Librarian Bear Read online

  Enormous tension sluiced through Tom Barlow. His eyebrows beetled down and he glared furiously at Matthew, who could neither say nor do anything to defend himself. Making light of the situation—for example, protesting that he certainly hadn't taken the secret charter—would not go over well.

  On the other hand, it might provide that dramatic incident he was looking to incite. Instead he only shook his head slightly, hoping it would somehow assuage the other shifter, but Barlow clearly didn't like or trust him.

  Which was fair enough, really. Barlow knew nothing about Matthew, except he was a shifter who had shown up on the doorstep asking about Virtue's secrets. Matt, under those circumstances, might have been suspicious of himself, too.

  Barlow growled, "I don't know anything about a secret charter," which was a blatant lie that Matthew had no intention of calling him on.

  Sarah's expression drooped. "No, I suppose not. It really must be a copy of the original one, I guess. Nothing else makes sense. I'm so sorry for taking up your time." She rose, and Tom Barlow stood as well, his expression caught somewhere between irritation and—still—confusion at Matthew's presence.

  "I wasn't aware the charter was missing," he said grudgingly. "I'll look into it myself."

  Sarah brightened. "Oh, thank you. Do you know what's really strange, though? Matthew discovered that even the copies of the charter had been excised from the town records. It's not super important, since they're not the official one that the judge is looking for, but I'm still trying to figure out why they would even do that. Oh." Her expression went wistful. "I don't suppose you have the town council book from the 1790s? The library is missing it, too."

  Tom Barlow stared down at her a long moment. "My grandmother was very fond of the old record books, as they were written by, and spoke of, people she knew in her childhood. I'll look through her belongings."

  "Wow. She must have lived a long time. That's amazing."

  "We do tend to live into our nineties."

  "Well, thank you." Sarah looked as if she'd like to hug Mr. Barlow, but she refrained. "Do you have any ideas on which other family I should go to next?"

  Barlow exhaled heavily. "Perhaps the Whelans. I know Michelle enjoys genealogy. She may have other old papers mixed up with her birth and death records."

  Sarah smiled brilliantly. "Thank you again. We'll let ourselves out. You've been so helpful!"

  They escaped a moment later, Sarah letting out a noisy raspberry once she thought—incorrectly—that they were out of earshot. At least, Matt assumed it was incorrect. Most shifters had excellent hearing, and he certainly would have been able to hear the explosive sigh from a considerable distance. "Well," Sarah said, "that went better than I thought, except for the part where we didn't get any useful information."

  "I think we did, though." Matthew's heart was hammering. "Not about the charter, it's true, or not exactly, but..." He swallowed. "Look, I don't want to come across as forward or weird, but...could we go back to your place to talk? I have...I have some thoughts about...stuff...."

  Sarah laughed. "Thoughts about stuff, huh? You're doing well with the words there, Matt." Then she sighed again, less explosively this time. "Yeah, I guess we could. I'll need to call Michelle Whelan to see if she'll let us come by, and I don't have her number in my phone, I'll have to look it up."

  "Which you can do with your phone," Matthew said, although he knew he was working against his own interests there.

  "No, hers is unlisted. I've got it at home because I have the old actual paper phone trees from the days before we all carried phones in our pockets, but it's not like I ever call the founding families, so I didn't put it in my phone. Could I say 'phone' more times in two sentences?"

  "Probably, if you tried. What'd you think of him? Tom Barlow?" Matt clarified.

  "He looks like a movie's idea of a small town patriarch," Sarah replied as they got into her truck. "Handsome but also thuggishly dangerous. He's always kind of scared me, and people don't, usually. He just seems...I don't know. Not wild, exactly, but like he's containing something...well, dangerous. I sound like a lunatic, don't I?"

  "You really don't," Matthew assured her. "I know what you mean. And I think you're not wrong." In fact, she was literally right, but explaining that would take being somewhere private.

  "Did he get really growly when I mentioned the secret charter, or was that my imagination?"

  "It wasn't your imagination," Matthew promised.

  "Which means it's probably real." Her voice absolutely sparkled. "I'm going to get to the bottom of that, by gum."

