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THANK YOU FOR NOT SHIFTING
CHAPTER1
The cowbell overthe entrance to Sunny’s Outlook jangled for the umpteenth time. I heard the waiter, Jo Jo, offer a welcome, so I continued scrubbing off the diner table and re-setting it.Oo-wee.I was tired. Who knew being co-owner of a vegetarian restaurant in a tiny shifter town would be so exhausting?
Not me.
The breakfast crowd had been full of eager beavers. Not real beavers, of course, though werebeavers do exist, some were even in town this week, but most of their kind tended to be integrators—therians who hid their second natures to live like non-shifters. My parents are integrators, which means Mom is seriously unhappy with my brother Babe and me for living in an (almost) therian-only locality. Dad is more rational about the situation, but he shows his disapproval in other ways.
A blond boy ran inside the door, he was laughing as a teenage girl, face red with fury, fought to catch him. The boy was my friend Ruth Thompson’s nine-year-old son Linus, and the girl was his nineteen-year-old sister Michele.
“Linus,” Michele scolded. “You hold it right there.”
The boy dropped to his hands, and in seconds, he transformed into a young buck, nubs for horns and the softest looking buff-blond fur.
“Linus!” my best friend and business partner Sunny shouted. “No shifting in the restaurant. This is a shift-free zone, boy.”
Michele blushed as Jo Jo Corman, our young waiter, wrangled the small deer wearing denim shorts and a pale blue tank top.
“I’m so sorry, Sunny. You too, Chav,” Michele said. She grabbed the shorts off the ground when they fell down the deer’s bony legs. In one of the pockets, she pulled out a phone. “Got it!” She held it up triumphantly then blushed again. “Linus stole it out of my hands while I was texting.” She gave Jo Jo a meaningful look.
A silly grin formed on his face until he saw me staring, then he blushed as well. Over the past year, he’d let his short, brown hair grow out a couple of inches and wore it spiked with blue frosted tips. I wasn't sure whether it was any better than the blond leopard spots that used to grace his head. The spots had really pissed his dad off to no end. Though, Brady Corman had preferred the dyed hair to all of Jo Jo’s tattoos and piercings. I think Jo Jo told me once that he had twenty-six piercings in all. Twelve of them were in his face. I really didn't want to know the location of the others.
“Michele, you better get your brother out of here and take his shorts with you.” I looked at the deer who I could swear was silently laughing. “Don’t you dare shift back in here, Linus. No flashing your wee-willy in the restaurant. Take it outside.”
He snorted then pranced to the door, the pale blue tank top tight against his chest. He was already growing into a young adult. I’d known the youngest Thompson since he was six, and it just didn’t seem possible he was already starting to grow horns. It made me feel old.
Michele opened the door for him. She gave a shy wave to Jo Jo, and he nodded to her.
“Oh my,” Sunny said. She danced around Jo Jo like a fairy throwing flower petals. “I think young love is in the air.”
“Stop it,” Jo Jo said. He looked at me, his eyes pleading. “Chavvah, help me.”
I grinned. “I think I hear a baby crying. Do you hear a baby crying, Jo Jo?”
“No, Chav,” Sunny pleaded.
Jo Jo’s expression faltered, then he smiled. “I wonder if Baby Jude’s hungry.”
“I hate you,” Sunny exclaimed. She covered her chest with her forearms, but it didn’t hide the breast milk streaming in twin rivers down her pale green blouse. She headed toward the bathroom where she kept spare shirts.
“That wouldn’t happen if you’d wear breast pads,” I muttered.
I returned to my post behind the counter. We’d been doing a brisk business due to the Tri-State Council July Jubilee. This was the first time Peculiar had hosted the annual event, and our therianthrope community had been overrun by shifters from the surrounding states. Right now, our part of the Ozarks was bursting with every type of shifter you could imagine.
The bell jangled again. Delbert and Elbert Johnson, the twins who ran the general store across the street, came inside.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “Just grab an open table. I'll be with you in a minute.”
“No hurry, Chavvie.” Delbert grinned, his forehead crinkling over bright blue eyes. He was so cute for an old possum.
“Take your time, darlin'. We're not going anywhere,” Elbert added.
They both had that Uncle Jesse look. You know, the dude from Dukes of Hazzard. White hair, white beards, overalls, and a little tubby in the middle. I could tell them apart by only two things, Delbert had a thinner face, and Elbert had a small freckle near the corner of his left eye. Sunny had actually pointed it out. At a distance, it was nearly impossible to see the difference, but up close it was no problem.
The cowbell jangled again. I ignored it while I finished recording the last order.
“Chavvah.”
