Once Upon a Shifter (113 page)

That meant he was in bear form, of course, somewhere out with Kane, probably.

“What did you need?” she asked, still stirring.

Thomas licked his lips and thought that he should tread lightly. It wasn’t looked upon kindly in shifter society to charge into someone’s home and tell someone’s wife that they’d been up to no good.

“There was a break-in at the library,” he said, slowly. “They found bear tracks outside.”

That part wasn’t true, but it didn’t really hurt.

“The cops don’t know what’s going on, but I think it might have been some of the younger guys,” Thomas went on. “I was hoping Glenn could help me figure out what happened.”

Mrs. Long clucked and shook her head. “You know how the cubs can be,” she said, her tone firmly disapproving. “I’ll be sure to tell Glenn that you came by. He doesn’t like these sorts of incidents any more than you do.”

She took a quick taste of the chili, thought for a moment, and reached for the chili powder. “Think if someone got caught and panicked,” she said. “Then we’d all be outed in a moment.”

Thomas just nodded.

Every bear he knew had had some sort of close call. His had come at age seventeen when he’d been racing down a mountain in his mom’s car, doing at least ninety on the straightaways. When the cops had pulled him over, he’d been so nervous and amped up that he could practically feel the fur starting to come through his skin, and he’d broken a sweat just trying not to shift.

“Thanks, Mrs. Long,” he said.

“Sure,” she said. “I was just making dinner for myself, but do you want to stay?”

It smelled great, but he didn’t like being in Glenn’s house any longer than he had to be.

“I’m getting dinner with my folks,” he said. “Thank you, though.”

Chapter Three

Walking down the stone steps away from the library, Sofia didn’t have any of the bounce in her step that she’d had earlier that day. Not after spending nearly nine hours picking shards of glass off of the floor, shaking the old newspapers off to get the glass shards out, and then sweeping the rest of the glass off of the floor.

Francis’s husband had at least come, knocked the rest of the glass from the panes, and nailed plywood over the empty windows. At least it would be harder to break into the room again, Sofia thought, but she didn’t take much comfort in that.

In five minutes she was in front of The Tipsy Miner, her
other
favorite place in Placerville. She pulled the big brass handle on the glass door toward herself and headed in.

The Tipsy Miner was actually a pretty classy place, more wine bar than dive, and much nicer than its goofy name would suggest.

At the center was a dark wood bar, rows and rows of whiskey and vodka and gin and tequila neatly lined up behind it, beer taps in front. Rumor around town had it that the bar still had bullets from a gunfight encased in the heavy wood, but Sofia had never been able to find them, and she’d been to the Miner plenty of times in the past few weeks.

“Hey, Sophie,” called Gavin, the bartender. He was shaking some cocktail in a heavy silver cocktail shaker, the muscles in his forearms flexing as he did.

Sofia could have watched him shake that thing all day, honestly.

He was cut from the same cloth as Thomas, the library’s computer guy, though they both said they weren’t related. Gavin was lighter-haired than Thomas, his coloring a little ruddier, but he had the same build: incredibly tall, and built
solid
.

“Hey, Gavin,” she called, walking to her usual place at the bar.

“Usual?” he asked, pouring the martini into a glass for an older tourist couple.

She just nodded, and thirty seconds later, Gavin was pushing a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in front of her.

Sofia just looked at it and sighed, not even able to get excited about a delicious glass of wine.

Gavin frowned.

“Bad day?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Someone broke into the room with all the old stuff that I’m using for my dissertation,” she said.

“In the library?”

Sofia nodded, taking a sip of wine. It
was
very good, and Gavin was partly to thank for that — his family owned both the bar and the winery where they got all their wine.

“Why?” Gavin asked.

Sofia just shrugged and shook her head, all at once.

“I have no idea,” she said. “They took all the books I’d set aside for research, but it’s not like those are valuable, they’re just old.”

“Are they collector’s items or anything?”

