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licensed to serve food and are a lawful establishment.”
    “The last place like this I went to turned out to be a gentleman’s club. I wasn’t happy.”
    “Fortunately for you, I’m no gentleman.”
    She blinked at him, probably thinking what he’d said wasn’t worth a response.
    Probably isn’t.
    “Come on. Trust me.” He pressed his hand to her back and got her moving.
    “Don’t hold your breath waiting on that.”
    “You trust me well enough to straddle my bike for eight hours.”
    “Only because I was more awake than you were. I might as well have been the one steering.”
    “No need to exaggerate.”
    “If you say so.”
    He pulled the door open, and immediately the balls-to-the-wall rap music that had been muffled by the closed door smacked them about the heads.
    Covering their ears and cringing, they both took a few large steps back, and when the door closed the sound in once more, Sean took a deep breath. “Forgot about that. They have a DJ a few nights per week. Wait here and I’ll ask the bartender to get the guy to turn it down.”
    “That wouldn’t have bothered me before …” She pointed to herself, ostensibly to what she was, that she hadn’t been a few months ago. “Before this.”
    “No, it probably wouldn’t have. You’ll find ways to adjust, though. We sometimes carry earplugs just to have on hand for situations like this.”
    “No one told me that. No one’s really … told me
anything
.”
    Sean was certain there was a learning curve, but because he’d been born a Cougar, he hadn’t felt it. She’d been thrown right into it with no primer.
    The glaring was supposed to help her adjust.
Why haven’t they?
    She toyed with the end of her braid and looked toward the road.
    Because she hasn’t let them.
    Typical Hannah.
    That wasn’t fair, though. He couldn’t make them shoulder all the responsibility. He had to do his part to get her acclimated, too. It could be a sort of olive branch between the two of them. He was tired of fighting with her. He wanted to be
nice
to her.
    “I have an idea,” he said. “You can keep this in your repertoire of shapeshifter tricks.” Pulling up a browser window on his phone, he did a quick search for the establishment’s number and dialed in. The guy on the other end of the line could barely hear him over the music, so Sean had to shout it three times. “We are outside. The music is too loud. Could you turn it down so we can come in? I’ll make it up to you in tips.”
    “Oh,” the guy said.
    And suddenly, the bombastic thumping from the other side ebbed to nearly nothing.
    Sean stuffed his phone into his pocket and made an
after you
gesture at Hannah.
    “I see,” she said, nodding. “Offer people money to make them behave in the civilized fashion they should have been anyway.”
    “It’s easier than arguing, right? And sometimes, folks’ll do it for you anyway just because you asked nicely the first couple of times.”
    She rolled her eyes and pulled open the door. “I’ll work on that
asking nicely
thing.”
    Sean could do with some improvement in that area of his life as well. He’d asked Hannah nicely to talk to him in those two weeks before the curse had taken him, and that had gotten him nowhere. Nicely may have worked well with most rational people, but he was coming to understand that Hannah wasn’t always completely rational.
    He needed to stop treating her like she was.

CHAPTER SIX
    Hannah’s eyes had barely adjusted to the low light in the pub before a screeching wildebeest flung herself at Sean.
    Either his reflexes weren’t as great as they should have been, he expected the assault, or didn’t
care
.
    The wildebeest—actually a shrieking waitress—had her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck. “Where’ve ya been, Seanie?”
    Sean shrugged. “Here and there.”
    Hannah vaguely registered that she was cracking her knuckles and raring up for a fight. Not her, rather, but the cat part