Rachael and I hastily threw on the cloaks and faced the wall once our meal arrived on a silver cart, both tiers laden with food, drink, and utensils. Two maids accompanied the runner, helping him to set the table. Leihalani called the runner over and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, bowed, and exited the room, somehow making urgency look graceful. By the time everything was laid out, the runner was back. He dropped a small tin in Leihalani's open palm, then left with the maids, closing the door firmly behind them.

With a  sigh, I tossed off the cloak and ran a hand through my tangled black hair. I wasn't cut out for subterfuge.

"Here," Leihalani said, passing me the tin. "For your travel bruises."

I turned it over in my hand. It was no bigger than my palm, a little thing that fit perfectly in a lady's purse. Unscrewing the cap, I took an experimental sniff.

Huh. Almost odorless.

"Thanks," I said. "Do you mind if I put it on now?"

Leihalani sat down at the table and paused, hand outstretched over a teapot. "Go right ahead. The bathing room is to the right."

"Ooh, this looks so good!" Rachael exclaimed as I went to go find the bathroom.

It was where I had suspected—right off the bedchamber. I slid into the room and automatically slapped my hand on the wall, looking for a light switch. My fingers met a slim sconce instead. By the light streaming in through the bedchamber windows, I was able to see a small knob on the enclosed sconce. Turning it, a shutter fell open, shining light into the room.

I drew back, then peered forward curiously. A small orb of glowing white light bobbed in a little glass bulb. Well, isn't this something, I thought, impressed. Some sort of magic light bulb. Neat. Definitely something we didn't have back home.

The room was dominated by a massive, clawed-foot tub in one corner. All pristine porcelain and gold trim, it sat raised up on a slight dais. A curved gold spigot arched up and over the middle of the tub. Expensive-looking glass bottles lay arranged on a shelf nearby, along with a row of the fluffiest, whitest towels I'd ever seen. Above the tub was a painting of elven women dancing and cavorting at some sort of party, their attire all gauze and nothing else.

Closing the door, I sat on the toilet and gently pulled down my jeans. Owww ... Dare I look? Ah, shit. My inner thighs were red and slightly bruised—sure to turn to fully-bruised by tomorrow morning.

Uncapping the ointment tin, I dipped my fingers in the colorless paste and smeared it on one leg. A cool, blessed numbing sensation spread out along my skin, working its way deep into my muscles. I sighed with relief, spreading it around the affected area. Then I turned to the other leg.

"You're coming home with me," I told the tin, holding it up to my face.

Capping the tin, I wriggled back into my jeans and washed my hands in the marble and gold sink. It was such a mundane action that I forgot for a minute that I was in a non-industrialized magical land. How did water flow without technology?

Pulling the cabinet doors open, I peered beneath the sink. A series of pipes actually ran from the floor to the faucet, but inscribed on the copper tubes were a line of small runes. Huh. The elves had managed to figure out how to enchant indoor plumbing. That was something human witches and sorcerers had yet to do.

I left the bathroom and returned to the table, finding that neither my cousin nor Leihalani had decided to wait for me. I claimed my seat at the table and shot Rachael a look as she stuffed seasoned potatoes into her mouth.

"We were hungry," she said, the words garbled.

I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. Teenage shifters. "The ointment works great," I told Leihalani as I reached for a covered dish.

The elf looked up from her meal and smiled. "Good." She cut a large slice of chicken-like meat and dipped it in some dark purple sauce. "Roasted ponrill, seasoned small potatoes, belberry sauce, bread, butter, Anmall wine, wild salmon in a honey-glaze ..." she said, pointing to each dish with a laden fork.

Teenage shifters were voracious eaters, but adult ones were no slouches, either. Baring a few food quirks, I tended to eat whatever was put in front of me with glee. And this? This wasn't bad.

No, not bad at all.

Night fell on the village. I stood in the shadows of Leihalani's balcony and gazed out at the clear, moon-lit sky. It was hard to believe that this world and our own occupied the same Earth, yet were somehow separated by a magical veil. But the truth was told in the constellations, which came through so large and so bright that any doubt was chased away.

There, high above, was the Big Dipper, and over there, standing tall and proud, was Orion with his ubiquitous belt. I leaned on the railing, in awe of this hidden world.

"It is time to go," Leihalani said.

I turned and saw her leaning up against the door to the balcony. She had bathed and braided her chestnut hair up, foregoing the emeralds and citrines. "Okay." I took a deep breath and pushed away from the railing. It had been fun lounging about this lavish suite, but that wasn't why I was here. There was a child out there that I had pledged to find.

After Rachael and I gathered up our cloaks, we left the suite and descended the stairs to the foyer. Mistress Rondolan sat in a small alcove off of the foyer, playing some sort of card game with an elven man.

"Out for a stroll ... my lady?" she asked. Putting a hand on the back of her chair, she started to get up. "I would be happy to lead you around town."

Leihalani did not pause. "That is not necessary, Mistress. Have a good evening."

