by Renee Hewett
The last thing on the video was a black screen with a phone number and the word MUFF.
He replayed the whole thing over and over, trying to figure out the trick he was watching, and then he finally gave up and Googled the phone number and MUFF.
He learned that MUFF stood for “Merrily United Furry Friends against the unethical treatment of non-sentient animals by shifters.” Their shady website told tales of people who could turn into animals, who called themselves “shifters.” MUFF stood against them and stood up for the normal animals that were harmed by them.
Jimmy let all of this percolate in his mind for a bit before he decided to take the leap. They needed something that could get them international attention, and that was what this group seemed like it could do. If MUFF came to Goosby and supported their cause, Jimmy and his team would be able to out Dedra, turn the factory back to the old ways, and have things back to the old ways.
But he knew he had to make the pitch in a certain way, in order to get MUFF to agree to help them. In his first call to them, he explained the video and told them what Dedra had done. “If we don’t do something, she’s going to cause the extinction of all the geese! No one will want them anymore! It’s not like we can put them in a zoo or something!”
The cultists fell for it.
And they moved fast. Before Jimmy knew it, they’d set a day to meet on-site at the factory. He hadn’t been sure that they would buy into the whole “think of the geese!” plea, but Lady Luck brought him one more surprise to help him along.
A goose, live and in the flesh, er, down.
“Oh mighty Lenny, please, in your wisdom, tell us how we must act next.” He put on a show as he walked through the factory floor behind the thing. He’d found Lenny wandering outside the factory and learned his name thanks to the tattoo on one of the goose’s webbed feet. It seemed trained, even responded to words, and Jimmy immediately realized that this was the perfect mascot. Having the thing around was just what they needed to make sure MUFF would help them.
MUFF wouldn’t know that Jimmy was full of shit, that he didn’t believe this goose was anything special, but it would serve a purpose. He’d got his co-dissenters to agree to the faux-worship of Lenny, and they'd been making big shows of lavishing praise on the bird.
Now for the big show. Jimmy was on his way to meet the MUFF members, walking with Lenny by the non-dissenting employees, past the machine that blew and combed the unnatural fluff, past the rollers that made webs that would be folded into the pillows and duvets. He looked at the clueless lemmings, his coworkers who acted like they were so happy to have updated machinery. Didn’t they know that those machines were going to replace them all eventually? That they were at the end of days if they didn’t act now?
The goose marched through the workshop, and some workers did a double-take. They weren’t used to seeing a live goose in their midst. A bit of fluff puffed off of a conveyor belt, floating to the ground in front of Lenny. The goose turned up his beak at it.
“How dare you insult Lenny by throwing fluff at him!” Jimmy yelled.
“Shut up, Jimmy,” the worker said. “Get that thing out of here before I decide to pluck him and make my own pillow.”
Lenny squawked at that and flapped his wings, picking up speed as he made his way to the floor overseer’s office, where they’d been keeping and feeding him.
It was also where the MUFF representatives were waiting for them. This meeting was important. Even though MUFF had already agreed to help them, they’d made it clear that they could back out at any time. Jimmy knew it was a hard sell, getting them to support the idea that getting rid of natural down was risking the extinction of the goose species and that it was decreasing their value on this earth.
Jimmy walked into the office after he opened the door for Lenny. Jimmy’s lackeys, Seamus and Pearlene, had met the MUFF members outside and brought them in, where they were all waiting to meet Jimmy and Lenny.
“So glad you all could come and support us in this endeavor.” Jimmy, Seamus, and Pearlene met MUFF members Vergie, Elon, and Brain. And of course, they introduced Lenny.
Jimmy already had an idea that these folks would be creepy, based on their weird website, but he thought the black robes and hoods over their head with the gold embroidery was a bit over the top.
Even so, the factory rebellion needed them if they were to be heard.
The leader, Brain, got down on one knee. “Hello, Lenny,” he said with reverence. “Thank you for taking on this mission, for doing the work of the geese who have been silenced.”
Lenny, in true goose fashion, screamed and pecked at the cultist, getting him right in the cheek, barely missing his eye.
Jimmy held his breath, certain the stupid bird had just ruined everything.
The cultist fell forward, holding himself up with his hands and knees, looking like he was bowing to Lenny. “You’re right, Lenny. I will pay penance on behalf of the humans of the world who have betrayed your kind. If you choose to make an example of me, I will take it.”
Jimmy let out his breath and looked over to Seamus and Pauline. Pauline whispered to him, “What kind of cock-a-doodle-doodle is this guy running on?”
“Who the hell cares? If we want this factory to get back to the old ways, then we need them to help us go viral or whatever. To get more folks behind us. Whatever it takes.”
Brain finally stood and turned to the three factory dissenters. “We will be glad to join your cause. We’ve already issued a MUFF DIVE to members of FUC to announce our intentions of action against Dedra Wakins. What would you like to see happen next?”
Jimmy smiled. “It’s simple.”
Before he could finish, Lenny squawked and flew up, attacking a wall. He targeted a framed photo, knocking it to the ground. The glass cracked, but they could still make out the photo of the Wakins family.
