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“So… what was it like growing up as a shifter? As a little kid, I mean. Kids suck.” I braced myself for him to be annoyed or to shoot down the topic, but he seemed fine.
Taavi shrugged. “My papá taught me at home, so I didn’t go to school with other kids until I was fourteen.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, his expression thoughtful. “I had cousins, one older than me, one younger. They thought it was fun to pretend to have a dog.” He shrugged. “I played a lot of fetch as a kid.”
I had no idea what to say to that. “Does that—I mean—were you—”
The smile he gave me was a little bit ironic. “I liked that there were other kids to play with. I didn’t really care if they wanted to throw a ball or a frisbee for me to catch or if they wanted to play Monopoly.” He coked his head at me. “I can’t really imagine you as a child, though, Hart.”
I couldn’t help letting out a bark of laughter. “Well, I definitely didn’t look like this as a kid.”
“When did you change?” he asked.
“I was twenty-nine. A perp I caught turned and ripped my mask off, then spit in my face.”
He winced.
I shrugged. “Cops are at pretty high risk for Arcana,” I replied.
The next look he gave me was sharp. “Yet there aren’t a lot of Arcanids in the police.”
“Nope.”
Neither one of us were at all confused by this fact. Taavi had been at my side through the whole Magic-Free Movement protest fiasco outside my office, and he’d been the one who had a gun pointed at him in my car on the way home from work.
Most cops ended up leaving the force if they came back from their bout with Arcana with fur or fangs or pointy ears. I’d guess probably half those who became Arc-humans also left, and I’d have bet that a good deal more tried very hard to pretend they were still ordinary humans so that they could keep working without having to take shit for it. I still wondered what my life would be like if I’d made a different decision back in Milwaukee. The one Elliot had tried to talk me into.
“What were you like?” Taavi asked me, interrupting my thoughts. “As a kid?”
“Typical Wisconsin, kid, I guess,” I answered, talking to my shoes. “Lots of time outside. Got really dirty.”
Taavi’s lips quirked in a smile when I glanced over at him. “Brothers or sisters?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just Elliot, although I saw him often enough that he might as well have been my brother.”
“He’s a shifter, right?” It seemed Taavi remembered me talking about or to Elliot, who I’d called more than once for shifter-related advice when Taavi had been living with me as a dog.
“Yep. Badger.”
His expression brightened. “I’ve never seen a badger. Or a badger shifter.”
I laughed. “You see a real badger, go the other way. They’ll fuck you up.”
“Is that a judgment on your friend?”
I chuckled. “Not unless you come at him swinging. Elliot’s a good guy.”
“But don’t piss him off in fur.”
“Yeah… I wouldn’t recommend it. His claws are a lot longer than yours.”
“I’ll remember that.” Taavi laughed, the sound warm.
We finished the loop back around the park to the car, chatting about the little things—work, differences between our home states and Virginia, that kind of shit.
Taavi had worked construction since graduating high school because his dad hadn’t been able to save up money for him to go to college—and then his dad had gone to Mexico and disappeared. Taavi had originally thought he might go back to school later, but later had just never happened. He said he liked working with his hands, but I got the feeling that it was something he’d convinced himself of. Or maybe it was true, but it was more a hobby thing than a calling thing.
I got that. I liked baking, but I’d probably hate being a professional baker.
The only time Taavi had sounded actually excited about his work was talking about some of the kids at the Arcanid-Arc-Human Youth Center. He did basic maintenance for both the AAYC and Hands and Paws, and although it didn’t sound like he disliked it, he only seemed to have energy when talking about how he’d helped some of the kids use some old equipment to rig up some sort of game.
