Page 52 of Raven's Instinct
The kids who were still waiting to be picked up were distraught about Addison’s accident, and Alan was quick to try to distract them from their anxiety and guilt. It was easy enough to get Gil into role-playing a doctor for Addison with Ryan as a nurse. They pretended to take her temperature and blood pressure and squabbled over toys instruments. Amy was inconsolable and didn’t want to be comforted or coddled, and when Alan tried to pick her up to snuggle, she popped defiantly into her owl form.
“Oh!” Alan didn’t register what was different until Kendra said, “She took her clothes!”
Her wings were completely free, and Amy was keen on beating them at Alan. Bits of down surrounded her like fog. Ryan sneezed.
“What a clever girl!” Alan praised her. “What a good job you’ve done!” Amy squawked at him in surprise and looked around with big golden eyes.
The door buzzed. Addison started to reach for her phone, but Doctor Gil scolded her to lie still.
Alan checked the security feed. An ambulance was out front already, and there were two EMTs wearing scrubs witha stretcher, along with two parents with terrible timing. “Tara, Ryan, get your things!” He started to unlock the door for them, then remembered the owl in his arms.
“Fingers and feet, Amy,” he told her. “There are strangers coming.”
Amy stared back at him and gave a little hiccup of a hoot.
“Time to be a little girl,” Kendra said, taking Amy from his arms and setting her on the floor. “Fingers and feet!”
Amy hopped in place and clacked her beak in triumph, then started to skittle sideways.
The door buzzed again and Alan could see the increase in alarm and confusion in the image on his phone. Someone pounded on the door manually. “Amy, I need you to be a little girl so we can bring people in to help Teacher Addy!”
Amy paused, then seemed to concentrate hard. She made a dry heaving noise.
“This is not the time for a pellet,” Kendra scolded her. “Fingers and feet, or there’s no bath tonight!”
“Ooooo,” Ryan said. His mother had warned Alan that he was very bath motivated.
Amy gave a brief shriek and turned into a little girl again, plucking at her clothing with interest. “DID IT! Okay!”
“You did it!” Kendra said, swooping down to pick her up as Alan could finally unlock the door and let in the EMTs.
The parents did an admirable job of not getting in the way, and Addison assured everyone that she was absolutely fine, that this was just a precaution, Gil wasn’t in trouble, he was a very good doctor, ending in an ohhhhhhh that fooled no one.
The medics took her vitals with real instruments and prepared an injection.
“What’s that?” Kendra asked sharply.
“Just a sedative to slow the labor so we can get to the hospital before the baby comes. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. We do this all the time.”
“No!” Addison shook her head emphatically. “I don’t want that.”
The medic exchanged a look with his partner, then reluctantly put the needle away. They lifted Addison onto the stretcher over her half-hearted assurance that she could walk and carried her out to the waiting ambulance.
Tara and Ryan were reluctantly dragged out with their respective parents, along with the sleeping toddler, Shane, who woke up very crabby from his brief nap. Once they were gone, Amy practiced shifting back and forth with her clothing until she was so tired she ran into a wall, knocking herself down. Gil seemed to think that was his fault, too, and cried even louder than she did.
Kendra picked her up and she shifted into a little girl who took a death grip on Kendra’s neck.
“Is something wrong?” Alan finally had a chance to ask Kendra.
“Don’t you feel it? Something doesn’t add up.”
Alan might have dismissed Kendra’s anxiousness as a carryover of the general shock of Addison’s accident, but something rubbed him wrong, too, and he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Smells bad, his raven agreed.
And if a raven thought something smelled bad…
Cherry’s phone rang.
