Argentum (P.A.W.S. Book 2)

by Debbie Manber Kupfer

  “Thank you, kids. You did wonders!” She beamed. “You must take some Passover kugel home with you, and of course some almond macaroons.”

  About ten minutes later, the group left, their arms filled with packages to take back to P.A.W.S.

  Chapter 3

  On the way back the group chatted about the evening, but Miri was unusually quiet. She kept thinking about that photograph, about those eyes, so close to her—staring back at her. She knew Sarah was right. She needed to learn about the connection between her and this Miriam from the past. She shivered and clutched her cat charm for comfort. She thought about her dreams. Was it possible that all of this was connected?

  By the time the group reached the Forest Park Metro station, it was very late and there were no more buses running into the park, so the four of them started walking back through towards the Jewel Box where P.A.W.S. was located.

  “Last one back is a rotten egg!” shouted Danny suddenly, and he swiftly changed form. Danny’s animagus was a large and beautiful Maine Coon cat, tabby and white with huge, powerful paws. Almost instantly, Josh changed into his wolf form and ran after Danny, howling. Miri metamorphosed into her cat form (small and black, with yellow eyes and one white whisker among the black).

  “Wait for me, guys!” she meowed, and shot after the boys, a swift black shadow in the night. This left Mandy standing there on her own. She looked up at the sky. The moon was almost full. Tomorrow night she would be forced to change into her wolf form, like she was every full moon. Tonight she had a choice. She’d only recently learned how to exercise this choice and still she didn’t feel entirely comfortable doing it. She still remembered the pain of her first transformations, but Josh had been patient with her and taught her well, and now, by closing her eyes and concentrating, she slowly began to let go of her human shape and embrace that of the wolf inside her. She still felt a little resistance, but Josh had been right, the transformation was no longer painful. She gazed at the brown fur forming on her limbs and torso. Then, taking a deep breath, she launched herself after her friends, enjoying the speed and agility as a wolf that she could never attain in human form.

  When she reached the cedar tree that acted as the entranceway to P.A.W.S., her three friends were waiting for her and had already shifted back to human form.

  “Guess I’m the rotten egg!” Mandy smiled, changing back.

  Josh took a stick from the ground and traced the letters P.A.W.S. on the bark of the tree and revealed the entranceway in the tree’s trunk. The four friends descended.

  The outside air on that spring evening was chilly and damp. By contrast, inside it was warm and cozy. The Institute’s janitor, Bob Stone, an animagus giant tortoise, made sure that whatever the weather above (and St. Louis weather was notorious for changing at a drop of a hat), the temperature inside the home of the Midwest Institute was always pleasant.

  The friends made their way to the rec room, which was filled with laughter interspersed with the occasional growl or squawk. Joey Marks, the visiting exchange student from the P.A.W.S. Institute of Australia whose animagus was a kangaroo, bounded up to them as they came in through the door.

  “Hey, mates! How was your evening?”

  “Good.” Danny smiled. “I’m completely stuffed. Josh’s mom is a really good cook, though don’t tell Hugo I said that. He’d be jealous.” Hugo Hogsworth was the P.A.W.S. Institute’s chef; a rather large fellow and a shapeshifter pig, who often consumed as much as he cooked.

  “What have you been up to, Joey?” asked Miri.

  “Been playing chess with Andy—almost beat him that last time.”

  Andrew Bones was one of the three new werewolf students that recently joined P.A.W.S. after Alistair’s pack was disbanded. He and his two friends Jordan and Devon had decided to stay in P.A.W.S., at least for the moment, though another defector, Ethan, had felt more comfortable joining the wolf pack that lived just outside the boundaries of the zoo in Forest Park.

  “Anybody else want a game?” asked Joey.

  “Sure Joey,” said Josh. Josh had been playing chess ever since he was small, and had also recently been playing games with Andrew, who was a particularly cunning player (and was probably going easy on Joey). Josh suspected that Andrew had perfected his strategy in the same way he had, by playing many, many chess games with Alistair during his captivity.