  Despite his nerves about the whole situation, Matthew laughed. "'By gum,' huh?"

  "Hey." She gave him a not-very-threatening glare. "It's tough not swearing in this modern world of ours. Give me my little quirks."

  "I love them," he said, maybe too honestly. Sarah looked startled, and Matt, trying to cover, said, "Have you considered borrowing some curses from Tintin? 'Blistering barnacles' is a really good one."

  "Oh, that is good." Sarah repeated it a couple of times, smiling. "Really satisfying. Tintin, that's...it's a comic book, right? The redheaded do-gooder?"

  "And his friends, yeah. Captain Haddock swears really creatively in it. I learned from those comics that anything can be a swear word if you say it with enough conviction."

  Sarah laughed. "I thought you didn't know anything about comic books. I'll have to remember that. Thanks."

  "I don't know anything about superhero comics, I guess," Matt said. "Give me European kid stuff like Asterix and Obelix or Tintin and I can hold my own any day of the week."

  "Oh, I remember Asterix and Obelix! They were great." Sarah rattled off a list of ridiculous puns from the comics, making the drive back to town seem shorter than the trip out to the Barlow estate, but Matthew's stomach was in knots the whole way. His bear kept saying, Relax, but despite its conviction that Sarah would be understanding, Matthew was still shaky with nerves as they got out of the truck in her driveway.

  Humans don't take well to surprises like "So I'm a shapeshifter," he told his baffled oso, which rolled its eyes.

  Humans might not, but your mate will.

  That sounded...reasonable. Possible. Even likely. And it made the question of leaving Virtue even harder, somehow. The idea that Sarah could just...accept him...seemed extraordinary and wonderful.

  And impossible, if he had a whole life waiting for him in another city, just a few weeks from now.

  Aloud, as they walked up the driveway, Matthew said, "Sarah," slowly. "I know we don't have the charter, but I'm pretty sure I've figured out what the peculiarities mentioned in that diary were."

  "Really?" Intrigued delight brightened her face. "What?"

  "The thing is..." Matt's hands were frozen with nervousness. "The thing is, you...aren't going to believe me."

  Her delight turned to sly laughter that she directed at him in a sideways glance. "What, are they vampires?"

  "Heh. Um. No. Not...not vampires. Sar...can we..." Normally he was better with women than this. Normally he was better with talking than this. "I wouldn't normally invite myself into someone's house, but I can't explain it out here. Could we...go in?"

  "Sure." Some of Sarah's amusement faded, turning to concern. "Are you all right?"

  "No. Yes. No. I don't know. I'll let you know?"

  "Okay." Eyebrows drawn down, Sarah let them into her house, which—at a glance—seemed wonderfully her. It was filled with bright colors and comfortable chairs, with artwork that spoke of personal interests rather than a unified theme or look, and books piled absolutely everywhere. An extremely fluffy dark brown cat cat stood up from the couch, stared in horror at Matthew, then, its tail puffed like a brush, bolted from the room. "Oh wow," Sarah said, watching it go. "I've almost never seen her do that before. It's probably not personal. She does it when Jake comes over, too."

  Matthew, almost under his breath, said, "Oh, it's definitely personal with me," and smiled uncomfortably wh
en Sarah gave him another worried look.

  "What, cats don't like you? I don't know why."

  "I do. It actually—it has to do with Virtue's peculiarities. The secrets she talked about in her diary. Do you want to...sit down?"

  "Okay..." Sarah sat, her expression a perfect mix of bewilderment and worry. "How can Doc McStuffins not liking you have anything to do with Virtue's founders?"

  Matthew, momentarily distracted, laughed. "Doc McStuffins?"

  "She's named after a wonderful cartoon character."

  "Right." Matthew looked after the cat a moment, then sighed. "The reason Virtue's founding families are so secretive and stand-offish is they actually do have a secret, a big one, and the rest of the world wouldn't handle it well."

  "And you know this how?" Sarah sounded faintly amused again, although alarm still tinged the edges of her voice.

  "Because I share their secret. It's why Tom Barlow and I got so weird there for a moment. We were...sizing each other up, I suppose. I'm on his territory, and he was trying to decide what to do about it."

