by Lucia Ashta
“No one’s going to hold your hand here, especially not me. Any questions? None? Good. Let’s get started. Every one of you here is at least a twoer, which means you all should have some basic shifter skills by now, unless McGinty is going soft in his basic shifting classes, but I’ve known the man long enough to know he’s a hardass. So don’t bother using the excuse that you haven’t learned something about your shifter animal on me. I won’t buy it. Sure, you learn more as you go, obviously, but being a shifter, and eventually being an Enforcer, is all about learning on the fly. Flexibility is your friend. If you allow yourself to form rigid beliefs about what you can and can’t do—or what your opponent can or can’t do—you’re setting yourself up for a world of hurt.
“You need to teach yourself to think outside the box. Keep your mind sharp and access it even while you’re in your animal form. And before you ask, yes, every one of you in here is a shifter. The other supes and vamps will train a different way. I’m a shifter, so you got me.”
What kind of shifter? I was desperate to know what kind of animal belonged to this instructor’s steely attitude.
“We won’t be working on your shift or how to develop your shifter powers. I’m leaving that to McGinty. That’s obviously an important part of defending yourself, but in this class we’ll work on using your skills to throw your opponent off balance, to allow you to dominate even when your animal might be the weakest in a fight. Size is important, it’s true, boys”—she flashed a quick grin—“but in shifter fights, like in real life, it’s not always the biggest and strongest that will win. How you use your skills is more important than size, and I’m going to teach you why and how. And if you’re lucky enough to be the strongest and fastest in the room, there’s always more to learn, trust me on that. Arrogance will get you killed quicker than anything else. Never underestimate a shifter. If you do, it might very well be the last thing you do.”
Marcy June stopped her pacing across the front of the room to scan her audience to confirm that we all hung on her every word. “I’m also going to train you to fight in your human forms. We can’t always rely on our animals, especially when the magic of our opponents is varied and unpredictable. Some of the stronger mages can block a shift. There are also some magical objects that can interfere. Or maybe you might be too injured in your human form to conjure the strength of your magic to shift. Since we can’t anticipate the exact circumstances of your fight, we need to train for as many bizarre situations as we can think of. It’s the only way to truly prepare.
“I’ll pair you up so that you start by fighting other students that evenly match you. As the term progresses, I’ll make the odds tougher. By the end of the term, every single one of you will have to fight someone who outpowers you, or you might fight me. And trust me, I won’t hold back. It won’t serve you if I don’t show you what you might be up against. When you’re a shifter, it pays to be tough as nails. Right, Sadie?”
“Hell yeah,” she said from behind me. “The tougher, the better.”
Marcy June scanned her audience again, dark eyes intense. “Girls, you’ll want to wear shorts under your skirts. There’s no room for delicate flowers in this class. Be ready to be thrown … unless you can throw your opponent first.” She grinned as if she’d made a joke. Sadie was the only one to chuckle.
The professor proceeded, undoubtedly saying more things to freak me out about the rest of the term, but I didn’t hear a thing for several solid minutes as a realization hit me—hard.
Marcy June had said this class was for shifters several times. Further, since Ky and Boone were such great friends with Leander, they spent a lot of time together. And in this school, creatures were clustered according to type—by necessity; we had different skills and couldn’t all be grouped together. If Leander was in this class, that meant the elfin prince was a shifter.
Why on earth hadn’t I considered that before?
Then I knew why. I’d seen his wings and assumed he was a creature who constantly maintained his form. But … holy shit. He wasn’t sporting wings right now. His back, sans wings, rested completely against the back of his seat, directly in front of me. And I hadn’t even noticed.
Dumbfounded that I could be so stupid, I stared at the back of his light blue shirt. His back appeared smooth beneath it. WTF? What kind of shifter was he that he could retract his wings? Was there such a thing as a partial shift? Even though I wasn’t as ignorant as I’d been last term, I still had no idea.
