by Piper Dow
"Kelly, I wanted to introduce you to Joel," David's voice filled the pause in the conversation.
Kelly glanced up at him, wondering how long he had been standing there. She stood and offered her hand to the older man David had been talking with in the kitchen.
"Hi, I'm Kelly," she said.
The man was thin and wiry. What remained of his dark hair was cropped close to his head and sprinkled with gray. He held a cane in his hand.
"Pleased to meet you, Kelly," Joel said, and Kelly noted that he spoke carefully, one side of his mouth not moving as easily as the other.
"We'll take these chairs," David said, pointing to the kitchen chairs on the other side of the television set a few feet away. "I think Chad is getting ready to start."
Kelly looked around, and realized that most of the seats were now taken. Chad, their host, was ushering the last person from the kitchen into the sitting area. He walked to a spot where he would not be blocking anyone's line of sight and spread his arms to the side. "Okay, welcome everyone, it's good to see you guys again. We have a couple of new faces with us this month, so why don't we go around the circle and do brief introductions. Just give your name and if you're a Shade or a Light; let's keep it simple. Maria, why don't we start with you?"
They made their way around the circle with guests introducing themselves. Maria, it turned out, was a Light. In fact, more than half of the group were Lights. Janet was a Shade. Joel, too, was a Shade. There was just one other, a tall teen named Alan who looked like he battled serious acne.
"Okay," Chad said, looking around. He was still standing at the edge of the circle. "For the new people, let me just give a brief rundown of what I'm anticipating for this evening. Generally, we have a short time for anyone who wants to tell us their experience—how they learned about the Shadows. It's not mandatory, but sometimes it can help us to understand what we can do to make you feel comfortable. Then we have a question and answer session where Lights are invited to ask questions they have for Shades. Appropriate questions," he said, with a pointed look at Maria and her friend. Maria giggled.
"Diana, do you want to tell them about finding me in the ladies' room, or should I?" Janet had turned her head toward her friend sitting on the couch. At Diana's smile and shrug, Janet turned back to face the group again. "Well, we teach in the same school. I've been there for two years, and Diana—you've been there for what, four years? Anyhow, we've known each other for a while and worked in groups together, but nothing outside of school. A few months ago I had to go to the ladies' room, and I couldn't wait for recess, so I had to ask someone to cover my class. You would think that this was no big deal, right? But, the other teacher was having a bad week, and, whatever." Janet's hands fluttered as though to brush aside an annoyance.
"Anyway, I get into the ladies room, and I'm fit to be tied because she had turned it into such an ordeal. Sometimes stress makes shifting harder to control, and sometimes that time of the month makes it harder to control, and sometimes when you put those two things together, mistakes happen. I was splashing water on my face, trying to calm down, when Diana came out of one of the stalls. I picked up my head to look at her, not realizing I was partially shifted."
Kelly looked at Diana, who was staring at the nails on her hands, folded in her lap. One leg was crossed over the other, and the foot in the air was busy drawing circles. When she realized that Janet had paused, she glanced up. Her eyes met Kelly's, and she gave a tight smile.
"Well, you can imagine the panic she felt, I'm sure, but I know that you can imagine my panic, too!" Janet was grinning. "It's funny now, but at the time, I sat right there on the floor and just started sobbing! I'm sure that Diana didn't know what to do."
Diana shook her head and smiled, but then said, "Oh, no. I didn't know what to do with a furry face, but I knew what to do with someone crying. I teach third grade, remember?" She picked up the tale. "I went over, sat down on the floor next to her, and put an arm around her shoulders. I told her, 'It can't be all that bad.' And all I could think about was that we had just read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where Hermione turned into a cat. When she had stopped crying, I asked Janet where she'd been brewing her potion."
Janet's grin widened. "The best way to make any bad situation better is to laugh—it truly is the best medicine."
"Okay, but what did you do when you left the bathroom? I mean, come on, you just saw someone with fur all over her face, and you just accepted it?" Kelly thought the speaker's name was Ben, but she wasn't sure.