  Sarah, not quite under her breath enough, said, "How macho," in a not particularly flattering tone. "You don't seem like the dick-measuring type, Matt."

  "I'm really not, but it's an..." Matthew wrinkled his face. "An animal instinct."

  "Oh, come on. Please. Spare me the male posturing and just tell me what the deal is, if you're so sure you know."

  "Pretty sure I do," Matthew said, then just went ahead and shifted into a bear.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs and levitated onto the couch like a 1950s housewife, as if two extra feet of height could shield her against the bear suddenly in her living room. She shrieked again, backed up a step, and slid over the back of the couch with an entirely different scream that ended in a crash of side tables and books and tables lamps. Matthew, from the far side of the couch, said, "Sarah?!"

  She heard him hit the couch, saw his face looking over the back of it at, her and screamed again for good measure. He was just a guy again, not a freaking bear in her living room, but that didn't actually help matters any. He said, "Are you okay?" and Sarah, who normally prided herself on her excellent vocabulary and general ability to think on her feet, screamed again.

  Matthew cringed and withdrew from her line of vision. Sarah lay there on the floor, heart hammering at roughly nine million beats a minute, and took stock of the entire situation.

  First, although her favorite lamp appeared to be irreparable, she herself didn't seem badly hurt for someone who had just gone ass over teakettle across the back of a couch. That was something. Not, in the grand scheme of men turning into bears, a lot, but something.

  Second, Doc McStuffins was in the hall entryway, flat as a pancake but with her fur puffed up everywhere and her eyes saucer-large as she watched Sarah in concern. Her big, green-eyed gaze darted to Matthew, and she growled low in her throat, then looked back at Sarah as if asking whether she needed to Deal With This Interloper.

  Sarah, imagining the little cat flinging herself at Matthew's face in a fluffy ball of protective terror, giggled very quietly and crooked her fingers at the kitty. Doc slunk over to her, belly still against the floor, and stuffed her face in Sarah's neck. Sarah patted her softly, whispering, "It's okay, baby. Thanks for having my back. I'm okay. You can go hide in the kitchen now if you want."

  The cat couldn't possibly understand her, but she still slunk, low to the floor and as fast as she could, out of the room.

  Sarah decided to stay on the floor another minute, trying to wrap her head around what she'd just seen. What she logically couldn't believe she'd just seen, except Doc was freaked out, and she herself didn't normally fall over the backs of couches without good cause.

  Matthew Rojas had turned into a bear. In her living room.

  Which she supposed, yeah, had been a better decision than doing it on the front lawn. The lots for Virtue houses were pretty generous, especially a block or three away from the town square as Sarah's was, but a bear would surely still be noticed.-

  He had turned into a bear. In her living room.

  She really needed to get over the hangup about that second part.

  Except focusing on the second part let her skate over the first part, which was kind of a lot to take in.

  He had turned into a bear. A black bear with a creamy streak down its nose and chest, and surrounding black patches around its eyes, like a mask. Or like—"Spectacles," she said out loud, and sat up, although she couldn't see Matt over the back of the couch. "Your glasses turned into spectacles. A spectacled bear."

  Matthew, his voice quite small and nervous, said, "Mi papá was a bear shifter from a small community of them in the Andes. Tom Barlow is also a shifter, and if your cat doesn't like your friend Jake, and he's from an old Virtue family...I'd guess he might be one too."

  "Uh huh." Sarah lay back down. She was surprisingly unhurt, for having gone over the back of the couch, but she felt like she needed to be as flat as possible to deal with this. Matthew was a bear. Tom Barlow was apparently also a...bear? "Are you all bears? Is Tom Barlow a bear?"

  "I don't know," he said, still in the small, apologetic voice. "I mean, we're not all bears, no, but I don't know what he or his family are."

  "It runs in the family?" Sarah's voice cracked. "So you're not gonna like have jaguar babies someday?"

  "Not unless my fated mate was a jaguar shifter, which would be unusual."

  "Your—" Sarah felt like she was talking in italics with every word. "Your what?"

  "Fated mate. We usually know, when we see the person we're meant to spend our lives with. Love at first sight. Our animals know, anyway."

