BloodMoon

by Drew VanDyke

  Elle gasped and I realized that Ghost Mom was no longer invisible to everyone else. My sister crooned with Siegfried’s mouth and Annabelle Scott spoke sweet nothings into the familiar’s ear.

  “Why don’t we leave the girls to their reunion,” Nurse Sam said and ushered the rest of us out of the room, but I wasn’t too upset, werewolf hearing and all. Besides, with Amber’s body in a coma it seemed that the twin bond was wide open and I could see through Siegfried’s eyes myself. I had to lie down against the nausea I felt at the superimposition, so I retired to the floor of the guest bedroom and turned all the lights out.

  My mother’s frame wavered before me on the cinema in my mind and she rose, Siegfried-Amber attached to her hip, and approached Elle who still sat on the edge of the bed. “Elle Gordon. I am so desperately pleased to finally meet you,” Annabelle said and held out her hand.

  Elle looked at it and then extended her left hand toward my Mother’s right. Annabelle caught it and brought it to her lips and I shivered as the scent of Jean Nate wrapped around us. Ghost Mom was bringing them all together.

  “If you’ll pardon me, Mrs. Scott,” Elle said, “but how can you be here?”

  “I only get a few dispensations in my role as guardian of lost souls, but I wanted to meet the woman who made my daughter happy.”

  “You know, I think your daughter would appreciate this moment more if she weren’t stuck in a dog’s body.”

  I keep telling them I’m not a dog.

  I laughed at the absurdity of it all.

  Ghost Mom said, “You’re absolutely right.” And the next thing I knew, Amber was popped back into her own body, the twin bond was shut down, and I got my equilibrium back.

  Ghost Mom has powers, I thought, but I felt a bit hurt until Siegfried relayed that my mother only had a limited time to take advantage of the energies of a full manifestation. Besides, she wasn’t going anywhere.

  I decided to leave them alone and go for a run up the canyon. I reminded myself of one of the things that all the twin books I’ve read said was important: parents needed to establish individual relationships with each of the twins. I’ve had Ghost Mom for years. Amber, on the other hand, was making up for lost time. I could be the grownup here and let them have each other all to themselves for a while.

  At dawn the next morning, I found Amber sitting out on the back porch with her coffee. She looked like she’d been up all night, but she was radiant.

  “So, how was it?” I asked.

  “I’ve always envied you, you know. You seemed to get most of her attention.”

  “Yes, but you were Daddy’s little girl.”

  “The price of that was too high,” she said, referring to Dad’s long, painful and not-really-over period of adjustment when she finally came out of the closet. Amber always told me, “You know, I never really felt like a lesbian. I just fell in love with a woman.”

  “And now?” I asked.

  “I still envy you. Not quite as much.”

  We both chuckled.

  “So, tell me. What did she say?”

  Amber looked at me and said, “That’s for me to know, and you to never, ever find out.”

  “Hey, no fair!”

  “We’re not kids anymore, Ashlee. We don’t have to share everything.”

  And though I knew she was right, it felt like something inside of me died a little.

  If this is what growing up feels like, I don’t wanna.

  “What died in here?” I voiced to nobody as I opened up the shed in which Elle kept her toys and the smell of rotting meat wafted out. I’d gone to get a couple of seahorses, er, sawhorses, so I could do some silk painting

  “Don’t let the flies in!” My sister called out the window and reinforced her words over the twin bond we shared. That’s the titan arum, the corpse flower, and it’s for the spell we’re doing to protect you all over the Blood Moon.

  I closed and locked the shed, but not before a waiting swarm of big ugly black insects made it into the aluminum building. Hope that’s not going to cause a huge problem, I thought. I’d decided I needed to save a little face with the delegation and give them all hand-made silk scarves that I dyed and set myself. Well, all the females at least. I could do four at a time, which means I could have them done in two days. Dying silk is a messy business, but besides my writing it was the one thing I could always rely on. In silk painting, even my mistakes came out beautiful.