“We take out Dedra Wakins,” Jimmy translated. “If we get rid of her, we can get the geese back.”
They’d shared a good meal the night before, but Dedra remained sexually frustrated, as Andrés hadn’t budged in his stance on no touching.
All in good time. Dedra had other ways to pass the hours, including texting with Kailee to get all the details of her adventure with her FUC agent. Between texts, she played a match-three game on her new phone and then ended the night finishing one of the hockey sports romance books she’d bought.
So, not all a complete loss.
But by the next day, the novelty had worn off, and Dedra was feeling stifled by the tiny aircraft and quite annoyed that her vacation had been ruined. She was ready to get down to business, to deal with MUFF, and return to sun tanning on the beach.
Instead of reading, since she’d finished all the books NAKED had dropped off, she passed the flight by asking questions.
“What do you do for FUC?” she asked Andrés.
“I’m currently a professor at the academy.” His answer seemed purposely vague.
“What do you teach?” She wondered if he had some super-secret FUC reason to be cagey about it or if he were embarrassed to admit what it was.
“How about you tell me about you instead? I’m curious how you can run such a big company but still travel south for the winter.” As they’d been coasting for a while at the same altitude, he was able to sit comfortably in his chair and look at her, only occasionally glancing at the tablet that gave him the readouts.
Damn, he looks sexy surrounded by all those controls.
“I have a lot of good people in place who run it in my absence.” He seemed to be playing it cool, so she did the same. She didn’t want to throw herself at him and look desperate. She didn’t need to be desperate. Just because Andrés seemed like he’d been dropped on her right from the heavens didn’t mean she was going to act foolish for him.
“And there were no murmurs of an uprising before you left?” He leaned in his chair, his hand casually dropping off the armrest and brushing her arm, sending a jolt through her. De
dra stiffened but refused to respond further. She knew he was just playing with her.
“No. I made a lot of changes this past year, but I kept the workers informed the whole way. I promised them that nothing would happen to their jobs and even gave people a chance to leave with a generous package if they wanted to.” It kind of annoyed her to think that some of them had plotted against her. She wanted to know who and why, but she didn’t dare call in and ask anyone about it. She would check in with the FUC team at the academy and see what intel they had before she alerted anyone at the factory that she was wise to what was going on. Andrés said it was the best way to ensure that the workers and MUFF didn’t decide on any drastic action right away.
“What kind of changes?” He seemed truly intrigued, and she liked it. Most men didn’t care to hear about her business. She ran a finger over his hand, looking at his gorgeous fingers, wishing she could do more. His fingers responded to her touch, reaching out for her, caressing hers.
“There were certain things my brother never liked about the company. My father refused to change, and my brother walked away. I didn’t, but I knew that when my father passed the company to me, I’d make the changes that would bring my brother back.” Although they were on the topic of business, her body was elsewhere. How could playing with fingers be so sexy?
“He walked away? That must have infuriated your father.” He closed her hand around hers, holding it still. She looked from their hands to his deep brown eyes.
“Yeah.” It had. And it broke her heart when it happened. “Grayson came back around when his son, Maddox, was old enough to want to know his family, but Grayson and Dad were too stubborn to fully make amends. Dad died after Mom did and left everything to me. I wanted to make sure Grayson got half of it, but he refused to take it as long as it was ‘blood money,’ as he called it.”
He squeezed her hand and then rubbed the top of it with his thumb. “So you got rid of real down and moved to fake fluff, and that’s enough to bring him back?”
“I was hoping so. My dad always called him a bleeding heart. He hated geese getting killed. Really hated it. He’d scream if our parents tried to get him to go to the factory, even though we didn’t kill geese there; we just had the down delivered. He threw down pillows and duvets out of his bedroom window if they tried to give them to him. He walked away and never wanted any part of it.”
“You two are still close, though. How do you leave for so long without any way to talk to him or your kids or even anyone at the factory? You don’t check in with them for the whole winter?”
“Wrong.” Dedra shook her head. “I fly a specific path, so they know where I should be, and when. I stay in hotels, having a pre-arranged package from NAKED ready for me at each stop with clothes and a throwaway phone. I check in at certain times. Otherwise, my workers and kids won’t know I haven’t been hit by a plane or some shit.” It happened. More often than she liked to think about. Sometimes shifters were bigger than the average non-sentient animal, but humans couldn’t tell the difference. And if you zoned out while coasting through the clouds, planes could sneak up on you.
“So, they know where you’re staying when you get to your end spot.”
“Bingo.” She pulled her hand from him, wanting to shake off the intimacy she was feeling, and tapped her temple. “This isn’t new. My people have been doing this forever. Now that we have the internet, it’s easier to coordinate.” It also helped that she had plenty of money to pay NAKED from wherever she was.
As if reading her mind, he commented, “And your family fortune probably also helps.” She’d seen that look before. He wasn’t asking about a fortune made from pillows.