Sofia snorted. “Nothing nearly that fancy,” she said, taking another sip. “I mean, maybe there’s some kooky millionaire collector out there who really wants an original copy of
Shifter Legends of the Sierra
with handwritten notes in it, but I doubt it. The cops think it was just a random thing, whoever broke in didn’t find anything valuable, and so they just took whatever looked the best.”

Gavin drummed his fingers against the bar for a moment.

“Hold on for just a sec,” he said, and walked away.

Sofia took another long quaff from her wine and watched Gavin pull a bottle of whiskey off the shelf, pour it into a small glass, and bring it back to her.

“Buffalo Trace small batch,” he said, pushing it across the lacquered wood. “On the house. Seems like you could use it.”

Sofia smiled, despite herself.

“You do know how to take care of a girl,” she said. She could already feel the wine beginning to take effect.

“I do my best,” he said, resting his forearms on the bar and grinning at her.

She blushed, and quickly took a sip of the whiskey to cover it up. It burned sweetly down her throat, prickling at the inside of her mouth, and she savored it for a moment.

“That’s really good,” she said, swirling the remaining liquid in the glass.

“Don’t tell my boss I gave it to you,” Gavin said. “They’d write me out of the will.”

“It’s worth it,” said Sofia, taking another sip of the whiskey.

“Does the library have cameras or anything?” Gavin asked. He grabbed a towel and started drying off glasses. He seemed to Sofia like the kind of person who couldn’t sit still very well, or for very long.

Sofia shook her head. “Only on the front entrance,” she said. She’d gone over it extensively with Thomas today, as they worked to pick glass up from the room.

“Damn,” said Gavin.

Unlike Thomas, he only had one tattoo on his left forearm, but it was also a bear: this one stylized, heavy curved lines that wrapped around his arm. Other than that, his skin was blank.

“It’s a public library in a small town,” Sofia said. “Thomas gave the tapes to the police, but there’s not a camera anywhere near where the break-in happened,” she went on.

“Nobody heard anything?” Gavin asked. He picked up another glass, dried it expertly, and stacked it.

“The windows were right by the rose garden,” Sofia said.

She sighed.

“They’re talking about installing motion-activated floodlights on that side of the building to keep this from happening again,” Sofia went on. She drained the last of the whiskey from the glass, and Gavin spirited the glass away. “But this seems like it was so random and weird, I don’t think it’s
going
to happen again.”

Gavin opened his mouth to say something, but a group of young men came in and started ordering beers, keeping Gavin occupied for the next ten minutes or so as Sofia drank her wine and played games on her phone.

When he came back to talk to her, her wine was gone, the money was on the bar, and she was leaving through the door.

Just as she left, Sofia heard the bar door open behind her, and she turned to see Gavin come out after her.

“Hey, wait up,” he said.

Sofia stopped, her eyebrows raised. She wasn’t exactly in the habit of being chased by incredibly attractive men, but she was also a little drunk and afraid of what she might say.

He put his big hands on both her shoulders and towered over her, looking down into her eyes.

He’s going to kiss me
, she thought wildly, her heart hammering.
Right here in the middle of town.

An older couple walked past them, talking loudly about panning for gold.

“I’m sure it will all work out,” he said. “Hell, you might even get those books back.”

Sofia frowned, slightly. It seemed like a slightly weird thing to say, out of nowhere.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’m not holding my breath.”

His eyes were so intense that she had to look away under their weight.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” he said. “It will seem better in the morning.”

“I hope so,” Sofia said.

Chapter Four

Sofia didn’t feel spectacular the next morning, but she didn’t feel awful, either. It took her a little extra time to get out of bed, wash her face and eat breakfast in the tiny studio sublet that she’d found for two months, but soon enough, she was heading down Main Street again, toward the library.

Today she wore pants. She knew they didn’t flatter her particular figure the same way that dresses did, but the California History Room was still a mess, and she’d be damned if she was spending another day on the floor, picking up and organizing newspapers in a skirt.

