“Who said magic isn’t real?”
“Um… everyone? For like the last 200 years or so?”
“Tsk, tsk, little girl, didn’t your parents teach you anything?”
I didn’t bother to reply, simply because I wasn’t used to arguing with crazy people. If Gwen wanted to believe there was magic, how on earth was I going to argue with her? It’s like when someone says that you can’t prove to them that there aren’t teeny, tiny, weightless, invisible unicorns who become insubstantial whenever you try to touch them dancing on your head right now. You can’t disprove that kind of thing, you just know better.
Gwen gestured around the room for a bit, and then her eyes glowed a bright green for a few seconds. That weirded me out, but I wasn’t sold on the idea that it was magic. You could buy all kinds of fancy contacts these days. I knew a girl who would put white contacts in her eyes and go sit in a park for hours at night, just to freak out the neighborhood kids. Folks need their hobbies.
“So, did you set up our cone of silence?”
“This is not an episode of Get Smart.”
“You sure? It kinda feels like one.”
Gwen just glared at me again. I felt that was an unfair number of malevolent eye gestures in my direction, when she was the one who had abandoned me after I’d been attacked AND the one who had broken into my house afterwards, making me think that my stalker was back.
I tried to return the glare, but wound up merely squinting. I probably looked like I had gas.
“Wanna tell me why you’re here, now?” I said, when I’d given up on the staring contest.
“Are you sure you’re ready? Would you like to sit down first?” she asked.
“Gwen, for fuck’s sake, just tell me!”
“Tomorrow the triangle will be complete!”
I WOULD LOVE to tell you what the hell Gwen meant by that, but she poofed out of existence right after she’d made that announcement. Literally. There was an actual poofing sound.
I stared at the wolf and slowly slid my way down the wall next to my bedroom door.
“What the fuck is going on with my life?” I looked around at the Princess Bride, Harry Potter, Moana, and Doctor Who posters that covered my walls, but they seemed disinclined to help.
The wolf whined a bit, and tucked its head under the hand that wasn’t holding the field hockey stick.
“I have psychos creeping into my bedroom at night, crazy women who can poof in and out of existence showing up to relate cryptic messages…” I hesitated and looked down at the large, amber-eyed wolf currently resting its muzzle peacefully on my leg. “And a giant, friendly wolf that followed me home.”
The wolf whined a bit.
“I feel like I’m losing my damned mind.”
I looked around my bedroom and realized that I wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep here. I was exhausted, but the thought that Edik might come back, or that Gwen would poof in whenever she felt like it… a shiver crawled along my spine and I stood up.
“Come on, wolf. I can’t sleep here and you… probably need to get back to wherever your pack is.”
To my astonishment, the wolf got up and followed me without complaint.
Until we got to the front door, where it resolutely sat down and refused to cross the threshold.
“Come on, buddy. I can’t keep a wild wolf. It’s illegal, and you’d hate it. I don’t have anywhere close to the acreage you’d need to be comfortable. Surely you have a pack somewhere.”
The wolf didn’t respond with any sort of noise or gesture, but it remained resolutely in place.
“Right. I’m still talking to a wild animal. Thanks for reminding me that I’m going cuckoopants.”
The wolf snorted, far too close to a human chortle for my liking, and then headed for my living room.
“Seriously?” I sighed, shutting the door and locking it, not wanting to let anyone else show up uninvited in my house tonight if I could help it.
I stepped into the living room, just in time to see the wolf disappear on the other side of my couch.
A heartbeat later, Seamus was standing on the far side of the couch, naked, or at least, I was pretty sure he was naked. If he was wearing pants they were… incredibly low.
I swallowed and tried not to scream.
“Do I have a sign painted on me somewhere saying 'please surprise me naked'?”
“Vic, I’m really sorry. My clothes are outside. I can run and get them, but I wanted to show you the truth first.”
“The what?” I asked, my foggy brain finally realizing that I couldn’t see the wolf anymore.
