Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  “You don’t mean to say––” I said, “they don’t want him around anymore?”

  “Bingo,” said Ballard, and winked at me.

  Now I was completely confused. And I was starting to get angry. Gaven was Gaven. He didn’t deserve this kind of treatment. I focused on Ballard with my eyes to get him to elaborate. Maybe he could see the fierceassness behind my eyes. Maybe he thought I would put a jinx on him. Whatever it was, he started talking more explicitly, in a way I could understand.

  “Gaven can’t shift. He is no longer one of us. Before you get upset,” said Ballard, “it was my advice that the Council, the Werewolf Council, you remember, make him a lifetime member of the Pack, a consiglieri, you know, a respected advisor, someone on the board of trustees, that sort of thing––that’s why I haven’t been around, I’ve been busy–– Happy birthday, by the way,” he said to me.

  “Thanks.”

  “––but apparently it’s against the rules, and now he’s a dummy figurehead waiting for his successor. I didn’t make the rules,” said Ballard, who could see me getting visibly upset. “In fact, the Council, of which I’m not a member––too young, remember?––suggested that I was colluding with him, that Gaven was trying to exert his waning influence to choose his successor, but then that’s how Locke is, he makes everyone so paranoid, to the point where they turned away from Gaven. It’s almost like he’s outcast, or worse: like Gaven’s a non-person. A non-wolf. NWG. Non-wolf Gaven.

  “But it’s only during Wolf Councils. Of course, everyone’s going to be at the wedding. They think it’s a good thing. They want Gaven gone and maybe his honeymoon will help expedite the transition. Out of sight, out of mind. Or something.

  “Gaven is like that old wolf,” said Ballard, which was a kind of echo from the man himself. “With him here, no one else can establish dominance, become an Alpha.”

  But I had had enough.

  “You cannot become an Alpha,” I said angrily. “Either you’re born with it, or you’re not. And I know Locke. And he’s not. Despite what others may say!”

  Locke was not an alpha dog. Nor was he a beta. He was a tertiary character who was a whining cur and I wouldn’t let him treat Gaven this way. I wouldn’t.

  “But you forget there’s also Paolo, and some others,” said Ballard. “They all want their shot. In the absence of Alphas someone will rise to seize the Alpha Headship in their stead.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “Gaven should be Head. He’s oldest and he’s the wisest. And he’s the hottest. So there.”

  Ballard just sighed though.

  Apparently I wasn’t a werewolf so I didn’t understand.

  “Do you know what happens when someone new and younger comes in? Either the old make way or there’s civil war. Gaven knows this. He doesn’t want to be the cause of discord. Especially during these troubling times,” said Ballard.

  I snorted.

  Ballard did his so-be-it look.

  Ballard had a point, but I had the rest. Hadn’t I seen Ballard, in one of my dreams, as Head of the Pack? Not Paolo. Not Locke. Not even Lia. But Ballard. I decided to keep it to myself. But my Diary had to know. And I made a vow to myself that I would get it all down.

  This new sometimes-wise Ballard was really annoying. I missed the old hothead. But now he contained distinctions. I would keep my eye on that.

  Locke was a bozo––there could be no denying that; and if he was leading the Council, perhaps it wasn’t such a leap that he would become Head Wolf. I rubbed my Wiccan fingertips together, itching to pick a fight.

  As far as mating pairs went, all the werewolves hooked up with each other. Ballard said they had extraordinary sexual appetites. Maybe they just needed to go with their instincts on this one, whatever that meant. But it did explain one thing. Why there were no old werewolves in the Pack. They had all been ostracized.

  Chapter 3 – Luminarium

  Ballard had reinvented himself: he was more self-confident, less of a kid, more inclined to talk impromptu and passionately on various subjects, and his mind raced, like a million out-of-control Gambalungas.

  He was working on a crutch or a clutch or a brake lining or something, which was all technical mumbo-jumbo to me, while I wrote in my diary. He took the opportunity to look at it again, and comment that, Didn’t I know better? “What would happen,” he said, “if your Diary fell into the wrong hands?”

