I accepted the call and sank into my computer chair, saying nothing. My room seemed weirdly quiet. Helena had gone out for a drink with Krista in an effort to reassure her everything was okay. I felt too wrung out to lie. I thought I might just break down and grab my best friend into a hug and not let go. It’s kind of what I wanted to do.
“Jae-ya?”
Dad’s voice was gravelly, smoke-pitted, and familiar.
Unexpectedly, the endearment slammed into my heart like a thousand-pound hammer. Suddenly I was a kid again, and my dad was there, picking me up, telling me everything was okay. I could half smell him, smoke and leather jacket, and that particular scent I could only describe as Korea.
Right in that moment, no matter how much I wanted to maintain the solid wall of ice I’d built up between us, I was lost, and confused, and he was still my dad.
“Hey…” my voice broke on it. I fought the emotion rushing up my throat. I didn’t want to feel like that lost kid. I didn’t want to ask my dad for anything. I didn’t want to want him to comfort me so badly.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Your mom’s worried about you,” he said. There was no judgement in his tone. It almost made it worse. “She called me.”
Which meant she was probably worried I was going to kill myself or something. It also meant she told him. About my leg, about school. I imagine she’d gotten an email about my deferral.
I swallowed and turned my attention back to my bag. Clothes. I could take clothes. Maybe I should just leave everything else. If I took too many memories, I might slide into depression for real. It might be easier to leave it all, wholesale.
At my extended silence, dad let out a pained sigh. It struck me, then, that he might kind of get it. A car accident had ended his boxing career. He’d never thought much of my penchant for dance, but he at least would understand how hard it was to lose the thing you were good at.
“I want to come home,” I said.
Home. In English, the word meant Ruff Patch. It meant Krista and Sanadzi and shoveling snow. It meant early mornings fogging up the mirrors at the studio.
In Korean, it meant a split-level house in Yeonhui-dong, the smell of mom’s cooking, and laundry hanging in neat lines on the balcony.
I heard dad breathing on the other end of the line, and for a moment, I wondered if his promises had been genuine, coming from a place of guilt, and the expectation that I would refuse. It certainly reinforced the image of the man in my head—the worthless alcoholic I’d reduced him to, because it was so much easier not to miss him if I could pretend he’d never been a good father.
I pretended he’d never picked me up every day after preschool, or held my hand on the walk home. I told myself he hadn’t checked my homework, or come to every recital, or ever laughed. It was easier to hate the man he’d become. The one who’d drowned my dad in liquor and broken our family into two unequal pieces.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, Jae-ya. I’ll take care of it.”
I put my hand over my face, feeling my chest heave a little. I shut it down. I couldn’t say thank you. If I did, I would lose the last threads of control.
“Call your mom, okay?”
I swallowed thickly. “Kay.”
“Good. Think about what you want to eat when you get home, huh?” I cracked a laugh at that. “Bulgogi?” he said, sounding relieved and enthusiastic to have gotten something positive out of me. “Tteokbokki? We’ll eat whatever you want.”
“Okay,” I said, and a minute later, the call was over.
I stood from my computer chair, a fresh spike of energy flowing through me with my next step certain. Dad would get me a ticket, and then we’d figure out how to get Helena along. Maybe it would be better for her to take a different route. Busan had a big airport. I could stay with my dad for a few days, then pick her up.
We could head out to the countryside. Sure, we’d seem a little eccentric, but that didn’t matter. I’d figure something out. Maybe I’d set up a dance studio for the farm kids. Maybe we’d just turn canine and vanish into the forest. We could run, and keep running. Through China, maybe. I’d always wanted to see Mongolia.
All that would come later. Whatever happened, we would be okay. We’d be together.
I pulled open my dresser drawer and grabbed a handful of tee shirts. Unless my world had changed beyond total reasoning, Seoul was hot this time of year.
