by Amy Star
CHAPTER FOUR
The car was silent at first. For long enough that Ainslie assumed that it was going to remain so for the entire drive. If not for how stiffly Andy was sitting up, she might have assumed that the girl had fallen asleep.
Her thoughts, though, were apparently churning.
“Don’t you want to ask about it?” Andy mumbled eventually, halfway back to the house. She was still staring out the window and her breath fogged the glass as she spoke.
“Of course I do,” Ainslie answered easily. “But I figure if you want to talk about it, you’ll talk about it whether I ask or not, and if you don’t want to talk about it then it isn’t really any of my business.”
Andy was quiet for a few moments, until eventually she stated quietly, “There was this… thing… Mom could do.” She offered no elaboration on what that thing was. “Everyone figured she would be able to teach all of us how to do it, no problem, and Lily and Paisley picked it up like old pros, but I could never figure it out.”
She shrugged one shoulder and slid lower in the seat. “I didn’t really care that much at first, but everyone kept saying oh, maybe I’d figure it out later, and I’ve been getting sick of it for ages. And last time we went to my grandparents’ house I kind of got into it with Grannie and Papa.
Papa can’t even do it either, but neither of them would let it go, and I’d rather stop pretending I’ll figure it out when I’m not going to.” She was quiet for a few seconds before she finished awkwardly, “So I didn’t want to go this time. I can bash my head against a wall just as easily at home as I can at my grandparents’ house.”
Ainslie nodded slowly in understanding. The gist of it made sense, though it was still pretty obvious that a major piece of the puzzle was being withheld from her. After a moment, she wondered mildly, “What was this thing that your mom taught the others to do?”
At first, there was no response. The silence stretched longer, until finally Andy huffed out a sigh and muttered, “It’s hard to explain.”
Ainslie took the hint and let the topic drop. The rest of the drive was silent, save for the sounds of the tires against the road and the wind whistling past the windows. It didn’t really feel like an uncomfortable silence, though, so Ainslie was going to consider it a victory.
*
It was hardly past seven when they got back to the house, and Ainslie tossed a quick dinner together. They both ate quickly, before Ainslie began raiding the pantry for ingredients. Andy watched her skeptically from the table, and her suspicion didn’t lessen in the slightest as Ainslie began measuring ingredients out into two bowls, mixing them periodically with a fork.
Andy was squinting at her warily as she stuck both bowls into the microwave and set it for a minute and a half. Despite her suspicion, though, Andy stayed in her seat at the table.
Soon enough, the microwave beeped and Ainslie pulled both bowls out and set one on the table in front of Andy. Andy blinked down at it, evidently utterly gob-smacked to be presented with a bowl of chocolate cake. She prodded it warily with a fork before taking a slow, cautious bite. And finally, she grinned.
“I didn’t know you could make cake in the microwave,” she stated eventually, halfway done with her cake.
“I can show you incredible things,” Ainslie assured her.
Afterwards, they left the dishes in the sink and watched a movie in the family room. It was soppy and romantic and it wasn’t quite to Ainslie’s tastes, but Andy seemed invested in it, and as far as Ainslie was concerned, that was the more important part.
The moon was high in the sky by then, full and round and glowing silver. A look at the clock in the family room said it was nearly ten at night, and Ainslie had to stare at it for a moment.
It was a quiet evening, on the whole. Andy disappeared upstairs to take a shower and Ainslie finally dealt with the dishes when e she had a free moment before she wandered up the stairs as well.
The day had certainly gone quickly. It may as well have devoured itself while no one was looking.
*
Christopher was curled up on Ainslie’s bed again when she got to her room that night. Sighing and shaking her head, she sat down and waited for him to pick his head up before she scratched beneath his chin. He allowed her to pet him for roughly seven seconds before he curled up into a perfect circle again and went back to sleep.
Ainslie was in her pajamas and sitting cross-legged on the bed with her laptop balanced on her thighs when Andy peered around the corner of the doorframe. She was wearing her pajamas and her hair was still dripping from her shower.
“Hey, um, Ainslie?”
Ainslie glanced up from her laptop.
Andy shuffled in place for a moment, tapping her fingers against the doorframe. Finally, she spat out in a rush, “Thanks for today,” before she turned and fled back to her bedroom.
Ainslie smiled quietly to herself.
She slept well that night, at least until Christopher tried to smother her with his tail around midnight.
*
On Sunday morning, Ainslie woke up with Christopher partially draped over her neck. Either he had decided he was fond of her, or he wanted to suffocate her and wasn’t quite succeeding. For her own peace of mind, she was going to assume it was the former rather than the latter.
She had a song from the festival stuck in her head already, and she hummed it under her breath as she collected her clothing for the day from the dresser and closet, and she nearly brained herself on the bed frame when she tripped over an empty suitcase.
