Free Sorcerer's Luck by Katharine Kerr Page A

and caterpillars
had vanished. In their place flew butterflies.

Chapter 4
    I slept so well in the Burne-Jones bedroom that I got to school late the next morning.
During class, I had trouble concentrating on our current model, a man with an
interesting but difficult asymmetric face. He had pale skin and thinning blond
hair that he wore long and straggly. Trying to keep the textures of skin and
hair separate drove me nuts, especially since part of my mind kept wondering
how I was going to tell my friends about my new job. Cynthia noticed how
distracted I was. When the model took his mid-morning break, she came over to
my easel.
    â€œIs something wrong?” she said.
    â€œNo, actually. Things are looking up. I quit the burger joint.”
    â€œThat’s great!” Cynthia grinned at me. “New job, huh?”
    Brittany had drifted over to join us. “Sweet!” she said. “It couldn’t have
been good for you, breathing all that meat grease. And eating there, too.” She shuddered with
high drama. “Dead chemical food!”
    â€œI’m glad to be out of there, yeah.”
    â€œWell, what’s the new job?” Cynthia said.
    I realized that the truth, or at least, part of it, could transform itself into the lie I
needed. “Taking care of a shape-changer. Someone who turns into an animal now
and then. Like in the folk tales, y’know?”
    They both burst out laughing. “Oh come on, Maya!” Cynthia said. “What is it really?”
    â€œThat’s it, really. This guy turns into a bear when the moon’s full, and he’s paying me to
lock him into his room so he doesn’t go out and hurt anyone.” I kept my
expression as serious as I could. “I get room and board, so I’m living there.
Kind of an au pair for a were-bear.”
    â€œI get it now!” Cynthia was grinning at me. “You’ve moved in with some guy. You’ve been
holding out on us about him.”
    â€œNo, this is strictly a business arrangement.”
    â€œOh yeah sure!” Brittany said. “Is he cute?”
    â€œFor a bear he’s not bad. His name’s Torvald, but I call him Tor. His family’s from Iceland.”
    â€œThat’s probably why he’s a shape-changer.” Cynthia seemed to find my supposed joke
worth elaborating. “The lonely glacial island and Viking settlers and all that
amazing history.”
    â€œAnd the volcanoes.” Brittany was speaking in dead seriousness. “Volcanoes are always
centers of spiritual power. There’s prana in them. Or something like that. They
release it, anyway.”
    Although Cynthia rolled her eyes, I wondered if for a change Brittany was making sense.
I’d seen National Geographic TV shows about volcanoes, and you could sense how
powerful and strange and terrifying they were just from the footage. In person
they must have inspired genuine awe. I could believe they did release some kind
of sorcerous energy.
    â€œActually,” I said, “he’s a shape-changer because he got bitten by one over in Marin. There
aren’t any volcanoes over there.”
    â€œJust some totally weird people, huh?” Cynthia said. “Do we get to meet Tor?”
    â€œI don’t see why not. But it’ll have to be when the moon isn’t full.”
    They both laughed, and I grinned, but all I was doing was speaking the truth. You get
good at weaseling when you’ve got a disease like mine. Their laughter made me
realize something else, that the idea of a good-looking guy like Tor turning
into a bear was too funny to be true. I thought of all those bears in movies
for kids, the big, clumsy, furry clowns, or the sluggish critters I’d seen at
the zoo. On the TV docs I’d seen some dangerous wild bears, fierce as tigers,
and they could move really fast when they wanted to, but still! It can’t be
true, I told myself. It’s just some kind of a joke on his