I was halfway through packing when Hel and Krista got home. I heard them coming up the stairs, both chuckling. One set of footsteps was clumsy, dragging against each step. The other was heavy, as if bearing extra weight. The splutter-snort of Krista’s laughter gave me some inkling as to which set of footsteps belonged to which girl.
A few minutes later, after some more laughter and shuffling and the loud clunks of what I could only assume were nut-crusher boots being cheerfully hurled across the room, my doorknob turned.
Helena stepped in, looking…diminished. Beautiful, of course—I always thought she was beautiful. But she’d lost weight from using all that magic, and with her shoulders slumped and her head turned slightly down, it suddenly looked like too much. Worse than the physical, however, was the way her presence seemed small, as if she were slinking in, trying not to disturb me.
As if she expected me to tell her to go.
She came up short at the sight of me. “I thought you were asleep,” she murmured. Quiet, like I still might be.
God, she was wound up tight as a guitar string. And, with my own thrum of guilt, I knew some of that tension was my fault. She’d been dealing with all this crap, and all I’d been able to do was snap at her over my leg.
I stepped forward, sliding my arms around her, and dragged her against me. “Hey, baby.”
She was tense in my arms, every muscle coiled, fingers stiff on my ribs. An ache tightened my chest. She’d come a long way, but she was still so afraid. I wanted to take the fear away. It killed me that I couldn’t.
After a few seconds, she relaxed. Her hands slid around my waist, and she turned her head, resting her cheek against my shoulder. Her hair smelled like cigarette smoke and the heavier scents of beer and grease that assembled in my mind as the scent of bar.
“Hey,” she whispered. I slid my fingers into her hair, cupping her head against my chest. A shiver went through her.
“We can do this,” I said. “We’ll be together. And I can watch your back now.”
Her chest expanded and she tightened her arms. “Kind of.”
“Kind of?” I leaned back, looking down at her in mock offense. “I’ll have you know I am the macho-est. The reigning champion of manliness.”
Helena snorted, which had been my goal. She eased back, tipping her head up to look at me. There was a bit of life in those hazel eyes again. I brushed a lock of hair from her forehead with the back of my fingers.
“If you’re going to be watching my back,” she said, “we should work on your patrolling.”
My hand stilled and I tilted my head back with a groan.
“Do we have to?” Patrolling was our code-word for this weird astral projection thing where I sit, access the wolf-spirit now attached to my own, and go wandering around like a magical lupine ghost while my body hangs out like a breathing sack of meat. According to Helena, I could affect magic in this form almost as if I were physically there and only other canines or Sorcerers would be able to see me.
I had yet to find out for myself if that was true. The moment I realized I was doing the thing correctly, my concentration shattered. And though I’d never tell her this, Helena’s not the best teacher in the world. She understands how to do it on an intuitive level and can’t really explain it. I like directions. I like steps. I don’t like being told it’s something you just do.
So, I was terrible at it. To Helena, though, having me learn to do this was ideal. It was the only way I could really help her without putting myself in danger.
“We don’t have to,” she said, her hands
settling on my hips. She tipped up and kissed my chin. “But it would make me feel better.”
Dammit.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and dragged her over toward the bed. I flopped onto my back. Helena settled onto her side next to me, head propped on a fist. I closed my eyes. “Wolfish thoughts.”
I turned my mind toward paw prints in snow, yellow eyes, and dense salt-and-pepper. I slowed my breathing, felt myself drawing closer to that primal brightness inside me, where the wolf lived. I circled it, sensing myself growing closer.
Then a thought popped into my mind—the weird werewolf-CGI creature I’d seen last year in a film. It had looked ridiculous, walking on its hind legs, its balance impossible, its crotch sexless. And it wasn’t even the worst I’d seen.
More images of terrible werewolf suits popped into my mind one after the other, down to the dancing one from Thriller.
I opened my eyes and glared up at my ceiling. Clearly, I wasn’t in the mood.
“I must need more foreplay,” I said.
