Page 114 of The Turning of the Tables

Why do you hate working with him?

He’s a bossy knowitall.

Also, I feel like a potato could do this job.

Important question.

Is your brother a potato?

I’m not doing what he’s doing.

And no. Last I checked, he’s a wolf shifter.

I might be a potato.

Last I checked, you definitely weren’t.

That was before I got Arcana.

I have never meta potato shifter before.

Seems dangerous.

How?

Someone might try to make you into fries.

With that tasty cheese stuff.

If I go out as pimento cheese fries, I will die happy.

It has to be better than this shit, anyway.

My poor baby.

I was killing time,waiting for Quincy to join me. I’d gotten to Dot’s early so that I could snag a table at the patio and drink half my body-weight in coffee while munching on a double order of toast—no butter—I’d slathered with orange marmalade. She’d begged for me to come out with her to dosomething, anything. I’d agreed to brunch, even though I probably couldn’t afford it on my new, horrifyingly-low hourly pay.

I’d been working with Noah at Hands and Paws for about three weeks. Noah, whose job title of ‘Coordinating Director’ meant he did at least a little of everything, managed volunteers, secured donations, organized fundraisers, coordinated with political groups fighting for Arc-Arcanid rights, and even helped to arrange housing and line up work and start-up kits for homeless shifters. He’d done it for Taavi, when he’d first arrived in Richmond—well, once Taavi had managed to get back into person form, anyway.

I was not nearly so skilled at or knowledgeable about all of the things Hands and Paws did.

I also had a few different hats, and all of them were equally boring, if necessary. I stocked the shelves of the foodpantry from the mostly-pathetic donations we got in and then sent off the list of staples we still needed with one of the staff who did the Costco shopping for the rest. I sorted through donation items—socks here, shirts there. I used the paper-cutter to cut out flyers once.

Nothing they asked me to do was too physically taxing—which was good, because while I was getting better, I was only around sixty, maybe sixty-five, percent—and required exactly zero knowledge about anything having to do with the day-to-day operations of the organization. Which I also didn’t have.

The worst part about working with Noah was not, as I’d suggested to Elliot, that he was bossy, although he was. I was used to that, and it mostly didn’t bother me. What bothered me were the pitying looks he sent my direction when he thought I couldn’t see them.

I’d been given a literal pity-job, and that rubbed me wrong about seven different ways, even though I know that giving shifters pity-jobs was one of the core parts of the Hands and Paws mission.

I just hated it.

Just like I hated pretty much everything else about being a shifter, including my substantially-increased grocery bills. For instance, I’d already eaten breakfast before coming out to meet Quincy so that I’d only eat a little more than what a normal person would eat.

And I absolutely felt guilty for thinking about it that way, because who’s to say who’s normal?

Ugh.

I took another sip of my diner coffee, liberally dosed with more sugar packets than I wanted—but they didn’t have non-dairy creamer, so I compensated for the lack of almond- or oat-milk with more sugar. I wasn’t a fan of sweetover creamy, but it would do in a pinch. And this was a pinch.