“The truth. You kept talking about losing your mind and I thought… shit, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”
It was taking a lot of effort not to launch myself at Seamus with the field hockey stick, and maybe he could tell that I was struggling, because his face looked pretty concerned all of a sudden.
“You have 30 seconds to explain yourself well enough to keep me from applying this stick to your head.”
“Fine. Right. Ok. Look, I’m not supposed to talk about this, but… you’re clearly not a non, and… Gwen did magic in front of you, right? So, I shouldn’t get in trouble, but… damn it, I’ve never had to explain this to anyone else before!”
“Start making sense quickly, Seamus, you have 15 seconds.” I adjusted my grip on the field hockey stick and settled into a fighting stance.
“I’m a werewolf.”
“What?” I almost dropped the field hockey stick.
“I’m not naked because I want to sex you up or anything, and I’m not stalking you, I just… I followed you because I was worried that Edik would try another stupid stunt like the one he pulled at the pool, but you made it clear you didn’t want me around, so I tried to just stay nearby and hope I would hear it if you needed help. I must have fallen asleep, because I didn’t hear anything until the sirens were most of the way here. I tried to get in, but your doors were all locked, and by the time I’d decided to try breaking a window or something, the cops were already here. Then it seemed like they took care of Edik somehow, because he was out cold and in handcuffs when they dragged him out of here. I waited for them to leave in order to check on you. But then, well you know the rest of it, we heard that thump upstairs and now… well, crap. You seem so… exhausted? Upset? Alone? I don’t know, I didn’t want to leave you alone, but I was worried you’d try to call animal services on me or something, so I decided the best thing was just to tell you the truth. I mean, you saw Gwen do magic, Edik straight up told you he was a creature of the night, and you smell like one of us, so I figured… crap. You think I’m insane, don’t you? Look.”
And then suddenly I was staring at the wolf again. He was just standing there, amber eyes and wolfy ears pointed right at me.
“See.”
Now I was looking at Seamus again. Right where the wolf had been.
That was about the time my legs gave out.
OK. FINE. WEREWOLVES existed. By the time Seamus had left last night, there really hadn’t been any arguing that. I did briefly try to convince myself that it was a truly elaborate prank, but in the end I couldn’t figure out how it worked if it was, and, oddly enough, Occam’s razor suggested that Seamus actually turning into a werewolf really was the more likely explanation. In the end, the fact that I could run my fingers through the wolf’s fur and then be sitting next to a naked Seamus half a second later—and it was a sign of how stunned I was by the whole revelation that sitting next to a naked Seamus didn’t phase me at all—well, what other explanation was there?
Of course, the best "scientific" explanation I could come up with was that Seamus was somehow pulling a wolf through an inter-dimensional pocket and trading consciousnesses with it, but that sounded almost as far-fetched as the idea that the whole thing was magic, so I kept it to myself.
Meanwhile, after eventually coming to terms—at least marginally—with the idea that Seamus was actually able to turn into a wolf at wi
ll, I kicked him out so that I could finally get some sleep.
Then I’d remembered that the thought of sleeping in my own bed made my stomach turn, and I’d set up camp on the couch. It wasn’t rational that I felt in any way safer there, but my brain wasn’t looking for reason, it was just looking to not go upstairs and be reminded that some psychotic asshat had shown up in my room in the middle of the night.
Despite how exhausted I’d been, sleep was a struggle. My brain kept turning over the things that Seamus had said. He was a werewolf, and I was… he wasn’t sure, but he knew I was something, probably a were, just not a wolf.
All of which was preposterous. Werewolves were one thing… maybe. Me turning furry at will? Well, that was insane. I’d know if I had an animal form I could call on whenever I wanted. The idea that I’d somehow missed my ability to turn into something with four legs whenever I felt like it was just stupid.