Helena’s brows bunched in confusion, but she snorted. “There’s a little Scottie in the kennel I’m sure would be happy to hump your leg.”
“There’s a doggie style joke in here, but I can’t put it together.”
Helena poked my chest, right over my tattoo. “Focus,” she said. “Just imagine…you’re walking. Remember in March, when your leg was feeling well enough that we could run around in the park with Poo-stank?”
I closed my eyes and hummed my agreement. I did remember. It was always easier to transform when Helena did it first, like I needed the sight of it to remind my brain it was actually possible.
I imagined the path. I imagined the way it had been to walk with my eyes so low to the ground, my head so far forward. You’d think it would feel a little like crawling, but it didn’t—there was no need to crank your head back unnaturally to keep looking forward, and having four paws on the ground gives you a much different sense of balance.
And tails. Tails are weird. They’re so weird. I had more sympathy for excitable dogs now, because no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to keep that thing from wagging when I got excited. What little control I thought I had over it went out the window with my emotions, not unlike another, more human part of my anatomy.
Helena’s hand was pressing on my chest now, covering that tattoo. “Good. You’ve got it,” she said, and I knew without opening my eyes that my tattoo was glowing red.
“Now draw that feeling around you, sort of like a jacket. Remember what it’s like to have paws. Imagine your body is an anchor, and you can shrug it off. And step…”
I stepped. Really, I jumped, landing on the floor of my room on four paws. There was no sound to it, which was freaky. There was also no real feeling of impact, just a sense that my body should stop here. I had a feeling I could sink right through the floor if I wanted to, or run through that wall.
I glanced down, picked up a single paw, which was more like a translucent form, outlined in unstable red and white currents. I had done it. I bore down on the feeling, holding onto it like it was a balloon threatening to float away.
I turned around, looking back at Helena with a triumphant wag of my wolfish spirit’s tail. She had levered herself up onto one palm, and was grinning at me…over my own body.
And cue the vertigo.
A cherry red snap of light, and I was back in my body, flailing upright, heart pummeling my rib cage.
“What the-”
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Helena said. She was holding onto my shoulders, rubbing my arms. Still grinning. “You did it.”
I swallowed, mastering the shudder. “That was fucking weird.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But it means you don’t have to be physically present somewhere to watch my back.”
“And vice versa,” I said. She watched me a moment, her grip softening on my shoulders. The look in her eyes was strange, and I wanted to erase it. I took her face in my hands, amazed at how delicate her jaw felt in my fingers. It was square, and narrow. She just seemed so much bigger than her body.
Helena leaned past my hand and brought her mouth to mine, stopping just shy of kissing me. Her forehead pressed to my brow, nose bumping my cheek. Her lips brushed against mine as she whispered. “And vice versa.”
Chapter 11
Helena
I covered for Krista the following morning. Though our drinks hadn’t lasted unreasonably late, I’d come home to find Jaesung wide awake and restless. The two of us had spent several hours turning back and forth, unable to get comfortable enough to sleep. It wasn’t until morning that I managed to drop into a doze.
So when Sanadzi arrived at the rescue that morning, a blue and pink silk scarf restraining her firework of tight, tawny curls, it was to me staring blankly at the kennels with a leash in my hand.
Luckily, she was used to blank morning looks and laughed me back up the stairs to get us both cups of coffee.
I’d been afraid Sanadzi might hate me after what happened last year. My fight with the Guild had come to a head when Isaac nabbed me from her wedding reception. Luckily, Jaesung and Krista had kept my absence from her long enough to shoo the happy couple off on their honeymoon vacation to Morocco, and Sanadzi had been completely clueless about any disasters until her blissfully-wedded feet hit Minnesota snow.
Even luckier was the fact that she was excellent at rescuing, whether it was dogs or people—or those of us who were both. She hadn’t hated me, and she hadn’t kicked me out. After a period of shock, she hadn’t even treated me differently.