Leander was a shifter. He had to be. I was crushing on a guy and I had no idea what he might turn into…
As if he sensed my attention on his back, he turned in his seat. When his eyes met mine, he raised his eyebrows in question. Slowly, those around him turned to face me too. Ky was first, then Boone, but their groupies soon followed. Ginger tried to sear me with the force of her stare. Jas leaned forward in her seat to try to sear Ginger with her own stare. It was getting ridiculous, and in two seconds we’d have Marcy June on our asses for interrupting class.
I swallowed my shock—both that Leander was a shifter and that I’d been stupid enough not to notice—and blinked my link to him away. I smiled blandly and pinned my attention on Marcy June up front. It took a while, but eventually everyone did the same.
But even though I stared at the tiny professor with the dark hair and the dark eyes, I didn’t absorb a single word she was saying.
Leander was a shifter.
Like me.
Maybe that meant we were similar enough that we could be together. Even if for a term or two on campus...
9
I never thought I’d be relieved to be in Basic Shifting 201 after how much I’d flubbed my shifts in McGinty’s class last term, but after the tension of Defensive Creature Magic, I was ready to be free of Ginger and her equally catty friends. If I had to leave her to rub her paws all over Leander to get away from her, so be it. Besides, Marcy June was intense, too intense for the first day of classes, especially with the way the day had started.
My relief, however, was short-lived. Though Basic Shifting was also held in the Illumination Room, McGinty directed us to the shifter practice room in Bundry Hall before most students’ butts hit their seats. And he assigned me as a partner to the best shifter in the class: Jas. She grinned at me from the other side of the padded mat, bouncing on the balls of her feet as if we were about to spar.
“You do realize you’re not supposed to hit me or anything, right?” I said. “Because you’re looking a little unhinged.”
“According to you, I always look unhinged.”
“True enough, but you look particularly so.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just picturing all the ways I’m gonna take down Tracy.” She jabbed the air between us, her white-striped black hair and dangling nose ring swinging with each punch. “Take that, bitch,” she hissed to her imaginary opponent.
“Who the hell is Tracy?”
“The bitch who couldn’t take her eyes off Ky. She’s encroaching on my territory, and I’m gonna put her in her place.” She jabbed again. “Teach her a lesson.”
I breathed in some patience; with Jas, I could always count on needing a whole lot of it. “First of all, my brother is not your territory. And secondly, is Tracy one of the redhead’s friends?”
“If you mean the redhead with the huge boobs who can’t keep her grubby hands of your man, then yeah.” She punched a quick one-two combo. “You know, if you roll your eyes like that they might get stuck facing the back of your head.”
I scoffed. “No they won’t.” But just in case, I kept my eyeballs where they belonged. “And Leander isn’t my ‘man,’ you know that.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. You can let Stacy take Leo if you want, but I’m staking my claim on Ky.”
“Wait. Stacy and Tracy? Are you for real?”
“Yep.” She grinned and brought her fists down to her sides. “Their little grabby, buxomy trio is Stacy, Tracy, and Swan. You can’t make that shit up.”
I chuckled. “I’m pretty sure it’d be impossible to make up half the shit that goes down at this school.”
“Eh-hem.”
I turned my head to find Professor Conan McGinty behind me, towering over me with his full, bushy beard and full, bushy head of auburn hair.
“What do you think, lasses? Are ya actually going to do any coursework today?” His voice was a slight brogue. Now that I knew what shifter magic felt like, I sensed it on any shifter powerful enough to put off shifty vibes when they were in human form. I was sensing lots of power rolling off of him. “You’re supposed to be practicing your shifts, not gossiping like old maids.”
Jas pouted and opened her mouth, probably to complain about being called an “old maid,” so I rushed to keep her from sticking her proverbial foot in her mouth. I tried not to alienate my teachers, even if she apparently didn’t care. I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head: “I practiced a lot over the summer.”
“I’d hoped you would. The better you get, the safer you’ll be.”
