by Sammie Joyce
She doesn’t want to know the truth.
“Three dead and three seriously injured humans are going to cause a huge backlash in our community,” Nia barked. “Someone needs to answer for this.”
“Anticlaw can answer for it. They’re the ones who stormed that place. They’re the ones who brought it on themselves.”
Again I was speaking but everyone seemed to accept that I was doing that now.
“How the hell do we know that’s what happened?” Bula sighed. “We have no one to attest to that.”
“What about security footage from the restaurant?” Jack suggested. Nia scoffed.
“You don’t think we didn’t try for that first?” she growled. “It was shockingly erased, if you can imagine that.”
The sarcasm in her voice was thick.
Shifters own that place. They were protecting us. Protecting me.
I made a mental note to personally pay the owners a visit and thank them for their discretion.
“If that’s what happened, if Anticlaw rushed the restaurant, how did they know who to let leave? How could they have figured out who was a shifter and who wasn’t?” Fernando asked slowly. “This is all very strange.”
Suddenly I remembered something else.
Gavin Boyle. He was there. The shifters are working with Anticlaw.
The problem was, I couldn’t say anything without everyone looking to me for answers I didn’t want to give. I thought quickly.
“What if they had someone who could tell?” I asked slowly. Nia scoffed at me.
“We’ve lived hundreds of years without being detected by humans,” she shot back at me. “Now you’re implying that there’s some subcategory of human who can foresee this?”
“I know a human who can tell.” I really wished I could stop talking. Dubious looks met my announcement and I shrugged.
“He’s known about us for years and now he can detect us.”
“No way,” Nia insisted and I sighed.
“Believe what you want but it’s true. And if there’s one human who can out there, I imagine there are others.”
“How?”
“Who is this guy?”
“Is he part of Anticlaw?”
A low murmur of confusion filled the room and suddenly the tension was palpable. I held up my hand.
“He’s not a threat to us,” I started to say but the words only fueled the stress in the boardroom.
“No human is a threat until he is!” Nia snarled. “Do you think we’ve won any favor from the mortals with what happened yesterday?”
I bristled.
“Who is he?” Nia demanded. I held her gaze, my eyes narrowing.
“It doesn’t matter because he has nothing to do with what we’re discussing here,” I said firmly. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jackal’s surprised expression but I carefully avoided his eyes.
“She’s right,” Bula said quickly, stopping Nia before she became like a dog with a bone. “But now we have to do damage control.”
I smothered a low groan of annoyance. It was the same conversation all the time, one that was beginning to wear on everyone’s nerves.
“Let me guess,” Nia said, her voice dripping with cynicism. “We’ll minimize our contact with the humans to work-only affairs.”
“I don’t think that’s going to do it this time,” Bula replied, stunning everyone. Typically, Bula and Homer were mellow about the human issue, being bears and relatively solitary. But something had struck a nerve with them this time, something I wasn’t sure I understood.
Had there been a bear at the restaurant?
I thought about it and in my mind’s eye I saw one lone beast at the back of the building, holding her own. I wondered if there had been a talking witness after all.
“What are you proposing?” Jack asked, finally reaching out to stop Nia from her endless race around the room.
“Call on the Protectors,” Bula suggested. “Have them wrangle in the shifters. Things are going to get considerably worse for us over the coming days, especially when the shifters won’t talk. The humans will demand blood for this.”
“Then they should take their own blood! They’re the ones who started this!”
Indignation laced my words but no one was paying any attention to me.
“Full segregation,” Bula went on. “Shifters can’t share spaces with humans.”
“Bula!” I laughed. “You can’t be serious. We have jobs, children in school. We have—”
“You’ll have nothing if you’re dead, will you?” Bula fired back. I balked and our eyes locked for a moment.
Does she really believe that’s what’s going to happen?
I thought again about how gung-ho Anticlaw had been when they’d shown up that night. It had been my first encounter with them, even if I’d heard the stories. They were a lot more intimidating than I had expected, even as a shifter. They had been hellbent on finding us and what? Killing us? Seriously harming us?
If we hadn’t stopped them, I had no doubt that they would have done everything in their power to stop us.
“Bula’s right,” Nia agreed to no one’s surprise. “Screw the humans. We’ve lived without them before and we can do it again.”
“We lived without them before because we were structured to do that!” I protested. “Now our lives are comingled. Come on. I don’t need to spell this out for you!”
I shouldn’t have been as exasperated as I was but all I could think about was how I might see Wes again. I was a councilwoman. I couldn’t lay out the rules and then blatantly break them. If I was ever caught…
“This is what’s best for everyone’s safety,” Homer conceded and Jack nodded. The wolves bobbed their heads also and I looked desperately at Jackal but it was useless. Everyone had agreed, leaving me alone with my resentment.
“Can we call this meeting adjourned?” Fern demanded. “I’m getting squirrely in here.”
“It was your idea to meet here,” Lorna reminded him dryly but Fern didn’t respond. We ended the meeting, me first toward the door.