“You’re going to regret swapping with Kris this morning, baby,” she said, setting aside her half-empty cup. “It’s vaccination booster-day for Snarlypoo.”
I winced. We all had different nicknames for the evil Chow, most of them containing some form of the word “demon”, but Sanadzi was too softhearted to call him that.
“I guess that means I get to hold the rabies pole?” I said, squinting over at the animal in his kennel.
He had flattened himself to the floor, and at my glance, began a low rumbling growl deep in his chest. To be fair, I understood why he was pissed off.
We’d rescued him from the back yard of some jackass whose basement, according to Eric, had boasted an incredible amount of meth. Chained up and suffering, the dog had snapped at any officer that got near it. Rather than putting a bullet into it, Eric had called us.
It had taken a tranquilizer to get him bathed, shaved, and treated for the scabs his old collar had caused. Though his fur was growing back fox-colored and fluffy, his personality seemed to have been incontrovertibly twisted by fear and abuse. Four months later, we still had to take him into his own dog run, and the only way to keep him from savaging the nearest set of hands was to hold him at a distance.
I snagged the rabies pole from the wall as Sanadzi prepped the needles and got herself in position to Ride the Bull.
“Hey, buddy,” she said, low and soothing. “Buddy” peeled back his lips and scooted toward the back of the kennel. Sanadzi motioned me forward. “Easiest thing is to get that around his neck and get him to the front of the cage. If you can keep his head kind of pulled next to the bars, I can throw these shots into that fluffy butt.”
“He’s going to love this,” I said, meeting Buddy’s eyes. I crouched, drawing a coil of turquoise power into the tattoo on my shoulder. Sanadzi couldn’t see it, so it seemed like a worthy risk.
I slid the pole between the bars, letting the loop drag along the side. Buddy feinted a lunge toward it, then drew back, snarling.
“It’s okay,” Sanadzi cooed. “It’ll only take a minute.”
She tossed a biscuit into the cage, and the Chow’s attention flashed to it, then away. He was too worked up and suspicious to care.
I pushed my magic into my tattoo, letting the outer rings go hot with energy. Inside my head, there was a tug, and a sort of tripping sensation.
Then I stepped out of my body in th
e ghostly form of a hound.
This was different from transforming. It was the first part of the spell, which drew my mind into the spirit of the hound, and gave me the ability to separate from my human form. A step further, and the spell asked my form to twist—change to match that hound spirit anchored into my body.
Sanadzi couldn’t see it.
The Chow could.
He continued to growl, though his attention was diverted from the loop-end of the pole near his head. I paced forward, letting him lunge and nip at my incorporeal body. I was a bigger dog, an Irish Wolfhound with the same mass as my human form, and he had good reason to be wary.
Then I snapped back into myself, regaining control over my human limbs with practiced speed, and flipped the loop over his head.
“Nice!” Sanadzi said.
The Chow went nuts. He twisted and snarled, fighting to buck loose from the restraint. I wrestled with the end of the pole, drawing it hand over hand until Buddy was a bristling tornado of fluff against the bars.
Sanadzi darted forward. One long, brown arm shot through the bars and seized around Buddy’s hips, pulling his back end against the cage door. Then her right hand was up, and the needle sank into his immobilized back flank.
Two shots went in. The third one did not.
Buddy flung himself off his feet. He twisted in midair and slammed onto the kennel floor on his back. The movement jerked both me and Sanadzi against the bars.
I’m not sure how it happened. Maybe the movement created slack in the loop, or maybe we were both so confident with our small amount of triumph that we’d let our grips go lax.
Buddy slipped free. And then, before either of us could jerk backwards, his jaws closed around Sanadzi’s arm.
She screamed. I was on him, grabbing at his neck, his muzzle, trying to make him let go. Blood seeped from between his jaws and I thought for one wild moment that I was going to have to use a spell. I was going to have to knock him out or sear his paws, or do something—anything—to make him let go.
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