Grumbling, she kicked her suitcases into the closet so they were out of the way, before she stepped out of her room, into the hall. It was time to start the day.
It was early. She tended not to sleep in much on weekends, so she would have a couple hours to herself before Andy got up. She used it as a chance to take a bubble bath, because the tub in the bathroom was enormous and had about half a dozen different kinds of jets and a groove for reclining, and it seemed criminal to never put any of those features to the test.
She supposed she should have expected it when she fell back to sleep in the water, though not for long, as the water was still warm when she jerked back awake. Even so, it seemed like a good idea to finish washing up and get out of the tub before she nodded off again.
She straightened up the bathroom before heading down the stairs to the kitchen. It seemed like a good morning for some bacon and an omelet.
Eventually, lured by the smell of food cooking, Andy crept into the kitchen, moving as if she thought she was being sneaky so she could steal some bacon for herself, only to come to a sudden halt when Ainslie simply handed her a plate of food.
Both of them still partially in the stages of waking up, breakfast was quiet, with only minimal conversation.
As Ainslie straightened up afterwards, she could hear the television in the family room.
It was a slow, leisurely morning. It seemed like a good way to recover from the excitement of the day before, and Ainslie was content to let the day drift by in peace.
*
It was around noon when Malik’s car pulled back into the driveway. Paisley was fast asleep in his arms when he walked through the front door and Lily shuffled in his wake like the littlest zombie.
Ainslie waited until both of the girls were napping on the couch in the family room before she moseyed into the den after Malik to talk to him.
Leaning casually in the doorway, she stated, “So, Andy and I had an interesting conversation yesterday.”
Malik paused in sorting through things on his desk, sliding a slow, sidelong glance in her direction.
Ainslie carried on. “She said there was something her mom could do that most of the rest of the family could do, but she couldn’t.” She didn’t miss the way Malik suddenly looked uncomfortable. He looked like he was going to try to excuse himself from the conversation, but that wasn’t something Ainslie planned on letting him do. Before he had a chance to say anything, she tippe
d her head curiously to one side, and her tone turned expectant. “Malik, what was she talking about?”
Though she didn’t sound angry, her tone brooked no argument. She wasn’t an idiot; she could tell when there was something deeper than just standard sibling rivalry going on, and if there were any enormous secrets in the middle of the family she was working for, she wanted to be privy to them. Her life was tied to their family; she figured she at least deserved to not be kept in the dark.
CHAPTER FIVE
Slowly, Malik sighed, lifting a hand to drag it through his hair. “I could explain,” he stated slowly, “but you wouldn’t believe it if all I did was tell you. So, come with me.” He crooked two fingers and turned away, heading towards the basement stairs.
Curiosity compelling her, Ainslie fell into step behind him.
She hadn’t been in the basement before that point. Not because she wasn’t allowed, but simply because from the limited amount she had heard about it, there was simply not much for her to do down there. The laundry room was behind the main floor bathroom, so it wasn’t as if she needed to go into the basement for that, and the weight room held little appeal for her.
To Ainslie’s bemusement, Malik walked through the weight room without pausing, instead heading out into the garage through the basement entrance.
Ainslie had been in the garage, of course, and it was with confusion that she followed. She didn’t recall there being anything particularly outlandish or amazing or… skill-based in there.
“Face the door,” Malik instructed, gesturing loosely with one hand for Ainslie to turn around.
As soon as she obeyed the command, her back to Malik as she faced the door they had just walked through, she heard the sound of fabric rustling. Slightly alarmed, she whipped back around, just in time to see Malik lose the last of his clothing and change shapes entirely.
Where Malik had been standing just an instant before, there was instead a bear. A black bear. Larger than normal, though still nothing truly enormous (at least not by the standards of a bear). Ainslie gaped for a second as the situation processed, before she squealed in alarm and began backing towards the door to the basement, only to forcibly come to a halt when she tripped over Lily’s skateboard and landed on her ass on the concrete floor.
Malik—for she had no choice but to assume the bear was still Malik—rolled his eyes and sat down on the floor. He watched Ainslie placidly while she gaped at him.
Cautiously, the door opened and Lily poked her head out, presumably to see what the shrieking and clattering that had apparently woken her up had been about. Utterly calm and unalarmed, she regarded the bear for a moment. “Oh,” she offered after a moment, as if she was simply observing that it had started to rain. “Are we showing her that now?”
She asked the question so calmly that Ainslie almost wanted to demand to know if they were, in fact, both looking at the same sight. Such things were rather antithetical to her role as a caregiver, though, so she wisely bit her tongue.
Malik shrugged in a manner that Ainslie had previously assumed bears were incapable of, and the fact that the gesture seemed slightly helpless did not make it any less absurd just then.
