"No," he said. "Only a . . . part of a year." He paused again. "Without counting them and . . . and the other triad dragons, of whom there are many, I'd say I've seen about twelve, maybe thirteen shifters. Not . . . not close enough to talk to. I've only talked to a couple. I never went out of my way to talk to them. And sometimes, it was ambiguous, you know. Like, you're walking downtown and you see someone walk in a certain direction and moments later a wolfhound . . . or a wolf . . . comes from the same direction. The only ones I knew for sure were the triad and the orangutan and the coyotes. There seem to be any number of them within the triad. Hundreds. And that might be hereditary. They seem to think they're descended of the Great Sky Dragon. They marry among themselves and they have rites and . . . and stuff."
"So—excluding the triad—a dozen in five years? That doesn't seem like many."
"No. And most of the time it was larger cities than Goldport. Large cities back east. New York and Boston and Atlanta."
"Odd," Kyrie said. "Because just last night—"
"Yes, you and me and that lion," Tom said, his voice grave, as he finished taping the gauze in place. At least she assumed he'd finished, because he lay the tape back on the table, with the scissors on top of it. And then, ever so gently, he tugged her robe back in place. "I've been thinking the same. Why that many in one night. With the triad here, too, we must be tipping the scales at . . . a lot of shifters. And I wondered why."
Kyrie wondered why too. She'd been living in Goldport for over a year. She remembered the Greyhound bus had stopped here and she'd thought to stay for a night before going on to Denver. But she'd never gone on. Something about Goldport just felt . . . right. Like it was the home she'd been looking for so long. Which was ridiculous, since it was what remained of a gold boom town that had become a University town. And she never had anything to do with either mining or college.
But Goldport had felt . . . Not exactly familiar, but more safe. Secure. Home. Like the home she'd never known. She had walked from the Greyhound station to the Athens and seen a sign on the window asking for a server. She'd applied and been hired that night.
But what attraction could the small, odd town have for other shifters. Well . . . Tom had come via the Greyhound too, she supposed. And Frank had offered him a job.
As for the lion . . . She wouldn't think about the lion. "It's probably just a coincidence," she told Tom. And it probably was. Three were not, after all, a great sample. Perhaps they were the only three shifters in town—other than the triad—and had just chanced to bump into each other. The blood had surely helped. She swallowed, remembering what the blood smelled like in the other shape.
Tom came around and started gathering the first-aid supplies.
"What kinds of shifters are there? What kinds did you see? Just big cats? And werewolves? And dragons? Or . . ."
Tom stopped what he was doing. He didn't drop the supplies, just held them where they were. He didn't look at her. "You're going to think I'm an idiot," he said.
"Um . . . no," Kyrie said. She couldn't understand why she would think he was an idiot now. She had a thousand reasons to think him careless, low on self-preservation instincts, and probably a little insane. But . . . an idiot? "Why?"
He sighed. "I swear one of those shifters was a centaur. I know what you're going to tell me, that centaurs don't exist, that I was just seeing a horseman, that—"
"No, I'm not," Kyrie said.
"You're not?"
"Tom, dragons are thought not to exist too."
"Oh." He looked shocked. As if he'd never thought of it that way. Then he grinned. "Well, then I can tell you. Another one of them was an orangutan. Little stooped man, sold roast chestnuts on the street near . . . near my father's house. And he shifted into an orangutan at night. He was a very nice man, once I got to talking to him. He told me that his wife and his daughters sometimes didn't notice when he shifted." He grinned at that, as he gathered all the first-aid supplies, and headed back to the bathroom.
Kyrie followed him, wondering what to do next. He'd helped her. And, whether his association with the triad was dangerous or not, he, personally, didn't feel dangerous. And they'd lost the triad for the night, hadn't they?
She was reluctant to send him out alone and barefoot into the night. What if he got killed? How would she feel when she heard about it? How would she live with herself?
And besides, having grown up without family, all alone, this was the first time she'd found someone who was genuinely like her. Not family—at least she didn't think so, though he could be a half brother or a cousin. One of the curses of the abandoned child was not to know—but someone who had more in common with her than anyone else she had found. And if he'd gone bad . . . She shook her head.