Trouble in a Fur Coat (The Fur Coat Society Book 1) (2 page)

As Silver tried to recover, she heard voices coming down the hall, and realized that Mr. Astor was approaching the library with one of his guests. Silver winced, and tried to stand again. She didn’t want sympathy from these two men about her knee. But before Silver could get to her feet, she froze at the words she heard floating down the hallway from the men’s conversation.

“Yeah, Tim. But the problem is that the current mayor doesn’t even believe that shifters exist,” Mr. Astor said.

“How can he be so blind?” the second man, presumably Tim, asked. His tone was incredulous.

There was a pause, and then Mr. Astor spoke again. This time, his voice was louder, and it sounded like he was standing at the entrance to the library. “A lot of people don’t believe it, actually. They just assume that shifters are made-up characters in fantasy stories. And it’s hard to prove. Shifters try to blend in, and they tend to only shift when they’re far away from any full humans.”

Silver crouched as low as she could behind the desk. Her mouth was hanging down in shock, and her heart was beating rapidly in her chest. She silently prayed that Mr. Astor wouldn’t walk around the room to the other side of the desk or realize that she was in here. A thousand questions flooded her mind. How did
he
know about shifters? And why was he talking to the mayor about them? Silver had a sinking feeling in her stomach that, whatever the answer to that question was, she wasn’t going to like it.

“We have to get rid of them,” Tim said, his voice growing louder and angrier. “It’s unbelievable to me that, as advanced as society has become, we still sit around and let such dangerous creatures roam freely among us.”

“I agree,” Mr. Astor said. “We have to do something about this. We have to plan carefully, though. We don’t want to alert the shifters in time for them to figure out a way to hide from us or escape. Or, worse, to attack us before we attack them.”

Silver bit her bottom lip so hard that she could taste blood. There was a gap between the floor and the bottom of the desk’s front panel, and Silver could see the feet of the two men walking further into the room. Silver squeezed her eyes shut and tried to come up with some plausible excuse for why she was hiding behind the desk. She could always just pretend that she had passed out from the pain in her knee, right? She could play dumb and act like she hadn’t heard anything the men had been talking about.

“How
are
you going to find the shifters?” Tim asked.

“I’m working with someone down at Hook Labs,” Mr. Astor said, a hint of pride making its way into his voice. “He’s an older scientist, and worked on a failed attempt to wipe out shifters years ago. He’s been pretty quiet since then, keeping his head down and working for the government on other projects. But he recently discovered a way to program the eye scanners used in security cameras so that they will sound an alert if the eyes they are scanning contain traces of animal DNA.”

“Which is why we need the mayor’s help,” Tim said.

“Exactly. The mayor is a close personal friend of the president. If we can convince the mayor that it’s a good idea to require security scans of all citizens, he’ll convince the president for us. The shifters won’t be able to hide anymore. All we have to do is stir up fear in the general public about the dangers of shifters, and the momentum will snowball from there. We’ll have the support we need to wipe shifters from the face of the earth.”

Much to Silver’s relief, the men stopped walking before they made it anywhere near the desk. Her palms were sweaty, grasping the fabric of her cocktail dress so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

“We should get back to the dining room,” Mr. Astor said. Silver watched his polished dress shoes turning around in one smooth movement as he headed toward the door. “We don’t want to be late for dinner. I can show you these books afterwards. And we can discuss the shifter situation more then.”

“Alright,” Tim said. “But it’s going to be hard to concentrate on the dinner conversation. I just want the shifter scum gone from Chicago and gone from the country.”

“Me too, my friend,” Mr. Astor said. “Patience, though. We still have a lot of details to work out. Our time will come. And when it does, we’ll be the heroes of this nation.”

The two men laughed as they left the room, as though they were part of some sort of evil inside joke. The sound of their laughter sent chills up and down Silver’s back, and for several moments she remained frozen under the desk in shock, unable to move.