“Yeah, my brother and Boone coached me quite a lot since we didn’t have much to do in the fae’s Golden Forest over the break.”
“Glad to hear it. Leander didn’t help?”
I schooled my features into indifference. “No, his father kept him pretty busy. I didn’t see him all that much.”
“Hm. That surprises me.”
“Why?”
“Well, Leander’s shown quite an interest in you is all.”
“Hm-hmm,” Jas said from behind me in a singsongy I-told-you-so tune, though she’d never told me any such thing.
Don’t ask, don’t ask—“How so?”
McGinty’s eyes twinkled as he looked down at me. I thought he was actually going to answer my question for a few moments, before his expression grew serious and he tucked his arms behind his back. I suspected he’d just realized he was beginning to gossip like an “old maid.”
“Show me your shift,” he said. “Let’s see where you’re at now, lass.”
I pushed the many questions and doubts I had to the back of my mind for later analysis—or even better, where I’d hopefully forget them—and stepped into the center of the mat, encouraging Jas off it. I closed my eyes and pictured my essence embodied in a strong, powerful, muscular mountain lion. During last term, McGinty had specifically instructed me not to do it this way. But it worked for me, so whatever. I was pretty sure the instructor would encourage me to embrace however I could get to the desired end result. I’d seen him encourage Dave Bailey to shift a dozen different ways, so long as he stopped ending up part bobcat, part boy. After my many struggles in shifting last term, I was just grateful I’d found a way that got it done more or less predictably; I still only managed to shift maybe seventy percent of the time.
I envisioned my thick fur, the golden color of a sandy desert, glistening in the sunlight. I pictured my eyes, golden, copper-toned, so much like my human eyes. I envisioned the way my muscles glided under my flesh in the pinnacle of grace and efficiency. This was easy as I’d watched Ky as a mountain lion over the summer until I’d had my fill, and our lions were much the same, though mine was slightly smaller.
I breathed in deeply, gathering my energy in the center of my abdomen, deep in my core. My magic pulsed there like a beacon for my power … and then I pushed it out, sending it toward that image of myself as a mountain lion, a majestic creature perfectly in tune with nature and all creation. I directed my magic toward the image I held in my mind and … poof.
I shook myself and opened my eyes, knowing I’d managed it. And in record time. I was nowhere near as fast at it as Ky or Boone, or even Jas, but compared to my performance of last semester, I was a superstar.
“Damn, girl, that was awesome,” Jas said, and I noticed Wren and Dave grinning at me from a few mats over.
I looked up at McGinty. His face was far too serious. “Well, you didn’t blur, vibrate, or flicker. But neither did you shift the cracking-breaking way.” Finally, he grinned as wide as my friends. “I suppose I always figured you were unique. You came up with your own way, and it suits you just fine. You’re a mighty beautiful lion, that’s for sure.”
I smiled, though I had no idea what that might look like in my animal form. He reached down and patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “This is a vast improvement from last term, no doubt about it. But there’s always room for more improvement. You’ve seen what your brother can do, right?”
I nodded.
“Keep practicing until you achieve his fluidity. Or until you surpass it.” He smiled again, the enthusiasm twinkling in his eyes. “I bet Ky would like that, huh, his squirt of a sister shifting better than him?”
Wait, was McGinty pitting me against my brother? And how many people knew Ky called me “squirt?” I still had to get back at him for that...
“Shifters are competitive by nature,” McGinty continued. “But the only one you should compete with is yourself. Keep it up until you’ve managed your best. You’ll know when that is.” He squatted down to examine my face. “It’s really quite remarkable. So few of you in the world...”
He studied me for long enough that I would have definitely been fidgeting in human form. He stood again. “Now, let’s see you shift back. I want to hear all about how you shift without the three usual steps.”
But when I went to shift, reaching for the image of my human self in the reverse of what I’d done, I couldn’t quite hold on to the image long enough to return to my usual self. My lion seemed to be asserting her dominance, her power.
