"No. I've got an early evening DJ gig for a private party, then I've got to be back here. Somewhere in there, I need to get started on my homework."

“Damn. I was going to see if you wanted to grab dinner or something."

That "something" conveyed a certain promise that made Madison's face light up a bit.

“How about Tuesday?"

"Can't," Heda replied.

“I've got practice, and my stick fighting class starts after that. Stupid combat classes," she growled. Four Corners University, which was built by and secretly catered to shifters, had a number of courses on the curriculum that normal humans did not know existed, including a number of weapons classes, magic manipulation courses (for those with the gift), and paranormal history classes.

"I promised my mom I'd stick with some kind of training."

"It sounds cool. I was . . . discouraged . . . from taking stuff like that," Madison said, her voice becoming bitter and a bit fragile.

Heda did not like her voice like that. She liked Madison's voice when it was low and sultry and sexy-as-hell, which is the way it usually was when Madison was in this booth. It had been the voice Madison had been encouraged to use when they had made love the night before.

"I'm sorry. That sucks. Hey, I think we might be able to voice your complaint against Alvin this Friday."

Madison looked cautiously optimistic.

"Really? I didn't think the Council convened until the third week of school."

"Yeah, but Reichert is back for classes, so I called his office and “I'LL wait," Madison said, her optimism dissipating.

Heda was confused.

"But Reichert seems to like me, or at least he respects my mom. The Reptile King's word would carry a lot of weight.”

“Yeah, but . . . just never mind, okay?"

“Just tell me what's wrong."

Madison actually pulled away and started pulled out more CDs. She looked agitated.

“Reichert doesn't like me, okay? He's this great and powerful macho alpha, and I'm --" She stopped and tapped her temple, drawing attention to her non-functioning eyes.

“I'm a DM, remember?"

Heda hated that phrase. DM stood for "Darwin's Mistake," and it was about as nasty of a thing you could say about a shifter. Back in the day, shifters with the kind of disability that Madison suffered would have been left to die in the wild, similar to the behavior exhibited by their wild brethren. The human side of shifters had eventually caused them to ban such practices but even hundreds of years after the fact, not all shifters agreed with what they considered "charity."

To many, it should still be survival of the fittest. Never mind that shifters Like Madison could still live perfectly normal lives as part of the human community. Shifter purists thought that leaving them in the gene pool was dangerous. What was really stupid, particularly in Madison's case by Heda's way of thinking, was that she was Gifted.

A Gift was a special ability or abilities that manifested itself in only a small percentage of the shape-changing community, and these Gifts were generally looked on with great pride and awe. Heda was Gifted, and her Gift allowed her to become stronger, faster, and see farther than normal.

Madison also had a Gift, though only the four people in the radio station at that moment actually knew about it. Madison actually was able to use her souped-up bat ability of echolocation in her human form. She used sound waves to “see" the world around her, in many ways more accurately than someone would with normal sight. When it was on, it was impossible to sneak up on the young woman. But Madison still could not see things like "color" as far as most people understood the concept, and she could not see the auras given off by other shifters. She had hid her special ability from everyone by hiding her eyes behind her “blind girl" sunglasses. A shifter's eyes glowed the color of his or her aura when a gift was being used.

"Hey, he seemed like a pretty stand up guy to me," Heda said. The Kings and Queens of the animal families held a special reverence in the minds of the rest of the community, so having someone be so openly distrustful of one struck a nerve with Heda.