  Josh was particularly glad of the new werewolves at P.A.W.S. For many years, until Mandy turned up last fall, Josh had been the only one of his kind at the St. Louis Institute, but now with all the new arrivals, he felt much more at home and far less lonely than he had for a long, long time. Tomorrow night for the full moon, the five of them would join up with the zoo wolf pack and it would almost feel like a party!

  He sighed. He hadn’t been paying attention to the game and now Joey had checkmate. Oh well, he probably should get some sleep, seeing as he wouldn’t be getting much tomorrow night.

  Chapter 4

  Quentin Frakes gazed in the mirror, looking for a sign—a telltale wrinkle, a stray gray hair. There, right at the root, a tiny flash of stray silver trying to poke its way through. No, no that mustn’t happen. He walked over to his refrigerator, opened it, and peered inside. At the very back were three and a half bottles of red liquid. No need to take any chances, he thought, I’ve still got plenty left. He removed the half bottle from the fridge and set a copper cauldron on the gas stove in his tiny kitchen.

  Quentin lived alone, nearly always had, and liked this modest apartment: just one bedroom, a study, a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Alistair had offered to buy him a fancier place, but Quentin had always declined. “For what?” he would say. “There’s only me.”

  Only me. He sighed. There was a time . . . but it was too late now. He’d burned that bridge a long time ago. There was no going back. But still . . . she had been just as he had remembered her, older of course, but still strong, powerful, beautiful. No, there was no use thinking about it, not after what he had done.

  He added ingredients to the pot, from the ancient recipe he had made so many times now that he no longer had to think about it. It was the simplest of healing draughts, but with a special ingredient. He opened the bottle of blood and added a little to the pot; that should be enough for now. Got to make it last. Now that Alistair was gone . . .

  Jessamyn stepped back from her scrying bowl. She had to stop doing this. Stop watching Quentin. He had betrayed her; he’d chosen to work for Alistair. She needed to walk away, but still it had unnerved her, seeing him so young and vigorous still. She looked at her own reflection in the water of the bowl. Yes, she was old now. He was right to treat her with contempt.

  But still . . . she remembered.

  She was just twelve years old when she’d met Quentin. She was still living at her parents’ home on Inis Fraoigh, a remote islet off the coast of Ireland. Her family had lived there for centuries and had passed on the magical arts from one generation to the next. Folks would travel from the mainland to seek out her mother, Cleona, for herbal remedies and spells.

  Cleona was teaching Jessamyn. “Pay attention, Jessa,” she would say, “one day you will have to take my place as Healer. You need to learn the magical arts.”

  Jessamyn was eager to learn magic, but frustrated with the slow pace of her mother’s lessons. Seeking out herbs and preparing them for potions was tedious. Jessamyn wanted to do “real” magic.

  She’d begun to experiment when her mother wasn’t looking. She would go out onto the deserted beach and pick out an interesting rock or seashell. She found that if she concentrated, she could in turn replicate it. She would continue doing so until she amassed a whole pile of shells and rocks around her. Then she would form them into mini-fortresses, and not once would her hands touch the rocks and shells. But her elaborate constructions were just illusions. She learned quickly enough that if she lost concentration on her task, the illusion would simply melt away.

  It was on such a day that she met Quent
in. The fortress she was building was wondrous, the biggest and grandest she’d ever made. It reached a full six feet high and was covered with shells that sparkled like jewels. She stepped back from her work and smiled. She wished she could show her mother this. Maybe if Cleona saw how beautiful her illusions were, she would encourage her. But Jessamyn knew in her heart that that wasn’t true. Cleona saw no use for illusion; it was not a practical form of magic, she said, so was clearly a waste of time.

  “Leave the illusions to the leprechauns!” she would say, “we have work to do.”

