Page 58 of Bears Behaving Badly
Fleeing to a park had been the only sane response to such madness. And they were apparently the only ones on the grounds who weren’t park employees. They hadn’t seen or scented anyone else during their walk, nor had they run across anyone frantically searching for a missing child wearing something red. Which did not bode well, for unsavory reasons.
It was an unlikely place for a fall, she thought as she waited for Nadia. There were several warning signs posted along the trail, complete with a symbol of a genderless cartoon figure helplessly cartwheeling over a cliff, presumably to its death, and a slope that clearly led to a steep drop. It was also anastyplace for a fall. The ravine was at least forty feet deep, with unforgiving boulders and nothing to cushion a plummet but rocks and dead brush.
If someone threw a bag of puppies down there, I will be very. Fucking. Irritated. And if someone threw a… Good God, it hardly bears thinking about.
Nadia reappeared beside her and shifted back in midair, landing lightly (and nudely) on her feet, ice-blue eyes bright in her flushed face. “She’s alive! Knocked about and bloody, and she’s got a horrid forehead gash that will need stitching, poor darling. But she hasn’t been down there long. She doesn’t seem to be dehydrated, and she’s no more than two or three years old, poor clumsy child.”
“I’ll call 9-1-1.”
“And she’s a Stable,” Nadia warned.
“I figured.” If the child had been a Shifter, she likely would have shifted from instinct if nothing else. And it was likely her other self would have been far better equipped to await rescue, or even gotten out on her own. “Should I try to get down there? Help you bring her up?”
“We don’t have the appropriate equipment, and I worry we might cause her further injury. I’ll keep her company so she doesn’t thrash about. She thinks I’m a magical eagle who gives rides to fairies in the woods.”
“Well, there’s really nothing to disprove that.”
“You’resocharming when you care to take the trouble.” Nadia preened. “But you stay here. I know you’re tough, Annette, but it’s really quite steep and you’re awfully, ah… What’s the opposite of ‘light on your feet’?”
“I don’t know, what’s the opposite of ‘not condescending at all’?”
“I’m sure you can figure it out if you think about it for a bit.”
“I see what you did there!” Annette hollered as Nadia shifted and swooped back down. She gathered the woman’s clothes in a tidy bundle and called Emergency Services, reporting an injured minor who needed rescuing, with a possible concussion and broken bones.
Then there was little to do but wait and wonder if, on the way back, she could talk Nadia into stopping by Milkjam Creamery for Thai Tea ice cream cones. Which would only happen if they didn’t have to answer too many awkward questions about how they happened to notice a girl child alive at the bottom of a ravine no one could see into or reach without mountaineering equipment.
That was the trickier side of their work and always had been. She and her kind were outnumbered thousands to one; it was a simple fact of life as well as population statistics. So when a Shifter needed an ambulance or was robbed or had to report a missing person, odds were the person or persons who came to help were going to be Stable.
So right there, they had to be careful what they said and did. Most of her kind preferred to deal privately with such problems: hire a Shifter private eye, go to a Shifter physician, hire a Shifter accountant to explain why romping through a forest at midnight was deductible.
IPA was the only all-Shifter government agency in existence, as far as she knew. Perhaps they would eventually have their own police precincts and schools. Oh, but that sounded bad, 1960s bad: separate but equal.
Except plenty of Shiftersdidn’tthink Stables were equal. Some of the most intelligent people she’d ever known viewed Stables with pity and condescension at best, animals at worst, locked into one shape, never evolving, just wallowing in their destructive instincts. Her own father had explained it rather crudely when she was a child: “A six-week-old puppy knows not to shit where she eats. Stables still haven’t figured that one out.”
And always, always hanging over their heads was the constant fear of discovery by the wider world of Stables, the most rapacious, destructive predators in the history of the planet.
One thing at a time. Focus on what’s in front of you. So to speak.Good advice, and not a moment too soon. Behind her, from the south, she could hear a small group approaching. Not running or shouting, and it was too early for the paramedics. So, then: park visitors. Two males and a female.
No, she realized when all three of them blanched when they saw her. Not visitors. Or, at least, not therejustto visit.
“Hey!” the taller man barked. “What are you doing?”
Rude.“Watching.”
The taller one lowered his head and stepped forward, pushing with his shoulders like he was trying to get through a crowd. “What’s going on?”
“A rescue operation,” she replied pleasantly. “Isn’t that good news?”
“A rescue?” The woman, small and slight, with dark-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, was cupping her elbows in both hands. “But why? There’s, um, there’s no one down there.”
“Of course there is.”
“No, there isn’t.” This from the smaller male.
“There’s no need to take my word for it. Oh, and that’s a lovely jailhouse tattoo. The tears aren’t filled in, though. Does it signify time served, or people you tried to kill? Well, it’s not important.” She gestured to the edge of the ravine. “Peek for yourself.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “There’s nobody down there.”