“Amity, wait.”
I didn’t need to turn to know it was Jackal on my trail. He had noticed how I had been acting undoubtedly and he wasn’t apt to let me off the hook so easily.
“What is it?” I asked, only half-turning as he joined my side. I kept my stride, heading toward the parking lot. I didn’t want to give him the impression I had time to chat, even though I technically had nowhere to be. I had been looking forward to texting Wes after the meeting but suddenly even that didn’t seem as important as simply putting as much distance between me and the Council as possible.
“Since when are you such a human advocate?” Jackal asked me, meeting my gait easily.
“Since I like bringing home a paycheck,” I replied curtly. “Don’t make this into something it’s not.”
“You know how these things play out,” my councilmate said placatingly. “We lay down some ground rules for a few days and then everything gets back to normal.”
I scoffed.
“All we’re doing is putting a half Band-Aid on a massive head gash. Keeping the shifters and humans apart has never solved a damned thing. Widening the gap between us isn’t helping in the least. I’m just sick of these half-assed solutions.”
Jackal reached out and grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop walking. I gaped at him in surprise. I couldn’t remember a time when he’d ever touched me for any reason.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” he asked softly, his eyes fixing on mine. Heat shot up through my ears and I swallowed the lump that had abruptly formed in my throat.
“Like what?” I croaked.
“Like anything, Amity. You can be honest with me.”
I returned his stare evenly, my heart beginning to race as I realized that he was giving me an opening to come clean, but was it safe?
I could tell him about Gavin Boyle.
No, I couldn’t, not yet. I would need to get
my head on straight about everything first before telling Jackal or anyone else about what had happened that night.
I forced a smile, realizing that Jackal was still trying to read my face like a lie detector.
“If I thought you needed to know anything, I would tell you,” I assured him, untangling my arm from his palm. Jackal snorted.
“That’s a nice way of telling me to screw off,” he said. I sighed and shook my head, not wanting to alienate possibly the only one on the Council who might understand me.
“I’m not telling you to screw off,” I promised him. “I’m telling you that I don’t think this is the time to talk about it.”
Jackal’s face softened slightly and he nodded.
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “I’ll accept that… for now.”
My shoulders sagged slightly and I nodded.
“The Council is not the enemy, Amity, even if the Protectors sometimes act like it,” Jackal went on. My brow furrowed and I shook my head.
“I never thought they—we—were the enemy,” I replied. “We’re here to enact security and order for everyone.”
Does that everyone include the humans now too?
Would I have asked myself a question like that a week earlier? Four days earlier?
What is Wes doing to my head?
Jackal nodded slowly.
“I’m glad you agree. That said, I’m always here if you need to discuss anything…”
I stared at him inquisitively.
“What makes you think that I have something to discuss?” I asked with more curiosity than defensiveness.
“You spoke more at this meeting than you did at all the others combined,” Jackal pointed out and I had to admit he was right.
“Tensions are running hot and the stakes are getting higher. If Anticlaw is willing to attack so openly now, we’re all at risk.”
“All?”
“Yes—everyone. Shifters, humans…”
Jackal tried not to react but I could tell I’d already said too much.
“Anyway, I have to get home. I guess I’ll have to call into work, won’t I?” I added quickly, turning away.
“Amity…”
Inhaling, I paused and glanced over my shoulder.
“Yes?”
“Just be careful, all right?”
I nodded, flashing Jackal a quick smile.
“I’m always careful,” I replied haughtily, skipping off before he could say another word, but the warning played in my head long after I’d climbed into my late model PT Cruiser and headed out of Albany through Interstate 5. I hadn’t been careful at the restaurant the previous night and I hadn’t been careful with Wes.
Maybe it was time to re-evaluate my entire outlook before someone I cared about got hurt.
Someone like Wes or me.
12
Wes
Amity had left that morning, much to my chagrin. I would have happily had her stay all day and lounge away Saturday with me as we had done the night before. In the end, she’d sighed and told me that she had a Council meeting, something that I didn’t understand at first.
“What kind of Council meeting?” I asked, blinking. She stared at me oddly.
“Shifter Council,” she replied slowly. “Do you know what that is?”
I had no idea but as she explained it, I felt a now-familiar rush of pride and pleasure shoot through my veins.
Is there anything she can’t do?
“That sounds intense,” I joked but she didn’t smile.
“It’s an emergency meeting,” she sighed, eyeing her phone warily. “Nothing good can come of that.”
I didn’t know what to say and despite my reluctance to see her go, I offered to drive her home. She smiled tensely.
“I can get where I’m going a lot faster… my way.”
I didn’t need to ask what that meant. She was going to shift and run wherever it was she was going.
“In the middle of the day?” I asked, both impressed and worried for her. After what Anticlaw had done, I was concerned for her safety. I was concerned for everyone’s safety. Something told me that we hadn’t seen the end of this story.
