Sean found Ruddy standing in the middle of the basketball court with a blank expression on his face. “You okay?”

  “Oh, hey,” Ruddy said. “Yeah. I was just practicing something Teri showed me.”

  “Ah, yes. Life with a mentalist. I used to be terrible at shielding my thoughts until the day I broadcast some interesting daydreams about Cymber to my girlfriend … well, let’s just say it was good incentive to learn to keep my thoughts to myself.”

  Ruddy didn’t laugh.

  “Anyway ... uh, Cymber asked me to give you some pointers on how to use your abilities.”

  “Oh, awesome! I can’t wait. I still haven’t seen you turn into a dog.”

  “I’m not sure you’re ready for that,” Sean said. “You can hurt yourself if you don’t know what to do.”

  “Yeah, but then I could heal myself.”

  “Maybe. But what if you, say, grow a bone through your brain? Can’t come back from that.”

  “Eww.” Ruddy scrunched his face up. “I never thought of that. Still, everything else has been pretty easy. How hard could it be?”

  “I had to study anatomy when I got here. Fred wouldn’t let me try a major change until I had everything down. I had to practice making paws and snouts. Tails were the hardest. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have one, so I’d forget it was there, make it too long, forget to run nerves to it, or something. I always messed up the tail. But it isn’t only about getting the details right. We can change more than our shape. There are stories of changelings who turned themselves into animals instead of people shaped like animals.”

  Ruddy shuddered. “Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

  “If I’m in dog form too long I want to chase rabbits for hours after I change back.”

  “Really?” Ruddy said.

  “Really,” Sean said. “And you’re a lot stronger than I am, so things could be worse for you. Fred always says the greater your power, the faster you can hurt yourself. It would take me half an hour to grow a bone through my brain. You could probably do it in a second.”

  Ruddy sucked his breath in through his teeth.

  “Ah, don’t sweat it too much,” Sean said. “As long as know what you’re doing, you’ll be fine. That’s why we take it slow.”

  “Makes sense,” Ruddy said. “I guess I have a lot to learn.”

  “I’m not going too fast, am I? All this is new to you. You must have a thousand questions.”

  “Yeah,” Ruddy said. “Like, sometimes I can see what other people are doing. Dennis was making a bowl out of wood and I could see his power flowing into it and shaping it. And when Corey heals people, I can see that, too. This morning he was fixing Freeman’s broken wrist and I could see a blue glow. I watched the bones knit together almost like an x-ray. But when Xeke uses his powers I can’t see anything.”

  Sean nodded. “That’s because Xeke’s power is different from ours. There are three types of powers—energy, matter, and mental. We don’t know why, but if you have an energy power, you can see other energy powers working. Same thing with matter powers. Mentalists can see it all. We changelings have a matter power, so we can see Corey and Dennis’ talents at work, even though ours are different.”

  “So I can learn how to make bowls and heal people?”

  “No. You can only do one thing. Healers are healers and changelings are changelings. Well, unless you’re Fred.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Fred has more than one power?”

  “Yes, but none of us know the details because she won’t talk about it. She’s different. People like you and me, we fall into one category and that’s what we can do.”

  “OK, so how do our powers work ... the matter powers?”

  “There’s two kinds—shapers and changelings,” Sean said. “Corey and Dennis are shapers. Their powers are external, meaning they affect things outside of themselves. We changelings have an internal matter power.”

  “But I thought Corey was a healer.”

  “He is. Think about it; he’s a person shaper.”

  “So Dennis is a healer, too?”

  “No, no … most shapers can only affect one type of material. Dennis is a wood shaper. We have a shaper for living plants, too—she’s sort of a plant healer. We have three metal shapers, a stone shaper—and Arjun is our water shaper. You should see him work, it’s really cool. He can make a stream flow backwards, or go wherever we need it, and even purify dirty water.”

  “I’m sort of a metal shaper,” Ruddy said.

