by Cheree Alsop
“I didn’t know it could do that,” I said in surprise.
He grinned at me. “Magic for the not magic,” he replied. “You should carry one.”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it when I phased.”
I bit my tongue at the reminder that the word ‘if’ may have been more appropriate than ‘when’. I refused to believe that I would never be in wolf form again. My soul surged at the thought. The wolf was still my true form. I felt the most at home with four legs and fur. I had to get back to it.
“That’s true,” Virgo replied, ignoring my blunder. “Maybe we could make a pouch or something for you to wear when you’re a wolf. Or you could leave it with your clothes.” He gave me a straight look. “Phasing back to human form without clothes on must leave you in a few unsavory situations.”
That brought a laugh to my lips that chased away my discomfort. “Yeah, a few.”
His eyebrows lifted.
At the inquiry, I said, “There was this time I was on a mission to get intel on a couple of men in a town not far from here. I thought I would be fine traveling in wolf form instead of using public transportation.”
“And?” Virgo prompted.
I couldn’t help the smile that crossed my face. “When I got there, I realized it was a business, not a home, so I was forced to hide out in the alley until someone appeared who was close to my size so I could, well, borrow his clothes since there were no homes nearby to sneak some out of.”
“So you jumped him?” the warlock asked. His voice held a note of distaste as if maybe he didn’t want to know.
I snapped a vine from where it tangled around a tree and proceeded to tear off the leaves as we walked. “Not exactly. I was a young werewolf and a bit cocky about my abilities.” I glanced at him. “I figured I could phase and tackle him, but I still wasn’t smooth at the transition. I missed my target and ended up in a garbage dumpster.”
That brought a laugh from the warlock. “So what did you do?”
“Well, he locked the dumpster and so I was stuck there until he returned with backup.” I shuddered at the memory of listening to the footsteps surround the rectangular bin. If they had guns, even if the bullets weren’t silver, I knew I was in trouble.
“I heard the first guy preparing the others, telling them that I was a monster and to shoot on sight.”
Virgo’s eyes were wide when he looked at me. “What did you do?”
“I swallowed my pride and phased back to wolf form,” I replied. “When they opened the lid, instead of jumping out and attacking them, I sat up on my hind legs and begged like a dog. I shook hands, sat, rolled over, whatever they commanded. In the end, they teased the man about being afraid of a sweet dog and I took off with a belly full of bacon from the shop next door.”
Virgo shook his head with a chuckle. “That was smart.”
“I was stupid,” I admitted. “But that’s one thing about the Lair. You learn quickly or you die. I never made that mistake again and learned how to phase quicker than any other werewolf there.”
The rain fell harder. I kept on with the hope that Isley would continue in the direction she had taken. Brickwell wasn’t that far away. In wolf form, I could probably have caught up with her. But stuck as a human and without knowing her destination, I had no choice but to keep walking and hope she didn’t change direction.
Virgo’s steps slowed. “I think I’d better go back for my truck. I’ll meet you in town.”
“Good idea,” I replied. “I’ll keep on in case she stopped somewhere to wait out the rain. If all else fails, I’ll meet you at the Willards. We can get the rest of the werewolves on her trail.”
The thought of how terrified she had been at the memory of one huge wolf protecting her had kept me from getting the others involved in the first place. I prayed that it wouldn’t come down to that.
I reached the edge of Brickwell drenched from head to toe. I knew roughly where Isley’s house was, but instincts told me she wouldn’t go there. She wasn’t running from something. Her trail, at least in the beginning, had been too direct. She was running toward something. Whatever it was had been enough to keep her going in the rain. What did a girl who had been bitten, nearly died, and been revived again as a different entity entirely need?
Answers.
I knew where she was going.
I ran through Brickwell toward the far end of town. The memory of Isley’s screams echoed in my footsteps. The rain poured down in sheets, making visibility nearly impossible, but I knew exactly where I was going. I turned down the street and slowed at the sight of the blur of light at the end.
“Isley?” I shouted.
“Who is that?” she replied with panic in her voice.
I lifted my hands to show that I meant no harm and walked toward her. “It’s me. Zev. Are you alright?”
When I squinted, I could make out Isley’s form amid the shine of her elemental power. She looked bedraggled and soaked to the bone like a cat that had crawled out of a pool.
“No, I’m not alright,” she yelled. She turned in a circle in the driveway that had been stained by both of our blood. “There’s nothing here!”
My instincts screamed for me to back away, that her light would hurt me. Instead, I walked closer.
“What are you hoping to find?” I asked, keeping my tone casual.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head. Her long blonde hair hung in wet ropes down her nightgown. She shoved a soaked strand out of her face and turned to look at me fully. The frustration on her face was clear. I wondered if tears mixed with the rain that streamed down her cheeks.
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice soft enough that I might not have heard it above the storm if I wasn’t a werewolf. She looked around again, her expression changing to one of loss. “I hoped for…something. Anything.”
I dared to approach her. “Answers?” I asked gently. I stopped a foot away. At that distance, the light and heat that emanated from her sent electric tingles across my skin. I felt as though I was standing in a lightning storm.
