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While Jonny showered and dressed, Peter cleaned up the kitchen. Then he dressed and drove to the rescue center.
He had never tried to shift during the summer. He’d never felt the urge, and he’d always connected his ability to shift with the onset of winter’s chill. If he and Jonny moved to Florida, would he have to give up what had become such an important part of his life, the camaraderie of the other guys at the outpost, the joy of flying, the chance to serve Santa?
The only shifter he’d known to stop had been Prancer Phil, who had retired after decades of service. It had always been made clear to him that to serve Santa, you had to be in good physical shape, and that once age took its toll on you, you were released. But he was still young and healthy—could he back away, or was he committed?
He wanted to pull off to the side of the road, shift, and fly right up to the outpost to ask advice. But he had to be at work. As soon as he got there, it seemed like every sick person in Addison County was calling for EMS help, and he was on the go for his full eight hours. Before he left the station, though, he went online.
The shifters used an online message board to communicate when they weren’t at the outpost, and Peter logged in. He scanned through the FAQs, hoping someone had asked the questions that were bothering him, but no one had. The most southerly he could find were a couple of guys who lived a few miles apart in the Shenandoah Mountains. He couldn’t find a single shifter in the database who lived below the Virginia state line.
Jonny’s parents had relocated to Daytona Beach, and that was where all the properties that Jonny would have to manage were located. Peter checked the weather in the south and was depressed to find that there was only an occasional snowstorm as far south as the mountains of northern Georgia. When he checked average temperatures, he saw that it rarely dropped below freezing in Atlanta.
The story was even grimmer in Daytona, where the average low temperature in January was forty-seven degrees. Sure, that seemed cold if you were looking for a beach vacation, but when Peter was accustomed to single digits in Vermont, that was positively balmy.
He noticed that Dasher Dan was online and sent him an instant message asking if they could chat. “At work now,” Dan replied. “Want to fly down to my place this evening? My wife’s out of town so I’m on my own.”
Jonny was working late at the ski shop, picking up the hours he’d missed while he was in Florida, so Peter agreed. Dan sent him the coordinates of his home in the Berkshires, just south of the Vermont border, with the note that he lived next to a golf course with lots of room to land.
Peter drove back to the apartment. With Jonny at work, it was cold and empty, and Peter worried that was what his life would be if Jonny left him behind.
He paced around the apartment, bumping into furniture, cursing at wayward sports equipment, worrying about what Dan might say, what the consequences might be for his life with Jonny. Could they maintain a long-distance romance, at least for a while? Maybe Jonny could sell those rental properties, get his mother situated with one of his sisters, return to Vermont?
Even as he thought it, he realized the chances of that were slim. Jonny had already said that his sisters were too busy with their own families to be able to provide much care for their mother, and that the properties were necessary to provide income to support her.
Finally, Dan’s quitting time approached, and Peter hurried out to the woods where he could shift easily. A few minutes of flight through dark skies, and he was landing behind Dan’s house, a modern-looking two-story with picture windows that looked out at the darkened golf course.
“Come on in,” Dan said. “Things are a mess right now because we’re converting my wife’s office into a nursery.” He grinned broadly. “She’s six months along, went to see her mom in Colorado for a few days before she gets grounded until the kid pops out.”
“Congratulations,” Peter said. “You think your kid could be a shifter?”
“Doubt it,” Dan said. He handed Peter a beer. “I mean, never say never, right? But from everything I’ve heard, the gene skips a couple of generations. I’ve never met a father-son pair.”
“And there are no girl reindeer?”
“Well, in the wild, of course,” Dan said. “Otherwise the species would have died out, right? But somehow the shifter gene only ends up in males. I’ve never asked why.”
They sat down in Dan’s living room. A fancy new stroller tied with yellow ribbons sat in a corner, along with a pile of smaller gifts.
“So what’s up?” Dan asked.
Peter blew out a breath. Where to start? “I’ve been dating this guy, and the connection is really strong between us,” he said. He explained about Jonny’s father, the need for him to move to Florida. “So my question is, what does that mean for me?”
Dan cocked his head. “In what way?”
“Can I still shift in a warm climate?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Comes the summer, I’m glad to kick back and be a normal guy.”
“You know anyone who can? Or anyone I can ask? Beyond the big guy, I mean. I wouldn’t want to bother him.”
“He knows more than you’d expect,” Dan said. “But you’re right, we ought to be able to figure this out ourselves. Let me ask some of the guys I know from other outposts. And you could check with Fingolfin too. As an elf, he deals with a lot of shifters from different places.”
Peter took another sip of beer. “What if I can’t?” he asked. “Shift, I mean.”
“You mean drop out of the squad?”
Peter gulped. “If it comes down to that?”
“I don’t know, Peter. I’ve never heard of a shifter who quit in the middle of service. How would we replace you?”
“Wouldn’t another guy just show up?”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Dan said. “I’ve never questioned how we maintain our ranks—that’s above my pay grade, you know. I just show up, pull my load, help out with training, whatever the big guy wants.”
“It’s not like we signed a contract,” Peter said. “I mean, I didn’t sign over my soul or anything.”
“No, but you took on an obligation.”
Peter shook his head. “I didn’t choose this. It happened to me.”
“That’s not the way we look at what we do, and you know that. It’s almost sacred, a duty.”
“Could Santa make me stay on?”
“You mean put a spell on you? He doesn’t work that way. But I can’t say what would happen to you if you just walked out. Maybe you’d lose the ability to shift.” He grinned. “Maybe Santa would put you on his naughty list forever.”
Peter stayed at Dan’s for another hour, but they kept going back over the same points. Could Peter shift in a warm climate? If he couldn’t shift and couldn’t fulfill his duties with the squad, what would happen to him?
In the end, which was stronger—his commitment to Jonny? Or to Santa?
