Page 16 of Bear My Heart

But being with her was so good. Just talking, learning about her, finding out about her heartbreaks and her hopes. He wanted to heal the one and make the others come true. Laughing over dinner and admiring the chef's efforts. It was just so easy, and felt so right.

That's fate, his bear said, more patiently now. It's supposed to be good. Now hibernate. It's winter and you've eaten a lot.

Pete actually laughed out loud at that, and struck a salute toward the bear's sudden bossiness. "Yes, sir. It's just called sleeping, though, you know. If you don't go to sleep for three months, it's not hibernating."

His bear sighed. Humans should. Sleeping for months is nice.

"But it would make it much harder to see Shanti tomorrow."

Bears weren't really suited for throwing their paws in the air and going I GUESS, but his bear gave a good impression of it, and Pete went to sleep with a grin.

He also woke up early due to the bear's impatience, not his own. It wanted to be up and moving, on the way to see Shanti, and Pete was at the town square a solid ninety minutes before there was any hope of Shanti showing up. There were pickup trucks lining the side of the square opposite the playground, and cheerful people in big boots and coats hauling what looked like giant Lincoln Log toy construction pieces out into the square. Peter jogged over and offered to help, realizing as he did so that there were at least a dozen other shifters among the building crew. They accepted his help, and everybody, even the true humans, pretended that there was nothing unusual about one person carrying a four foot tall, eight foot long section of snap-together logs by themselves.

Because they were actually logs, not plastic, and they were heavy. It took two true humans to carry any one section, and even Pete grunted the first time he picked one up. He also waved off assistance once he had his grip on it, and took it where he was told to. The pieces really did slot together like a construction set, and it was clear that the organizers of the holiday market had this down to a science. They put the booths up two at a time, moving past each other with the ease of long practice so nobody got in each other's way, and after an hour's effort, the once-empty field had twelve or so mostly-completed booths laid out in the beginnings of a grid. Somebody yelled, "Coffee break!" and all work stopped, turning into cheerful admiration of their handiwork as the builders collected together in a bunch and headed toward the doughnut shop.

A good-looking white guy who was probably close to twenty years older than Pete fell into step beside him. Like Pete, he was a shifter, though from his rangy build, Pete thought he wasn't a bear. He said, "Thanks for the help. Jake Rowly," as they walked across the square.

"Pete Baranov. My pleasure, although I don't think you needed it. You guys are artists."

Rowly laughed. "Lots of practice, that's all. You're new in town?"

"Working on the railroad." Pete glanced that direction, then dropped his voice and tilted his head toward a group of the true humans who had also been working on the bazaar setup. "Everybody in Virtue knows about shifters…? Or do they just think there are a lot of really strong people who help set up?"

"More people than usual know about us here, yeah, but not everybody's in the know. They think we're just strong and like to show off." Rowly flexed. His winter coat hid any actual visible muscle play, but Pete laughed anyway.

"Good to know. I'm looking forward to seeing it all set up. Is it mostly done?"

"Oh, God, no! It ends up looking like its own whole little village in the middle of the town square. A hundred booths or so, plus seating areas and a couple of heated tents for people to warm up in." Rowly sketched pictures in the air as he spoke.

Pete's jaw dropped. "A hundred booths? That's got to be one of the biggest holiday bazaars in the country, doesn't it?"

"I don't know," Rowly admitted. "I do know it's grown hugely in the past five years. The town council decided to cap the size at about the same time the town voted to bring the railroad back in. We want it to keep feeling like a local affair, you know? So people who live in Virtue are grandfathered in or have first dibs on getting a space if they're a new business, and then there's a lottery for the remaining booths."

"And you decided that before the railroad came back," Pete echoed, impressed. "That must have gotten up some noses." He took a deep breath, because they were nearly at the doughnut store now and the scents of cinnamon and coffee and sugar were wafting out on the cold air, delicious and powerful. "Speaking of noses, wow, that smells great."

"Imelda's is a treasure," Jake agreed, and added, "and yeah, it did. But everything about the rail line has gotten up one nose or another. Bringing it back at all, building a new station for it, capping the bazaar, limiting the number of hotels and B&Bs we'd allow in town…but it'll be good for Virtue in the end, I think."

"You're not worried about exposure?" Pete asked more quietly. Most of the builders had gone into the doughnut shop already, but he and Rowly lingered outside a moment as Pete explained, "My own village is a lot like Virtue in some ways," by which he meant there were a lot of shifters, and Rowly nodded, clearly understanding. Pete nodded, too, and went on. "There's been a lot of in-fighting about whether we should let it become a stop for more cruise liners. Exposure's one of the concerns."

"But tourism dollars are a compelling argument in the other direction," Rowly said with wry understanding. "Yeah, people are worried, and we've had some trouble around town over it, but in the end it's change or die, isn't it? And we don't want the town to dry up and blow away. It came close enough to doing that already, and we're worse off without it."

The slight emphasis meant he was talking about shifters specifically, though his expression grew more intense and concerned. "You know there's been some exposure lately, though?"

"What?" Pete found himself straightening like he was bracing for a fight. "No? What are you talking about?"

Jake Rowly exhaled unhappily. "There was a natural disaster last summer in Colorado. In Renaissance, do you know it?"

Pete shook his head. Jake nodded in response, then shook his head, too, like he couldn't stop himself. "My parents retired there, and Steve Torben, the guy who owns the gastropub, his family's from there. There were a lot of us on hand when the disaster hit and they chose saving lives over protecting their own secrets."

Pete's heart clenched and he took a step aside, putting a hand out to brace himself against the doughnut shop's porch railing. "Yeah," he said after a thick moment. "I think I'd have done the same thing, but…how bad is it?"

"It's been almost five months and there haven't really been any obvious repercussions," Rowly said, still quietly. "Some noise on the internet boards, but it looked like the whole topic got laughed out of town or went so far underground most people couldn't find it anyway, so maybe they contained it. It helps that we're hard to photograph."

That sounded strange, but Pete knew what Rowly meant. Shifters could be photographed just like anybody else when they were in either their human or animals forms, but for some reason, not even video could really film them in the moments around transition. It created a kind of buffer that made it much more difficult to link him to his bear form. It didn't stop true humans from seeing them shift, obviously. It just made it really difficult to prove, and was one of the things that kept shifters from being completely exposed in the modern world. Even the most careful shifters might otherwise get caught by a random person with a telephoto lens, or a camera phone at the wrong time.

"Right," Pete said slowly. "Is there some kind of network or alert that I should be part of…did you say Torben?"

"Yeah?"