  “Well, you are the only changeling I’ve ever heard of who can change his own skin into metal,” Sean said. “But you’re still not a shaper because you can only alter yourself.”

  Ruddy held his hand up and changed his skin to metal. The flash of power was blinding, and the transformation was instantaneous.

  “I still can’t get over how easily you do that,” Sean said. “How do you move your blood vessels beneath your skin so quickly?”

  Ruddy shrugged. “I don’t really move anything. I just think ‘metal hand’ and it happens. It’s like moving my arm.”

  “Maybe you are ready to start learning some animal shaping,” Sean said. “Let’s start simple, though. Just watch me.”

  Sean held out his hand and cleared his mind, picturing the end result. First the nails shrank to claws, and he worked his way down from there.

  “See how every bone in my hand is becoming a different bone in the paw? Dogs and people have all the same bones, but they’re shaped different. Same with the muscles. So all you have to do is change your human bones into dog bones and your human muscles into dog muscles.”

  “There is no way I’m going to be able to remember all of that. Besides, I don’t want to be a dog. I want to be a tiger!”

  “There’s no reason you can’t be a tiger, if you’re willing to learn enough about them. I like being a dog, though. Tigers get shot at and attract way too much attention.”

  “Then I’ll be a metal tiger,” Ruddy said.

  Sean grinned. “A bulletproof tiger! I can’t wait to see that. But first things first. Let’s see if you can make a paw. Then we can start learning arms, legs, teeth, stuff like that. You can be studying internal organs in the meantime, and maybe by next year you can do the whole body at once.”

  “Next year?” Ruddy said.

  Sean started the transformation again.

  “Can’t you go faster? This is boring.”

  Sean sighed. “I wish I could. I’m not as strong as you. You’re going to have to be patient with me.”

  “Sorry,” Ruddy said. “I didn’t mean …”

  “It’s okay. Just pay attention.”

  It took him five minutes and he was sweating when he was done. “Now you try.”

  Ruddy smiled. His hand changed into a perfect paw.

  “Holy crap!” Sean said. “Maybe this won’t take you a year. How did you remember all that?”

  “I didn't know I was supposed to be memorizing anything,” Ruddy said. “I don't really think that way. I just did it. That's how it works for me.”

  “OK. Well, that’s fine for arms and legs and skin, but when you change your whole body, you really need to be careful.”

  “I know,” Ruddy said. “You already told me that.”

  Sean forced a smile. “We’ve done a lot today. We should probably talk to Fred before we go any further.”

  “I guess,” Ruddy said. “I don’t see what the big deal is, though.”

  “Just promise you won't try anything complicated without me,” Sean said. “The rule around here is to take things slow and we’ve already done way more than we should have. Cymber will strangle me if you hurt yourself.”

  Ruddy brightened at the mention of Cymber. “OK, no problem. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

  “See you.” Sean watched Ruddy walk away.

  This is going to be tough, Sean thought. Ruddy didn’t seem interested in learning from someone so much younger and weaker than him. That wouldn’t normally be a big deal, but at Ruddy’s level of power, a little rebellion might lead to a lot of disaster. He made a mental note to talk to Fred about it as soon as he could. After all, hadn’t Fred tamed Ezekiel Daniels? Surely she could handle one know-it-all changeling.

  On his way home, Sean’s heightened sense of smell—honed from all the time he spent in dog form—caught a familiar scent in the air. He smiled. Sure enough, there was Teri, walking towards her cabin.

  Teri smiled at him, then sat down on the steps and waited. “I’d love to watch the sunset with you,” she said when he got there. “Sorry … you were sort of thinking it right at me.”

  Sean grinned. “It’s okay. I’ve only got good thoughts for you.”

  He’d never met anyone like Teri. She wasn’t cover-of-a-magazine beautiful like Cymber or Tamara, but she was pretty in her own way. The cane only added to the allure. She seemed at once ancient and powerful and young and innocent. She was by far the most interesting girl in town.