by Chase Connor
Furthermore, even if there was some other pack of wolves that the black-hooded man had been referring to—it wasn’t Jason’s pack he controlled after all—that presented another question. Why had Jason and his pack been at Oma’s house the night the black-hooded man had attacked a decade previously—the night I managed to pull a metaphorical rabbit out of my metaphorical ass? That couldn’t have just been coincidental. Had Jason and his pack decided that they were tired of Lucas refusing their offers to let him join their pack? Would things have been different if they had known that Lucas could never turn into a werewolf?
Was that even true?
Was I choosing to believe a lie Lucas made up?
Or maybe it was a lie he thought was the truth?
Would we really know the truth until we had lived through a few more moon cycles?
Question upon question began piling up in my brain, and none of them seemed close to having an answer. Being unable to talk too openly about the man in the black hood made things even more difficult. The fact that Oma and I had to be careful who we told anything to compounded that fact. Everything had changed since I had come back to Point Worth, yet everything was the same as it had been before I left Point Worth. A decade had not been long enough to truly change anything about the danger we found ourselves in by merely existing.
More disturbingly, I felt angry. All of the time. As I sat there looking at Jason and Oma in turn, all I could feel was frustration and anger at my present situation. Had I always been so angry, or just since I found out my life was not like other kids back when I was a teenager? Even though I had my memories back, none of them told me that I had felt perpetually angry before. Now, as an adult, and having returned to Point Worth, everything upset me. Of course, I conveyed that anger through removed indifference…but it was there. Just bubbling under the uppermost layer of who I was.
I was beginning to be afraid of myself.
What the hell can happen to someone who loses themselves so quickly and deeply?
“Robbie?” Oma’s voice was gentle, obviously concerned with my mental removal from the situation. “Ya’ still with us?”
Shaking my head to chase away the ghosts of everything in my head, I turned my full attention back to the two people physically present with me.
“What did he say to you?” I asked Jason since Oma’s question had been made rhetorical by me responding at all. “When he came to you just the once, Jason? What did he want?”
Jason appeared to be going over his options in his head, obviously reluctant to share any information with the two people who had just attacked him with magic as though it were no big deal. Logic won out over attitude and Jason gave a sign, finally indicating that he was going to answer.
“Look,” He stated defensively, “it really was just once. I’m not jerking you around here, okay? He came to me in a dream. Offered me and the pack power if we would help to build him an army. But I refused.”
“An army for what?” I asked.
“You know what for.” Oma snorted.
Jason glanced at Oma quickly before answering. “To help him destroy a couple of witches. I’m now assuming that is you two.”
Oma bowed her head with a grin.
“What’s he got against you two?”
“Long story,” I stated evenly. “Why did you refuse?”
“I’m not crazy, Rob.” Jason spat, though there was no heat to his words. “I know real trouble when I run into it. I knew the guy in the black hood was not someone I wanted to attach myself to. I knew he was trouble just as much as I know you’re trouble.”
“Of a different sort.” I shrugged.
“Trouble is trouble.” Jason shook his head though a small grin reached his lips. “Doesn’t matter how you dug the hole if you end up stuck in it, does it?”
“You and Oma should trade folksy sayings sometime.” I rolled my eyes, but before Jason or Oma could respond, I continued. “So, if you refused him—to create this army of puppies—why are you still taking on members? Why did you go after Lucas so much when we were younger?”
“We’re a pack.” Jason looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s like a family, we just reproduce differently.”
“Gross,” I responded blandly, to which Oma chuckled. “Why Lucas?”
Jason was chewing at his lip. A tell-tale sign that he either didn’t want to say what he was thinking or he had no idea how to answer the question.
“He was one of us,” Jason responded suddenly. “On the football team. We knew he’d make a good pack member.”
“That’s a lie,” Oma replied.
“No shit, Shirley,” I answered her, though my eyes never left Jason’s.
“I’m not lying.”
“You already know we’re witches, assface,” Oma responded. “Do you think we’re goin’ to buy some cock-and-bull story that you just felt like you had to have Lucas in your pack because he played football with ya’?”
Oma’s statement gave me pause as I sat there, helping her to stare down Jason and intimidate him into talking.
Witches.
She had said I wasn’t a witch before…
“Fucking fuck.” Jason groaned as he reached up to run his fingers through his hair, which he had obviously not bothered to stop by his house to wash after disposing of the two bodies. “Look, Lucas…we were just supposed to make him part of our pack, okay? That’s all.”
Oma looked over at me, a frown adorning her face.
I stared back at her, thoughts of witches on my mind.
Pushing away my questions—for the moment—I squinted at Jason.
“What do you mean you were supposed to make him part of your pack, Jason?” I demanded. “Who told you that was something you were supposed to do?”
Jason’s head fell back in defeat and he stared up at the ceiling, as though saying a silent prayer.
“When I told the…guy…that I didn’t want his offer of power, he got mad, okay?” Jason explained, almost pleading for understanding. “I guess not many people turn him down and when they do, I guess it pisses him off.”
“Yeah.” I nodded slowly. “He’s been pissed at my family for a while now.”