She’d heard stories from her parents and the other elders in her clan about attempts decades ago to wipe out shifters. It had all seemed like a crazy, unbelievable part of the past. Silver thought that society today had advanced past the point where it would judge someone merely for being a little bit different. Out of respect, she’d heeded the warnings from her parents to not tell anyone she was a shifter, but she’d always thought they were being overly dramatic.

She’d just found out how wrong she was.

Silver wasn’t sure how long she remained frozen beneath the desk in the library, but it was too long. She sat there in a daze, unable to move and unwilling to go to the dining room to sit down and eat with the people she had just discovered wanted to get rid of her and everyone she cared about.

The sound of Joe’s voice calling her name finally snapped her out of it. She jumped up, wincing at the pain in her knee but forcing herself to quickly make her way out of the room despite the awful throbbing. She hobbled down the hallway quickly, trying to put as much space between herself and the library as possible. Just as she reached the end of the long hallway and stepped into the now-abandoned formal living room, Joe came whipping around the corner. He ran into Silver, which caused her to yelp in pain as she put too much pressure on her knee.

“Silver! Sorry, I didn’t see you there. Where did you go? You’re late for dinner and my mom is like an angry hornet,” Joe said, then paused and put a hand up to Silver’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay? You look really pale. Do you have a fever?”

“I…I think I’m coming down with something,” Silver lied. It wasn’t exactly the truth. But she was in a lot of pain from her leg, and she did feel sick to her stomach after the conversation she’d just overheard in the library.

“Do you think you can make it through dinner?” Joe asked, concern filling his voice.

Silver shook her head no. “I’m really sorry. I think I just need to get home. I know your mom will be upset, but I don’t think I can sit and eat right now.”

Joe nodded and brushed a loose strand of hair back from Silver’s face. “Okay. Here, let me help you sit down on the couch. I’ll go tell my mom and she’ll just have to get over it. You don’t look well at all. Let me go talk to her and then I’ll come help you get home.”

Silver nodded and sank weakly onto the couch while Joe left to go speak to his mother. Silver knew that the conversation wasn’t going to be an easy one to have, and she half-expected Mrs. Astor to come storming into the living room, demanding that Silver tough it out.

But Joe somehow must have convinced his mother to understand that the situation was dire, because he reappeared in the living room ten minutes later, alone.

“Come on,” he said, offering his hand to Silver and gently pulling her up. “Let’s get you home.”

Silver allowed herself to be led out of the condo and back to the elevator, which quickly zoomed down to the parking garage. On the way down, she entered the code into her personal tablet to call her hovercar, and it was waiting for her outside the elevator door when they arrived in the garage. Joe helped her in as the hovercar’s doors whizzed open, and then climbed in next to her.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Silver said. “I’ll be okay, really.” Of course, she didn’t tell him that she really needed some time alone to process everything she’d overheard his father saying earlier.

Joe shook his head. “No way. I’m at least going to make sure you get home okay. I’ll just send my hovercar ahead so it’s there waiting to take me home once you’re all settled in.”

“Isn’t your mom going to be mad that you’re missing dinner, too?”

Joe shrugged. “She’ll get over it. They’re too busy falling all over themselves trying to impress the guy running for senator to stay mad at me for long.”

Silver sighed and nodded. She didn’t have the energy to argue with Joe, and it
was
nice of him to make sure she got home okay. As Joe started remotely programming his hovercar to fly ahead and meet them at her apartment, Silver placed her hand on the glowing screen of her own hovercar. The screen lit up and let out five beeps as it authenticated the fingerprints on each of her fingers.

“User authenticated,” the computer chirped at her pleasantly. “Welcome back, Silver. Where can I take you this evening?”

“Home, please,” Silver said, reaching to buckle in to her safety belt. After a few more beeps, the engine in the hovercar started revving louder, and the small vehicle rose several inches above the ground.

