Page 3 of The Librarian’s Familiar

“Well, it is still summer, so most people want to be out and about, making the most of it. But in winter, when there’s nothing else to do, I bet there’ll be standing room only.”

Great, he was competing with the midnight sun and losing. In winter, he’d be competing with the northern lights. He was excited to see them for the first time, but he expected everyone living here to be a bit more blasé because they saw them all the time. “I will hold another one once I have got the new books on the shelves and rearrange things a bit more.”

“I guess I’ll be seeing you and your books again.”

“I hope so. Don’t forget to bring the form back…or you can email.” Did he sound keen or desperate? Maybe both. He didn’t want to be sitting in an empty library all day, every day. Sure, he’d be able to read and work on his research project, but he liked interacting with patrons…especially the ones who spoke more than twenty words and didn’t eat crayons.

CHAPTER THREE

The living room of August’s parents’ house was full of family. Children played on the floor of the activity room that had once been a formal dining room, and adults sat wherever they could, which included bringing dining room chairs into the living room and squeezing them between sofas and armchairs.

Not everyone had come for dinner; most had come around after, wanting nothing more than coffee, cookies, and all the gossip. It didn’t matter that everyone had the internet and could find out the news from around the world. They wanted to know what he’d been doing and what was going on in the paranormal community. They wanted the news personalized for polar bear shifters.

They also wanted to hear about how he handled living among humans and pretending to be one of them. Where did he shift when he was on the road so much?

Wherever he could, but he was used to delaying and putting all of that energy into his game.

Was it awful shifting inside with no snow and ice?

Yes, but he also got out as often as he could. Even if it was only for a few hours in the nearest national park. Outside, even with no snow, was still better than inside.

What about injuries? Did anyone get suspicious that he healed fast?

August sipped his hot chocolate. He didn’t like coffee before he went to bed, and no one made a hot chocolate like Mom. She always served them in massive cups as if expecting them to shift and hold it with their paws. Even the humans in the room got the same giant cup. He’d had a few injuries over the years, but nothing that had drawn undue attention. It helped that one of the team doctors was a witch.

“You shouldn’t ask about his injury,” a teen who was trying to sit with the adults instead of playing on the floor with the kids said in something close to a whisper. In a room full of shifters, he may as well have shouted.

“It’s fine. Most of the time, I shook them off and shifted later if I needed to.” Usually in the bathroom, back at the hotel. “I couldn’t do that this time.” The injury had been too obvious. The hit to the face had knocked him on his ass and out cold for a few seconds. He’d actually seen stars before the darkness took over. The puck had somehow slipped under his visor, smashed his cheekbone and eye socket, and damaged his eye.

Unlucky is what everyone called it.

No one wanted to risk a shift with broken bones because the pieces would move and potentially cause more damage. Bits of his broken face might’ve ended up in his brain, and while some people said hockey players didn’t have one to damage, he preferred not to take chances.

He’d also insisted on seeing a specialist. The Coven had sent in a surgeon who understood that plates and pins would move when he shifted. The bone would also heal when he shifted, not instantly but faster than a human. The best course of action had been removing any free-floating bits and giving his eye socket shape with minimal metal.

Everyone expected him to lose all vision in his left eye. That’s what he’d been prepared for, too. But a supervised shift after surgery had gone a long way to saving it, or at least part of it. It had also given him a false hope that his peripheral vision would return. It had been two months, several supervised shifts, and it hadn’t improved any further.

He’d been given a choice by the team: be cut or announce his retirement. He’d chosen the latter and watched his team lose their remaining games. Not because he was that good—in part because he held himself back in case people got suspicious about him being too good—but because it took time to gel when things got moved around.

“Shifting can’t heal everything.” He glanced at the teen who probably only had a couple of shifts under his belt. “It’s a lesson all shifters need to learn.”

Most of them learned it from hearing horror stories from their elders. Some, however, needed to make all the mistakes themselves. Some shifters thought they were invincible. Usually, the bigger ones simply because they were bigger. But being bigger meant there was more blood to spill and thicker bones to break.

He was pretty sure it was his great-grandfather who’d tried to fight off a real polar bear and had to come off second best. He’d survived but had the scars to prove it in both forms.

Going away to boarding school had saved him from making some dumb mistakes with his friends and brothers. One of the guys had been burned setting off fireworks; he’d survived because he shifted, but the scars meant his fur was patchy and he suffered in the cold when in bear form. There were a few nods from the other adults, and some of them looked as though they were remembering close calls.

For several minutes, the conversation shifted away from him and to what other people have been up to when it came to shifting. It started with injuries and moved on to hunting and then dating, which led to a few people looking at him. He prepared for the next obvious question. One that his parents had already asked. That his brothers and sister had asked, too, and to which he had no good answer.

“I’m surprised you came back alone?” a second cousin asked.

August smiled. “It’s hard to find a polar bear in the city.”

A few people laughed, but they were all waiting for him to answer.

“It’s hard to date when I’m on the road so much.” And that was where he wanted to leave it. He didn’t want to be discussing his private life with his extended family.

He didn’t need everyone knowing that he was gay.