  I shrugged. “They would be entertained? Besides,” I said, “imagine if there were the Risky Diaries, if he had kept a journal? What might we know then?”

  He nodded, thinking about it.

  “You haven’t, you know, found out anything, have you?” he said. “I mean, when I was... I mean... did you?” He looked at me bug-eyed.

  “You mean when you were ignoring me, Ballard? No,” I said. “I don’t know anything new. Why?”

  He looked relieved.

  “Good,” he said. “That way we can figure things out together.”

  It was like that whole episode in October-November-December was forgotten about.

  I looked at him curiously. For whatever reason, he and I were linked. It was like we were lineaged to each other. Descendants of the same problem. What had Risky and the Rookmaakers been up to, that it got the Rookmaakers killed?

  And Risky. Whatever had happened, he had never spoken about it to anyone. Not even Gaven or Lia. If Risky wasn’t a Rosen, who was he? What had happened to him? What happened to the Rookmaakers, and what was Risky’s role in it? Risky had left Ballard a cryptic note, along the lines of find Halsey Rookmaaker. But now what?

  The absence of any answer was my biggest problem in life. Risky was dead and my parents too. But then, the secret must lay in House Rookmaaker. I abused my diary gnatting at the problem.

  Ballard was rocking out to his beat-up boom box, music I had never heard before. I must’ve looked all weird, sitting cross-legged with my hair in my lap. I needed a haircut. I couldn’t be left standing around not knowing what to do, if I was going to have my own House. I was a Mistress now. The Rookmaaker of Rookmaaker House. Me. It felt like something which had been unearned. And I wondered why my parents had left it to me? If I was ever going to be worthy of House Rookmaaker, I would have to start earning it now. Unbidden came the image of the two gravediggers, and the words: stormr hamrinum. I looked at my Mark, wondering if I should try it. Reckless, said a small voice in my ear.

  The words had been spoken, like a magic spell, or an incantation.

  I needed someone who could teach me the ropes––instruct me in the ways of Wicca––because only then could I exercise my power––and keep House Rookmaaker from becoming the kind of place I imagined the Ravenseals had become––decadent, hierarchical, and competitive in a way which was disadvantageous to everyone except those few at the very top.

  My parents would’ve wanted Rookmaaker to be a place of inclusion, I felt; and since I had no one else to discuss the matter with...

  I bent my head over the paper.

  “How’s the vampire situation in Rome going?” I asked, wondering if Ballard’s family was still hunting them.

  Ballard looked up. His forehead slick with sweat.

  “It’s like they’ve vanished,” he said. He went back to his work. So apparently the vampires were all gone.

  With Rome now definitively the werewolves’, I would be free to develop House Rookmaaker unencumbered by outside influences.

  And if the Lenoir, or House Ravenseal, or the Master House tried to interfere with me, woe betide the individuals who got on the wrong side of us.

  It will flourish like a roisin dubh in the hot Roman sun, my Wiccan House––wherever it was.

  * * *

  Things to do by Magic (a list). I wrote: fly, turn invisible; I made a list, ticking them all off, fully intending to learn each one.

  Next, I made a chart of all the known werewolves in Ballard’s family––and their proclivities....

  There was Locke... And Paolo, of
course; Liesel, Lia, Gaven, Ballard. There was also Raina, Lorentz, Blunt, Giorgio, Berenice, Michelle––Pendderwenn. It was funny. There was actually a werewolf named Pendderwenn. I had thought that was a Wiccan House, yet here it was, being used by a daughter (not son) of Romulus. Oh, I remembered, writing it down. There was also Leander, another one of the Werewolf Team Leaders. I listed who was alpha and who was beta. I thought a bit, for if I had missed one. Volt and Pouch, I wrote. I didn’t know the Pack dynamics well at all.

  Who were all of these lycanthropes?

  Plus there were lots more of them––the ones I had never directly ‘met’––the other shape shifters.

