Page 27 of Partridge in a Bear Tree

Penny whispered, "Tell me about shifters," from within her bundle of winter clothes, and Ashley smiled, pressing her mouth against the parka's hood.

"We've been around for a long time. As long as true humans, probably. Maybe longer. I don't know. There aren't that many of us, but at the same time, there are a lot more than you'd think. Renaissance is a shifter town, which just means there are a lot of us who have settled here. You've never had any kind of major injury or anything, have you?"

Penny made a surprised sound and shook her head, just a rustle of movement. Ashley nodded. "I didn't think so, because we almost always instinctively shift to help ourselves heal. And if you've ever had blood drawn…do you have a rare blood type?"

For a moment, the drummer emerged from the parka, eyes large with surprise. "Yeah. How did you know?"

"Shifters usually do. I'm not sure if we've all got the same rare blood type or if it's something that shows up in true humans, too, but we're careful about getting our blood drawn, or having surgery. Mostly we're just people, Penny. It's just we can also turn into animals. And I don't know why you didn't know you couldn't. Your parents can't?"

"I was adopted," Penny said after a moment. "And I remember…I can hear it now." She sounded sad. "This dumb little voice in my head. It used to drive me nuts when I was eleven or twelve and I just wanted it to go away because I wasafraid I was actually crazy. It finally did and I forgot about it, but I can hear it again now."

"Oh, honey. You weren't crazy. That's your partridge talking to you."

Penny sat up and pushed her hood back so she could give Ashley a hard stare.

Ashley couldn't help blurting a giggle. "Okay, okay, yes, I hear how that sounded. But it's true. My bear talks to me all the time. So you were never crazy, sweetheart. I get why you must have thought you were, though. You must have an awful lot of willpower, to suppress it that thoroughly. But you don't have to anymore. Everything's going to be okay now. You're a shifter, not crazy."

"I don't know," Penny whispered. "I think Imightbe crazy. You can't hear this thing. It sounds like a lunatic."

CHAPTER 16

The bear is going to eat us,the voice inside Penny's head said.Except it's not because it's our mate and everything's okay but it's definitely going to eat us. We should hide. But not from the bear. This is a nice nest. We're safe in it. It's warm. Let's lay some eggs.

If she wasn't crazy, Penny thought, then she was going to go crazy pretty soon. She honestly didn't know what was worse: turning into a partridge, or turning out of a partridge and being naked, or the little voice's conviction that something was going to eat them. Her. "Are my pronouns 'they/them' now?" she asked faintly.

Ashley chuckled, a warm and surprisingly comforting sound from someone who had turned into a gigantic grizzly bear and started Penny's apparent descent into madness. "I don't know what other people do. I think of myself as me, but if I think of me and my bear, it's 'us.'"

"It's separate from you?" Penny whispered.

"Nnnnooooo, but yes? It's a personality of its own. It's chiller than I am. But it's also part of me. When I'm human, it's part of me. When I'm a bear, I'm part of it. If I don't have anything else to do besides bear, it's pretty easy to just bumble along and notworry about anything, but I can still think and plan like a human if I need to."

Penny, remembering the absolute brainless panic of being a partridge, shook her head. "I don't think I can think and plan as a…bird." That sounded ridiculous. "I couldn't even bring my clothes with me."

"You can," Ashley said encouragingly. "It'll just take some practice. I've been doing this my whole life. You just shifted for the very first time."

Clothes are like feathers,the partridge announced.We're naked without them.

"No shit!" Penny froze as the words burst out, then whispered, "You, uh. How do you talk to your bear? You can't talk aloud, right? Or people would think you were nuts."

"I think we all talk to them out loud sometimes, but no, you can talk to your partridge in your head." Ashley was obviously trying to sound calm and reasonable, but the words she was using, in the order she was using them in, were just absurd. "Look, Penny, I know you've got a hotel room, but I think maybe I should bring you back to my apartment tonight. You've had kind of a shock?—"

The goddamn partridge in Penny's mind lit up like a cartoon bird zotted by an electric shock, all buzzy bolts and feathers outlined in blue.WE'VE BEEN SHOCKED?!?!

Penny said, "Oh my God," out loud. "Not that kind of shock." Although she felt a little like the aftermath of that kind of shock, all frazzled and like her hair was standing on end. "How do I make it shut up?"

"Your partridge?" Ashley hesitated. "I don't know if you can. I ignore my bear and sometimes she gives up, but you can't really make it be quiet, I don't think."

"Drumming," Penny said with sudden violence. "That's why I took up drumming. It drowned the damn thing out."

She sank back down into the fluffy coat, trying to hide from the world. Ashley, after another momentary pause, said, "Anyway, so I think maybe you shouldn't be alone tonight, and being around another shifter might help."

Not just another shifter,the partridge announced as if it was revealing something earth-shaking.Ourmate.

"Our mate," Penny echoed.

That, at least, felt right. It felt like something she'd known in her bones but hadn't quite been able to believe. Because who could believe it? Love at first sight wasn't something that happened, or at least, not often. Everybody knew somebody, of course. Somebody who had known right away, when they'd met the person they were going to marry. But that was the stuff of fairy tales, even if it did happen once in a while in real life.

Of course, turning into bears was also literally the stuff of fairy tales.

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