She even half expected the room to be in a shambles again, the plywood now covering the windows ripped out and everything she’d organized yesterday blown to bits again.

Instead, when she opened the door, everything was as she’d left it. That, at least, was a relief.

***

For a couple of hours, Sofia listened to podcasts and zoned out, reorganizing everything in the room by date and call number. It wasn’t her job, it was true, but she also understood that, besides her, no one was
going
to do it. Hell, even Thomas, the IT guy, only worked thirty hours a week. Even he wasn’t full time.

After lunch, there was a knock on the door, and Sofia crossed her fingers that it was him.

Ever since he’d turned down her invitation to go to the bar last night, she’d felt a little nervous about seeing him again, no matter how silly she knew that was.

It was just... she’d thought she’d felt some kind of spark between them. And so she’d asked him, casually, to go somewhere with her, even just as friends.

And he’d turned her down.

And even though getting dinner with his parents was totally valid and reasonable, she still felt funny about the whole thing.

Taking a deep breath, she pulled the door open to see his tall, handsome form waiting there.

“Microfiche reader repair man at your service,” he said, grinning down at her.

Sofia felt better instantly.

“You’re not busy with real work?” she asked, stepping aside and letting him into the room.

Thomas shut the door behind himself.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said. “I don’t have that much to do right now, and fiddling with an old machine and hanging out with you sounds pretty good.”

Sofia blushed, turning her face away.

The machine was still on the floor, a huge hunk of metal, glass, and plastic. Sofia hadn’t been able to budge it on her own, but she watched as Thomas bent, grabbed the thing, and then lifted it to the top of the desk as though it was no heavier than a pillow, the muscles in his forearms making his tattoo sleeves ripple.

I could watch that all day,
Sofia thought.

He sat down, pulled some tools out of his back, and began taking the machine apart.

“I never actually asked what you’re getting your PhD in,” he said, unscrewing the screen.

Sofia was sorting old newspapers by date, then stuffing them into boxes before putting them back on the shelves.

“American folklore,” she said.

“And you said your dissertation is on bear legends of northern California,” he said.

“Yup,” she said. “It’s about how the local natives here had a lot of mythology around people with special abilities who could turn into animals, and how the miners who arrived in the mid nineteenth century understood those myths and applied their own to them. Werewolves became werebears, that sort of thing. The same sort of people came up with the jackalope.”

“The what?”

“You know how every bar has a stuffed rabbit with deer antlers on its head?”

“Sure.”

“That’s a jackalope.”

Thomas paused for a second, then looked at her, and grinned. “I never realized that thing had a name.”

“Now you know,” said Sofia, and winked at him.

The box she’d stuff with newspapers was full, so she closed the top and walked to the shelf. For a moment she wished she’d worn heels that day as she stood on her tiptoes, the box balanced on her fingertips as she tried to coax it onto the shelf.

Holding her breath, she bumped it into the bottom of the shelf, half an inch shy, and nearly sent both her and the box careening backwards before catching it.

“Shit,” she muttered, readying herself to try again.

Behind her, there was a creak and then the box lifted itself from her hands, sliding smoothly onto the top shelf.

Thomas’s chest bumped gently against Sofia’s head. She felt a little like an idiot, standing there, her arms still outstretched, even though the box was gone.

“There ought to be a step ladder,” Thomas teased.

He was close, only an inch or two behind her. Sofia could fee his body heat coming off him and warming her skin, even through the clothes she was wearing.

She didn’t mind, not even a little.

“Why have a step ladder when I’ve got the IT guy at my disposal?” she asked.

She turned and looked at him. Neither of them had moved yet: still standing close enough to feel body heat, him completely towering over her.

Thomas lowered one hand and just barely brushed his fingertips along her shoulder, and Sofia remembered how he’d touched her yesterday: getting her out of the broken glass, looking after her one cut finger.