The Truth About Night

by Amanda Arista

  “I’ve known I was different my whole life,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm. “I’m mean, not this kind of different, but you will find that I rarely panic and I have never freaked out.”

  “Then what do you do if you don’t freak out?”

  “Drink,” I said frankly.

  “I think I can handle that,” Piper said standing. She took my teacup. “Will whiskey work?”

  “No, I didn’t mean …” I protested, but the woman continued across the kitchen.

  “Nonsense, you deserve a drink. You’ve been through a lot, and it might help calm that storm you’ve got brewing in your brain.”

  I watched, stupefied, as she grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the pantry and added a generous portion to my cup. She walked back across the kitchen, set the cup in front of me, and sat back down.

  “My mother always said hot toddies were good for what ailed you,” Piper said.

  “My mother just said ‘Shut up, you’ll get yourself into trouble’.” I took a gulp of the tea and let it burn down my throat. The heat helped. It gave me something to focus on through the questions spiraling through my brain. “How did you know about the storm?”

  Piper wrapped her hands around her warm mug and leaned forward. “Because of my resurrection, I’m pretty much made up of Wanderer energy, which means I can sense it more acutely than others.” She searched for the word somewhere in the air above my head. “Like a lightning storm.”

  I took another large gulp of the cooling tea. Apparently hearing the truth about yourself made you thirsty as well. “So if I’m magic, it means one of my parents was magical, right? Rafe said something about being a Legacy because his father was a Shifter.”

  Piper smiled widely at the mention of him. “You are a quick study, but then again, Rafe is our resident scholar. Even though it was against the rules, I am glad you two found each other.”

  I studied my drink and swirled a few leaves that had gone astray of their bag. Rafe and I did work well together. And I had a million questions about him.

  Piper continued with her story. “He was the Primo of a pretty large pack of wolves in Scotland before the …” Piper trailed off, again searching for something through the window.

  I wanted to ask a question so badly I had to wrap my ankles around the legs of the chairs to keep myself restrained.

  Piper turned back toward me. “Go ahead, ask away.”

  My eyes locked on hers and I felt the connection, the sizzle between us, like I had million times before. “Before the Great Shifter War?”

  Piper shivered for a moment, and I knew it was the magic taking hold. I’d just used a magical power on another person so powerful that everyone bowed to her. A magical power I’d been using on people my entire life. I wasn’t exactly sure how I felt about that right now.

  “Yes, before the War.”

  So Rafe was really powerful, too. He’d been able to feel my distress at the diner, like Piper was able to feel my lightning storm, but why didn’t Rafe pick up on my magic? Because I’d never forced him to answer anything. We shared information. That wasn’t like informants; that was more like partners.

  I mentally replayed every interaction with Rafe. He had never even alluded to being a Primo, or of being anywhere but at the bottom of the pack totem pole. Squarely where Levi seemed to want him to be.

  “I would have never guessed. I mean your husband, his power practically bowled me over. But Rafe’s is so …” I was actually at a loss of words.

  “Gentle? Yes, I noticed that too. He’s very restrained when it comes to his wolf.”

  “Maybe it’s a British thing.” I shrugged.

  Piper laughed and laughed. The comforting sound soothed me. It wasn’t until she stopped that I realized it was probably part of her power washing over me, making me feel safer.

  “So you can feel our power?” she asked tentatively.

  I nodded. “I can feel fur when Rafe is around, especially when he laughs, and you smell like my Grand-Mere’s baking. But Ethan never let his slip.”

  Piper scrunched her nose. “So you can feel our power, use magic on us, and yet, I can’t feel yours. You are a unique specimen, Miss Lanard.”

  “I have heard that more than once in my life.”

  She watched me, like Hayne used to watch me, to see what direction I was going to run, to see if I was able to run it. “Would you consider working with someone to hone your power, once we figure out what it is, of course.”

  “What do you mean hone?”

  “Magic is like someone handing you Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. The will and the power to play it comes from you, so you can’t get good unless you practice, and as the pack’s Shala, Emily, might be able to—”

  “I’m good,” I said quickly.

  Piper stopped talking and just waited. Seemed like she also knew a few tricks about getting people to talk, because it worked.

  “I know I need to deal with maybe being magical, but,” I searched for the right words, the true words. “I’m not ready yet, and frankly, we don’t have time. A day will let the trail go cold on these bodies.”

  Piper nodded and looked down at her mug of tea. “I understand.”

  “So maybe we can compare notes, and you can give me something more to run with. You guys know magic, but I know how to crack a story. We need to get on this now.”

  Piper picked up our teacups and placed them in the sink. “Ethan told me that you were special, something he’d never seen before.” Piper leaned back against the counter. “It’s why we need you. Rafe was just the only one with enough guts to do something about it. We need you to help us figure out what happened to Ethan, what’s really going on in our city.”

  “And once we figure out who is behind the deaths, you’ll swoop in and take them out?”

  “I wish I could. Be on the front lines.” Piper smiled, but there was a wink of sadness in the corner of her eye. “I’ve got too many depending on me to keep the Shifters together as one nation. If I put myself at risk, I put the rest of the Shifters in the world at risk too. It’s why I need you. Need Rafe and the rest of the pack.”

