follow-up act.
She seemed to have decided to forgo the bathrobe.
She stalked onto the stage, clearly trying for a model strut, but she didn’t have the attitude. Her fey- enhanced youth made her look almost like a child, or at least girl barely out of puberty. Especially compared to the woman who had just vacated the stage. Still, she had a raw appeal that made Griffen feel a little guilty. Very much the gamine.
“Tammy here is one of our new changeling attendees. As this has been their first time attending, she has volunteered to show off some of her shifting abilities.”
Tammy stood with her feet together and threw her arms up into the air, arching her back and throwing her head back. With an audible creak, she seemed slowly to lengthen, her limbs especially growing spindly and long. Her skin went a dark nutty brown, and began to roughen. Green shoots started to extend from her fingers.
Tammy stood as a small cherry tree, barely seven feet high. Her roots spread over the stage, a light smattering of soft petals drifting from her branches.
There was a brief bit of applause. This was not as startling as the demonstration before, but it was something different. The cherry blossoms reddened, as if she were blushing.
Griffen heard a low growling from Tail. He looked over curious, to see the man reach into one of his pockets and pull out a small stone. Before Griffen could react, the stone had been hurled toward the stage. Right at one of the leafy branches.
The stone passed through the branch and struck the wall behind.
What had been a tree before was instantly Tammy again.
Though her limbs were a little longer, her skin a little woody in color, she was still very much human shape. There was an angry burst of conversation from the other shape-shifters in the audience.
“Fifteen percent shifting, eighty-five percent fairy glamour. When the other participants agreed to only use shifting, even if they had other abilities,” Tail said.
There was a hiss from one of the shifters, a boo from another. Tammy, now fully her old self and quite naked and exposed in front of the audience, burst into tears. She ran off the stage and out of the room as the presenter tried to calm everyone down.
Griffen couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. He joined the presenter on stage, using his position as moderator to send everyone away. Competition aside, this was supposed to have been a friendly demonstration. And after the garou’s specialty trick with his clothes, picking on the changeling for her glamour seemed… petty.
Thirty-eight
Taking advantage of an open period in his schedule, Griffen tried to hook up with Slim to double-check the arrangements for the next day’s activities. Though the street entertainer had no official standing in the running of the conclave, he had proved to be a great help at seeing to the myriad of details that went into running an event, as well as serving as a liaison with the local groups.
The problem was, he wasn’t always that easy to find.
He was one of those that tended to keep his cell phone turned off except when he was making a call, which made that avenue of communication iffy at best. What was worse, he didn’t have any particular movement or behavior patterns, making his whereabouts unpredictable. While he would occasionally hang out with the other animal-control people at the conclave, for the most part he was a loner, seeming to prefer his own company.
One place there was always a chance of finding someone from the conclave was the hotel lobby bar. While the attendees were mostly into exploring the wilds of the Quarter and the locals tended to duck out to drink at their habitual watering holes, the lobby bar was convenient for a quick drink or conversation.
Poking his head in, Griffen did a quick scan of who all were there. Not seeing Slim, he started to leave, then took another look.
Sitting alone at a corner table was Tammy. The changeling was hunched over her drink, staring down into it while she idly played with the swizzle stick. While, like the other fey kids, she was normally high-energy and exuberant, just then she wasn’t looking happy at all.
Looking at her, Griffen wavered for a moment, then heaved a sigh. Pausing at the bar to gather up a drink of his own, he approached her table.
“Mind if I join you?” he said.
The changeling looked at him blankly, then gave a little shrug.
“I don’t know why you’d want to talk to me, but sure. Pull up a chair.”
Griffen studied her covertly as he sank into the indicated seat. He always thought of her as “the coltish one,” and the image still held. While she wasn’t all that tall, there was a lean, all-legs look about her that made one wonder what she would be like when she grew up, yet also left one feeling they were glad to have met her at this stage in her development. The look was accented by her outfit. She was wearing short shorts, which made her legs seem even longer, and a bare-midriff T-shirt that accented the soft flatness of her stomach. Topped by a long, slender neck and a pixie mop of blond hair, she was not unattractive at all.
He caught himself and forced his mind back to the issue at hand.
“Are you okay, Tammy?” he said. “It’s not really any of my business, but you seem a little down.”
The changeling gave a sigh.
“I really screwed things up with that demo,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “All the others are really pissed at me. They say I’ve made our whole group look bad at our first conclave. I don’t know. Maybe they’re right.”
She took a long pull on her drink, giving Griffen a chance to grope for something to say.
“I don’t think anyone has come off as well as they would like to, including me,” he said. “Except, maybe watzername, the tattoo and bird lady. She would be a tough act to follow for anyone.”
“Tell me about it,” Tammy said with a bitter laugh. “I was only going to do my partial tree change, but it would have looked so lame after her showstopper I tried to juice it a little with glamour.”
“That’s understandable,” Griffen said, soothingly. “It’s only natural to try to make a good impression. I really don’t think it’s such a big thing. To tell the truth, I didn’t even know that shape-shifting was one of the abilities you changelings have.”
“It isn’t, really.” Tammy grimaced. “A few of us can, but it’s not part of the standard package. That was part of the game plan. You aren’t alone in not knowing what we can or can’t do, even though for most of them it’s because they really don’t care. We’re supposed to be secretive and evasive about our powers, then show off some that people don’t expect… like the shape-shifting. It’s supposed to make people take us more seriously, or at least pique their curiosity.”
“Well, it worked for me,” Griffen said, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I, for one, am extremely curious about you.”
The changeling suddenly brightened as if someone had turned on a lightbulb inside her.
“Really?” she said. “You don’t know how much that means to me, Mr… I mean, Griffen.”
She put a hand over his and pressed down hard, effectively pinning his hand in place.
“I mean, I’ve always wanted to meet a dragon, but since that first day… you’re nothing like what I expected.”
Every alarm in Griffen’s head was going off.
He had meant that he was curious about the changelings, but Tammy was obviously taking it personally. Moreover, her response was so enthusiastic there was no way he could see of correcting the impression without it sounding like a blunt rejection of her. Of course, he wasn’t all that disinterested in her.
“Um… Tammy…” he said.
“Oh, I know,” she interrupted. “I don’t expect you to feel the same way. Still, curiosity’s not a bad place to start.”
Still holding his hand, she shifted it from her shoulder to the middle of her chest.
Griffen was suddenly aware that there wasn’t a damn thing under that T-shirt except Tammy.
At that pivotal moment, Tail came into the bar with two of the other shape-shifters. Tammy saw him and let go of Griffen’s hand, recoiling as if she had been struck.