And whenever I’d managed to stop thinking about the ridiculousness of a world where a guy from my english class could turn into a wolf, I’d gone right back to thinking about some douchetart showing up in my bedroom while I slept.
Sometime after the sun started to rise, I drifted off to sleep.
And was woken by my alarm almost immediately afterward.
“Fuck everything,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes and hating life.
I debated just skipping school. After all, I would be useless after the negligible amount of sleep I’d gotten… but even as I thought about slinking upstairs and curling up in my bed, my stomach twisted. Memories of head butting Edik came flooding back, and I realized that I wasn’t likely to get any more sleep, even if I stayed home.
“I repeat. Fuck everything.”
I took a quick shower, scarfed a bowl of cereal, and trudged off to school as quickly as my sluggish legs would allow.
~~~
“I’m actually a vampire.”
“What?!” I was trying to whisper, but I was so flustered that freaking Stalky McStalkerson was still my lab partner, despite the fact that he had been taken away in handcuffs the night before, that I was raising my voice more than I'd intended.
He was supposed to have spent the night in prison and not been allowed to attend school today. The cops had told me we were supposed to have a court date on Thursday to establish a restraining order. I wasn’t supposed to have to see him until then. But my lawyers (yes, I have lawyers, my parents left me a whole estate, there was a lot of paperwork involved) had called me this morning while I was walking to school to inform me that, despite everything I had told them and what the police had confirmed with them the night before, Edik had been released immediately. In addition, none of the law enforcement officials who had dealt with him seemed to recall any sort of violation of my rights. My lawyers were baffled and looking into it.
In the meantime, Sir Creepsalot was sitting right next to me in class with a face that didn’t look at all like I had head-butted him the night before.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
Which may explain why I wasn’t all that surprised by the words coming out of his mouth.
“I’m a vampire.”
I simply stared at him. He was clearly not in the best place mentally. After all, who thinks it’s ok to break into someone’s house and watch them while they sleep? I tried not to think about how fucked up the night before was, and took a deep breath.
“And why, exactly, do you think you’re a vampire?” I asked. I glanced at the front of the room to see if Ms. Rebuke was getting ready to send us both to the principal, but she seemed distracted by some disgusting blob that one of the students had created over one of the Bunsen burners. I wasn’t clear why they were using the Bunsen burners in physics class, but I had bigger problems to worry about at the moment.
“I don’t think I’m one. It’s just what I am. It’s why I’m different. It’s why no one understands me.”
My eyebrows lifted towards my hairline and I had a hard time keeping my face from reading as “you’re batshit nuts!” when I turned to look at Edik.
“Um… have you considered that no one understands you because it’s socially and morally unacceptable to show up in people’s bedrooms and watch them sleep without an invitation?”
“No. That’s not it. I’m a vampire. I drink human blood. Humans can tell I’m a predator and I make them uncomfortable. But you’re different.”
“No, I’m not. You definitely make me uncomfortable.”
“It’s not that. It’s your smell. You smell different. And I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”
“I have a good poker face and I don’t wear gaudy perfume. That doesn’t mean anything mystical. It means you should give me my space.”
“No. You’re special. I can tell. Here, look.”
Some form of sheer morbid curiosity had me turn to look at Edik. What I saw was not reassuring. The way that Edik’s teeth caught the sun was entirely disconcerting, and it fully explained why I’d never seen him smile with his mouth open up till now.
“You had your teeth encrusted with diamonds? Doesn’t that cut your mouth up all the time?” I asked, trying to keep the pitch and meter of my voice level, despite wanting to scream across the room that I was paired up with a lunatic.
“I didn’t have my teeth encrusted. They are diamonds. My whole skull is made of diamond. It’s part of who I am.”
This was going a bit far for an emo fantasy, or strange divergent cosplay, or whatever the fuck this was. It was too much. Ok, fine, his teeth were sparkly. Disconcertingly sparkly. And he was disturbingly handsome as well. But whatever the explanation was: "I’m a vampire," or "I’m a crazy person who shouldn’t be allowed to be in school with the people I stalk," it amounted to the same thing: I was soooo done talking to him.
