by Layla Nash
I hated not being able to judge his intentions and having to fish around for motivations. As straight-forward as he seemed to play things, the man was a damn mystery.
Dodge put his elbows on the table and went back to scowling at Evershaw. “At least we can use the detective as a threat if Bridger doesn’t agree to leave Persephone alone. The loan shark doesn’t want the cops sniffing around her shady business, and we all know if O’Brien starts kicking rocks, all kinds of shit is going to be uncovered. When we confront Bridger, that’s in the back pocket. Just in case.”
My cheeks heated as I gripped the chopsticks and used the pinching motion he’d demonstrated. It wasn’t easy by any means, but I managed to get a piece of cabbage onto my little plate and tried to maneuver it into my mouth. Part of me wondered where he’d learned to use chopsticks, because he was damn good at it – picking out little pieces of cucumber kimchi and bean sprouts with garlic to put on my plate – all the while continuing to discuss whether or not they would confront Ms. Bridger.
It was definitely easier to stab a piece of cucumber with one chopstick than to pick it up with two.
I caught Dodge eyeing me sideways when I used my modified technique to finish off everything stab-able.
When Miles paused in what sounded like a rehearsed diatribe about how the lions were all rich assholes that no one did business with unless they had no other choice, Deirdre leaned forward and fixed me with an intense look. “But we’ve overlooked another little... hiccup. You don’t seem particularly... surprised by this anymore, Percy. We should still discuss what happened at the house, with Silas.”
I raised my eyebrows and waved a chopstick around to take in all four of them. “You guys stopped being the worst thing going on in my life the second I heard the b-bone saw.”
I tried to be nonchalant about it, tried to play it cool like Dodge, but I didn’t have it in me. Flashes of what I’d seen in the sanctuary’s kitchen kept surfacing at odd moments, distracting me and dragging me back to that panicked, uncontrolled feeling of pure fear. I stumbled over “bone saw” since I definitely wasn’t as relaxed about someone getting chopped up as Dodge.
She nodded but there wasn’t any judgment in her expression. “Be that as it may, since it sounds like we’re all going to be very... involved in each other’s lives for the near future, it would be a good idea for us to explain what happened with Silas and what we’re trying to do.”
I put the chopsticks down carefully and braced my hands on the table, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Shoot.”
A hint of a smile crossed her face. “It’s not that dire. Apparently Smith already shared quite a bit with you about the variety of supernaturals who are in the city. Until very recently, we witches have kept ourselves apart from the shifters and the fae. The shifters are quite... boisterous in their engagements with each other and seem to create a lot of feuds and drama, so witches typically stayed away to watch from a distance.”
“Bullshit,” her husband said, rolling his eyes.
“Oh? What, precisely, is bullshit?” she asked sweetly.
He apparently didn’t hear the warning and scooped up a massive amount of spicy kimchi, using his chopsticks like a shovel, and tilted his head back so he could practically swallow it whole. “We don’t cause feuds. The lions do. Those fucking cats are dramatic. And you witches... are you forgetting about the nonsense with Henry and his mate?”
Deirdre poked his ribs just as he swallowed, and Miles choked and coughed as he inhaled the massive mouthful he’d only partially chewed. She turned her attention back to me as her husband pounded on his chest and struggled to breathe, his face reddening. “As I was saying, there are a lot of politics within the supernatural community. That can take finesse to navigate. We don’t want you to feel thrown into this on your own. Because we are responsible for your knowledge of the community, we’re also responsible for familiarizing you and giving you the tools to navigate these relationships.”
“Relationships?” I frowned as I studied her and played with my chopsticks. I definitely needed to practice with those things. It seemed like an important life skill. “What relationships?”
Her head tilted as she glanced at Dodge and then back to me. “Well, now that you know about... all of us, there’s no going back. Not really.”
My heart thumped a little faster against my ribs. What the fuck did that mean? Was I going to be imprisoned in the basement along with the wolfman? Maybe I could take my chances with Ms. Bridger. I could explain that I didn’t see anything and didn’t want to know anything. I’d start over somewhere far away and she wouldn’t have to worry about me ever again.
I struggled to find a way to respond when another knock signaled the waitresses’ return. My eyebrows rose as they came in with massive platters of grilled meat, some marinated in sauces and others seasoned only with salt. I was just gearing up to tell Deirdre that I didn’t want anything else to do with their incredibly dangerous, apparently drama-filled, community, when Dodge signaled one of the waitresses and said something in a rapid-fire foreign language.
She stared at him as openly as I did, then laughed, nodded, and disappeared. I frowned at Dodge, once more completely thrown off my assessment of him. I tried to focus on Deirdre and the matter at hand despite the intense and delicious aroma that foiled my fumbling chopsticks ability. “I’m not –”
My teeth clicked shut as the waitress returned with a fork, smiling at me as she put it on the table next to me, and disappeared again. My cheeks burned as I looked at the utensil. It was a little embarrassing that I was the only one at the table who couldn’t use chopsticks, but at least I stood a chance of getting some of the barbecue before Todd and Miles inhaled all of it.
Which they’d started doing the moment the platters hit the table.
