by D. N. Hoxa
“Her DNA is much more complicated than that. It’s like her human part has altered her magic, made it unique. Like I said, I haven’t seen this before, but there are records of half humans, and they’re not at all similar to Vicky’s case here,” said Aidan.
“What…what does that mean?” He had me completely lost.
“It means you’re not half human, half witch. You’re more like forty percent human, forty percent witch, and another twenty percent of you is something in between. Does that make sense?”
Not really, it didn’t. “But I’m…I’m a werewolf.” I’d say it as many times as I needed to. I turned into a wolf. “I’m not crazy. People have seen me. They’ve seen me shift.”
“And I believe you, but whatever it is, it isn’t…you,” Aidan said, raising both his hands toward me.
I squinted my eyes in confusion, but Finn beat me to it. “What the hell does that mean, boy?”
Straightening his shoulders, Aidan took a step away from the desk. “We still don’t have all the results, but if I were to guess, her shifting is not really shifting. It’s just a manifestation of her magic.”
Both Finn and I sighed. He could have been speaking Korean for all I understood.
“Look, just bring me the final results when they come in. I’ve had enough of this shit,” Finn said, both his hands around his head. “Now I have a headache.”
Aidan nodded, his eyes stuck on my face. “Will do, boss.”
When he left, the silence in Finn’s office drowned me. I wanted to move, get up and leave, get out, get some fresh air, but I was stuck. I was glued to that stupid chair.
“I want to ask you if you knew this, but I already know you didn’t,” Finn finally said. “So I’ll ask you something better: how did you not know this?”
“I’m a wolf.” Those words were all I could clearly think about. The only thing. “I shift. My body changes. I become a wolf. I’m a werewolf. A different werewolf—but a werewolf, not a witch.”
“It’s blood, kid. Blood. How the hell do you have an enhanced sense of smell if you’re not a shifter?”
“I’m a werewolf!” My voice rose. I couldn’t control it. I was angry and I was afraid. And my stupid wolf wasn’t reacting. Why wasn’t she reacting? She loved situations like this. Not even a fucking growl?
“Stop saying that.”
“But I know what—”
“You don’t.” With a sigh, Finn leaned back in his chair. “And I don’t, either.”
Feeling smaller by the second, I forced myself to raise my head. “What now?”
Finn laughed. The sound raised the hair on my forearms. “Now, we wait for Aidan.”
Aidan took another two hours to get back. Finn left the office, but I stayed in. I paced around the small space like it was going to make time go faster, but it didn’t. It just stretched the seconds to eternity.
Being alone with my own thoughts that day wasn’t smart, but I had no other choice. I didn’t want to be there, but I also couldn’t leave without hearing…the rest. What more was he going to say, that I was the devil’s daughter?
Of course, he didn’t say that.
He said something worse.
“Your magic is a bit on the higher side of average for Greens, but your usage is…is zero.”
“Goddamn it, boy!” said Finn, making us both jump. “Can you say it in plain English?”
“I am!” said Aidan, a dumbfounded smile on his face. “She doesn’t use her magic—literally. It’s…it’s like she’s an infant.”
“So it can’t be,” I said in a whisper. “My shifting can’t just be a manifestation of magic. It’s real.”
“No,” Aidan said without missing a beat. “No, no, I’m more convinced now than ever that you have absolutely nothing to do with werewolves.”
“So it’s the ritual,” Finn suddenly said. “You said it yourself, she’s an infant. That’s because she never did the ritual to get her powers from her parents.” A light shone in his eyes.
Parents. Of course I didn’t do the ritual that all witches have to do at the age of eighteen to get their full powers from their parents. I didn’t know my biological parents, and the people who raised me were both werewolves.
Yet again, Aidan shook his head. “Like I said, her magic is above average. It’s at its full potential, and I don’t know if she did the ritual or not, but even if she didn’t, she has enough on her own to use it—and she doesn’t. Not an ounce.”
“So how can my shifting be a manifestation of it?”
To that, Aidan had nothing to say. Who was I kidding? Neither I nor Finn had any clue about what to make of me, but now Finn was even more stressed out. He gave me the day off after he told me—about four hundred times—to be careful. To go straight home and to stay inside.
How could I?
A stranger in my own skin, I couldn’t just go back home. What would I do? Think about how I was not a werewolf at all, that I was a Green witch, and that Haworth had been right? I was half human, too. Even Aidan, who could see colors differently than everybody else couldn’t figure me out. I’d seen it in his eyes—he’d looked shocked. Excited. A bit scared, too.
So, no, I wasn’t going home. I was going to call my friend Mandy, do good on the promise I made her, and spend some money so I could keep my mind off the important stuff. Then, I was going to drink so much, I was going to pass out until morning. And in the morning, I’d ask myself a very important question.
3
What would Red do?
He was a vampire. He was a very old vampire. He was a vampire who could kill faster than a bullet. Why would I care what he’d do, I wondered…but I cared. I cared because I missed him. I cared because another night had gone by, and he hadn’t come to my door. I cared because every second that passed without him confirmed that he had really died in Haworth’s house, and we all knew whose fault that was.