  So that led to the next question. The one that I was actually hesitant to ask, because I knew what I wanted the answer to be.

  “Can I still work with Rafe?”

  Small crinkles at her mouth gave away her mirth.

  I stood up and rested my bag on the table. “Please tell me if my instincts are wrong or if I am out of line, but Levi isn’t exactly happy about bringing an outsider to this even if I’m a …” I struggled to get my mouth around the word. “Wanderer. I need someone who can answer questions without growling every time I need to know something. And Rafe’s never lied to me.”

  “I want you two to keep up the good fight. For Ethan.”

  In that one instant, I knew I had to make good on my promise. I could trust her. More than that, I wanted to trust her. I wanted a place to come back to get the answers about me, but they had to take a second fiddle to the answers about Ethan’s death.

  I took a deep breath and went back to that night, the convenience store. I met Piper’s gaze.

  “That night. Ethan told me to tell you he was sorry.”

  Piper paled and tears sprang quickly to her eyes. “Sorry about what?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been going over it in my head for weeks.”

  Piper put her hand to her heart. Perhaps the piece of Ethan had resided there. “Ethan was good. Wanted to protect his family, you included. There is nothing to forgive him for.”

  She moved away from me, toward a back door. “I need to get the grill fired up for dinner. I’m waiting for a few others to get here. Give me forty minutes and everyone can convene downstairs for you to present the case.”

  “To everyone? The whole pack? It’s pretty gruesome.”

  “Everyone needs to know, Merci.”

  She slipped out the back.

  I had to find out what was going on, not just for Ethan
anymore, but for his family too. For this completely wonderful Wanderer in front of me. For the first person in a long while who seemed to accept me as I was. Well, second person.

  I wandered outside and ducked into my coat. Piper and Kye were whispering about something on the back patio and an enthusiastic game of flag football was happening across the open backyard with some of the younger people here, not that everyone here didn’t appear particularly young.

  Rafe broke through the line of the trees on the back of the property. His hair was wild and his cheeks a little pink. He spotted me, and before I knew it, we’d gravitated toward each other, ending up on the edge of the backyard.

  “Have a good chat with Piper?” he asked.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say. “It was interesting.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I was lost for a moment in his blue eyes. The words pooled in my throat with the urge to tell him everything, but I had to figure it all out for myself first, get my facts squared away. “I need to understand this more.” I turned to watch the group of people at play.

  He surveyed the scene with me. “Well, I’m not from these parts, but I think it’s called football.”

  I chuckled. “A joke? Nice.”

  I watched his pack mates on the field, their lithe bodies running and tackling and bouncing around like they were all Cirque du Soleil performers. I recognized a few of the older ones from the funeral, but everyone looked different in sportswear. “They are all so athletic.”

  “They are, we are, at our core, animals,” he said. “What else would you like to understand?”

  After that little talk in the kitchen, wrapping my head about the fact that this instinct I’d honed was potentially a magical power was going to need more than a game of twenty questions. “I need a total magic primer, like an Idiot’s Guide to being a wanderer.”

  Though I doubted he could produce one of those form a magical pocket, I went back to what I usually did, asking questions, piece everything together in small digestible bites.

  “How does it work? The magic that shifters have?” I shivered and jammed my hands in my pockets. One of these days I would remember a scarf, maybe even manage gloves.

  Rafe stepped around and stood upwind from me, blocking the breeze, but surrounding me in his woodsy smell, like he’d rolled around in pine needles. And perhaps he had. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing in the woods.

  “Each Wanderer has a specific magical ability given to us by the Mother. Shifters are able to use their magic to turn into an animal that fits their spirit.”

  I nodded; it was always nice when sources collaborated a story, when the gothic tales from my youth matched up with my current reality. “Piper said it was like a trumpet.”

  He smiled. “Piper’s father was a Jazz musician, so of course she looks at it like an instrument. We all have our own way of figuring it out in our heads.”

  Mine was a storm. I knew that. Piper had already figured that one out for me. A lightning storm and I knew what it felt like to be electrocuted if the storm didn’t get its way.

  “I know it sounds strange, but mine is a book. It’s how I visualize my power, open, then shut.”

  “Figures, Professor.”

  We watched the game for a few moments longer, and in the middle of a particularly long pass, one of the young men shifted into a wolf, twisting in the air to catch the ball in his mouth.

  I gasped. It was within a blink, and at such close range. From there, it seemed to be a chain reaction, and the field was covered in a furry mass of wolves and dogs and a mountain lion all clambering around in play, ignoring the football now tumbling toward me.

  Rafe stepped forward and stopped the ball with his foot. He popped it up with his toe and caught it. With a whistle, the pack stopped and turned their heads toward us in unison.

  An ice cube of fear slid slowly down my spine as I stood in the predatory gaze of all those animals.

  Rafe launched the ball back at them, and one of the wolves shifted back into his human form to catch it and run across the field for a touchdown.

  I stared at the field as they all shifted back into their human forms, clothes and all. Playing like it was nothing.

  “It is really always that easy?” I asked.