“Yes,” she said.
She closed her eyes with the simple word. It took everything in my power not to put a hand on her arm in comfort. The memory of what her touch would do to me was still fresh enough to sting.
I didn’t think it was possible, but the rain began to fall even harder. It hit my head and shoulders with the force of tiny hammers. The ridiculousness of us standing there in a stranger’s driveway soaked and getting even wetter seemed to occur to Isley at the same moment it did me. She cracked a smile and I did the same. A laugh escaped from her lips. She covered her mouth as if worried I would think she was crazy, but when I laughed with her, relief filled her green eyes.
“You’re shivering,” I said.
She smiled at me. “You, too. I know somewhere we can go to get dry. Come on.”
Chapter Six
Isley led the way to a cul-de-sac a few blocks further. The rain was pouring so hard that when we reached the porch, I didn’t even realize how big the house was until I stood staring up at the huge door that looked as though it belonged to a castle.
“What are you expecting, giants or something?” I asked to hide my awe of the mansion that made even the witches’ manor look small.
Isley smiled as she entered a door code. “Something like that,” she replied.
She pushed the door open and led the way inside. I stopped on the plush mat just inside the doorway. I didn’t want to track water across the black and white marble floor of the entrance corridor. Isley didn’t give it a second thought and had reached the sweeping staircase before she realized I wasn’t following her.
“Zev, come on.”
Her voice echoed up to the sparkling chandelier and back.
“I don’t want to make a mess,” I hedged.
She gave an exasperated motion. “Don’t worry about it. The maids will be here in the morning. It’ll give them something to do.”
> I remembered her comment about being home alone often. She hadn’t even had anyone to call when the felgul bit her and she fought for her life. From what I had gleaned through our conversations, her father was in a branch of the military, her mother was in Italy with her aunt, Isley had lost one brother in a car accident, and her other brother was away at college. Alia had commented that she was used to taking care of herself.
My bare feet made squelching sounds on the marble when I crossed to Isley.
“Where’s your shoes?” she asked.
“I was sleeping when Mrs. Stein called,” I replied, hoping it was a good enough excuse.
Embarrassment touched Isley’s cheeks with red. “Sorry about that. I didn’t want to make a scene, and I figured slipping out would be my best bet.” Her brow furrowed. “I lost my phone somewhere and couldn’t call a driver.”
“So you figured hightailing it through the forest during a rainstorm was the best option,” I replied with a teasing tone I hoped would lighten the shadows in her eyes.
It worked. A half-smile lifted one corner of her lips. “Not my best decision.”
“You’ve had a rough past few days,” I told her. “You get to make terrible decisions. It comes with the territory.”
She laughed at that. “And running through the forest barefoot after me means you’ve also had a rough past few days?”
That made me laugh in return. “Yeah, you could say that.”
I didn’t tell her that the soles of my feet were as hard as leather from years of not wearing shoes. I figured the more I avoided swinging the topic to myself, the better.
Isley shook her head.
I couldn’t read her expression, but it was enough to make my stomach do a strange little backflip. “What?” I asked.
She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
She played with a drop of water that had fallen off her fingers onto the railing as she replied, “You make me feel better even though my entire life has turned upside down.” Her eyes met mine with a directness I wasn’t prepared for. “It’s a gift.”
It was my heart’s turn to do somersaults. I put a hand to it to calm it down and looked away. “I don’t know about that. I’m just a normal guy.” The lie stuck in my throat.
She gave a cute little laugh. “Okay, Zev the backpacker who came out of nowhere, saved Alia’s family from a burglar, and has apparently become a part of their family to the point that Alia’s even fallen head over heels for your brother. You’re just a normal guy.”
I didn’t know what to say. When she put it that way, being seen as normal definitely wasn’t an option. But that left only the abnormal. If she knew just how abnormal I was, we wouldn’t be standing on her stairs discussing whose decisions were more terrible.
“Come on, normal guy,” Isley said, breaking up the awkward silence. “Let’s scrounge you up some clothes. I don’t need you getting a cold on my account.”
She sniffed as if to emphasize the point. I realized she was shivering and nodded. “You, too. You need to get warm.”
“I’m not cold,” she replied as I followed her up the staircase. Her steps slowed. “I should be,” she said in a tone that was more to herself than to me. “But whatever those witches did made me not cold anymore.” She glanced at me. “That’s a sentence I never thought I would say. I’m not crazy, am I?”
I watched her closely when I replied, “You’re going to have to accept that this world has secrets you’re just learning about, but that doesn’t make you crazy. You need to stop asking that.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she shook her head, refusing to let them fall. “It’s just that first the creatures that chased me in the dark, then a wolf appeared who now haunts my nightmares, and some witches say I’m a being of light and that they’ve unlocked the way for me to control it?” She shook her head again. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I think—” I began, but she cut me off.