Rachael sniggered into her fist as the proprietor plunked back into her chair, shoulders rounded in defeat.

We left the inn and followed Leihalani around the stables. There, in the deep shadows cast by a storage bin, Rachael and I divested of our cloaks and clothes and handed them to the elven woman.

Was I nervous? It was hard not to be. Even as I shifted and my paws hit the ground, I realized that I was taking a huge risk. We hadn't asked how many elves had the same powers that Leihalani did, nor what they would do if they saw a pony-sized snow leopard and wolf prowling around their village.

Well, there was no going back now.

Leihalani held out the whiffle ball that Rachael liberated from the Grabowskis' backyard. I sniffed the ball, throwing all of my concentration into isolating the boy's scent from the half-dozen others that were also present. Be one with the leopard, I chanted.

I took a step back so that Rachael could do the same. With the scent locked into our minds, Rachael and I struck out.

As we had discussed during dinner, I would take the left side of the village while Rachael would search the right. In the center of town, close to the inn, was the market square. This was to be our dividing point.

I slunk across the grass, belly low to the ground, paws moving quickly as I bolted from the dark shadows and into the village. All of my senses were on full-alert; a crackling sound sent me dropping to the dirt behind the first house. I pressed up against the boards as someone leaned out of an open window above my head. Fabric snapped, sending dirt and bits of fluff showering down around my ears.

My heart raced and I tilted my head up, eyes slit against the onslaught of domesticity. Oh shit, please don't see me, I pleaded. Not right out of the gate!

Thankfully, that was all the woman of the house needed to do. I loosed a heavy sigh as she retreated back inside, pulling the window closed. Lightning-quick, I spun around and raced to the next house, searching for clues as to Jimmy's whereabouts.

It quickly became apparent that I was ill prepared for the sheer amount of sensory overload I was to encounter. The scent of elves dominated my nostrils; it was overpowering and so totally alien that even as I moved to another house, I could not dismiss it. This was not a scent one could get nose-blind to very quickly.

At one point, I started feeling a little loopy, so I slithered beneath the floor of one house and stuck my muzzle up to their compost pile. Anything to get a different scent in my nostrils.

Digging my claws into the gravel beneath the house, I lamented the fact that I could not seem to separate the trails. If I couldn't do that, how was I supposed to find one human boy among hundreds of elves? And what if the next town we went to had a larger population?

You're a poor excuse for a leopard, I muttered to myself, tail tip flicking against the bottom of the house. Not for the first time, I lamented on how little I knew about my other self. For all of my life, I had treated the leopard as some sort of fancy car, to be taken out and driven once in a while. But I didn't understand her; no, I was practically ignorant.

Somewhere, my ancestors were laughing.

Ugh. Brushing my muzzle with one paw, I crawled out from beneath the house and struck out again. If there was a magical formula to instantly understanding the beast within, I didn't know it. I tried pleading with myself and then demanding as I moved from house to house, senses assaulted to the point of insanity.

Luckily for me, I didn't lose my mind—but I certainly came close a few times. As the moon and stars whirled above me, I finally completed my circuit of the village.

**Rachael?** I called out. No answer. Normally, a lack of response didn't bother me; our abilities only worked within a certain range. But here, in elven territory, I rapidly grew worried. **Rachael?**

**Yeah?**

Phew. I crouched beneath a series of thick bushes behind a smithy. **Are you done?**

**Almost.**

**Did you find anything?**

**No.**

Her short replies told me that she was focused on something other than conversation. So I folded myself into a leopard loaf beneath the bushes and waited ... and waited.

**Done.**

My right ear flicked, catching an errant sound. Though the bushes, I saw a skinny boy of thirteen or so exit the smithy. Shit, I muttered, drawing my body compactly together. I was a big cat and these weren't massive bushes.

The boy yawned and, scratching himself beneath an armpit, wandered over to a corner of the yard. What the hell is he doing? I wondered, purple eyes slitted.

Well, I soon found out, for the boy dropped his pants and began to pee onto the trunk of a thin birch tree. Oh, God! I exclaimed, clamping my eyes shut and covering them with my paws for good measure. I did not just seen an elven penis.

And here I thought they all had indoor plumbing. Apparently not. Either that, or the kid was a sleepwalker.

**Aly?**

**Hold on a minute,** I sent back, watching as the boy pulled up his draw-string pants and teeter-tottered back inside. **Okay, I'll meet you back at the inn?**

**Yup.**

Slowly, carefully, I extracted myself from the bushes. As I soon found out, going in was easier than backing out. Tiny branches and pointy leaves snagged my plush coat, making getting free rather difficult.

Ramming speed, I thought to myself, throwing all of my considerable weight backwards. Out of the bushes I popped, dragging with me several branches. Ugh, I grunted, landing on my haunches. Though I could feel the leaves and twigs digging into my coat, I didn't have time for grooming. With a quick shake of my head, I rose and left the smithy yard, the acidic scent of urine a gross but welcome distraction from everyday elven odor.