I cleared my throat and said a quiet, “Thank you,” to Dodge. He grunted and jerked his chin at one of the platters.
“Try the galbi. They make it right here.”
When I hesitated, trying to decide which one he meant, Dodge leaned over to scoop up thick slices of beef to put on the small plate in front of me. Then he scooted a basket of lettuce leaves in front of me as well, and pointed at the little dishes of a red bean paste. “Beef in leaf, then sauce.”
I watched him make a beef-leaf taco, stunned when he nearly swallowed it whole, and took a moment to appreciate the way his forearms flexed each time he used the chopsticks and reached for more food. When I caught Deirdre watching me with that faint damn smile, I flushed more and tried to drag my thoughts back to the matter at hand.
“Look, I understand you’re probably – concerned about this, but I promise, the moment our business is concluded, I’ll just go back to my boring life without any interaction at all with this... community.” I forced a smile. “I like boring. Boring and normal. I’ll work on the habitat for Silas, if you still want me to and assuming I survive the next few days, but after that... I’m fine with closing the door on our acquaintance.”
She made a thoughtful noise, nodding along as I talked as if she agreed, and watched as Miles kept putting more and more food on her plate. “I can appreciate you wanting to limit interaction with the shifters. They’re very pushy, aren’t they?”
Miles elbowed her and gave her a dark look. “Eat, woman.”
Deirdre rolled her eyes with a “see what I mean?” expression, but picked up her chopsticks to make her own beef-and-leaf pocket. “But I can say from recent experience, Percy, that when the various supernatural elements realize you know about them, they’re unlikely to let you simply disappear.”
A knot tied up my throat. “What does – what does that mean?”
“It’s not dangerous,” Dodge said. He shook his head and half-stood so he could lean down the table and retrieve thick slices of pork belly for both of us. “It’s rare for humans to know about us, so if you have a particular skill that they would find useful, once everyone knows that you know about us, it’s less risky to bring yo
u in to work on different jobs. They don’t have to worry about dancing around the specifics of a requirement, like we tried to do with Silas.”
“I can’t imagine there’s a lot of demand for habitat specialists,” I said, and tried to laugh it off. The thought of being an in-demand architect for a bunch of werewolves and witches and whatever Smith was sent chills down my spine. “Unless everyone has some kind of mutant in their basement? Is that common?”
Todd made a face. “No. Silas got caught up in a conflict with a sorcerer and ended up... changed. We’re still not sure how to fix it.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I stuffed down the demand to know what a sorcerer was and how it was different from a witch, since apparently knowing more about them just meant getting roped deeper into the craziness. I was already neck-deep; going any deeper meant drowning.
“He was forced to shift his form and then frozen in between,” Deirdre said. Her expression hardened and grew icy around the edges. “We just need to understand how to force him back.”
I studied a piece of pork belly as I tried to understand all the layers of impossibility in that conversation. It could have all been a really crazy, intense dream or nightmare. Maybe a hallucination or bad trip. “How does it all work? I mean, the turning into an animal thing. Are they always people in their head? Is there a – a wolf brain or something?”
It was ridiculous. A completely ludicrous series of questions. If any of the waitresses overheard us, they’d call the police and have us all committed to the psych ward.
But Dodge didn’t hesitate to answer as he tore up a few lettuce leaves and handed me one, along with more rice. “There’s a wolf half and a person half. The person usually stays in control in both forms, though the wolf is always there. Only when there’s severe stress or trauma does the wolf take over; that’s usually to make sure we survive a situation, then the wolf retreats after most of the danger passes and the person can take over again.”
It sounded insane. I eyed him. “So you’ve got – a wolf in your head? All the time? Just – talking to you?”
“Not quite.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “He’s me, just... a wolf. We’re connected, we think and want the same things, just sometimes he’s more observant than I am. He noticed the guys following us this morning, and he sensed that something was wrong with the SUVs at the sanctuary when we went to get you.”
The way he referred to himself and the wolf side as “we” kind of threw me off. “So... there’s no difference between the two sides? Could they get separated or mixed up when you go between... forms? God, this sounds so fucking weird.”
“Mixed up?” Todd leaned back, rubbing his jaw. “Not typically. Sometimes when shifters are turned, instead of born...” He must have seen the “what the fuck are you talking about?” look on my face, because he smiled wryly and started over. “Most shifters are born to parents who are also shifters. On occasion, a shifter could bite a human and turn them into a shifter – what we’d called a ‘turned’ shifter. It doesn’t happen often; usually when a human is mated to a shifter and wants to transform for their own reasons.”
“So their heads are different, if they change later?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to parse all of this new information. I needed some kind of wiring diagram or flow chart to work out all the possible issues and decision points. “But the ones who are turned later, are their kids then born as – as shifters?”
“Yes,” Dodge said.
I looked at all of them, certain I’d missed something. “So there functionally shouldn’t be anything different between the wolf-person relationship based on whether someone was born that way or turned later. Maybe it’s... degrees of awareness? But the relationship between the two entities, such as they are, should be identical. Right?”
“It’s difficult to say,” Deirdre said slowly. “Since a born shifter can’t understand how a turned shifter relates to their animal side, and vice versa. They’re using two different vocabularies to describe a situation where nuance is vital to understanding.”