  Jessamyn had stepped back to admire her creation when a large seagull had flown in from the sea and landed directly on top of her tower. Jessamyn stared at the bird; surely this was not possible. Her tower was merely an illusion; the gull should have sunk right through it, but here he was, perched like a sentry on its topmost spire. Her surprise at seeing the bird made Jessamyn lose her concentration, and the bird plopped down to the ground in front of her. She’d expected the gull to fly away, but it just sat there looking at her as if it was trying to work out if she could be trusted.

  She looked closely at the bird and noticed a strange thing: around its neck it wore a chain of silver with a tiny charm attached. The charm depicted a bird with outstretched wings. It was beautiful, wrought in silver by the finest jeweler. Without understanding what she was doing, Jessamyn reached out towards it. The bird did not stop her and the charm felt warm to the touch.

  Then slowly the bird began to change. Jessamyn stepped back and watched in wonder as its wings elongated and transformed into arms ending in pale white hands with long fingers. Its body stretched and formed a torso and its spindly legs and claws formed long human legs and feet. The gull’s eyes had been green and those did not change, but within minutes, in the place of the seagull, was a young man of maybe eighteen or nineteen with long dark hair and a mischievous smile.

  Chapter 5

  Miri and Danny were sitting together on a bench in the Jewel Box. This was Miri’s favorite place at P.A.W.S. The glass walls, which shattered last November when her mother Nora burst through them, had since been restored, but for tourists, the Jewel Box remained closed for renovation.

  It was filled with lush tropical plants and the air was lightly scented. It was nighttime, and the stars shone through the glass ceiling. Danny had his arm around Miri and was gently stroking her hair. Although Miri loved spending time with Danny here in her favorite place, she was also distracted today. She was thinking—thinking about that other Miriam from long ago. Who was she? How were they related? Miri had grown up with her omama, Celia, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She knew that her omama had come from Vienna and had escaped somehow during the Second World War with her opapa, Max, but she didn’t know the details. She assumed her escape was somehow related to the cat charm that today hung around Miri’s neck.

  She turned and looked at Danny. She’d been pondering what she needed to do, and had come to a decision.

  “I’m going to have to go, Danny. Back to New York. I have a feeling the answer is there.”

  “I’ll come with you, Miri. We can go in the summer. Spend some time at the New York P.A.W.S. Institute. I have some friends there who visited a couple of years back. It would be fun to see them again.”

  “I suppose so,” replied Miri. It would be good to have Danny with her, but still Miri wondered if she really could wait two more months. Something inside her told her that it was important to try and find out the truth; that she needed to connect the dots.

  She hadn’t told Danny about the dreams, either. The dreams of Alistair that now punctuated her nights, and left her tense and scared. It was a good thing, she thought, that her special power only worked in one direction. Miri could sense the emotions of others and magnify them. She was glad Danny couldn’t sense how scared she was of the part of Alistair that was left inside her.

  She looked at Danny, his green eyes so full of concern for her. It still amazed her that he loved her. Slowly she lowered her mental shield and let herself be filled by the flow of his emotions. It was beautiful, and instinctively she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, while she magnified his love and sent it back to him. He broke off for a moment and looked into her eyes and smiled.

  “You’re so beautiful, Miri,” he whispered and drew her back into his arms.

  Chapter 6

  Mandy said goodnight to Josh and went up to her room. Since December she’d gained a roommate, another of her kind, a young girl called Jenna. Mandy remembered her from the time she spent in Alistair’s packhouse. She was thirteen years old, a year younger than Mandy, but she was very small and frail. Tomorrow night on the full moon, she knew Jenna would stick close to her when they were out in the park. Despite having been a werewolf longer than Mandy, Jenna was still terrified of her monthly transformations, and avoided changing form at any other time of the month apart from on the night of the full moon when she had no choice.