  "You're a shapeshifter with a magical true love?" Sarah was definitely talking in italics.

  "I am," Matt said in a very small voice. "I know that's a lot."

  "It's a very lot!" She sat up again, now prepared to see what kind of disaster she'd caused going over the back of the couch.

  Not as bad as it could be, really. She had a red mark on one wrist where she'd knocked the lamp table over, and a couple of visible dings in her arms where the corners of books had landed, but really, she was fine.

  And Matthew Rojas was a bear.

  "I'm going to stand up," she announced. "You should do your...thing...so when I stand up I see your...thing."

  A tiny sharp sound, like a bullet of laughter, broke the air, and his voice, strangled, came across the room. "I've never had anybody ask like that before."

  Sarah made an inarticulate noise and his laughter quieted. "Okay. I'm shifting now."

  After a few seconds of silence, Sarah rose carefully.

  The bear in her living room was sitting in as small a space as he could, his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. The cream outline around his face made his eyes look enormous and very puppy-dog-ish. She could see faint lines of cream across his belly, where his front legs, mashed together like a cat with its paws mathematically aligned, fluffed the belly fur out around them. He was at least twice as large as Matthew in terms of mass, and she didn't have a clue how that worked.

  Although why it mattered when a man had just turned into a bear in her living room, she didn't know. The obvious answer was magic, and there was no particular reason to think about it more.

  He was pretty cute.

  For a bear.

  In her living room.

  "Where do your clothes go?" The obvious answer to that was also 'into the magic,' but somehow it seemed important to ask.

  Matthew shifted back to human, still sitting in a very small space on the living room floor, and said, "I don't know, exactly. There's no difference whether I shift naked or with clothes on, so I think anything touching my skin like that shifts with me."

  "Do your glasses?" Sarah demanded. "Is that why you're a spectacled bear?"

  He dared a teeny tiny smile. "No, that's just my species. The fact that I have to wear glasses as a human is some kind of
shifter irony."

  "I'm going to sit back down now." Sarah slid back down behind the couch and sat there a few minutes, trying to take in what Matthew had shown her, and its ramifications. "Are there a lot of you?"

  "Probably both more and fewer than you'd think. There are twenty or thirty of my kind specifically, at least that I know about. There are probably tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of us in general, worldwide. And I'm pretty sure Virtue was settled as a shifter town. Which is—" Matthew fell silent a moment, then, sounding somehow awkward, said, "You probably understand this already, but it's a secret. You can't tell anybody."

  "Well, obviously! How'd you know Tom Barlow was a shifter?"

  "We recognize each other on sight. Sarah, it's important, though. You really can't tell anybody."

  "I know, Matt. Who would I tell, anyway? No one would believe it." Sarah lifted her head, staring at the back wall of her living room. "So if it's a...a shifter town? Wouldn't you have recognized other shifters among the people you've met over the past few days?"

  "I have. The old man at the cafe today was a shifter, too."

  Sarah's eyebrows shot up and she looked over the edge of the couch momentarily. Matthew sat as far away from her as he could go without leaving the room, his expression worried. "Wallace Evans? Is that why you choked on your sandwich? Wallace Evans is a shapeshifter? He didn't react to you being there...."

  "He's probably used to seeing other shifters in the area," Matthew said apologetically. "I'm not. But first him, and then Thomas Barlow? I'm sure there are more here. It's just nobody else I've met so far was one, and as for the commons..." His voice changed a little as he shrugged. "There were a lot of people. Just because I didn't see or even sense other shifters doesn't mean they weren't there."

  Sarah slid back down to lean against the couch again, staring at the ceiling. "So...that must be what's in the secret charter. Something about this being a...sanctuary town? For shifters. No wonder they hid it." She fell silent, trying to think her way through an outrageous amount of emotion. "But why is the public one hidden? Who's got a copy of it? Do you think Judge Owens knows about the shifters? No wonder Jake Rowly always laughed when I called him a lone wolf!" The last words were half-shouted. "I bet he is one! Augh! Ugh! And nobody ever told me! Me! They didn't tell me! I thought I knew everything about Virtue!"