  Will had cobbled together an old water heater down in the basement and I could steam-set the silks after they were dry and wrapped in newsprint.

  I wonder if I should think about dyeing more, as a moneymaking cottage industry? Get it, cottage? Never mind. I set up in an undeveloped flat of land between the shed and a copse of trees that bordered the back of the property and began the arduous process of using push pins to stretch the silk over the bars.

  Soon I was laying down my patterns with a blue fabric pen that would wash out later. So, I was up to the elbows of my smock in multicolored spillage when Colby showed up in the backyard. I only got the heads-up a moment before when Amber opened up the twin bond in my head and spat, this isn’t Grand Central station, Ashlee. You need to tell me when someone is coming over, or at least tell them to come in by the gate and not make me answer the door.

  Hey, I didn’t know myself!

  But she’d already shut the bond down.

  “What’s that godawful smell?” Colby asked as she passed by the shed.

  “Corpse flower. Witchy stuff. Blood Moon Spell. That’s all I know.”

  “Huh,” she said and looked at the scarves that were drying in their stretcher bars against the back fence. “Those are cool. What are they?”

  “Silk scarves for the delegates. The bitches, anyway.”

  “Cool! I want that one,” she said and pointed to a teal number I was particularly fond of. On all of the scarves I’d used a gouda, which in this case is not a cheese, but a rubberized liquid that hardens into a flexible but impenetrable line to create a resist and stop the bleed. I never treated my silks beforehand, and in these I’d sketched paw print indentations over a multicolored backdrop that evoked nature in rich fall and autumn colors.

  “No worries. It’s yours,” I said, pleased at her enthusiasm. I didn’t paint silk often, but scarves made the best presents at Christmas time.

  “Awesome…anyway, I know it’s not polite to show up unannounced, but after the other night and the fiasco that I caused –”

  I interrupted, “You didn’t cause a fiasco. You just gave me more information than I was willing to handle at the time.”

  “That’s me, Queen of TMI.”

  I laughed. “That’s what Amber used to say about me.”

  “So, you’re okay?” Her eyes pled her case.

  I sighed.

  “You’re okay with Jackson and me?” Colby pressed.

  “The wolf in my head may want Jackson,” I confessed, “but the heart of the human knows Will is the only alpha male for me.”

  “But, I thought Will was a beta.”

  Ah, the literal teenager, always trying to sharpshoot her elders. “It’s just a figure of speech.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Depends on how personal.”

  “When did you first have sex?”

  “As a wolf or as a human?”

  “Both.”

  “Human? High School. Wolf? Never.”

  “OMG! You’re a virgin too? Did they keep you locked up like me?”

  I laughed at that. “Only one who locks me up is me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” I said. This child did not need me to give her a lecture on consensuality and velvet handcuffs. Besides, chances are she’d already read Fifty Shades of Grey. “It means most of the time we’re complicit in our confinement.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, you’re eighteen now, and you’re here. You can disregard whatever restrictions y
our father put on you any time, right?”

  “I guess. Daddy gave me the key to the chastity belt. I can take it off any time now.”

  “But will you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Eventually.”

  I lifted my palm in a there-you-go gesture. “Like I said. You’re complicit.”

  She thought about that for a while. I let her mull it over.

  “So, Jackson said you have a cage in your basement and Dad and Sierra wanted to know if I could use it over MoonFall.”

  “He said that, eh?” I was hot after working all afternoon on the dyeing, so I splashed myself with the garden hose. I guess I wasn’t thinking too much about teenagers and hormones, because Colby’s eyes got wide as the water, well, let’s say it highlighted my better assets. “Er, sorry.”

  “No worries,” she squeaked out. “Sully also said it might be good to have the ulv on hand with me, just in case.”

  “Not ready to do the deed, yet, eh?” I asked, tactlessly.

  “I’m just trying to get my bearings. Jackson thinks I should have sex as a human before I try it as a lycanthrope. Especially not over the Blood Moon.”