People either loved or hated the fact that her people were from a mob. “Sure,” she said cautiously, knowing that, with his FUC intel, he likely knew plenty about her family’s past, but she wasn’t going to offer up details, any more than he was going to tell her about his FUC duties.
“I heard what you told that boy. About your family.” His face was stony. She couldn’t tell if he was being judgmental or merely curious.
She shrugged. “Rumors. Legend. Lore. Enough to keep little shitheads like him from trying to come at me again.” But she gave him a little smile while she pulled out a tiny—airplane-appropriate sized, even if she wasn’t flying commercial—bottle of gin and took a swig. It wasn’t her usual martini, but it was better than nothing. Then she winked at him.
“A lady of secrets. I can respect that.”
“And you? You’re a pilot. And you can apparently figure out exactly what branch to use to knock a flying goose out of the jungle. What does that make you, some kind of engineer or mathematician?” She watched his face closely for any sign of a tell.
“Nope.”
“Seriously? You’re not going to tell me what you do? Is it something lame, like basket weaving?”
“I’ll have you know basket weaving isn’t lame.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “It goes along with old skills like tying knots to make nets. It’s historically a very important trade.”
“Fine. Do they offer a basket weaving or net-making course at the academy?”
He shrugged and offered her a tight-lipped smile that she couldn’t read. “I can’t say one way or another.”
“I’ve opened up to you. You gotta give me something.” She meant it. She did want to get to know him. They’d spent this much time together already, and she didn’t like feeling like it was all one-sided.
He surprised her by leaning toward her, close enough for his lips to touch her ear while he spoke his next words. “Take my word that I’ll let you know what you need to know, and when I can, I’ll tell you more.”
5
Andrés waited until they were on the final leg of their journey to hit her with the secretive forms. There would be no turning back then.
“This is why you wouldn’t talk to me about your job or anything FUC-related? Because I’d yet to sign this?” she asked, skimming the document on his tablet while he drove his truck, which they’d picked up at the private British Columbia airstrip.
Andrés nodded, keeping his mouth shut until she had time to read it all over and sign it. From this point forward, she was going to be privy to the secret world of FUC, and she had to agree to keep all knowledge quiet.
To the outside world, FUCN’A, the Furry United Coalition Newbie Academy, was ARSHOL, the Animal Rescue Special House of Learning. They had tons of land up in the Rocky Mountains, with trees and lakes and rivers running through it. There was plenty of room for cadets to train in their human or animal forms. And if anyone managed to get through the communication blockers and get some footage of animals running around, they could explain it away as a part of the animal training center.
At the gate, Andrés greeted the security attendant. The guard looked over to Dedra and back to Andrés. “You got the TURDS?”
Andrés grimaced. Whoever named the Truthful and Unfettered Reconciliation to Defend our Secrets must have hated the agents. Why not just call it a non-disclosure agreement? Was it really worth it to call it a TURDS form instead of an NDA?
Dedra’s snicker seemed to answer that question. Andrés shook his head and handed over the tablet. The guard looked it over then nodded, handing it back to him and then opening the gate. “Enjoy your stay, Ms. Wakins.”
“You have a marvelous day!” she called out as Andrés was putting up the window and driving onto the academy grounds.
She excitedly watched out the window to get peeks of the cadets. They were running drills, practicing the obstacle courses.
“I haven’t known very many other shifters, you know,” she told him.
“Really?” Andrés couldn’t imagine a life like that. His parents had made sure he had a solid network of shifters to turn to when he was growing up. Especially when they’d moved from South America to Canada. They believed it was important to have a big support system.
“Yeah, only geese when I was growing up but, even th
en, not many. My family had secrets, and my father treated our shifting ability the same as he did some of his, well, different business ventures.”
“What about Kailee’s dad?” As soon as the question came out, Andrés felt weird about it. He was interested in Dedra, and asking about her deceased husband felt awkward.
“Meeting him was a fluke. We met in university. I guess something pulled our animals together. Let me tell you, though, was it ever hard to get around to admitting it to each other! The shifting part, that is. You start out kind of like, ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if people could turn into animals’ and then start to feel it out from there.” She laughed a little, seeming to look off in the distance while the memory floated in her head, and when he glanced at her, he saw some sadness in her face.
“He was a goose too?” Andrés asked, unable to figure out a good way to change the subject without seeming insensitive.
“Oh, no!” Dedra exclaimed, turning to him. “Not at all! He was a narwhal!”
Andrés swerved a little, causing the cadets on the grass to look at them. He waved, a gesture to tell them all was all right. “How in the hell did that work?”
“Well, he loved swims in cold water, but he’d jump on a plane and come south with me for vacation. I just stuck to shorter southern migrations when he was around. Kailee takes after him, you know.”
“She’s a narwhal?” As much as Andrés had grown up around shifters, he hadn’t been around very many large marine mammals before. Otters, sure. But whales or narwhals, never.
“She is.” He liked the pride he saw in her face as she talked about her daughter. “Early on, I’d been a little sad not to have a little gosling to keep under my wing, but the time she spent out there, swimming with her dad, are moments she’ll treasure forever, so I’m glad she took after him.”