“I’m a panther, remember?” she laughed. Like I could have forgotten the sleek gleam of her fur from that night. “I blend in if I stay in the trees.”
There are certainly enough of those in Oregon, I thought, easing my worry slightly. Amity had been at this a lot longer than I had. I couldn’t exactly argue with her when she’d been doing just fine without me for decades. Yet the need to protect her was overwhelming.
“Are you sure I can’t drive you?” I insisted. “I mean, probably not to the Council meeting but—”
Amity held up her hand.
“Honestly, I’m good. It’s better that I’m not seen with a human.”
The words stung slightly but I didn’t let her know. Instead, I waved her off, accepting her promise that she would text me later.
“Maybe we can reconvene for dinner or something?” I called as she moved toward the road. Instead of answering me with words, she turned to smile beguilingly and fell forward into her panther form, spinning to bound away, leaving me breathless as she always did.
I’ll never get tired of seeing that, I realized, my heart thumping as I watched her disappear. Now all I could do was wait for her call.
But I had work to occupy my time and when that was done, I’d go for a jog. There was plenty to fill my day as I waited for Amity to touch base.
After downing two cups of coffee, I set up my laptop in the kitchen and logged into my office accounts. I checked on the stock market as I did every morning and answered the shocking number of emails I’d received in less than twenty-four hours. In many ways, being a financial advisor was like babysitting. Some considered their investments more precious than their children, a sad but true fact. It didn’t bother me, the constant placating and reassuring. I knew what I was doing but suddenly, I worried about my shifter clients. After the display I’d seen at the Galley, there was a very real possibility that my life would be endangered should something happen to their money.
Don’t be a jackass, I chided myself. My clients aren’t going to attack me over some lost coin. If they couldn’t afford to lose it, they wouldn’t have invested it in the first place.
Anyway, I wasn’t in the business of losing money.
I closed out my work email and logged onto Twitter, my pupils enlarging when I saw a picture of the Galley pop up first on my newsfeed. Instantly, I clicked on the article by the JC Post and sank back against the stool, a hand rising to my mouth as I read the print.
A harrowing ordeal took place in the prestigious Galley Restaurant last night, the piece began. Bloodshed and aggression overtook date night and left three young Oregon men dead with three others critically wounded. Witnesses to this attack claim a militia group stormed the building at approximately nine p.m. The accounts are varied at this time, some describing the men as “anti-shifter”, or part of the movement known as “Anticlaw”. This group has grown in popularity after several unexplained animal attacks occurred in the eastern Oregon area over the past months.
The JC Post will keep you updated as more details become available.
*Editor’s Note: The JC Post in no way endorses or accepts claims of said “shifter” beings.
I exhaled in a rush of breath, not realizing I’d been holding it in the first place.
Way to separate yourself, JC Post, I thought grimly, clicking back to read what else I could find on the subject, but eerily, there was nothing. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to silence the events of the night.
A shifter or a human? I wondered. Who had more to gain from it?
I shivered slightly, realizing that I had been there to watch the massacre, my new lover partaking in the chaos.
She was only protecting herself, I thought, furious at myself for second-guessing what had happened. I had been there, seen it with my own two eyes. Whatever had happened t
o those men, they had more than brought it upon themselves.
Yet I also saw that if I was questioning everything even after being there, what were the other humans thinking right now?
Things are going to get really bad for the shifters now. Worse than ever before.
The doorbell rang and I almost hit the ceiling, my body half-falling from the stool.
“Get it together!” I hissed at myself, the sound of my own voice forcing me out of my own head and back to reality. I jogged to the front door and threw it open, fully expecting Amity to be on my stoop.
I almost gasped aloud.
“Vero!” I choked as she brushed past me to let herself inside. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The blonde spun and eyed me, a slightly hurt expression crossing over her face.
“Well, good afternoon to you too,” she retorted, spinning back toward the kitchen. Her high boots clicked annoyingly along the marble floor and I hurried after her, closing the door in her wake.
“I’m dying of thirst,” Vero announced, heading toward the fridge. She paused when she saw my open search on the computer.
“What are you looking for?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Did something happen at the Galley?”
I didn’t want to lie to her but I also didn’t feel like getting into it and how I knew about it.
“Vero,” I grumbled, closing my laptop. “You can’t just pop by here without letting me know.”
She scoffed.
“You never answer your phone when I call anymore,” she replied as if that justified her unannounced visits. She pulled a bottle of water out of my fridge and kicked the stainless-steel door shut with her boot, just another one of the many things she did to make me cringe.
It’s good she’s here. I need to tell her that we’re not going to see one another anymore. No point in procrastinating.
Vero uncapped the bottle and took a long sip, her eyes raking over me like she could already tell I was going to say something she wasn’t going to like.
“Vero,” I started but she cut me off.
“You had a busy night, huh?”
I balked at the question and realized she was looking at the two empty bottles of chardonnay on the counter. I’d put the wine glasses in the dishwasher already but Veronica knew me well enough to know I didn’t polish them off by myself.
