Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

Of course nothing happened.

Then she gripped the channel changer, both arms stiff, and pressed the PLAY button with both thumbs.

Xi Yong understood then, with a swoop of internal laughter—and sorrow when he saw the anticipatory delight in her face turn to utter betrayal.

She dropped the channel changer. Her eyes filled with tears, and she crumpled to the floor.

“That was a good idea for a robot,” he said, crouching down next to the little girl. “But robots have to have different types of parts. They need electric wires, and joints that can help them move.”

Pink just sobbed desolately. Her pain was an arrow to Xi Yong’s heart. He understood that to a three-year-old, a lesson in mechanics would be no consolation.

He looked around. How to comfort her? The sun was still too far off to borrow its fire, and anyway, perhaps fire was a terrible idea to play with around someone so small. She could not recognize the difference between his benevolent fire and that in the stove, for example, which no three-year-old ought to be experimenting with.

But the moon still hung low, just above the treetops, visible in the kitchen window.

He lifted his hands to gather some of its light, pulled it into his palms, rolled it into a ball, and then tossed it down so that it splashed, and rippled across the floor in widening circles.

Pink lifted her head, wiped her face on her sleeve, and watched the slow curls of light as it spread outward, dimmed, and vanished. Then she turned wide eyes to Xi Yong.

He smiled. “Would you like another one?”

She nodded, hiccoughing, tear stains on her cheeks gleaming in the moonlight.

He raised his hands and pulled light into them, rolled it together, and this time tossed it toward the ceiling. When the light ball nearly touched the plaster, he sent a mental command. The light ball burst apart and showered down in glitters of moonlight.

Pink’s face turned up, her lips parted. She reached fingers up. “I make it!”

“I will have to help you. Okay?” Xi Yong asked.

At her happy nod, he pulled more light, formed a smaller ball, and said, “Hold out your hands.”

Pink stuck her small hands out, then snatched them back. “Hurt?”

“No,” he said. “Not when I do it. But other fires will hurt very much. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She smiled and stuck her hands out stiffly. Concentrating on keeping the light ball in the air, he pretended to set it on her hand. It floated there. She stood so still she scarcely seemed to be breathing, and gazed into the light. It glowed in her wide eyes.

“Toss it,” he said.

She patted the light ball then tried to throw it upward. He used his mental command to send it splashing against the ceiling. Then it rained down, this time in crystalline snowflakes. They faded before they reached the ground.

“I make them,” she demanded, waving a dimpled hand at the window. “Show me!”

“You have to be like me,” he said.

She looked up in question, and her lip trembled.

“It’s something I can do because of the way I am,” he said. “I’m a qilin.”

“See-win?” Pink ventured.

Ordinarily Xi Yong was careful not to shift around people. But he felt differently about children. He didn’t want to lie to them any more than he wanted to diminish their sense of wonder in the world’s possibilities. So, because she’d worked so hard, only to smash against the realities of engineering—and maybe because he was still a little tired—he said, “You remember the horse with antlers that you saw? That was me.”

And he shifted to his qilin, right there in the kitchen.

Pink’s eyes widened. He saw her expression of wonder, and knew that the failed robot experiment was forgotten. So was her frustration at not being able to play with light herself. He smiled down, seeing his fiery crimson form reflected in her huge pupils, and rejoiced as she gave a crow of delight and danced on her tippy toes.

Because he was in qilin form, his senses reached—