Fred Hampson, Boston’s police commissioner, was a virulent hater of all things paranormal. He made no secret of the fact that he was a founding member of Humans First, and he’d publicly endorsed Seth Baldwin, the anti-paranormal candidate, for governor in the last election.
“Your partner knows I’m a shapeshifter.” I was pretty sure he didn’t like me, either. I’d been present when Foster had gotten into an ill-advised wrestling match with a zombie in Creature Comforts. I’d rooted for the zombie.
“And there’s no reason Hampson needs to find out I’m talking to you. It’s none of his damn business who my friends are.” That twitch in his jaw started up again. “I can’t stay out long. Everyone’s working around the clock on these damn Reaper murders. There’s a lot of pressure on the department to get results, and fast. Nobody’s happy when there’s a serial killer on the loose.” His fingers combed his curls. “And I want to catch the bastard before there’s another killing.”
I was glad I had some information, that I wasn’t just asking Daniel a favor. “That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know if this will be any help, but my aunt Mab told me that serial killers are usually possessed by the Morfran.”
A crease appeared between his eyebrows. “You mean those giant crows that attacked the crowd at the Paranormal Appreciation Day concert?”
“They’re not really crows. They’re a spirit, a demonic spirit. But yes, that’s what I mean.”
Daniel stopped in his tracks. A woman behind us bumped into him and cursed. He didn’t seem to notice. “But Vicky, that’s great!” He grinned, and I wondered why he seemed so happy at the prospect of tangling with the Morfran again. “I saw what you did that night, how you used your black dagger to get rid of them. You can do that again, right? You can pull the urge to kill out of the Reaper.”
“I wish.” It was a good idea, but it wouldn’t work. “The Morfran has to be loose—a free-floating spirit—for that ritual to imprison it. When the Morfran possesses someone, it becomes part of that person.”
“Well, is there any way to . . . I don’t know, call the Morfran? Flush the killer out of hiding?”
It might be worth trying, but I didn’t know the answer. “I’ll ask Mab. If it’s possible, she’ll know how to do it.”
“Get back to me as soon as you can, okay? The Reaper’s first two victims were forty-eight hours apart. We’re worried he’ll strike again tonight.”
“He?”
“He, she, it. I wish we knew even that much. Your information might be our first break.” He pulled back his sleeve to look at his watch, and we turned back toward the precinct. “So,” Daniel said, “you mentioned a favor.”
I crossed my fingers. If Daniel couldn’t help me, I didn’t know who to ask. “I was hoping you might be able to get one of your guys in forensics to analyze something for me. Check for poison—and whether there’s an antidote.”
“Possibly. But what—?”
“I can’t tell you. Please don’t ask.”
“You’re not . . .” The crease between his eyebrows was deeper this time. “You wouldn’t use it against someone, right?”
“Of course not.”
The crease disappeared, but no smile replaced it. “I didn’t think you would.”
“But you had to ask. I understand. And I don’t mind addressing that. I’m looking to heal, not hurt.” I pulled the plastic bag holding the cotton ball from my purse. Daniel took the bag and put it in his jacket pocket.
“I’ll see what I can find out.”
We were back at the precinct. We stopped in front of the glass doors, and I put a hand on his arm. “The sooner the better. All right? It’s . . . it’s important.”
He started to say something, then cut himself off with a nod. He turned and went inside.
10
THE KNEELAND STREET DINER, WHERE I WAS MEETING GWEN, is a 1940s diner that’s never aspired to join the twenty-first century. It’s famous as a late-night hot spot, a place to go for munchies after the bars close.
If you stop by Kneeland Street at two a.m. on a weekend, you can expect to join a line stretching halfway down the block. Lunchtimes are a little less crowded, but not much, even on a Sunday. I was glad to arrive a little early and snag a place in line. You had to wait longer if you preferred one of the ten or so booths to a seat at the counter, and I suspected Gwen would want some privacy for our conversation.
I was second in line when I spotted Gwen coming from the direction of South Station, pushing a stroller. I waved, and she steered toward me. She must not have been able to get a sitter on short notice, but I was glad to see the baby. Actually, Justin wasn’t much of a baby anymore, I thought, as Gwen came up. He was two already, a toddler with two settings: Go and Go Faster.