“Edik, I hate to say this—no, scratch that, I don’t hate to say it, I just don’t want you to attack me again, but I’m going to say it anyway—I don’t believe that you’re a vampire. And even if you are, you really need to stop talking to me. I’m working on filing a restraining order against you. I can’t believe the cops let you come to school today.”
I was agitated beyond tact and well into honesty. I didn’t have the emotional fortitude to protect this guy’s feelings, and frankly, he didn’t deserve to have his feelings protected. I don’t have much patience for guys who break into my bedroom and then corner me. Go ahead, accuse me of overreacting.
“The cops can’t stop me. I just altered their memories. Same as I’ll have to do with the girls who just noticed me showing you my teeth. But that’s ok. They’re just humans.”
“I’m not sure which part of that I find most disturbing, so I’m not going to analyze it much. But seriously. You need to leave me alone. I want nothing to do with you, vampire or human.”
“Vampire.”
“Ok. Fine. Go away, vampire.”
“We’re lab partners.”
“We’re lab partners who are about to try to get each other arrested.”
“I wouldn’t have you arrested.”
“Fine. I’m a lab partner who is going to get you arrested. Either way. Stop. Talking. To. Me.”
“But, Vic—”
“Do you need me to knee you in the balls again?”
Edik’s mouth slammed shut, and I wondered how he reconciled the idea of being a vampire with the simple fact that he got pwned by me last night. Not that I wasn’t a very competent fighter, I was, but still. Vampires in all the books I’d read were supposed to be hot shit when it came to physical defenses. What kind of vampire gets taken down with a nut shot from a normal human that he outweighs by 50lbs?
~~~
It wasn’t my first time being the new kid in school, so I was accustomed to the attention that one generally garners just by dint of being an oddity. Of course, I was usually considered odd enough that I continued to garner a bit of extra attention even after the initial new girl obsession had worn off. But just because I was used to the attention didn’t mean
that I liked it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stand being the center of attention; class presentations and theater performances didn’t bother me. It was more that I hated the kind of attention that being the new kid garnered. It was rather like what I assumed it felt like to be in a circus sideshow. The looks were long and leering, filled with a derogatory curiosity that left you feeling like you needed a shower.
Imagine my delight then, when, during my second period class, whilst I blearily settled myself into a seat at the back, I noticed a student I hadn’t seen yesterday. More than one person was looking straight at her and whispering in a way that clearly told me she was either new, or a pariah of some kind. Either way, she was taking the spotlight off of me. She sat calmly in the row directly ahead of me, and her dark, tightly-curled hair, pulled into a thick braid down her back, was all I could see. I smiled to myself at the idea of someone else getting stared at for a while, and then instantly regretted it.
“Ms. Marmot! What are you so smug about this morning? Is there something you would like to share with the class?”
What was Rebuke even doing in this class? I’d just escaped first period physics with her and was supposed to be in English with Topaz. She must be subbing again. I sighed.
“No, Ms. Rebuke, I was just smiling after relieving myself of some painful gas buildup. Thank you for asking though.”
Oh dear. Filters were down after a night of almost zero sleep and a morning full of stalker. Perhaps she would be distracted by my self-deprecating humor? A chorus of laughter sounded around the classroom, but one look at her revealed that my joke had done little to deflect her ire.
“Ms. Marmot, are you under the impression that you are funny?”
“Everyone farts, Ms. Rebuke. I believe there was a book about it.”
I bit my own tongue after that slipped out. What the hell is wrong with me? I didn’t usually talk back to teachers, no matter what they said to me. Although, to be fair, I’d never had a teacher dislike me quite as strongly as Ms. Rebuke seemed to. It must have been the cumulation of stress and exhaustion over the past few days, but I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth shut.
Victoria Marmot- The Complete Series Page 5