“Get up!” someone shouted, and for a second, I forgot that Mandy had spent the night. She’d crashed on the couch in the living room after one a.m. and way too many margaritas. And I’d been too drunk to see why that was so bad.
Terrified, I stood up and welcomed the darkness that took away my vision for a second. I put on my brand new robe that I’d bought the day before, and after a quick trip to the bathroom, I went to the kitchen to find Mandy with two cups of coffee on the table.
“I like the light in here in the morning,” she mumbled, waving at the windows behind while also holding a hand over her face to shield her from the sun’s rays. I smiled. “Do you need an aspirin?”
“No, thanks.” My hangover was terrible, but I would be good in less than an hour. I’d always thought I had my werewolf healing abilities to thank for that. Now? I had no clue what to think. “How’d you sleep?”
“How do you think?” Mandy said, her blonde hair all over the place as she moved her neck around. “Did we really spend almost four thousand dollars last night?”
Oh, shit. “We did.” My first paycheck and I almost blew all of it. I bought new clothes, new dishes, new towels—new everything, when really, all I needed was protection. Spell stones. Weapons. God, I was so stupid. “What time is it?”
“A little past eight,” Mandy said. “When do you leave?”
“I should have left half an hour ago,” I said reluctantly, but the way we’d parted ways the day before, I doubted Finn would complain if I arrived at the office an hour late. “This was a mistake, Mandy. I shouldn’t have let you come back here.”
“How else were you going to carry all those things?” she said with a shrug.
My head was killing me, the pounding growing louder by the second, but I smiled. “Then I shouldn’t have let you stay.”
Mandy laughed. “How else were you going to get hammered? Alone? I mean, after everything you told me…” Her voice trailed off, but we both knew what she meant. I told her everything—what I was and what I wasn’t. Then we guessed on what would happen today. How much worse coul
d this get for me?
It was a fun game, and while drunk, it had felt like we weren’t talking about me. Just about someone else. Now, though, it was everything but fun.
“Okay, I’m kicking you out,” I told Mandy. “This place is dangerous. If somebody comes for me and finds you here—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it, but you’re not throwing me out. I’m leaving myself. Steve’s waiting for me for a job,” she said with a flinch. “I don’t know how I’m going to work today.”
“Just be glad you’re not going to have to do an MRI.”
She was glad about that and told me to call her as soon as I knew something. By the time she left and I closed the door to my apartment, I could hardly believe it but I felt lighter. Something Mandy said the night before when we were halfway drunk about not trying to fight what you couldn’t control. Or it might have been something about only allowing yourself to stress over things you choose. I’m not sure, but it got to me. As strange as it was, she understood me. She was human, but she understood me.
When I went downstairs, trying to decide if it was worth paying a cab to drive to Finn’s offices, I saw that there was a car waiting for me. Finn’s driver was standing in front of a black Audi. On any other day, I probably would have been a bit pissed, but today, I was just thankful to not have to ride the bus.
I thought I’d have to come to terms with everything before I got there. After all, Mandy was right. None of this was my choice. I didn’t choose to be a witch or a wolf or whatever any more than I chose the hair color I was born with. So why stress?
I didn’t know why, but I did. And I did figure out what Red would do in my situation, but I couldn’t do the same. He’d disappear. He’d step back, take a look at things from a different perspective, probably spend some years thinking—he was immortal, after all—and then come back when the time was right. I had none of those privileges, and he wasn’t there to give me new ideas in person.
Everybody was waiting for me when I got to the research offices. Even Finn was sitting in one of the three chairs, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there, and he wasn’t there to support me. He was worried about what he’d gotten himself into with me, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. At least he had no comment about me showing up late.
Only Aidan seemed happy to see me. He more than happily took me another office where the MRI scan was, gave me a green, paper-thin gown to change into, and left the room. I was shaking by the time I lay down and he came back in to strap me, and it wasn’t because of the cold.
“I need you to hold very still,” he said. “No sudden movements in there.”
“How long will this take?”
“Just a few minutes,” he said with a smile. “I’ve spelled the machine, so you won’t have to hear the awful noise.”
“What exactly are you hoping to get out of reading my brain waves?” I asked. I didn’t like closed spaces. It made me nauseated, and for once, it wasn’t the smell.
“We won’t just be reading your brain waves. We’re going to monitor your entire body and search for anomalies—anything that can help us put together the pieces of what your blood tells us.” He put some patches all over my forehead and alongside my jaw. They were very, very uncomfortable. “If we can find anything out of the ordinary, we can possibly figure out how your DNA has been altered.”
He was much more excited about all of this than I was. “Okay.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he said when he was all done and I was strapped to the white bed with patches all over my head. “You said you turn into a wolf.”
I swallowed hard. “Yes?”
“If I could see—”
“No,” I cut him off. He was not going to make me shift.
“It wouldn’t take long, Vicky,” Aidan said, his eyes spitting fire. He was mad already, but he was fighting hard to hide it.