"No, she didn't just accept it," Janet said. "She kept coming back and asking me to do it again. Like, she didn't trust that her eyes had really seen what her brain was telling her they'd seen."
"You must have told her not to say anything, right?" Ben persisted.
Janet was nodding, and so was Diana. "She did, she stressed how important it was not to let other people know what she could do. But also—seriously? I don't need people thinking that I am doing drugs while teaching their children." She smiled.
"Okay." Chad drew the attention from the two women and smiled around the room. "Anyone else want to tell what they saw? How they found out?" His eyes scanned the room, but Kelly stared at a corner of the floor to avoid his gaze. Her story wasn't a funny, light-hearted tale. She wasn't ready to open that can of worms here.
The evening progressed with two more initiation stories before Chad opened up for questions and answers. Ben wanted to know why his Shade friend ate so much right after shifting, and Maria wanted to know if transfusions from a Shade would cause a transformation. Alan volunteered an answer about the hunger that shifting caused by using so much energy. Joel explained that the genetic changes that happened to cause the shifting were not affected by blood transfusions.
"Then why does someone being bitten cause that change?" Kelly asked, thinking of Sam's attack.
"We don't know," Joel admitted. "It doesn't always change the genetic structure, regardless of the severity of the bite. It seems to be a much more individualized process. There are Shade geneticists trying to find answers, but too much is at stake to do much openly."
The formal portion of the meeting wrapped up and members began to make their way out the door. Chad stepped into the kitchen and began putting salad fixings away. Kelly had relaxed enough to enjoy meeting the others in the group, but she was ready to go home, too.
"Kelly," David had returned from the kitchen with a bottle of water. "If you're willing, I'd like you and Joel to talk. I think it might help you, and he's willing if you are.
Kelly looked at the older gentleman and nodded slowly. "Yes, okay." She felt fluttering in her stomach, but pulled her shoulders back and nodded more decisively. "Yes. I have finals this week, but I could meet next week. Or we can do it on the weekend."
Joel nodded slowly. Both hands gripped the head of his cane, which was planted in front of him. "I can meet next week. Would you be willing to meet in Camdon? There's a little park there, the Veterans Park, that's just a short walk from my home. I don't drive anymore."
With arrangements for the meeting the following week made, David and Kelly returned to his car.
"What did you think?" David asked.
"It wasn't bad at all," Kelly said. "There were mostly Lights there. I guess I thought it would be more the other way around." She thought of the stories that had been shared earlier in the evening and grinned. "I can't imagine coming out of the bathroom stall and finding someone with a furry face there!"
Chapter four
Kelly glanced at the clock on the dashboard and eased her foot off the gas pedal. She had gotten busy finishing up Christmas ideas, but she was ahead of schedule. In fact—she looked at the clouds, patchy but heavy in the sky—she had time to stop and get a coffee to take with her. She flicked her directional and pulled into the drive-up to put in her order. She wondered briefly about getting one for Joel, too, but didn't know enough about the man, and didn't really want to buy an extra just to have it
thrown away if he didn't like coffee.
Kelly wished David had been able to meet with them at the park, but he had other obligations today. She wondered what kind of case David was working. He had been undercover at Sam's university for two years, until Sam was attacked by werecoyotes and Kelly and Wayne tried to prove that she hadn't been using drugs. It turned out that the coyotes had also been involved with smuggling and human trafficking, but the head of the group David had infiltrated was killed in the extraction. She had been so nervous last week about attending the meeting that she hadn't thought to ask David what he was working on now.
Kelly gave the barista a smile as she paid for her coffee, then re-entered traffic headed to Camdon. It was actually not as cold out as it looked. They were probably going to get rain instead of snow this time around. Kelly tried to think of what questions she might present to Joel. In the car on the ride back to her house last week, David had said that Joel worked for a power company before he retired. He was in his early 80s, and had lost his wife to cancer a few years ago. He had three children. David wasn't sure if all three were still living.