  “What? Gotta test drive the Honda before you go for the Lamborghini?”

  “What’s a Lamborghini?”

  Can you say “sheltered”? I was seriously going to have to show this kid Fast and Furious. We could have a marathon and watch every single movie. How many were there, nineteen by now? “Never mind. So, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know. I used to think I wanted to get it over with. But now I’m thinking I should at least be in love with a guy before we knock boots.”

  “And when you say sex, you mean…” I hedged.

  “Everything. Nothing.”

  “So you’ve never even…”

  “Dad would never let me. Only thing he let me do was kiss and hold hands. He would have killed anyone he smelled had tried to go too far.”

  “But what about the Inuits?”

  “Dad said what a girl does with another woman doesn’t count.”

  “I think my sister would beg to differ on that one.”

  Ashlee! My sister’s voice resounded in my head. Don’t you dare put words in my mouth!

  Then you get out here and talk to this child!

  Silence. Opening up the twin bond between us had its pros and cons. I guess I glamorized the experience in hindsight, the feeling of connection and energy that flowed between us when the floodgates were wide open. But it often meant a lack of privacy and left me with a hollow feeling when she shut it down. Did that make me codependent?

  “Anyway, Jackson said you’d be a good person to talk to about all of this stuff.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Remind me to thank him for that.”

  “I really like him,” Colby said. “I mean, he’s like twice my age, but Dad said except for his being gay, he’s like the perfect alpha.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but he is quite the gentleman.” I surveyed my handiwork one last time, before I went to wash up. “Well, come on. I’ll show you the layout.”

  We went into the pool house and down into the basement. I ditched my dirty clothes onto the washer and pulled a robe around myself, and then I showed her the cage with water dispenser and food bowls and the bedding, and the secret panel that opened up to the tunnel leading to the duck blind. “There are chains. But I don’t leave them lying out.”

  “I’ve stayed in worse,” she said.

  “Where are you staying now anyway? I mean, if you’re coming here to live.”

  “Oh, I’m over at the lodge on the lake, but they’re talking about moving up to the ridge in the ranch house. I mean, Master Shelby hired a caretaker for the place, but Sully wants to bring some of his livestock and horses in from Montana. I love to ride.”

  “I’m surprised the horses let you ride them.”

  “They’re special horses.”

  My brain took a leap of imagination and I watched a naked Jackson riding off into the sunset on horseback, but what I said was, “Boy, am I out of the loop.” I determined to rectify that situation after the doggie delegation was gone.

  We went back upstairs and I made some coffee. We sat down at my kitchenette table.

  “It must be weird being the only one of your kind,” Colby said.

  “I’m not the only one of my kind. Otherwise no one would know anything about me.” I can’t be, I thought. A girl could die of terminal uniqueness.

  “The only documented one, then. That we know of in modern times.”

  “Oh, I have documents now? I’d like to see those. Am I pure-bred?” I sighed and wondered if I were getting too comfortable. Letting others make a lot of decisions for me. I mean, I thought that I’d regained a modicum of control when Will took the bite and became a lycanthrope. But the pack itself still needed to reproduce in its own way. “So, how’d you get here?”

  “Master Shelby has several cars, and I borrowed one with a driver. He’ll come pick me up when I call or text him, although I think he’s parked near the irrigation ditch down the street listening to an audiobook. He’s kind of cute, for an intimate, and he says it’s a great way to pass the time.”

  “What, being an intimate?”

  “No, audiobooks. Duh.”

  Funny that sex-mad teens still missed the sex jokes. I guess I was too subtle.

  I heard a knock at my door, and then my sister turned the knob and stuck her head in the crack. “Ashlee, why don’t you and your guest come to the main house for dinner?” She suggested this in that tone where you knew it wasn’t a suggestion.

  “Sure,” I said, glancing at Colby.