I frowned as I scooted my chair back, wanting more room so I didn’t accidentally whack Dodge if I got excited and waved my arms around. It had happened more than once in architectural school. “Okay, so let’s assume it’s fundamentally the same but perhaps different... by degrees. There’s maybe... more distance between the two sides for someone who’s turned, because they’re learning to manage a fucking insane change to their brain and personality and awareness.”
All four of them watched me, apparently waiting for the light bulb.
I held my hands out, waiting for them to see it. “I don’t know fuck-all about sorcerers, but if he did something... What if he intentionally or accidentally created more of that distance between the wolf side and the person side? Would that explain why he’s – stuck like he is? And why there’s clearly not a person in charge of what remains? He may not be able to resolve the discrepancy on his own because he doesn’t have the – the vocabulary to understand what changed.”
Deirdre’s head tilted and she went very still, her eyes flashing silver in an eerie reminder of Smith. “Creating more distance between the wolf and the man. That might...”
She trailed off, staring into the distance, while I waited on the edge of my seat for her to proclaim I’d figured out the problem. Miles hardly paused in doing his best to eat his weight in marinated beef, not taking his attention off the food in front of him. “It’s a hypothesis, and one we hadn’t considered. We’ll test it when we get back to the house.”
“We?” The hair on my arms prickled. “I’m not sure...”
“It’s safer at the house,” Dodge said quietly.
“I thought we didn’t want Ms. Bridger to know about all this?”
He shook his head. “She probably already knows you took the meeting yesterday morning, and even if she didn’t... She knows you’re linked with our pack because of lunch. It’s better that way. She’ll hesitate before trying to screw with you, once she knows you’re part of the pack.”
“But I’m not,” I said slowly. He looked so relaxed about it, like it was perfectly reasonable that one mistake the morning before – when they released a wolfman from the basement – meant that my entire life changed and realigned. It wasn’t even my fault. Maybe I didn’t want anything to do with any of them, and the way they talked, it sounded like I’d be hip-deep in supernatural whatsits the rest of my damn life. “I’m not part of the pack.”
“You are,” Miles said. He swiped a napkin over his face and sighed as he sat back, draping an arm along the back of Deirdre’s chair as the witch muttered to herself and sketched something on the table. The big blonde dude watched me without expression. “You’re our responsibility. So, we take care of you. Protect you. Feed you.” He nodded at the scraps that were left over on the table, and my cheeks heated.
“Well, if I’d known there was an obligation attached to any of this...” I started, my hands shaking, and ran out of words.
“It’s not like that,” Dodge said. He shot a hard look at the other man. “It’s our obligation to you, since we brought you into this. It’s a way to protect the humans who are aware of the supernaturals in the city. If you run into a problem with a shifter or a witch, instead of trying to deal with it on your own, you would bring it to us and we would handle it. And if another pack wanted you to design a habitat for them or were concerned about something you did, they would approach us so that we could talk to you.”
“So you’re a bunch of middle-men?”
“A buffer,” he said quietly. His fingers ghosted across my shoulder before he drew away. “So that if you want to go back to a life that does not include any supernatural elements, we will do our best to give that to you.”
“But if everyone knows that I know about them, it sounds like they’d demand that I...”
“They won’t bother you,” Dodge said. His certainty, his calmness, was enormously reassuring. I believed him, even if I shou
ldn’t have. “I’ll make sure of it. If you don’t want anything to do with shifters, I’ll make it clear and no one will bother you ever again.”
For some reason, his expression and the depths of his hazel eyes and the soft husky voice tied a knot in my throat and made my sinuses burn. He meant it. He’d do his best to give me that space, if it was what I wanted. And on the surface... of course I wanted to go back to normal, before I knew about wolfmen and magic and whatever the hell Smith was. I managed to nod before my vision blurred, and cleared my throat a few times before I managed to croak, “Right. Thank you.”
Deirdre sat up, her excitement blazing from her eyes, and almost launched to her feet. “We need to get back to the house. I have an idea.”
Miles muttered something like, “Just fucking wonderful,” before he got up and jerked his chin at Todd. “You’ll settle the bill?”
The other man sighed dramatically and excused himself to seek out the waitress. I looked around as it seemed like everything started moving at once. “What is –“
“We’ll meet you back at the house,” Dodge said, and got up to pull my chair back from the table.
Miles frowned and checked his watch. “You sure you don’t want us to call in a team to make sure Bridger’s guys don’t try anything?”
“We’ll be fine,” Dodge said, shaking his head. His hand hovered at the small of my back. “But we’ll leave first and take Oak St instead of the side streets.”
I clenched my hands into fists and avoided Dodge’s touch. “Hold on a damn minute. What the hell is going on?”
“We’ll go back to the house,” he repeated and nudged me toward the door. “It’s the safest place in the city for now. You’ll have a whole wolf pack to protect you.”
He even managed a smile as he said it, although for some reason, his canine teeth looked a little too long for a human. I couldn’t look away as my heart beat faster and a hint of panic crawled up my spine. “I don’t think I want to be surrounded by a wolf pack.”