We snagged a booth right away. I held my nephew, who squirmed to escape my grasp, while Gwen folded the stroller. The waitress fussed over Justin, produced a high chair, and then fussed over him some more. She gave us menus and took our order for coffee, plus apple juice for the baby. “Big boy!” Justin shouted, pounding on his tray. I was hungry and in the mood for breakfast, which this diner serves round the clock, so I ordered the banana French toast. Gwen hesitated. She started to ask about the grilled chicken salad, then abruptly changed her mind. “I really shouldn’t, but . . . Oh, what the hell—heck.” She glanced at Justin, who was tearing up a napkin and dropping the pieces on the floor. “Bring me a cheeseburger with fries.” She flipped a page on the menu. “And a strawberry frappe.”
“Regular or extra-thick?”
“You know what? I’ll go with extra-thick.”
“Good choice.” The waitress nodded, winked at Justin, and went to put in the order.
Gwen sat back and looked around, taking in the red-andblue neon lights, the old black-and-white photos, the starburst aluminum panels behind the counter. She inhaled deeply. “I love that greasy-spoon smell, although I’ll want to wash it out of my hair by the time we get home,” she said. “I used to come here sometimes, back in my single days. My girlfriends and I would go out to the clubs, then stop here after they closed. It was fun.”
“Fun!” Justin waved a scrap of napkin at her. Gwen took it away from him and replaced it with a coloring book. She shook some crayons out of a box. Justin picked up a blue crayon, examined it, then broke it in half and threw both pieces on the floor.
“No, honey, like this.” Gwen opened the book to a picture of a teddy bear with an umbrella. She filled in part of the umbrella with red strokes. “See? You try it.”
Justin snatched the red crayon and scribbled on the teddy bear’s face. Two seconds later, the crayon was on the floor. Gwen picked it up, along with the two halves of the blue crayon, and colored the umbrella as she talked. Justin watched her.
“I didn’t expect to have him with me today. He’s too young to go with Nick and the others, but his babysitter was sick. She said she has the flu.” She stopped coloring and looked up. “Can you imagine not getting a flu shot? In this day and age?”
I knew what she meant. The fast-mutating virus that had caused the zombie plague three years ago was related to the flu. Since then, flu shots had become very popular. Norms tended to panic about any kind of virus.
“I feel like I should look for a new babysitter,” Gwen finished.
“Well, if she hasn’t dropped dead yet, it’s not the plague. She’ll recover.”
“I know. But she was so careless, skipping her flu shot. I can’t trust someone like that to take care of my kids.”
She put down the crayon as the waitress brought our food. I drowned my French toast in maple syrup. Gwen took a bite out of her massive cheeseburger, closing her eyes as she chewed, perhaps remembering those single days. Justin whined. She put some French fries on a napkin in front of him and spooned a little of her frappe into his mouth. He smacked his lips and made happy mmmmm sounds.
“So what’s up?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew: Maria
. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Can’t I just have lunch with my sister? It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and we didn’t get any girl time last night.”
That wasn’t why Gwen had asked me to lunch, and we both knew it. But I was happy to catch up with my sister until she was ready to talk about what was bothering her. I smiled to myself a little; Maria had acted the same way last night, letting me know she needed to talk and then having no clue how to get to the point. Like mother, like daughter. Justin waved his sippy cup and then bounced it off the floor. It landed near my foot. I scooped it up and handed it to Gwen. “Well,” I said, “we’ve got plenty of girl time now.”
For the next half hour, we swapped stories. I told some tales from work. Gwen laughed about the Drude victim who was terrified of cats, so his dream-demons took the form of cute, fluffy kittens. She talked about her boys—how Zack terrorized and charmed his kindergarten teachers by turns; how Justin had pointed at a cat and said, “Dog,” making a neighbor laugh, and then Justin refused to speak for a week.
After a while, Justin got squirmy in his high chair. Gwen lifted him out, and he amused himself by sliding off Gwen’s bench, crawling under the table, and climbing up onto mine. Then off my side, under the table, and back to Gwen. He repeated the expedition, over and over, with all the enthusiasm and determination of a mountain climber ascending Everest. I waved to Justin under the table, then looked up to see Gwen with tight lips and worried eyes. She was ready to get to the real subject.