Kelly pulled into the parking lot and found a spot in the nearly empty lot. Joel had said that he didn't drive anymore, but she couldn't help but look at the other two cars. They were parked next to each other, but both were empty. She glanced around at the well maintained landscape and saw Joel sitting at a picnic table near one of the paths. Taking a deep breath, she shut the car off and got out.
"I SEE THAT GREAT MINDS think alike," Joel said, lifting his foam coffee cup in a salute. He smiled easily at her and took a sip. "I hope you don't mind, I would like to walk a little bit. In the cold, it's better for my leg to be moving."
Kelly smiled and shook her head. Joel stood and stumbled a bit, fitting the coffee cup into his left hand before firmly taking his cane in the right. He set off at an easy pace, keeping off the grassy area.
"I hope you don't mind," Joel said, "but David filled me in on a little bit of your experience. That can't have been enjoyable. I bet it's keeping you awake at night, am I right?"
Kelly made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat. She wasn't sure she wanted to discuss her nightmares with this man. Not yet.
Joel smiled gently. "David also told me he thought you have a good head on your shoulders. That, if you can get past your fears, you'd make a good agent for the task force. Of course, that's up to you. Not every Light needs to work for the task force. For some, it's enough to know that we exist, and just carry on with their everyday lives. But, if you are considering a job with the task force, you're going to have to get past those fears."
Kelly glanced quickly sidewards at him before resuming watching her feet. She wrinkled her nose and lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. "I think I'm doing okay," she said. She worked to keep her face impassive. How could he know how about her fears? He was just guessing, assuming that anyone would be afraid after an encounter with a shifter.
"Are you?" Joel pursed his lips and gave her a searching look. "Okay, if you say so." They passed a bench holding a pair of gloves, apparently forgotten. Joel's eyes swept the wooded hillside behind the bench as they continued along the meandering path. "So, if I suggested that those gloves belonged to a Shade who was currently enjoying a little time in Shadeform in these woods, how does that make you feel?"
Kelly had seen him notice the gloves and glance into the trees. She had anticipated his question. "I guess they need to stretch their legs sometimes, right?" She lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "I'm fine. I mean, I could have seen Shades plenty of times and not known, right? And I could see one today and not know again. I can't live in fear of every animal I see for the rest of my life, just in case they could be a dark Shade."
Joel nodded thoughtfully. "That is true. It isn't just the dark Shades that scare you, though, is it? I mean, how do you know if they are dark? There are plenty of people who appear to be kind and compassionate while stealing from their employers or abusing their families, and their neighbors don't even know. How many times have you seen interviews on television where the neighbors all say, 'he seemed like such a normal guy, I can't believe he did this,' whatever the horrible crime was?"
Kelly could feel the panic tightening around her throat, making it harder to take a breath. He was right. But, she reminded herself, she hadn't been scared of Gladys, and she had been a Shade. And, she had met one of David's cop friends and hadn't been scared. She felt the panic start to recede.
"There were Shades at the meeting last night, and I wasn't afraid. I mean, I was nervous of the new situation, but not really afraid of the Shades who were there. I wasn't afraid of Janet."
Joel nodded again. They had traveled down a path leading into the park and were now quite alone. "Here, have a seat on this rock," he said, pointing at a large rock off the edge of the path. They were at the base of a small overpass where fishermen sometimes tried their luck in the stream that cut through the park. "I'm going to be just underneath the bridge. Try to control your fear."
Kelly frowned but nodded. She moved to sit on the rock, her feet propped against the side of a smaller boulder. Joel moved carefully along the path that wound it's way under the bridge. Kelly could see him easily from her perch, but anyone using the regular path would not be able to. He turned to face Kelly, then dropped his cane to the ground and shrugged out of his coat, then stood wavering just inside the shadow of the bridge. With no other warning, he turned. Kelly froze as his jawline lengthened to a snout, hair sprung out across his face, and his ears lengthened, furred, and sprung up from his head. As his face was morphing, his body was changing, too. He bent forward so that his arms—no, Kelly thought, bordering on hysteria, his two front legs—touched the ground, and shuffled out of his sweatshirt, using his front legs to help tug it off his head.
