Changer's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

okay,” Anson says, slightly aggrieved. “I was just trying to spare you.”
    “If you don’t promise,” Eddie says, “I’ll never stop worrying.”
    “Eh?” For once, Anson looks confused.
    “Yeah, if you don’t promise to fill me in every step along the way, I’ll be worrying the whole time about what you’re not telling me.”
    A smile splits Anson’s face, white teeth against dark skin.
    “You have me,” he says, laughing, “and my promise. Now, come, we go into the city and ask some questions.”

    Chris has only just taken off his coat when he is summoned from his office by the sharp rapping of the front-door knocker.
    There are times, he muses as he hurries down the hallway toward the cathedral-ceilinged entry foyer, that he might have been smarter to move into the hacienda as Arthur had suggested when he’d taken this job.
    However, the ruler of the athanor is too demanding a boss. Chris knows that if he had been in residence, he would be expected to be on call twenty-four hours a day—much as his predecessor, Eddie Zagano had been. He isn’t ready to surrender his autonomy to that extent. Neither, apparently, is Eddie.
    Undoing the deceptively simple lock on the front door, Chris pulls it open as the knocking starts a second time.
    “I’m here!” he says, a touch testily. “Hold your...!”
    He stops in mid-phrase, for the person standing on the sandstone stoop is not the Wanderer, as he had expected, but a rather plain Anglo woman. Her dull black hair is cut short: blunt bangs over dark brows and darker eyes. Blue jeans, work boots, and quilted denim jacket do nothing for a figure that might politely be termed “average.” Her button nose is cute, though, and her smile both witty and sly.
    “Good morning, ma’am,” Chris says, hoping that politeness will cover for his initial rudeness. “May I help you?”
    “I’m here to get the Changer,” the woman says in a pleasant, melodic voice. “I said I’d be here early this morning. Is he ready?”
    Chris swallows his initial incredulity, remembering what Bill had said after yesterday’s phone call, remembering, too, some of the things he has learned about the athanor since taking this job. He steps back and motions the woman inside.
    “I just got here myself,” he says apologetically, “and haven’t had a chance to check who is where. Would you like to wait or come along to the kitchen for some breakfast?”
    “I’ll take breakfast,” the woman says, shrugging out of her jacket, revealing a green-and-black flannel shirt underneath. “Do you know if Arthur’s awake yet?”
    “He should be,” Chris says, taking her jacket and hanging it in a hall closet. “He may even be in the kitchen.”
    As he turns to lead the way, Chris is halted by a firm but gentle pat on his shoulder. Surprised, he looks back and finds the woman smiling up at him.
    “Good recovery, Chris,” she says. “Very good. Keep it up and you may convince even Arthur that there’s some use for humans.” She chuckles, and it’s a warm, musical sound. “That’s something many of us have been trying to tell him for a long, long time.”

    Later that morning, when the Wanderer is in conference with Arthur and the Changer, Chris tells Bill about his early-morning encounter.
    “It’s a good thing you told me about that phone call,” he says, “or I might have made a complete ass of myself. I wonder if he—I mean ‘she’—pulled the appearance switch just to jerk my chain?”
    “Who knows?” Bill says. “I’m only sorry that class made me miss the show.”
    “Show!” Chris snorts. “I’d like to know if you would have done any better. No one bothered to tell me that the Wanderer is a cross-dresser!”
    “I checked his/her file,” Bill says. “The Wanderer—or the Vagrant as he/she is commonly known—is listed as a limited ability shapeshifter—not a transvestite.”
    “Still,” Chris grumps, “someone could have told us.”
    “I suspect