My wolf raised her head. She found this curious. Very curious. “I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.” And to tell him that I didn’t want to even talk about it anymore, I looked at the ceiling. There was something about the expression on his face I didn’t like. Or my wolf didn’t like. Was there a difference, anyway?
“Okay, then,” said Aidan, not happy at all. “Just hold on tight. This will be over soon.”
Finn made me eat lunch at noon, though I repeatedly told him that I wasn’t hungry. Thankfully, the headache had eased by then, and I could function properly. He had sandwiches brought up to his office so we could eat together. That’s how I knew he was going to talk to me about something.
“I’ve got a job,” he said before finishing his food. Unsurprised, I only nodded. “I’m not sure you’re ready, but I still need this solved within three days.”
“What is it?” I asked. Doing jobs for him beat being tested in an underground office any day.
“A client of mine is searching for her son. He’s put a block to all tracking spells with a family spell my client insists can’t be broken. He’s been gone for two days now,” Finn informed me.
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen. Why?”
I shrugged. “Maybe he just wants to be by himself. He’s a grown man.”
Finn smiled. “It’s not my job to make assessments. It’s my job to do what I’m asked,” he said. “And we don’t ask questions, kid.”
I swallowed the last of my sandwich. “When do I start?” I was bored out of my mind down there, waiting for results that would tell me what I already knew but didn’t believe. Red told me I was a witch. Haworth told me I was half human. If I’d believed them from the get-go, maybe I wouldn’t have been here now.
But who was I kidding? I didn’t have the resources to figure any of this out for certain, not like Finn. It was a good thing I was discovering who I was, even if my wolf didn’t like it. She hated it, in fact, but was dealing. I left her no choice. I was going to do the same until she had enough and made me shift.
“I’m not sure. Now that we know you’re not even a werewolf…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “You smell exactly like a werewolf.” It was obvious that he was still struggling to come to terms with what his team had discovered.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t as shocked. All I could think about was that Haworth had known I was half human by simply holding his hand over my head. What more could he tell me?
“My nose still works. That hasn’t changed.” It wasn’t my sense of smell at all. It was all my wolf, but still.
“I know, but we still haven’t tested that. And I was hoping to have some more time to work on it. To teach you how to use it properly. You could do wonders, kid. I swear, if your sense is as powerful as I’m hoping, you can find anything at all.” There it was—his excitement had returned.
I smiled. “We can do both, can’t we? We can train me, and we can search for the missing guy. The days are long. The nights longer.” And sleep was not my friend. Unless I turned into an alcoholic and decided to drink myself to oblivion every night, I was going to need something to do, something to distract both me and my wolf.
Finn thought about it for a second, but he was going to go for it. He was too excited at the prospect of seeing me do my magic. Figuratively speaking. I wished I could say the same.
“I guess that could work,” he said with a slow nod. “Even with the new discovery. Train and work at the same time.”
“Who’s going to train me?”
“A friend of mine. His name’s Moore. He’ll come here to train you every day.”
“Here?” I pointed both my fingers at his desk.
“Not in my office, no. On the third floor.” Finn pointed at the ceiling. “And once you figure out how to smell things better, we can move on to other stuff.”
A shiver ran down the length of me. By other stuff, I bet he meant fighting. Until then, I was going to have to either figure out a way to control my wolf myself or find a way to ask him to send in a pro to teach me.
I couldn’t let her ruin this, not when Haworth was still free and the ECU wanted me for questioning. Not when Izzy’s life was at stake.
Finn’s phone rang just as the door behind us opened, and Aiden walked in. Nausea hit me hard, threatening to make me spit out the sandwich I’d just eaten, but I swallowed hard and tried to focus. I tried to stay positive.
“The results are in,” said Aidan. I noticed he wasn’t carrying any documents with him. I looked at Finn, but he was still looking at the screen of his phone, reading a text, so I turned to Aidan myself.
“And?”
“You’re in perfect condition,” he said. “No anomalies, no strange bone structure, no nothing. Your insides look exactly like they’re supposed to.”
Finn was looking at me now, his dark eyes wide. Wide and full of fear.
“What does that mean?” I asked Aidan.
“It means we can’t figure out why you turn into a wolf or why you’re not using your magic—not without seeing.”
I knew exactly what that meant.
“No.” He wanted me to shift, to allow my wolf to take over, but that wasn’t going to work.
“There’s no other way to find out what she is without testing her animal, boss.” Aidan, was now looking at Finn. “It’s a simple screening test, and it would tell us everything!”
“No!” I shouted. Had he not heard me?
“But, boss, she’s—”
“Aidan, leave us.”
Oh. That surprised the both of us. Finn looked…angrier than usual and a bit afraid. I sniffed in the spicy scent coming off him in waves. Something was wrong.
“I thought this had priority,” Aidan complained.
I slowly rose to my feet, my eyes never leaving Finn’s.
“Leave us, boy,” Finn ordered, and without another word, Aiden left the office.
My wolf raised her head, interested to see the look on Finn’s face. He pushed the plastic sandwich plate to the side and folded his hands in front of him. I smelled his sweat even though I couldn’t see it yet.