It took me the rest of the hour-and-forty-five-minute long class to finally grab hold of myself, my long blond hair, copper eyes, bare arms and legs, school uniform, before things began to happen in the right direction. I channeled all the strength and ferocity of my lion into holding onto the image of myself as a young woman. My lion resisted; I pushed onward.
The bell rang just as I finally returned to myself as a girl. Panting and exhausted, I sprawled on the mat that reeked even to my human nose of stinky feet and old sweat. I wished the staff mages would do some kind of spell to keep them sparkling clean.
“Class dismissed!” McGinty yelled out to the rest of the class of mostly exhausted shifters before focusing back on me. “I’m glad to see you made it back, lass. You had me worried there for a bit. We’ll have to talk about how things went tomorrow.”
Joy. A conversation to look forward to—not.
I heaved myself up from the mat and joined my waiting friends in heading to the dining hall. Dave appeared as exhausted as I was; he must still be struggling with his shift. Sadie and Wendi settled behind our group, constant shadows. I caught Sadie elbowing Wendi before I turned back around.
I was famished. Shifting, or struggling to shift as it were, really took it out of me.
Despite the many personality quirks of the pygmy trolls, there wasn’t a thing I could say against their cooking. The selection of food in the dining hall was varied and smelled delicious, as usual. And as usual, Wren and I chose our food not based on what was most appetizing, but on which station was manned by the least frightening-looking troll. It varied from day to day, the trolls’ moods as fickle as Jas suffering from PMS.
I settled at the bench table with two slices of veggie pizza and a salad drenched in ranch dressing, which kind of negated the fact that I was eating a salad, but whatever. I’d probably burned about five thousand calories trying to shift for so long.
Sadie and Jas were already there. Sadie had two trays of food, piled high with a salami sub with all the fixings, two slices of pepperoni and mushroom pizza, three tacos smothered in hot sauce, and a bowl of chili topped with raw onions and Mexican cheese. I really hoped she was going to brush her teeth before sleeping with “one eye open” in our room tonight.
Jas sat in front of her spicy Szechuan stir-fry and stared at Sadie, plucked eyebrows raised. “Where are you gonna fit all that?”
“In my belly,” Sa
die said around a bite, smiling as we got a view of sub sandwich. “Man, I missed the dining hall. It was one of my highlights while studying here.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
“Mmm. The food is as good as I remember. A bonus of watching your ass all term.”
I choked on a bite of salad. “You’re going to be here with me the entire term?”
“Yup. What, don’t you want me watching your back?”
Actually, yes, yes I did. I nodded. “For sure. You look like you could kick anyone’s ass.”
Wendi took a seat on the opposite end of the table from Sadie. Her tray contained a salad and nothing else, and it wasn’t coated in ranch.
“Too bad she has to be here too.” Sadie’s shoulders slumped glumly as she shoveled another bite of salami into her mouth.
Wendi pretended not to hear—shifters have superb hearing—and took a dainty bite of cucumber and tomato and washed it down with sparkling water.
Sadie watched her. “Puke,” she said under her breath. I wasn’t sure whether to groan or chuckle.
“Okay, what is it with you two?” Jas asked, never afraid of conflict, while Wren and Dave sat next to me, and Adalia claimed her usual seat next to the prickly skunk shifter.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Wendi said like a Southern belle.
Sadie growled, “I just don’t like people who put on airs. There’s enough hot air around that chick to inflate a hot air balloon. When you’re the best at what you do, there’s no need for pretense.”
“You just don’t like that I’m the one who took out the shifters attacking the place this morning. You can’t handle that someone else might get the limelight for once. You always want it to be all about Sadie, Sadie, Sadie. She’s one of the best Enforcers, don’t you know? She kicks butt. Yada, yada, yada. I’m sick of it. You’re just going to have to deal with me getting more attention than you for once.”
“It’s not that, you idiot. You’re—”
“Hey there, ladies,” Damon interrupted.