  That seemed to be the signal for my sister to enter. “I’m Amber,” she said and stuck out her hand. “Sorry I wasn’t here to greet you earlier. My son John Robert was the one who met you at the door.”

  “Colby Rio.” She clasped my sister’s hand, looking back and forth from me to her as if to compare.

  “I’m assuming chicken is okay.”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “As long as I don’t have to chase it down,” I said.

  Amber shot me the look. “Colby, why don’t you come with me while Ashlee showers and we can get to know each other? I’ll introduce you to Spanky and Siegfried.” And for God’s sake Ashlee, put on some clothes. I don’t have your wolf’s hearing and even I can hear Colby’s heart palpitations. It’s not fair to dangle red meat in front of a hungry wolf and then say no, so unless you want to go there, stop teasing the girl.

  Hey, feel free to make her fantasies come true, I shot back.

  Amber made a strangled sound in her throat and led the child out the door.

  I applied myself to the three S’s – shower, shampoo, and shave the legs – and forced myself to dress like a grown-up.

  Sigh. I’d rather be naked.

  “You’re going to live up on the hill with a couple of gay men and a pack of werewolves?” my sister exclaimed at Colby over dinner. “Absolutely not! You should stay with us.”

  I looked at my twin sister in shock. This was so not normal. I pinged on the twin bond to get her attention, which was something I was only lately learning to do. Though I sometimes resented his being in my head, Siegfried was proving to be quite the teacher in spite of his silly poodle ways.

  Amber looked at me slyly but shook her head. Elle was even looking at her like she’d grown a second one. Obviously, she was up to something and I guess I’d just have to wait to find out.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  “Um. I’m flattered,” Colby mumbled over the corn on the cob she was gnawing on. My sister put another napkin down next to her and she grabbed at it like a life preserver. “But, I’ll have to ask my father and get permission from the pack.”

  “Why do you have to ask your father?” I said.

  “Because I just do, all right? At least while he’s still in town.”

  This girl really needed to grow a pair.

  Siegfri
ed stuck his nose in my crotch and I grabbed his muzzle underneath the table, which is what he wanted as he began licking the butter juice off my fingers.

  The child doesn’t know it yet, but she just became interference for when your stepmother is here, Siegfried commented. Okay, maybe talking to my sister’s familiar wasn’t all bad. I looked at Amber with a new appreciation.

  She smirked at me. “Siegfried. Don’t beg,” she said, for Colby’s benefit. “I’m sure they’ll say its fine. We girls need to stick together. And we’ve got plenty of room. Have you thought about a job? We could always use a live-in kid-sitter.”

  You do know that Colby’s a lycanthrope, right? I thought at her.

  She shrugged. What’s another werewolf in the family?

  You were all twisted up about me living across the lawn from JR and now you want Colby to stay inside the house?

  I just said that. I know you’d never hurt JR.

  I shook my head at Amber’s contradictions. You sure Elle is going to be on board with this?

  She will be.

  I always assumed that a mature relationship would be manifest in compromise, but ever since I can remember it felt like my sister always got her way. Maybe they compromised in the bedroom, I thought, and then shut the twin bond down. My sister gave me a look that said Seriously? You went there?

  Colby and I started clearing the table while Elle and Amber retired to their bedroom to “have a talk.”

  At dinner up at the ranch house on Friday night I presented the scarves, wrapped in foil gift boxes, to the ladies of the delegation. I even gave one to Sierra. It would have been déclassé to do otherwise.

  She looked like she didn’t know what to do with it, but followed suit as the rest of the women put the packages in their purses. I wasn’t good at small talk, but the scarves gave me a chance to tell them a little bit about my hobby. They were gracious and my estimation of the doggie dignitaries rose, with the one obvious exception.

  Most expressed regrets that Colby wouldn’t be with them during MoonFall, but secretly all envied her the chance to pioneer a new kind of regime. They may have convinced themselves that they were satisfied with pack status quo, but everyone wanted something unique and, presumably, better, for their daughters and sons.