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“Two/three for a while. Two days here and three as a fire inspector. Only for another two months. Any more than that, and they have to put me through additional training even though I know everything. The exception goes away.”
“Are you going to do the training?”
“Hell no. Maybe when I don’t have the body anymore to keep up with the firefighting.”Since we remain in our prime far longer than pure humans, that really means nothing. “No way, though. I don’t like this crap.”
Garrett laughs. “You don’t like anything.”
“That’s not true. I like when I’m alone with a cup of coffee free from fucking monkeys.”
“Monkey. Oh, wow. It’s not like I’ve never heard that one before. Besides, you’re way behind the times. Nobody argues about that anymore. Cladistically,?apesaremonkeys. You think you’re being a smartass but you’re not even being smart.” He says it in a singsong, teasing way.
“What the hell does claw dicksly mean?”
“Cladistically. It means descended from the same ancestor in biological terms. You should have spent more time with your nose in a book instead of in the jar of honey.”
“Whatever, Baboon.”
“Hey now!” he says, “that’s a real insult there.” It isn’t, of course, and he laughs. “Seriously, though, does this fire inspector thing suck so badly?”
Immediately, that girl’s face flashes through my mind. Madeline Charles. She has the most beautiful face imaginable. Her eyes are striking and perfect whether she’s being sweet and kind or absolutely prepared to kill me.
“Too much drama,” I say, “but I’ll survive the next few months, I guess.”
“You know, if you need to go wild on your two days, just let me know. I’ll work around your days here.”
“Thanks, man.” It’s a pretty damned breathtaking thing to offer me, actually. Go wild. That’s a way shifters describe shifting into our animal form in order to deal with the stress of being human.
Shifting clears away a whole hell of a lot of the crap in our heads and makes things a lot easier to handle. In general, any of us might take a few hours every four or five months, whenever we’re really dealing with something. Of course, we shift more often than that. But in terms of shifts designed just to be the animal, that’s going wild.
Vic, a lion, pokes his head into the kitchen. “Anybody got time to do a kid tour?”
Garrett says, “We can both do it. Start them in the garage.” Vic disappears and Garrett says, “Come on, Yogi. Your picnic basket awaits.”
“Whatever, banana mouth.”
Yeah, shifters tend to use elementary school-level insults with each other. Don’t ask me why we do that.
I follow Garrett out to the main garage. I drop my pristine coffee mug into the sink on my way. I never got my coffee and I don’t know what effect that will have on me while I’m trying to handle a bunch of kids.
I’m not much of a kid person, to be honest. I have some nieces and nephews, all that good stuff, but I never gave it too much thought.Of course, my nieces and nephews are bears. Mysister is a bear. All female bear shifters have shifter cubs. So, even though my brother-in-law is pure human, my nieces and nephews are bears.
And that makes them easy to handle. Bears are solitary creatures not too interested in interaction. I like that. Why would I want to deal with kids? I haven’t met the right girl so why would I think so much about kids?
Of course, having that thought brings the girl to mine. Madeline’s face flashes again, and I grit my teeth. I really don’t need a distraction right now.
“Hey, everyone, I’m Garrett and this is my fellow firefighter, Lucas.”
I wake up to the fact that there are about fifteen little kids around five or six years old now staring in my direction. I grunt and raise my hand at them. “Hey there.”Garrett gives me a look and I shrug. Not good with kids, okay?
Especially a bunch of them like this. They all start trying to ask questions at once and then, they want to touch everything. My eyes dart everywhere at once.
Garrett starts his spiel about our uniforms and what happens when an alarm goes off. We get dressed in our gear and the little guys get excited to try some on for themselves. I notice one little guy is getting lost in a pair of pants. I help him stand in just one leg, and he smiles. “Wow, you guys are like trees. These are huge!”
I laugh and start to growl. “I am big as a tree and I can do anything!”
He laughs. “You’re fun!”
Wow, that’s a first. I’m serious. He might be the first person in all of human history to call me fun. I help him out of the pants and carry him over my shoulder to the group. They’re about to get on the ladder truck. Garrett gives me a little smile and I feellike sticking my tongue out at him. I guess these kids are getting under my skin.