  “No, it takes practice. But most of us retain our conscious mind, or at least most of it, unless something goes wrong.”

  I pressed further. “But what happens when someone doesn’t learn? What happens if the magic takes over?”

  Rafe frowned as he worked through how to explain it. “Someone new to the shift might be lost to the shift, temporarily losing their conscious minds to their animal instincts until their power is burnt out, like a battery-powered toy. We call it Moon Crazed.”

  And what happens when a person can’t control the storm in their head? I already knew that answer. They get nosebleeds and black out. They lash out at themselves and others and do crazy things until the storm burns out and they are left lifeless on their couch for three days. It was the same magic, same consequences, same story I’d been living my whole life.

  “Things don’t go wrong very often. The pack structure sees to that.”

  I didn’t have a pack to save me, but Piper had offered theirs. “Piper mentioned something about Emily being the Shala? And you said Ethan was a Riko?”

  He shoved his hands into his jean pockets. “You don’t forget anything, do you?”

  “Mind like a steel trap this one.”

  He only half-smiled. “The leader, the Primo. The Rikos are the protectors. The Shalas are the teachers, to help younger wanderers find and control their animals.” He turned to me. “Why were you and Piper talking about the Shala?”

  My heart raced. I wasn’t going to tell him here why I needed a Shala, not yet. I turned away from him toward the field. Who knew that watching shifter flag football could be so distracting?

  “Piper just mentioned Emily could help me out with the investigation as well.” This lie tasted like burnt hair and wood chips.

  Wait. Could that be part of it too? I’d gotten the psychosomatic flavors of my lies for years, could it be my magic backhanding me for lying? God, there was so much I needed to know about this, about Ethan, and there just wasn’t enough time.

  I needed to switch topics. “You said that you watched over the pack when they shifted, so no one strays.”

  He nodded. “Especially the younger ones.” He pointed to a set of tall, lanky twins. “The Sleators are fairly new to the shift, the two black wolf hounds, one got bitten and then bit the other one and the Shift took in both of them; they’re up at the university with me. The wolves are all one family, the Thompsons, from eleven to eighteen, been shifting since their first full moon. Their mum runs this amazing sandwich shop in town.”

  “And the mountain lion?” I asked.

  He paused for the name on that one. “She’s new. I’m not sure I caught her name.”

  I watched them for a little longer, their exuberant play. “They are all so young?”

  “Aye.”

  “I never thought of werewolves as kids.”

  “Shifters, Merci. And where did you think we came from? Under a cabbage leaf?”

  I shook my head. I had never fully appreciated the width and breadth of what Ethan had been keeping from me, what he had been protecting. It wasn’t just him and Emily, it was an entire generation of innocents he was protecting when he was passing along our information to the pack.

  The anger at him passed through me and into the ground as the storm calmed. I was going to have be to that now, their information, their barrier against the darkness.

  After a hearty burger and handful of salty potatoes chips that I wolfed down like a teenager, the call went out for the adults to gather in the entertainment room.

  It was hard seeing Emily again, like a favorite toy that had been taken away but I wasn’t sure that I’d earned back yet. I just didn’t feel like I had the right to talk to her, and c
ould imagine the many reasons she wouldn’t want to talk to me. But I was acutely aware of her presence. I still mustered up my courage and walked toward the group of people gathered in the basement around a table. Correction: a Ping-Pong table. Someone had taken down the net to make for a better conference table.

  “I thought things would be more formal,” I muttered to Piper as she led me into the room.

  “Why?” She shrugged. “We’re people. People like Ping-Pong.”

  I clutched the folder full of pictures. This Ping-Pong table was never going to be the same again.

  Others lined up around the edge of the green table. All shapes and sizes. Some of the faces were familiar from the funeral and some weren’t. The tall blonde was there, the one who had led Emily away from the gravesite. And Levi, of course, scowling. Others didn’t look thrilled to be there and their eyes darted from me to Piper to Levi. A man the size of a doorway took up nearly the entire end of the table, his arms folded over his chest, his face blank. Piper and Kye stood together at the other end, as a united pair.

  I focused across the net line to Rafe standing there. He gave me a little nod.

  With the Shifters surrounding me, I was the odd man out. Would they be able to smell a whatever-I-was in their mix? Rafe hadn’t been able to, but I didn’t want to risk it. These people weren’t suspects or informants; they were here to help. I just would make sure I didn’t look anyone in the eye or ask questions.

  Right, like that was going to happen. I was so screwed.

  “I’m sure you all have heard about Merci from Ethan,” Piper started.

  There was a general grumble of assent around the table.

  “And, Merci, you know Levi, Emily, and Rafe, but you might not know our Prima, Cleo.”

  The tall blonde woman bobbed her curls at me.

  “And our other Riko, Xenom.”

  The huge man at the end of the table grunted like a grizzly bear, his face not moving a single muscle.

  “If you would,” Piper said.

  With a deep breath, I began. This was just like pitching a story to Hayne. The facts that I had already collected and then what we still needed to know. “While trying to investigate Ethan’s death, I found two more equally disturbing murders. Both have been ruled as exposure, and you’ll see why.”