Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

“How do you—” I was asking when a five-note chime crackled overhead from an intercom I hadn’t noticed in the ceiling. Captain Ames introduced himself and welcomed us aboard at incredible volume, and then a scratchy recording instructing passengers to report to their designated safety zones began.

“I just know,” Asher said, answering my unfinished question when our instructions were over. “But after this, we can take a tour. I promise.”

I just know was Asher’s polite way of telling me he knew, knew. From before, when he’d been a full-fledged shapeshifter.

Despite us dating for seven months, there were all sorts of things I didn’t know know about Asher. Things I might never even have the time to find out. As a shapeshifter, he wasn’t just the summation of his own memories and experiences, he was the combination of the knowledge and form of everyone he’d ever touched. Anyone he’d ever had skin-to-skin contact with before this past summer was inside him, and he could make himself look like them, and have access to everything they knew. Up to and including me.

Back in July he’d almost gone insane because of it, like all shapeshifters approaching their mid-thirties. He’d been saved from his fate by Santa Muerte, whom we’d been helping at the time; she’d stopped his descent into madness. Afterward, Asher could access old forms and memories, but not take on any new ones. Which was nice because it meant he didn’t always know what I was thinking anymore when he touched me. But it was still strange when he just knew things for no good reason.

And it was one of the reasons why I’d sort of assumed we couldn’t have kids, much to my mother’s dismay. I knew enough science to know about interspecies dating. Maybe Asher and I would have a liger together. I snorted.

“What?” Asher asked from inside the closet, where he was hanging up his suit jackets.

“Nothing! Hey, can you hang up my dresses for me?”

“Sure.”

I watched him from my position sprawled across the arctic-white bedspread. When he was done he came over to stand beside me on the bed, the red formal gown that I’d bought specifically for this trip hanging down in the open closet behind him.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “What’s wrong? Are you sick or something?”

His question was maybe a little too close to the truth. I stood up quickly. “Just jet-lagged. Sorry.” I smiled at him like I was carefree. “I’m ready now. Let’s go.”

And my heart melted when he smiled back at me.

He led us down the hallways without stopping to look at any signs, and I wondered if he or one of his other personalities had been on this same ship before. I held his hand but trailed behind him, as the hallways weren’t very wide.

I concentrated on the warmth of his hand as he held mine. He had a normal body temperature, which I liked. I’d dated zombies before, and they were cool, while werewolves could be too hot. If I were Goldilocks, Asher-the-shapeshifter was just right. Apparently my uterus agreed.

We reached the entrance to a grand banquet room together. There were multiple hand sanitizer stations right outside its doors.

“Look, it’s like we never left home!” I let go of his hand to cup mine beneath the automatic foam. Asher snorted but followed my lead. It was easy for him to blow things off; he never seemed to get sick. But he grinned at me, and I found myself grinning back.

The cruise employees inside the banquet room’s entrance checked our names off their list, and Asher led us to the table that corresponded to our room number.

The room itself was huge. Strange to think that such a big space was confined inside a ship, itself another big space. And that together, we, with those spaces, were hurtling over the ocean. I hadn’t really gotten a sense of our movement yet, and I looked around for cues. The chandeliers overhead were brightly colored ornate glass affairs, like the tops of tropical trees, complete with glass flowers and glass birds, all fixed so as not to swing, and the chair Asher pulled out for me to sit down on felt stable against the low carpet underneath. So far the only indication I was even on a ship was the waves I could see out the window, three tables down.

A crowd of people pushed in and slowly filled every chair. Kids too young to be back in school just yet, a few lucky though sullen teenagers whose families were letting them escape school for enforced family bonding, a lot of older adults who could afford to take two weeks off work, and lastly us. I felt very sympathetic toward the teenagers just then.

An older man with short gray hair and wearing a suit jacket pushed a woman up in a wheelchair to join us. She had a blanket covered in pink-and-purple paisley tucked around her legs. He was barrel-chested, one of those old men who’d managed to hold on to his bulk as he aged, betrayed only by the pull-tabs of his hearing aids just barely poking out of his ears. But she had aged even better than him, with bright eyes darting behind her librarian-style half-lenses and short hair smartly styled. Everyone ages, and as a nurse I was forced to be more aware of my mortality than most, but I also knew that some few are lucky enough to age well, and it was clear she fell into this happy category.

He positioned her at the table, put on the wheelchair’s brakes, and then sat down beside her. I inhaled to ask her why she was in a wheelchair, then stopped myself and gave her a big camouflaging smile. At my job, being nosy was practically mandatory. But in real life, asking random people rude questions about their health doesn’t make you many friends—and makes you seem a little creepy.

Despite my attempts not to stare awkwardly at her wheelchair, she smiled. “Car accident.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I backpedaled—this was a vacation, after all. “Is this your first cruise?”

“No. Yours?”

“Yes. I’m kind of nervous about it.” That’d be a good excuse for my rude behavior, and it wasn’t that far from the truth. “I don’t really like the sea.”

The cant of her left eyebrow rising over her glasses’ frame said she thought this was an odd vacation choice for me, but age had also given her more tact than I possessed. “We’ve been going on one a year for the past forty-five years. On our anniversary.”

“How nice,” I said and gave Asher a side-eye look, hoping he could rescue me from myself, only to find he was looking at something over his shoulder and not currently paying attention. He’d seemed so pleased with himself when he’d planned this trip for us. I couldn’t help but wonder just what traditions we’d create together or where we’d be in the next forty-five years.

Asher stood suddenly and gave me a tight hold-that-thought smile. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and he walked quickly across the room without another word.

“Are you all newlyweds?” the wheelchair woman’s husband asked. I flushed bright red.

“Um, no…” Even though I might be pregnant by him. Way to stay classy, Edie. But people made mistakes, and besides, if everything worked out, it wasn’t a mistake now, was it? Just a happy accident. That was okay, right? This wasn’t 1887 anymore. Or even 2007.

“Hal—” she chastised.

“If we’re at the same table here our cabins are probably next door. I just want to know if I should take my hearing aids out at night is all,” Hal went on, giving me a knowing look.

I caught his gist, with horror, and felt myself turning a Technicolor shade of red.

“Hal, shush!” she said with a laugh at my rising discomfort. She leaned over to pat my hand. “You’ll have to ignore him. Lord knows I do.”

And to think I’d thought I had the lock on awkward questions. “Ha ha,” I forced out.