  I stood with my back to Ballard and looked at the motorcycle shop, my eyes wandering to the open garage door. Rome was like a wonderful shining metropolis which held the glitter of my future happiness. The past was receding. Ballard’s past. Mine. The seven hills were like a fortification, defending us. Somewhere a horn sounded, a statue was crumbling.... And all the while I thought of him, and how we had come so close to our dreams, only to feel them abandon us, like the fog which rushes in and rolls out, each morning. A blanket of filth overhung Rome. I would miss it, when I left. I would miss the romantic notion that I would miss Rome, but I would miss Rome, nonetheless.

  So there were four big ones: Paolo, Locke, Leander, and Liesel (who was a chick); and also the big three, Gaven, Lia (another chick; I don’t know why that interested me so much), and Ballard.

  Something else occurred to me. With House Pendderwenn now extinct (and by that, I meant, all of its members now dead), mine was the only Wiccan House in Rome. In a way I had already fortuitously met the neighbors. What is more, we got along. Which was really big news. I saw Rome as a small community of like-minded pre-, post-, and current shape changers. And me.

  (Post would be what happened when you got too old, and pre, like Volt and Pouch, and those types: adolescents not yet into their powers; which is what Ballard should have been; but he wasn’t, he was alpha dog; in point of fact, my alpha dog.)

  Ballard continued to work on the strange and sparkly motorcycle, while I thought about this, and who should be the new Il Gatto.

  He could not refrain, however, from asking the question I had hoped Ballard would avoid. Namely, what had happened between me and––what’s-his-face? Lennox?

  It’s over.

  We’ve moved on.

  I’m flying solo now.

  I’m going to become a lesbian.

  “Please don’t bring up the past, Ballard. I’m trying to block it out,” I said. “Do you mind?”

  But he just said: “I liked those two bloodsuckers. What were their names, Dallas and Chenille?”

  “Not helping,” I said. I put my fingertips to my head as though I had a migraine. And I did. If I could’ve given it a name––I would’ve named it Ballard. Ballard Rosen.

  He just chuckled.

  “If you strike those poses for too long,” he said, “eventually you become them. What’s that?”

  “I don’t need any more sophomoric Ballardisms, thank you very much,” I said, looking at what he was pointing at. So much for secrets. My Wiccan Mark was burning like fire.

  “It’s really real,” he said. “Look at that! Halsey, it’s like you’ve been tricked out or something. You’re marked.”

  Ballard whooped; I did not.

  He couldn’t stop staring at my Wiccan Mark. I still had my hoodie on. Part of me was, like: Show me yours, I’ll show you mine, Ballard. But he needed to know. He needed to know that there were things which were happening and we had a part to play. So I pushed back my sleeve.

  It was like I was revealing to him my sex. Ballard looked at it like he had never seen one before. He licked his lips. He was all excited.

  “This is my Wiccan Mark, Ballard Rosen. There are eight Wiccan virtues, but this one’s mine. Honestly, it’s like you haven’t even seen your sister Lia’s before,” I said. I was thinking something was up with her Mark and like Lia didn’t want it to be seen or something. Ballard’s tool clunked.

  “Show me some magic,” he said. He had a hungry look on his face. Was something up with Lia? What wasn’t he telling me? If she was hiding her Mark from Ballard, it must’ve developed a certain way, maybe even wrongly.

  I made my Light pop on; he ooh’d as I shot it around the room. And then it disappeared. Rosens hiding things. Imagine that.

  I needed no reciprocation from Ballard. I just wanted him to know that I was badass. Not that I didn’t want to see his werewolf. His titchy little were-Ballard. “We have to get out of these abstractions,” I said. “Only what is real. I think, you know, you have to choose between the life you imagined, if you follow me, and the life you actually end up having, Ballard.”

  He nodded, glumly.

  “You can’t reasonably keep doing something without it becoming who you are,” I said. “I think we have two lives, the one in which we imagine what we can be––movie star, film director, President of the United States; and the other one, the one that’s actually important; the one that’s actually who we truly are. I don’t want to say I want to be this or I’m going to do that––because I won’t. I do want to say that I need your help, and that, together, I think we can do something, which is really important. I also want to say that I don’t want to fight anymore––unless it’s with Vittoria.” I cat-clawed the air. “We need to be like this.” I did the finger thing. And then for good measure, I said “strongass and together,” as Lia had once said to me. “Chasing dreams is good until you catch them,” I said. “What I want is real, Ballard. You know? Because anything else, you throw your life away trying to catch it, and then one day it just turns its back on you, and you’re left hanging in the wind. Like a wet and floppy pair of skivs, you know what I mean? And I don’t want to be a wet and floppy pair of skivs. Do you?”

