Still Life With Shape-Shifter by Sharon Shinn

Author:Sharon Shinn [Shinn, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction, General, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781101612224
Google: e3EeXzKVRRcC
Amazon: 0425256812
Barnesnoble: 0425256812
Publisher: Ace Hardcover
Published: 2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Probably everything would have been okay eventually. It wasn’t the first time I’d had a screaming match with my parents, not the first time I’d walked out, or been kicked out, or been told I should never come back. I wouldn’t even have to say I was sorry—no one in my family ever did. I could just reappear at the dinner table the following night, and no one would mention the threats and the insults from the day before. The argument would have continued, but in calmer tones, maybe; it’s possible we could have worked something out.

But I didn’t go back. I didn’t want to be forgiven. I didn’t want to be their daughter anymore.

And I certainly wasn’t moving to California.

I suppose it’s a lie to say I didn’t go back. After spending the night uneasily moving between the parking lot of the train station and a booth at an all-night Denny’s, I returned to the house around noon the next day when my parents were both at work. They hadn’t bothered to change the locks—though that was a promise my father had made more than once during such fights in the past—so it was easy enough for me to get inside and gather what I needed. Clothes, mostly, plus some towels and toiletries, enough to fill two big wheeled suitcases. I only had a couple of pieces of jewelry worth any money—a pearl necklace my parents had given me when I turned sixteen, and diamond earrings they’d given me two years later—and I picked these up, too. Not because they had any sentimental value but because I thought I might be able to pawn them if I ever needed the money. I was tempted to toss through my mother’s jewelry box and pick out the few pieces she owned that might net me a few hundred bucks, but I decided against it. I didn’t want to give them any reason to come looking for me.

I made a quick detour out back to leave a message for Cooper. A red ribbon tied to one of the patio posts meant I had dropped a note in the rusted old coffee can I’d placed at the back of the property line. For the past year, anytime I knew he would be in human shape and looking for me, but I’d be unavailable, I’d communicated with him in this way. From time to time, he’d also left messages—or drawings—behind in the same manner. I had seen him just two nights ago, and I knew he’d only been human for five days. He would find the note soon enough. In the past year, during the weeks he was in a man’s shape, we had never gone more than three nights without seeing each other. Sometimes we would even meet in daylight at a shop or a restaurant so I could buy him food or an item he needed. I had to admit, those outings—the ones that to most girls would seem like the most relaxed and normal interactions with a guy—to me seemed the most surreal.

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