Free Feral Curse by Cynthia Leitich Smith Page B

turkey bone into a trash can. “We could take the highway bridge — there’s a sidewalk — but by now Deputy Hoover has set up a roadblock to catch drunk drivers headed from the festival to the highway. He’ll want to know where we’re going and why, and he’ll have a hissy fit if we take the historic bridge alongside it. It’s a landmark, but a hazard. Half the town thinks it should be torn down.”
    Aimee frowns in the general direction of the bridge. “It’s early in the day to be nailing intoxicated —”
    “Klas’s Kolachies opens for brunch at ten A.M. It’s famous for its dollar-fifty home-brewed pints and dart games. I’m betting a fair number of husbands took refuge from the storm and their shopping spouses there.”
    Kayla is so plugged in. Her life’s been completely different from mine. I merely existed at the outskirts of town in Kansas. I slip anonymously through Austin. I don’t care like she does. I’ve never had a community that meant anything to me.
    “We don’t all have to go,” I say as a blue heron takes flight from the water. “Aimee, you could wait —”
    “Like hell,” she replies, spraying her arms with insect repellent.
    I knew she was going to say that. Still, the water looks dangerous for a human, and Aimee’s got a wary expression on her face.
    I pick her up in a matter-of-fact, rescue-worker kind of way. “Unless you’d rather ride on my back,” I say, “consider me your first-class transportation.”
    The rising river isn’t wide. After scanning the surrounding greenery, Kayla makes something of a game of leaping from the protruding top of one limestone outcropping to another. I wade, unwilling to risk dropping Aimee, but I’m still across in less than three minutes.
    “Where does the fortune-teller live?” she asks as I set her on the muddy bank.
    Kayla gestures southwest. “I think it’s that way.”
    The Morgans’ property is woodsy and dense. I can hear birds in the distance, but they become quiet when we approach, the way all birds do when cats creep by. Somewhere in the treetops, a sentry squirrel warns his kind that predators have entered their territory.
    It’s slow going with Aimee along. Not that she’s out of shape, just that she’s a human, not a Cat. I still can’t believe Kayla thinks her state championships in track and cross-country mean anything. I could dominate in shifter high-school sports . . . if there was such a thing as a shifter high-school league. Maybe there will be someday, if the fanatics get their way and we end up living in total segregation. Not that I’m the type to dwell on political crap I can’t change.
    I’d much rather dwell on Aimee. She walks almost everywhere and is naturally high-energy. Plus she’s taking tae kwon do two days a week. She’s got a cute little figure, different from Kayla’s. The Cat girl is all long, lean muscle with a tight round butt.
    I’m not saying it’s a competition. Truth is, there’s pretty much no female body type that doesn’t hold some appeal for me. . . . Still, I love a great ass.
    “Clyde is half wereopossum, half werelion?” Kayla asks. “How is that possible?”
    Stepping up and over a fallen tree, I reply, “Sometimes a Possum and a Lion love each other very, very much. . . .”
    “Actually,” Aimee puts in, “I think it was more of a strangers-in-the-night kind of thing that happened when his parents were separated. He didn’t even know about his Lion heritage until this winter.” Ducking beneath a branch, she adds, “They’re nice people, the Gilberts —”
    “I wasn’t judging,” Kayla replies. “I was realizing that, before this weekend, I hadn’t thought much about other mixed families — shifter and human.”
    It’s like she’s been reading my mind. “Your dad is
Homo sapiens,
” I say to Kayla, mostly so Aimee doesn’t accidentally out me to the Morgans on the theory that they can already scent my Cat-ness.
    Kayla extends her claws, more