  “I know what you mean,” he said, “it’s like truth and lies. The truth only hurts. Whereas a lie, if you don’t like it, you can just disregard it, and pick up some other truth. Maybe reality is lies, did you ever think of that?”

  Marriage, a boyfriend, family––Wicca, magic, a sisterhood, a place, a feeling of purpose––

  Those were the things I craved. Maybe they were all lies. I shot my sleeve down, and said, “Sometime––not now, but sometime––I am going to want to have a talk with you, Ballard Rosen. It’s about what we are, and what we want––but for now, I want you to finish that motorcycle. Whose is it, by the way?”

  Liesel’s––he said it was Liesel’s. It was hot pink with lots of chromoly.

  “You don’t mean to say she’s angling to be alpha dog too?” I said.

  “Angling, shooting for the moon,” he said.

  “Never mind that. It’s not important,” I said.

  It was a mark of Ballard’s gentlemanliness that he was helping Liesel to improve her chances of winning this motorcycle competition––because, despite what he said, a big part of Ballard wanted to be in that race. I knew he did. He had ambitions of being Il Gatto himself. He couldn’t hide it from me. And then, I imagined, Liesel wouldn’t look on Ballard so unfavorably. I asked him how it had gone with her. He said: she said she was too old for him. A subtle way, he said, of the pack reinforcing its belief that he was too young to join them. (“A very Lockean point of view,” Ballard called it.) “But you did kiss her?” I asked, referring to Liesel.

  Ballard blushed; I decided not to pursue the subject. The last thing I needed was to be on the outs with any more of the crucial people in my life. But he said, “We may have gotten that far. Yeah.”

  “Oh, Ballard, congratulations!” I said.

  He kept his thank-you speech to a minimum.

  But how to resolve this Locke situation?

  The Pack couldn’t be under Locke––it couldn’t. All you had to do was use Locke’s argument against him. The next Il Gatto would be the most important in their history––our history, because I had been made an honorary member.


  Ballard took a swig from his moonflask.

  “Life is interfering. Do you feel it?” he said.

  “I want you to enter that race, Ballard. And I want you to try to win it,” I said. “Okay? We’ll talk later, Ballard, all right?”

  “Okay,” he said. And then: “I can’t imagine Locke parlaying with the House of Houses. They would eat him alive.”

  “Let me deal with Locke. I’ll––figure something out,” I said.

  Something had passed between us––maybe Ballard saw the Wiccan in me. Whatever it was, we were like this. And that’s all I could ever really ask. To be like this with somebody. I think that’s all any of us could. Because when you find somebody you can be intertwined with––

  First things first, I thought, huffing: I needed an excuse to get away from my obligation to Ravenseal House. Luckily Ballard supplied me with one. “I forgot,” he said. “Lia wanted me to tell you. The date’s been shifted.”

  “What date?” I said.

  Perhaps he could see that I was having trouble concentrating, because Ballard waited for me to make eye contact, before continuing. I brushed the hair out of my face. “Ballard?” I said.

  “Lia’s wedding. You didn’t forget, did you?” he said. He smiled at me. I laughed back, chagrined. “No. Of course not,” I said.

  “Good––because you’ve got a whole month and a half more to think about it,” he said. He looked at me, as if to say, What fun!

  It was a moment before I understood what he was saying.

  “It’s called Lupercalia,” he said, “a werewolf holiday, here in Rome, happening this coming February. The thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, if I remember correctly.”

  “You have a holiday... celebrating... werewolves?” I said. “Publicly?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice. “And Lia’s wedding will be on that date?” It made no sense. Weren’t they supposed to keep it quiet––that they could shift? Wouldn’t this make it harder for Ballard’s family to hide the fact that they were werewolves?