Kelly scrambled back on the rock she was sitting on so that she dropped on the other side, putting the rock between herself and the coyote—for she was sure that was what he was. Her legs shook with the effort of staying crouched—they wanted to run, to put as much distance between herself and the animal as she could. She could feel her heart racing, feel her pulse in her temples. She forced herself to inhale, her eyes unblinkingly trained on the coyote. She breathed out, then in again, trying to slow her racing heart. She placed her flattened hands on the top of the rock, steadying herself with the contact. The coyote wasn't moving, wasn't growling or snapping at her. In fact, as she watched, it shifted its weight on its back legs in a way that suggested it was in pain. Kelly's eyes found the cane, laying on the ground next to it. She bowed her head, closing her eyes and breathing out deeply. Joel was an old man, making him an old coyote. She was embarrassed at her panic.
The coyote limped out of the shadows to the base of the rocks and sat back on his haunches. Kelly noticed it seemed to have more difficulty coordinating steps with the left legs, carefully picking up the front paw and moving it forward, its body almost teetering as it brought the hind legs forward. When it sat, the left leg jutted forward at an odd angle. Kelly walked around the rock she had scrambled behind and sat on the one her feet had been propped on, just feet from where the coyote sat. She pulled her legs into a crossed leg position and stared at the animal for several long minutes. His muzzle was grayed; gray hairs were sprinkled liberally throughout his coat of fur. He looked back at her, waiting. Kelly could see the intelligence in his eyes, though the left eye seemed to have a layer of fog covering it.
"I guess I didn't really manage to control my fear, huh?" Kelly said, cocking her head to one side as she spoke. She caught herself, and straightened. Her pulse had slowed, her breathing returned to normal. She no longer felt fear, but reminded herself that she was not talking to a dog, despite what it looked like.
The coyote looked back over its shoulder to under the bridge, then back at Kelly, as though waiting for her consent. Kelly looked toward the cane, waiting in the shadows.
"I'm okay," she said softly. "Unles
s—do you need me to do anything? Do you need me to help you?"
The coyote managed a glance down its nose that Kelly understood to suggest she should just sit tight, then stiffly got to its feet and turned back to the bridge. Kelly watched as the animal limped away. As it neared the spot where Joel had stood it stretched out it's right front leg, and Kelly saw a partially changed hand reach out and pick up the cane. She watched, feeling her pulse quicken a little as the coyote resumed Joel's form enough to use his hands to pick up his sweatpants. She turned her face and averted her eyes when she realized he was also going to shift the rest of his body back into human form, but stayed sitting where she was until he walked back to join her.
Chapter five
Kelly wasn't sure what to say. The old man seemed a little less steady after shifting than he had been on the walk out to the bridge. He hardly presented a scary image, yet she had barely managed to restrain herself from racing back to her car and speeding away.
Joel was the first to speak.
"You haven't been afraid of the idea of Shades, people being able to shift into animals, but you haven't actually seen another Shade shifted since you witnessed the man who used his shifting to intimidate you. Seeing it happen in front of you is different than being comfortable with an idea. You just exhibited a perfectly reasonable reaction, Kelly. In fact, I was expecting you to run for the hills, so you did better than I thought."
He led the way back to the bench they had passed on their way in. "Would you mind if we sit a spell?" He moved to the bench and gingerly lowered himself without waiting for her response. "Shifting takes a lot of energy."
Kelly sat at the other end of the bench, trying to keep space between them without being obvious. She sipped at the cooled coffee she had picked up after knocking it to the ground while scrambling for safety behind the rock. Some of it had spilled out, and what was left was unappealing, but it gave her something to do with her hands.