He jerked his muzzle towards the door expectantly, and with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Lily disappeared back into the basement, the door clicking closed once again.
For a few more seconds, nothing else happened. Finally, Malik jerked his head expectantly towards the wall. Ainslie didn’t speak bear or pantomime, but considering he had told her to turn around earlier, she was pretty comfortable in assuming that was what he wanted just then, as well.
Not quite trusting herself to stay on her feet if she stood back up, she instead simply covered her eyes with both hands and let her chin dip towards her chest. After a moment she could hear fabric rustling again, but with no proof of whether or not Malik had actually transformed or not, she kept her eyes covered until she heard him say, “Alright.”
She peeked through her fingers first, as if she still expected him to be a bear when she looked, regardless of the fact that she heard him speak and he hadn’t seemed to be able to do that while he was a bear.
Seeing him once again looking like a human being and fully dressed, Ainslie let her hands fall away from her face, landing in her lap. It took a few more seconds before she risked getting back to her feet.
When Malik gestured for her to follow him back into the house, she fell into step behind him after only a second of hesitation.
He led her back up the basement stairs and into the den, where he motioned for her to wait before he left the room once again. Ainslie sat down in an armchair and stared at the carpet as she tried to figure out whether she was dreaming or not.
By the time Malik came back with two mugs of coffee, Ainslie had come to the decision that she was not dreaming and she was not hallucinating. Slowly, she accepted the mug that he handed to her and stared into it rather than taking a sip.
“I’m a were-bear,” Malik stated eventually, before he paused to sip his coffee. “My wife was a wolf,” he added.
“So the girls can…” Ainslie trailed off as she tried to think of the word she wanted to use. “Change,” she finally settled on.
“Lily and Paisley can,” Malik confirmed. “Lily is a bear, like me. Paisley takes after her mother. Only one of my wife’s parents is a were-wolf,” he continued. “Her father is a regular human. So as unlikely as it seemed, it… skipped a generation, I guess, in Andy’s case.” One shoulder rose in a lackluster shrug. “Considering her parentage, I don’t know if she really qualifies as fully human, but she isn’t a were-animal.”
Suddenly, everything Andy had been talking about made a great deal more sense. After a moment longer of staring into her coffee, Ainslie finally took a gulp of it, swallowed, and observed, “She said her grandparents kept telling her to give it time, but if Paisley and Lily are already confirmed were-animals, it doesn’t sound like it’s a… puberty thing, or whatever.”
Malik sighed quietly and turned his mug back and forth in his hands. “More often than not, we know from close to birth. Lily’s first full moon was two weeks after she was born, and she changed. Paisley’s first full moon was just shy of a month after she was born, and she changed. But sometimes, there are late bloomers. Were-animals who don’t have their first change until puberty, like you said. But while that’s not unheard of, generally it happens at the beginning of puberty.”
“So if it was going to happen for Andy,” Ainslie mused slowly, “it would have happened by now.”
Malik nodded once, stiffly. “She knows that. She’s known that for a while. Her grandparents keep insisting that there might still be a chance, though, and it feels like they’re trying to get her hopes up for no reason by now. It’s… caused a bit of a disruption,” he finished awkwardly.
Ainslie cleared her throat. “I noticed.”
“She doesn’t really like to talk about it, usually,” Malik carried on, eying Ainslie thoughtfully. “How did you get her to say anything about it?”
Ainslie shrugged nonchalantly. “I let her decide if she was comfortable telling me. As it turns out, paying a little bit of attention and letting someone know you think they’re special even as a regular human does a lot to make someone comfortable.”
Holding his mug in one hand, Malik glanced aside and rubbed the back of his neck. “I suppose Andy does fall by the wayside, now and then,” he admitted reluctantly. “She just… always seems to have a handle on herself, and Lily only just stopped accidentally transforming if she’s too badly startled. I’m honestly amazed that you haven’t seen Paisley transform, considering she only barely understands the concept of secrecy.”
“So I’m going to go out on a limb and assume Evey was aware,” Ainslie guessed, her tone dry.
Malik huffed out something like a quiet laugh against the rim of his mug. “Not at first, but she figured it out pretty quickly.”
“I guess you’re two for two, then,” Ai
nslie observed.
“You’re planning on sticking around, then?” he asked slowly, his tone cautious.
Ainslie sighed slowly and busied herself with her coffee for a few seconds before she answered. “I’m sticking around,” she replied. “I’d be a pretty poor nanny if I decided to pack up and run.”
*
Andy was sitting on the stairs when Ainslie stepped out of the den. She jerked to a halt, startled at the sight of her. Andy looked conflicted, like she was searching for the words even when she wasn’t sure she knew what she wanted to say.