“Heading home,” the computer said, and then sped toward the entrance of the parking garage as Silver leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes. Silver’s dad, who had worked as a pilot his entire life, hated the widespread use of self-driving hovercars. It made him nervous to have his daughter trusting a computer to shuffle her around. But Silver loved not having to worry about paying attention to the road. Besides, bigger cities like Chicago had long ago outlawed any kind of manually-driven vehicles. Despite protests from the older generation, self-driving vehicles were safer overall. Taking the element of human emotion and judgment out of driving had been an extraordinarily effective way to reduce accidents.

Silver felt a pang of guilt as Joe put his hand on her forehead again to check her temperature. Her head was spinning, but it wasn’t from a fever. She was still trying to process the fact that her boyfriend’s dad was apparently her sworn enemy. How was she going to broach this subject with Joe? Silver opened her eyes and glanced over at him. He looked back at her with so much love and concern that Silver felt like her heart might break.

The lights of the city flashed across his face as her hovercar zoomed into the Lakeshore Drive Corridor, speeding north with Lake Michigan on the right and the glittering, high-rise condo buildings on the left. Below them, self-driving cars zoomed down the roads which had once been cluttered with manual vehicles. Even the self-driving cars were becoming scarcer as hovercars became more affordable. Pretty soon, anyone who didn’t own a hovercar would be the odd one out. Glancing at the display from the rear camera, Silver could see the lights of Joe’s hovercar following closely behind them. It hadn’t quite managed to beat Silver’s hovercar out of the garage. Silver was actually surprised that Joe was bringing his vehicle along to go home in later. She had half-expected him to insist on just spending the night with her to make sure she was okay. More than likely, he was going to try to make an appearance for after-dinner cocktails to appease his mother. Normally, Silver got angry when he rushed back home because of his parents. But tonight, she was looking forward to being alone. Besides, who could fault him for being a dedicated son? That was a good quality in a man, right?

Silver sighed and closed her eyes again. Some days, she really just wanted to grab Joe by the shoulders, shake him, and ask, “Why did you have to be so wonderful?” His family was so difficult to deal with, and she felt so out of place in their world. If Joe hadn’t turned out to be such a great guy—kind, fun, smart, and funny—Silver would have moved on long ago. But she hadn’t been able to bring herself to let him go solely based on the frustrations caused by his parents. As her hovercar zoomed into the parking garage of her own condo building and settled into its assigned parking spot, Silver forced herself to open her eyes and give Joe a weak smile. She had to act somewhat okay, or he might still insist on staying here tonight.

Joe hopped out of the hovercar and ran around to offer his hand to Silver as she eased out of the vehicle. Silver winced as her knee hit the ground, and then wordlessly made her way toward the elevators, still holding Joe’s hand. It only took the elevators a few seconds to whoosh up to the eleventh floor, and Silver stepped out into the hallway to hobble toward the front door of her condo. This building, while nice enough, was much less fancy than the building where Joe’s parents lived, or even the building where Joe himself lived. Joe had hinted at having Silver move in with him, but she wasn’t ready to take that step yet. And now, she was even more hesitant. Did she really want to entangle herself more with a family whose patriarch wanted to eliminate shifters? Sure, it wasn’t Joe’s fault that his dad was acting this way, but that didn’t change the fact that he was their son.

Silver avoided making eye contact with Joe as she pressed her right hand flat against the computer screen on her front door. In quick succession, the computer let out five beeps and flashes of lights as it verified her identity. She couldn’t afford one of the fancy new eye-scanner security systems, so she’d settled for the standard fingerprint scanner. After what she’d overheard tonight, she was glad she didn’t have an eye scanner. An involuntary shudder passed through her body as she imagined a scanner detecting bear DNA in her eyes and setting off an alarm. No doubt, as soon as technology like that was available, Joe’s parents would install it in their home. Which was obviously going to pose a problem when Silver came over to visit.

“Welcome home, Silver,” her security system said, greeting her in a male voice with a British accent. Joe hated the voice, but Silver refused to change it. She said it sounded sophisticated. Joe said the way American women idolized British accents was ridiculous. But since Silver lived here, she got to keep the voice set to whatever she wanted. For a few weeks, Joe had changed the voice on his own security system to a sultry female voice that said, “Hey there, baby,” whenever Joe arrived home. But his attempts to annoy Silver into changing the voice on her own system fell flat. Silver wasn’t threatened by a computer voice, and Joe finally gave up and changed his security system back to a more normal voice.