Oma agreed with a firm nod.
“Yeah.” Jason shrugged. “He told me that he was going to destroy my pack, make me watch…then he was going to kill me. I mean, this was a…a…dream, right? But I knew he meant it. I knew that the next time I would see him it was because he had come to kill me and my guys, right?”
“He doesn’t make idle threats, no,” I replied.
“Before I could tell him I was sorry and that we would accept the power—or ask what could be done to appease him—he offered a solution, Rob. He told me if I did him a favor, he would leave us alone forever.”
“What favor?” I asked, leaning in.
“He gave me a name.” Jason nearly shivered.
“Lucas Barkley?” I seethed.
Jason nodded.
Glancing over at Oma was all I could do to keep myself from instinctively punching Jason is his, well, punchable face. Oma looked as though she had picked up on the fact that I was feeling murderous, her eyes warning me to keep myself under control. When it came to magic, Jason didn’t stand a chance against me, most likely. In a fistfight, he’d probably kick my ass. So, it wasn’t fair to punch him in the face and then defend myself with magic. Even if he had been begging to be punched in the face for over a decade.
“Get out,” Oma answered the two of us when my eyes stayed on hers. “And don’t come back ya’ miserable little shit.”
“What?” Jason squeaked.
“Get the hell out of my house, assface.” Oma turned her head to growl at him.
In the corner of my vision, Jason made a movement as though he might protest being told to leave Oma’s house. Another sharp look from her made him rethink his decision, and he was quickly removing himself from his chair. Oma’s eyes followed him as he got up, pushed his chair back in cautiously, an
d moved toward the backdoor. My eyes stayed on Oma, keeping tabs on her as well as following Jason’s movements by following her eye movements. Then I heard the backdoor squeak slightly, and a fresh Spring breeze met the back of my neck.
“We’ll talk soon, Rob.” Jason had the nerve to speak. “You still owe me.”
“We’ll see about that,” I answered simply, my eyes still on Oma.
Jason’s footsteps sounded, the door closed, and Oma and I were left staring at each other once more. Thoughts swirled through my head, and I couldn’t separate one emotion from the next, so I simply sat there, staring at Oma with her staring back for a moment before I lifted my coffee mug to my lips. My hand shook slightly, and I had to pause for a moment to collect myself before I took a drink so as to not spill the steaming liquid down my front.
Oma sighed to herself and brought her own mug to her lips.
Once upon a time, I had been a sixteen-year-old kid with two very different and tough choices. Neither of which had been acceptable to me. So, I had made a new choice for myself. A choice that no one in my family before me knew was even an option. And my memories had been stolen from me. Sure, that had kind of been the deal when I had made the choice I had made, but with those memories back, I had even more questions than I had before I had jumped into the well in the cellar the first time.
“Oma.” I managed to speak without my voice cracking. “I had a dream last night while I was at Lucas’.”
“Yeah? So?”
Thinking of what I had seen in my dream, I felt my ability to speak being siphoned from me like water from a well. The scene of the darkened child’s bedroom, being inside of a body I was unfamiliar with, feeling the ice-cold floorboards beneath my feet, the throne of bones, the hooded figure, the red eyes…it was all too much for me to verbalize. The fact that something inside of me told me that it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory made it even more challenging to consider speaking of it. Worst of all—it wasn’t one of my memories. It was someone else’s.
“I—I need the book to not be blank,” I said. “I need to see what is inside of it again.”
Oma pushed her chair back and stood up gruffly, her coffee mug held in her fist like a shield.
“Well, good luck with that.” She snorted as she made her way to the counter. “That thing’s been as stubborn as you for the last ten years.”
Oma dragged the sugar jar across the counter and began searching through the utensil drawer for a spoon. Apparently, Oma needed more than just caffeine to get through the day this once.
“Did it just…go blank when I…left?”
“Well,” She looked thoughtful as one, then two spoons of sugar got dumped into her mug, “I’d say ‘yes,’ but I ain’t certain. It was blank the first time I looked at it after you run off to Hollywood, though.”
“That’s weird, right?” I asked, my stomach suddenly feeling like lead. “I mean…why?”
Oma chuckled to herself as she stirred her coffee and shoved the sugar jar back to its place on the counter next to the flour and brown sugar. With the amount of cooking and baking Oma did, I never did understand why she poured the ingredients into decorative jars from their original sacks.
“’Bout par for the course, I’d say.” She turned around with her sweetened mug of coffee gripped in her hand as she propped herself up against the counter. “You decided to take things into your own hands, ran off to Hollywood—things have been weird for a long time, Robbie. Hell, if something wasn’t weird around here at least once a day I’d probably cream my britches.”
“You’re the weirdest thing around here,” I mumbled to myself.
“What’s that?” She glowered.
“Nothing.”
“Mm.” She eyed me warily.
