Clare did not find the move especially pleasant. It felt like being stretched like silly putty and there was a smell that lingered, like something sweet that was burning - like that time she was making caramel for Ian's birthday, and Mama came out raging because her favorite hair spray was discontinued. She chucked a chair so that Clare had to duck outside, and by the time they got back in the trailer it the stove was ruined and it smelled sickly sweet for a week. They laughed and went out for ice creams and made Ian wear a birthday hat that hit the roof of the truck and made him grumble, but even that was not a good memory anymore.
She wondered if the smell would be less to a human nose, and so for the first time in days Clare prowled back toward the clinic trailer, behind which she'd stashed clothes, and transformed.
She'd only just got her pants pulled up around her waist when the voice behind her scared the living hell out of her, and she whirled with her shirt clutched to her chest. "Holy jumping Jesus, can't a girl skulk behind a building naked without an interruption?" she gasped, in her low Tennessee purr.