Silver stepped inside her small condo as the door whooshed open, and she hobbled toward the living room where she sank into her own couch, grateful for its familiar comfort. The couch was old, and didn’t have any modern features like temperature sensing or automatic height adjustment. But it was still comfortable, and Silver loved to sit here and read while sipping on a coffee or tea.

The lights had all automatically turned on as Silver entered the room, but she didn’t like how bright they were. Her head felt like it was spinning faster and faster, and the light was somehow making her headache worse.

“Computer, dim lights please,” Silver said.

“Dimming lights,” the British voice called out, and the lights slowly faded to a dim glow.

Joe sat down next to Silver and looked over at her with a renewed expression of concern. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked for the hundredth time.

Silver sighed. “Yeah. I’m okay. It’s just been a long day. I need to rest.”

“I can call off after-dinner drinks,” Joe said, his voice uncertain. Silver’s heart melted a little. She understood what a huge sacrifice that would be for him. He would hear about it for days if he didn’t make it back to at least have a drink with the guests before they left. She looked over at him, her eyes searching his handsome face, although she wasn’t quite sure what she was searching for. Some sort of reassurance that he wouldn’t think she was a monster because she was a shifter? A guarantee that he would stand up to his parents when it really mattered—when the argument wasn’t just over dinner parties but over people’s lives?

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked. “You look really upset, and I’m starting to think it’s more than just a stomach bug or a knee injury. Something’s bothering you.”

Silver took a deep breath. She knew she should wait until she’d had time to process everything before bringing up the subject. But she couldn’t help herself. She had to at least nudge Joe a little bit, and see what his reaction to his father’s shifter hatred might be.

“I overheard your dad saying something really upsetting tonight,” Silver said.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “That’s not that unusual. I love my old man, but he’s always spouting off about some bullshit or another.”

“Yeah, I know. But…tonight was the worst I’ve ever heard,” Silver said, then lowered her voice. “I overheard him talking to someone about wanting to eliminate all shifters. As in, completely kill them off.”

Joe raised his eyebrows further, then furrowed them. He looked genuinely confused. “Shifters? What are those? I’ve never heard that term before.”

Silver bit her bottom lip. It always took her by surprise when someone had never heard of shifters. For her, shifting was such a fact of life that not knowing it even existed seemed unfathomable. She had to remind herself that the general population, like Joe, didn’t have the same background that she did. Most people had only heard of shifters through fantasy books or movies, and Joe wasn’t the type to read a fantasy story. If he did read, it was usually a business book, or the latest advice on how to win the stock market game.

“You know, like shapeshifters. People that can turn into animals and back again at will,” Silver said, hoping to see some hint of recognition in Joe’s eyes. Joe looked back at her like she was crazy.

“You mean like a werewolf?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Silver said, wondering how deep into her explanation she should try to get right now. “Except werewolves aren’t real. Shifters are. Werewolves are made-up creatures that can turn you into a werewolf by biting you. Shifting is just a genetic mutation. It’s not a disease you can catch or anything like that.”

Joe gave Silver a look that clearly said he thought she’d just lost her marbles. He reached out and put his palm to her forehead again, checking for a fever. But Silver wasn’t burning up. She wasn’t sick, and she wasn’t crazy. She looked into Joe’s eyes, begging him to listen to her and hear the truth.

“Silver, I think you should get some rest,” he said in a soft but firm voice.

Silver felt anger bubbling up inside of her. “No!” she said. “Not until you hear me. Really hear me. I’m not making this up, Joe. Shifters are real, and your dad wants to get rid of them.”

Joe pulled his hand back, looking surprised. “You’re serious?” he said, his voice taken aback. “You really think that shifters exist, and, apparently, so does my dad?”