Free Shift by Rachel Vincent Page B

throughout the room, and the word shock didn’t begin to describe our bewilderment over the sudden invasion from above.
    “Although, Kaci…” my father continued, his voice stern but gentle, “I think it’d be better if you stay inside for a while.”
    Kaci nodded mutely. I could only imagine how she must have felt. A few months earlier, she’d been a normal thirteen-year-old, largely ignored by her older sister and crushing on human boys her own age. Now she was priceless, when she’d once been common. Coveted, when she had once been merely accepted. Fragile compared to those around her, in spite of her exponential gain in strength, when she’d once been considered strong and healthy for a girl her age.
    Everything had changed for Kaci, and she had yet to find balance in her new life. Peace and acceptance of her past would be difficult to come by when someone was always trying to snatch her from her home.
    Especially this most recent attempt.
    “Here’s what we know….” All gazes tracked my father as he began to pace across the center of the room. “The thunderbirds think we killed one of their young men.” He held up one hand for silence when questions were called out from all over the room. “We’ll get to the particulars of that in a moment. But first, the bird Owen captured is named Kai. No last name—they don’t use them.”
    “How do they tell one another apart?” my uncle asked, leaning against the far wall next to a morose and silent Ed Taylor. Jake’s family would not have time to truly mourn him until life returned to normal, and no one was willing to hazard a guess on how long that would take.
    My dad shrugged. “My theory is that there are too few of them to necessitate repeating names.”
    “Or they have a bunch of names,” I suggested. Dad started to frown at me, but I held up a hand to ask for patience. “I’m serious. They keep themselves completely set apart from human society. If we did that, even with our relatively large numbers, including the strays—” Blackwell scowled at that, but I ignored him “—would we need last names? We can tell at a single sniff what family a fellow cat is from, and if we didn’t live and work within the human society, why would we need last names?”
    To my surprise, though Blackwell still scowled, everyone else actually seemed to be considering my point. “All I’m saying,” I continued, aiming my closing statement at Blackwell, “is that just because they only have one name apiece doesn’t mean there aren’t bunches of them. If their population was really that small, would they risk picking a fight with us?”
    “Okay, that’s a valid point,” my father conceded. “We’ll hold off any assumption about the size of their population until we have further information from Mr….Kai.”
    “Did he give you anything useful?” Blackwell tapped his cane softly on the carpet.
    “In fact, Faythe and Marc did get two valuable bits of information from him. Without pulling out a single feather.” I couldn’t help but grin at that. My father would seize any opportunity to emphasize my worth to the other council members. Ditto for Marc. “First of all, thunderbirds have no Alpha.”
    Bert Di Carlo spoke up from behind me, and I twisted to see him frowning. “You mean they’re currently without an Alpha, or they never had one?”
    “Never had one,” I answered. My father raised one brow but let me continue, so I bobbed my head at him briefly in thanks. “According to Kai, they make decisions as a group.”
    “Like a democracy?” Kaci’s bright brown eyes shone with the first glimpse of curiosity I’d seen from her in more than a week—since I’d evaded her questions about my sex life. “So they, like, vote?”
    “I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Or maybe it’s not quite that complicated.” I shrugged and altered my focus to address the entire room. “I don’t entirely understand, but the impression I get is that they