rls had been trying to smother giggles, but hearing Jen’s phoenix laughing, they too let loose. Then Jen turned to Bird and trilled a few notes. Clearly an apology.
Cleo and Petra sprang to right the unhurt furniture as Jen hopped up to the table, then to the low wall around the terrace. And she took off, this time with more assurance. When she came back, she landed on the grassy area below the terrace, where Nikos had spent his day in unicorn form.
Again and again she took off and landed, calling to mind the disciplined martial artist: she didn’t stop until she was able to glide in and come to rest with her claws gripping the back of a lounge chair, which was heavy enough to support the weight of a large bird. She folded her wings and looked complacently at them with one eye, then the other. Pride swelled inside Nikos. His mate was brilliant.
Finally, as the moon dipped down toward the horizon, Cleo said, “Let’s fly with her. See if we can show her how to blink.”
Jen’s nearer eye turned toward Nikos in question, and he heard her say, Blink?
He said, “Turn invisible. As a mythic shifter, you can do this so that humans cannot see you. But other mythic shifters can, so please stay within the boundaries of this garden. We’re lucky that it’s as extensive as it is. You’ve got plenty of room for experimenting.”
The girls nodded soberly. It was clear they’d forgotten about the fight that they had not seen. “We will,” Petra promised.
And they did. Nikos watched the three of them take off, skimming the treetops then circling back. One, then the other of the girls blurred, but Jen was not able to make herself invisible to the human eye.
At length the three returned to the terrace, three perfect landings. Cleo’s eagle talons and hooves hit the ground, and she shifted in the middle of a yawn. “Oops! Sorry,” she apologized. “We didn’t sleep very much last night.”
“It’s getting late,” Bird said, looking around at everyone. “I suggest everybody get some rest. Planning can wait for morning, when you’re fresh. Jen, where would you like to be? Do you want to come into the house?”
Jen uttered a decided negative, turning her head away, her feathers briefly ruffling.
“The night is balmy,” Mikhail said. “It might be more peaceful for Jen out here.”
The trills this time were higher—agreement.
“Shall I stay out with you?” Nikos murmured softly, for her ears only.
Jen sidled up toward him. He grinned at her. “I’ll fetch a blanket and be right back.”
And so they spent their first night together, he in the lounge chair and she perched on the arm of his chair, with her head tucked under her wing.
FIFTEEN
JEN
When she’d suddenly found herself turned into a phoenix, the world seemed upside down.
No, that wasn’t quite it.
Her sight hadn’t changed up into down, or the other way around. It was more like the ground level had jumbled itself up with hazards, and she wanted to go high to get free of it. But her hands didn’t work right, nor her feet, and her eyes were just weird—she could nearly see all the way around her head, which at first made her dizzy. Then there were these extra . . . almost-colors, or colors that she had no name for, that she didn’t know how to deal with.
The worst was moving, until Nikos reminded her that it was a mistake to try to force her new body to be human when it wasn’t human.
Right. She was now a phoenix.
At first suppressing her instincts and letting this other consciousness within her take over wasn’t much better, because it felt helpless as a baby. But that changed fast.
Once she and her phoenix both understood how her claws worked to grip things beneath her, and she got her wings going, then everything got a whole lot better.
The toughest part was landing. But years of repeating a difficult move until her muscles learned it without her having to think paid off. It was nearly midnight when Bird called everyone to go in to get some rest.
Jen watched Nikos say goodnight to Mikhail and Bird before the pair went into the house. She knew he was worried about that Transfer Gate thing that had managed to get inside her somehow, though he hadn’t said anything. But she knew. One more thing to learn. She was aware how it worked now. At least, her head was. Both times it happened, she’d wanted to be somewhere else, and then she was.
So she perched on the back of a chair, and glared at a low tree branch in the garden. But her body didn’t budge. Maybe it was tiredness, maybe it was bird vision.
Nikos rejoined her, giving her that special smile that warmed her to the core. He stretched out on the chaise lounge with the blanket over him. She settled on the chaise arm. For a time she was content to sit and watch the wind with her amazing eyes, but when Nikos’s breathing slowed into sleep, she finally let her phoenix hide their head under a wing.
Without the constant stimulus of sight, she found her mind sinking and sinking . . .