  Mandy was hurt the night that Alistair and his pack attacked P.A.W.S. and she spent a week in the infirmary under the care of Mrs. Beatrice Bumsqueak, the Institute’s healer, whose animagus form was a huge purple toad. Josh had visited her every day and they had grown even closer. Mandy was determined to overcome her fear of changing form, and as soon as Mrs. Bumsqueak let her leave, she begged Josh to continue her training. Her lessons progressed well, and soon Josh felt she was accomplished enough to accompany him and two of the new wolves that had joined P.A.W.S., Andrew and Jordan, on a short scouting mission.

  Andrew and Jordan were going to lead them to Alistair’s packhouse; maybe there would be some supplies there that would be useful to P.A.W.S.

  The four of them traveled in wolf form. Andrew led them. Apparently, they had been making this journey several days a week for months now, while they spied on P.A.W.S. for Alistair, gathering intelligence. Andrew didn’t know if the wards placed around the packhouse by the magician Quentin Frakes would still be in place, but in any case, as recent members of the pack, the house should still recognize them and they should be able to enter.

  They traveled after dark. It was easier that way for wolves. Folks were less likely to notice them in the shadows. When they reached the neighborhood of the packhouse though, there was no longer any need to hide. The area was all but abandoned. Alistair had purposefully chosen this spot for that reason. Over the centuries, he had accumulated a good deal of wealth and could have afforded to live in a luxurious mansion if he had wished, but he preferred this derelict neighborhood away from prying eyes.

  They changed back into human form and walked slowly through the abandoned streets of boarded-up buildings, until finally they reached the packhouse. From the outside, it looked like all the others; all the windows were boarded up and the yard was overgrown with weeds.

  Andrew took the lead and walked up to the front door. The door was of plain wood with flaking green paint. He put his hand on it and pushed, expecting resistance, but there was none. The door just swung open and the four friends walked inside.

  The whole place was in disarray. Empty food packages, discarded newspapers, and odd items of clothing were spread all over the floor, and everything was covered in a layer of dust. In the kitchen, the sink was brimming over with unwashed dishes, and flies were swarming over a rotten piece of fruit that had been left out on the countertop.

  Mandy shuddered when she noticed a rat scurry out from the overflowing garbage can in the corner of the kitchen. Jordan started opening the closets. There had to be some stuff here worth salvaging, worth taking back to P.A.W.S. He found a pack of black plastic garbage bags in one of the cabinets and handed one to each of the friends.

  “Perhaps we should split up,” he said. “If you find anything worth taking, put it in one of these bags, and we’ll take it back to Forest Park.”

  Mandy took her bag and started walking up the stairs to the second level. It was strange to be back in this house where she was held captive for a month last fall. She
remembered this floor had been full of people when she was there. These had been bedrooms. Now they were all empty. She wondered what had happened to the other wolves—the ones that had neither been killed nor joined P.A.W.S. Were they out there somewhere? What were they doing now that their pack leader, Alistair, was no more?

  She wandered from room to room, picking up discarded clothes and other small items and putting them into her bag. Mandy understood the importance of this. She had come to P.A.W.S. with nothing, and everything she now owned she had been given. It was so different from her previous life when the idea of accepting a hand-me-down would have been out of the question.

  At the very end of the corridor was the small room where Mandy herself was kept during her stay in this house. She reluctantly walked towards it and opened the door . . . the room was not empty.

  Cowering at the back of the bed was Jenna. She held her knees clutched to her chest and she was shaking all over.

  “Ryan?” she said. “Where’s Ryan?”

  Mandy didn’t know what to say. She knew what had happened to Ryan. He had died the same night of the attack on P.A.W.S. He’d tried to attack Miri and had been killed by Nora and Jessamyn.

  “Jenna,” began Mandy. “It is Jenna, isn’t it?”

  Jenna nodded.

  “Jenna, we’ve come to take you away from here—to a good place, a place where you’ll be safe.”

  “Ryan!” said Jenna again. “Where’s Ryan? No, I can’t leave here. Alistair will be angry. He told me not to move. It’s been so hard—the moon, I had to go out in the moon. He’ll be angry when he finds me. He’ll beat me. He’ll hurt Ryan. No, I can’t leave here. Go away!”