Sitting there in Oma’s kitchen, thinking of the previous night’s events, I found myself pouring through my old memories that still seemed to be adjusting to being back in my brain. Things that Oma had said when I was a teenager. Things Lucas and I had done when we were younger. Things I had seen, things I’d been taught, things I had known on a deeper level than I seemed to know them at present. There was a nagging pull at the back of my skull, something telling me that I should remember something that I couldn’t. Not because the memory wasn’t in my mind but because I was human and humans are forgetful. At best, humans don’t have the extraordinary brainpower to connect the dots that link memories together.
With no better obvious course of action, I slammed back a swig of my coffee, wincing at the slightly too warm liquid, and stood from the table. Oma watched me from her place by the counter as I walked over and emptied my mug down the drain and rinsed out my cup before setting it in the sink. I laid my hands against the counter edge and stared out of the window that provided a view of the backyard. The white picket fence that surrounded the garden looked so pitiful with no garden to protect. Frowning to myself, I thought about all of the years Oma had tended to the garden dutifully, and how I was sad that she seemed to have no intention of ever doing it again.
“What are you thinkin’ about?” She asked. “All the money you’re losin’ by not takin’ your dumbass back out to Hollywood?”
“I don’t need the money,” I said, then corrected myself. “I don’t want the money.”
A sharp whistle emanated from Oma’s lips.
“Ain’t you fancy as shit?” She waggled her head slightly. “Guess your retirement plan is good if you decide to give up work before thirty?”
“I don’t have a retirement plan.” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “Just a shit ton of money.”
Her face twisted with disapproval.
“Wouldn’t have said it if you hadn’t pushed.” I shrugged, looking out the window at the barren garden once more. “Like you always do.”
“Well, what are you gonna do when you run out of money, smartass?” She asked though she wasn’t trying to be rude.
She was just being Oma.
“Unless I lived to be a thousand, I should be okay.” I retorted. “But the way things are going, I’ll be lucky to make it to twenty-eight.”
“You’ll be lucky to make it to twenty-seven, ya’ brat.” She replied nonchalantly. “If you keep sassin’ me you won’t make it another two weeks.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I said, vaguely remembering that my birthday was not far off.
“Mm,” Oma repeated her go-to humming noise. “What kind of cake you want for your birthday anyhow?”
Turning with an incredulous look, I pushed my hip against the counter and crossed my arms over my chest as I stared my grandmother down.
“Really, Oma?” I snorted. “Do you want to get me a cake and throw a party? Play Pin the Tail on the Donkey?”
“There’ll be more than one jackass gettin’ something stuck in its ass if you keep being a shithead.” She replied. “Thought it might be nice since we ain’t seen each other on your birthday for ten years. Have a cake. Blow out some candles.”
“Make a wish?” I teased.
“Oh, fuck you.” She dumped her coffee mug in the sink.
“Think it’d work?” I continued. “Close my eyes tight, wish with all of my might and blow out a whole bunch of candles, and everything will be hunky-dory once more?”
“That ain’t what I was getting’ at, and you know it.”
I shrugged.
“Why are you such a damn jackass lately?” Her hands went to her hips. “Can’t say two damn words to you without getting’ a load of sass.”
“That’s rich, Oma.” My mouth turned into a wide grin. “Unless you want to go get the tiara out of the box in the attic and dust it off, I think you can hold onto the title.”
When I felt the hand on my leg, I nearly came out of my skin. Jerking sharply, I looked down to find Ernst next to me, his head coming up to my hip, his eyes wide with shock. Oma jerked in surprise at my movements, saw Ernst, and let out a string of muffled curses. When Ernst realized that I had only jumped from surprise and not anger, his
shocked expression turned into a happy one, and his hand went back to lay against my leg. I reached down and patted his head with a smile while Oma cursed a few moments longer.
“Hey, Ernst,” I said, ignoring Oma’s prattling on.
“Mornin’, Rob.” He squeaked back.
“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Ev’ryone’s been keepin’ to themselves. S’pose they’ve all ‘ad enough excitement for a while.”
I laughed gently.
“Makes sense.” I shrugged. “Sometimes, I wish my family knew how to keep to themselves and give me some peace.”
Ernst’s ears wiggled happily.
“At least you know where your kin are, though.” My mind wandered, bringing up thoughts of my mother and father.
“S’pose,” Ernst said simply.
As if lightning had shot out of the sky and struck me in the forehead, a memory came back to me. Not an old memory, but a recent one. An important one. Ernst frowned up at me as my eyes grew wide with excitement. Quickly, I gave Ernst another pat on the head and stepped away from him and Oma, turning towards the main part of the house.
“Well, where the shit is you goin’?” Oma asked.
“I need to go see a man about a wolf.”
“What?” Oma coughed.
I was already taking the stairs two at a time before the word finished coming out of Oma’s mouth.
Chapter 5
Andrew’s office was nicer than I had imagined it would be. When I had only been back in Point Worth for a little over a week, Oma had introduced us while we were volunteering at the Toledo LGBTQ+ center. Probably because we were both gay and for no other discernible reason, such as she thought we’d actually get along. Regardless of our compatibility, Andrew and I went to dinner, he acted like a douchebag, and then he turned into a werewolf on the drive back to Oma’s house—after trying to grab my junk and generally act like a turd. Just like any other normal first date, really.