ever thought about what your life would be like if you didn’t shift?”
“No, because I know what it would be like. It would be miserable.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Nothing is more awesome to me than”—he leaned in and lowered his voice—“shifting and hanging from a tree limb, in the sunshine . . . or snow and just being me. Oh!” he suddenly added. “Even better, getting a big ball, wrapping myself around it, and just rolling around a yard.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s the best. What do you like to do when you are . . .” He glanced around, saw the full-humans and vaguely finished, “. . . your other-self?”
Stevie gazed at the panda for several seconds before she admitted, “I like to play with Blayne. Or something Blayne-like.” She leaned forward. “Human toys are the best because they kind of fight back. And the screaming weirdly entertains me.”
“I get that. But that’s a typical predator thing.”
She nodded. “I guess.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Why?”
“At the end of the day we’re all human. When I”—he cleared his throat—“change, I’m still me. I still know what I’m doing.”
“You mean you have control.”
“Right.”
“But what if you don’t?”
“But I do.”
“Yeah, but I don’t.”
“Wait . . . I don’t . . .” Shen shook his head. “What are we talking about here?”
Stevie leaned in. “What if, with medication, I could stop shifting . . . forever?”
* * *
Max, covered in stolen honey and bee stings—and some of those truly aggressive bees that just wouldn’t let go—trotted through a hole in the back fence that she’d created and cut through the yard. When she reached the front fence, she shifted back to human and batted off the bees, pulled out the stingers, and leaned against the fence.
That’s when she caught sight of Berg and Dag circling an Escalade that had parked in front of the house.
The bears on this street didn’t like strangers in general, but since Max and her sisters had moved in, they’d been extra protective. Something that Max found extremely entertaining.
“I smell cat,” Dag announced to his brother.
Berg leaned in and took several sniffs against the window. “That’s a big cat . . . and . . .” He sniffed a few more times. “. . . And cheesesteak.”
“There’s cheesesteak?” Dag pressed his nose against the glass again. “That’s definitely cheesesteak.”
“We could order cheesesteaks from Jersey Mike’s.”
“Yeah . . . but I’m hungry now. And the window is open a little.” Dag forced his hands between the window and the metal of the vehicle. He then pushed hard, forcing the window down with a squealing sound that made even Max cringe a little.
Dag only managed to get it halfway down and couldn’t get his massive body inside. Although it was humorous to watch him try.
After the third attempt, Dag stood and stared at his brother over the top of the vehicle. Some unspoken words passed between the two triplets.
Berg went to the back of the vehicle and, again, after looking at each other, they both squatted down and Max watched, her mouth wide open, as the brothers lifted the Escalade up and tipped it toward Dag. Everything that was inside came rolling toward the window.
“Shake it left,” Dag ordered.
And they did. They shook the Escalade to the left.
“Right.”
Then the right. Then left again. Like someone trying to shake a certain color out of a box of M&M’s.
When none of that seemed to work, they dropped the vehicle and Berg went to stand by his brother’s side.
“Maybe we should just call Jersey Mike’s,” Dag suggested.
“Yeah. But we still don’t know whose Escalade this is.” Berg wrapped his hand around the inside of the open part of the window. “Maybe if it’s unlocked we can just—ooops.”
Max closed her eyes and lowered her head, giving herself a moment so she didn’t laugh out loud. Hysterically. But the vision of that bear standing there . . . holding that door in his hand . . . because he’d pulled it off the Escalade, was something that would be burned into her mind until she died.
“That was an accident,” Berg said—and Max believed him.
“I know,” Dag replied. “But since it’s open anyway . . .”
Dag leaned in and, eventually, ended up crawling inside, followed by Berg once he leaned the door he’d been holding against the SUV’s back end.
Together, the pair began to rip apart the inside of the vehicle, still looking for those cheesesteaks. Oh . . . and information. Apparently.
Max heard footsteps and looked to her right. A male was