Acting for Shapeshifters [Anne Bishop's The Others]

Chapter One - Panther on the Patio

Tansy closed the script and stretched lazily. She had already memorized her lines, but it never hurt to read them one more time, even though the next episode of her sitcom Coconut Boulevard would only start filming in two days. She should give herself a holiday for the next two days.

She sprang to her feet and skipped to her hat closet. Her character, Mazel, wore different hats in every episode for the past five years. Almost a hundred episodes, although the hats counted less than that. Some of the hats had made a repeat appearance after a year or two. The hats were her signature, to emphasize her empty head, and Tansy collected the hats. They belonged to her, not the costume department. The hats sported ribbons and beads, fruits and flowers. She put one on—a ludicrous purple fascinator, decorated with feathers, faux amethysts, and a huge bow, and smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Nice. This would be the right hat for the next episode.

Behind her window, already darkened with the approaching night, the autumn rain beat a faint staccato on the roofs and patios of her co-op. When the other sounds intruded, she didn't recognize them at first. They were so alien in the peaceful evening, she thought one of her neighbors was watching a thriller, and the audio escaped through an open window. Running feet. A shout. A gun shot. Another gun shot.

Then something heavy thumped down on her patio. Tansy flinched. This was not a TV thriller. There was no music, no tense, anxious tunes of the strings, nor the breathy sax trills. No, these shots didn't come from any TV show. Someone was shooting a real gun outside her apartment.

She squeaked and rushed to turn off the light. Could the shooter still see her? She pressed her back to the wall in the darkness and listened intently. Did they throw something over the fence of her patio? Something stolen? A contraband? That couldn't be happening, not to her. She was a law-abiding citizen of Thaisia, a moderately famous actress in Sparkletown. She couldn't be embroidered in crime.

The clomps of running feet receded towards the entrance of the co-op. Should she see what was on her patio? Or should she call the police?

She stepped towards her phone on the other side of the living room and froze, when her feet started tingling. Drat it! The tingling feet were her tell. Every intuit had a different tell. Hers was the tingling feet. Just to check it, she made one more step, and the tingling turned painful. She winced. No, she shouldn't call the police. She never disregarded her tell. But should she check her patio herself? She didn't want to get involved in any shady activity.

Daring greatly, still in the dark, she tiptoed to the sliding door to the patio. The tingling stopped. Reciting all the swear words she knew under her breath, she pushed the door open and stepped into the drizzle. A huge pile huddled on her patio, between her flowerpots and the door. Another step, and the pile took form. An animal. A panther probably, its fur spotted.

Tansy almost screamed when further details came into view. A dark puddle spread on the flagstones of the patio under one of the panther's hind legs. And one of her front legs sported a human hand. A shapeshifter, a wounded shapeshifter lay on her patio, unconscious.

Tansy stared. She had no words. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before a whisper emerged. "Wake up, please. What are you doing here?"

The panther didn't reply. Probably hit its head on landing; the patio fence was quite high.

What should she do? When her doorbell interrupted her frantic ruminations, it was almost a relief. She went to answer the door.

The young man at her door looked reedy and nervous, his dark-red windbreaker shiny with dirt and moisture. "Ma'am, we're chasing a criminal. You didn't see or hear anything suspicious?"

"A criminal?" she shrieked. "Oh, no!" Her hands quivered. She didn't have to pretend her fear; her panic was quite real. "I heard the shots. I thought I should call the police. Are you the police?"

Her hesitated a moment too long before saying, "Yes."

He was lying. She was a good actress and she knew bad acting when she saw it. She couldn't tell him about the shapeshifter on her patio, but if one of his pals lifted himself over her patio fence, they would see the panther. Already, a couple of other guys were talking to her neighbors; she could hear a faint murmur of voices across the pass-way. They were going door to door in search of the panther shifter. She needed to get rid of this guy and get the panther out of her patio. Inside her apartment. As soon as possible. Sooner.

The prospect made her dizzy with fright, but then her acting training took over, and she channeled her role, the scatterbrained Mazel, into her next exchange. It was the only way to get him to back off in a hurry.

She grabbed the man's windbreaker in both trembling fists before he could step away. "It's terrible," she gasped. "Please, officer, you have to catch him. He'll killed us all. Oh, please ..." she pulled him closer and whispered into his filthy, sweaty neck. "You have to save us, officer."

"Yes, yes." He hastily pried her hands off himself and stepped away. "We will, of course, ma'am. Don't worry."

He beat a hasty retreat, and she closed the door in satisfaction. Phase one of her plan accomplished. Then she rushed back to her patio for the phase two. The panther was still there, still unconscious.

"Damn you. You need to get inside, before they find you here," she hissed. "I can't carry you. You're too big. Please, wake up." Tansy had never seen a shapeshifter up close, never mind touched one, and now she had this complication. The creature was much bigger than a regular animal, and even wounded, it was beautiful. Almost crying from frustration, Tansy crouched beside her uninvited guest and shook it gently. Its fur was short and silky. And wet. It didn't wake up.

"Fine." Tansy straightened and stomped back into her apartment. She rummaged in her walk-in closet for her folding cot, extracted its narrow mattress, and went back outside.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," she muttered as she rolled the heavy, unresponsive body onto the mattress, and dragged the mattress over the slight bump of the threshold into the apartment. Then she slid the patio door shut, pulled the curtains closed, and puffing from exertions, studied her new roommate. The mattress was already turning red under the wounded thigh. She needed to bind the wound, and for that, she needed light.

Tansy swallowed her unease. She already knew she shouldn't call the police. How about an ambulance? She wasn't a medic. She didn't know squat about gunshot wounds. What if the bullet was inside the wound? She took an experimental step towards the telephone again, and her feet immediately started buzzing.

"I hate you," she mumbled and reversed her steps towards the bathroom for her first-aid kit. After binding the wound, she dropped down on the sofa, a couple yards away from the now grimy mattress, and studied its occupant. She could do nothing else, until the panther woke up and took the human shape. And talked. What if it couldn't talk. Not all shapeshifters could manage human speech. Or so she had heard.

More to the point, what did a shapeshifter do in the middle of Sparkletown? It was a human-controlled city, and even after the Great Predation the previous summer, not much changed here. That horrible political movement, Humans First and Last, that had resulted in so many deaths in the East and Midwest of Thaisia and the complete annihilation of the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nation, didn't have many adherents in Sparkletown. Who were those people chasing this gorgeous panther shifter?

Pointless speculations, she told herself firmly. She would wait until her guest woke up. Hopefully, it wouldn't kill her on site, but as Tansy's feet didn't tingle, she decided it was unlikely. She put a spare pillow under the panther's head, covered it with her spare duvet, and put a bottle of water within easy rich of the mattress. Her guest made as comfortable as possible on the floor—Tansy couldn't lift it to the sofa anyway—she poured herself a glass of medicinal cabernet and went to bed.