“The problem is that I feel the light,” she continued. She held up her hand. Light pulsed gently beneath her skin. I doubted it was strong enough for the average human to see, but my wolf eyesight made it out as it glowed in time with her heartbeat. The fact that I could hear her heart from where I stood made me shift my feet uncomfortably. I wasn’t used to being alone with a girl, let alone one as vulnerable as Isley with her soaking wet hair and her nightgown that clung noticeably in places I was trying not to look.
“Whatever they did to me,” she said, turning her hand over to look at her palm. “It made me different than I was before.” Her eyebrows drew together as if she was trying to puzzle it out. “It’s like I’m more than who I was before, and less at the same time, as if I lost something that was me, but I don’t know what it is.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “If I can’t put a finger on it, how am I supposed to get it back?”
“Do you want it back?” I asked.
Regret for ever bringing her to the witches whispered through my mind. I wasn’t sure if they had done the right thing. Their motives were definitely all about protecting their coven. Had they considered the impact on Isley’s life when they opened her to her elemental powers? Or, were they going by Madam Onie’s teachings in her outdated book that also mentioned feeding werewolves silver? That hadn’t turned out exactly great for me, either.
“I’m not sure,” Isley replied, oblivious to my racing train of thought. “Watch.”
Warmth ran through the air and then light filled her upturned palm. As I watched, the light grew into a ball roughly the size of an orange. She passed it from hand to hand. The light reflected in her green eyes.
“Want to try?” she asked.
I stumbled back several stairs to avoid touching the ball. At my reaction, the glow that had lit Isley’s face faded along with the ball of light. Embarrassment and something that I thought looked like disappointment crossed her features.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she said with her gaze on the carpeted step beneath her feet. “It’s weird and it makes me weird.” Tears snuck free to trail down her cheeks. She wiped them away with an angry gesture. “I should have known.”
I shook my head quickly. “No, Isley, it’s not that at all. It’s just…I…I mean….” I couldn’t come up with anything beyond, ‘I’m the big bad wolf that haunts your dreams and I can’t touch the light because I’m an evil creature of darkness.’ I figured that wouldn’t go over well. Instead, I choked out, “I’m just cold.”
She watched me with a skeptical expression for a moment.
I tried to shiver, even though as a werewolf, I never usually got cold and I wasn’t good at forcing it. The effort came across something like a seizure mixed with a pathetic attempt at chattering my teeth which I quickly gave up. Trying to pretend to be a cold human was way harder than I thought it would be.
“You need dry clothes before you fall down the stairs,” she said. A sympathetic smile touched her lips, chasing away her sorrow. “I’m to blame, so I should make it right. Come on.”
She turned away without another word and walked to the top of the stairs. Doors lined the wide hallway beyond. Further along the corridor, another set of stairs curved upward again.
“This is the family wing,” she said in a monotone voice as if she was used to giving tours. “Upstairs we have hobby rooms, guest bedrooms, several bathrooms, and the maids’ quarters if any of them are required to stay for the parties we never have anymore.” She motioned toward the stairs. “Down there is the kitchen, the dining rooms, the guest dining room, the sun room, the library, my dad’s office whenever he’s home.” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “Which he never is, and my mom’s other hobby room. In the basement is the basketball court, the racquetball court, and the bowling alley.”
I stared at her. “No pool?” I asked with a hint of teasing sarcasm.
A light of triumph showed in her eyes when she replied, “That would be in the pool house which is throu
gh the backyard next to the guest house where Jeffrey stays when he’s home from college.”
I shook my head in amazement. “I’ve never been in a home this big.”
“A house this big,” she corrected as we continued down the hall.
“What’s the difference?” I asked. “I thought they were the same thing.”
She ran her fingers through her hair to untangle it as she replied without looking at me, “A house is a big empty box full of unkept promises and vague gestures. A home holds a family. It’s filled to the brim with laughter, traditions, inside jokes, and love.”
My inability to come up with something to chase away the bitterness left in the air by her words reminded me again that I was horrible at conversations. What was one supposed to say after something like that?
Isley reached past me to push open the door I stood next to. Her arm brushed mine and I jumped at the unexpected burn.
“What was that?” she asked in surprise.
“What?” I replied, my mind racing to come up with an excuse even as I hid my arm behind my back.
“You jumped,” she said.
“I, uh, saw a spider,” I told her.
My lips twisted in an attempt to hide my wry smile at the thought of a werewolf being afraid of any bug.
But she nodded. “I hate spiders, too. Next to wolves, they’re the number one scariest thing in this world.”
She entered the room and left me watching after her, her words ringing through my head.
Maybe she guessed the truth. If she was taking shots in an attempt to get me to talk, she definitely knew how to get under my skin.
Or perhaps she was just a girl who had experienced several terrifying things in too short of a time to process them, and what she knew was that the wolf was at the bottom of it, and so it became the face of her terror.
Either way, being the scariest thing in the world wasn’t something I relished, though I might once have.
“These should fit you.”
I entered the room at the sound of her voice. Isley hadn’t bothered to turn on the light switch. Instead, she had crossed to the huge walk-in closet where her own light illuminated hangers, drawers, and racks filled with shirts, pants, and shoes of all types.