“How’s Maria?” I asked. “You haven’t mentioned her yet.”
The line of her mouth got tighter. “It took her a little while to recover from her . . . experience last October. But she’s doing great now. Straight A’s in school. She really loves dance class. She’s got a recital coming up in a few weeks. I hope you can make it.”
“Email me the date. I’ll be there.”
Gwen picked up her spoon and stirred the remains of her frappe, watching the spoon go round and round. Abruptly, she pushed the glass away. “I think Maria’s becoming a shapeshifter.”
Good. Now her fear was out in the open, where we could deal with it. “She’s still so young, Gwen. It’s too early to tell.”
“She’s eleven years old. Two of her friends have already started getting their periods—I overheard them talking about it. And Maria is . . . she’s . . . starting to develop.” Gwen blushed, like the whole subject of Maria growing up embarrassed her. “All the pre-shapeshifting symptoms are there. The mood changes. The secretiveness. And she’s having shapeshifter dreams—she told me she spoke to you about those.”
“That’s just puberty. There’s nothing specific to shapeshifting in what you call her ‘symptoms.’ Most eleven-year-old girls go through those things.”
“Not the dreams.”
“She’s had a few flying dreams. Everyone gets those.”
She sighed, exasperated. “I’m not a norm, Vicky. I went through the change myself. I know the signs.”
“Okay, so let’s say she is becoming a shapeshifter. Things are different now, not like when we were growing up. There’s no shame in it, nothing to hide. Her friends will probably think it’s cool.”
“Yes. Things are different. And that’s what scares me. Do you think the authorities have forgotten what happened in New Hampshire? They’re watching us, watching Maria. If her abilities activate, there’s no way they’ll let her live a normal life. What if—” Gwen fumbled for a napkin from the holder and pressed it to her face. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. “What if they take my baby away from me?”
Finally I understood. I reached across the table and held Gwen’s hand. “You think they’ll force her to live in Deadtown.”
Gwen nodded, sniffing. “We can’t move there.”
Yeah, I could see that. Nick was fully human. As an inactive demi-human, Gwen was legally the same as a norm. The boys, too—even if they carried the Cerddorion shapeshifter gene, they’d never develop the ability to shift; that was restricted to females in my race. Out of the whole family, Maria was the only one who might be “monstrous” enough to fit in.
“She could live with me.”
Gwen quickly blinked the horror out of her eyes, but I’d seen it there. “Where would she go to school? Who’d be her friends? Zombies and werewolves?”
“They’re people, Gwen. Just like you—and me.” I knew what she meant, though. Gwen had always sheltered her kids, giving them the most comfortable suburban lifestyle possible. Maria wasn’t ready for Deadtown.
“We’ll have to leave the country. Emigrate to Canada, maybe. Or the UK.” Those countries had more relaxed laws that allowed paranormals to mix with the human populace. “But I can’t convince Nick. He doesn’t want to move.”
“I don’t want you to move, either. Let me talk to Kane. Maybe you can apply for a waiver to allow her to stay in Needham.” It didn’t seem likely. When the monsters came out into the open, more than three years ago now, werewolf families in Massachusetts had been forced to move to Deadtown or one of the three secure “villages”—which were more like penitentiaries—adjacent to the state’s werewolf retreats. The law had uprooted families who’d lived quietly among their neighbors for decades. It didn’t seem like that law would make any exceptions for an eleven-year-old shapeshifter.
“Gwen . . .” I knew I’d regret what I was about to say. “You know that Mab would take her in.” Gwen frowned. At the same moment, Justin bumped his head on the table and began to howl. She pulled him onto her lap and rocked him. I kept talking. I knew she was listening, even as she comforted the baby. Or was as close to listening as she’d ever get on this topic.
“I don’t mean for training. Even if she’s a shapeshifter, Maria’s too young for that. And training would be Maria’s choice, anyway. You know Mab would never force her.” Gwen kissed the top of Justin’s head and didn’t look at me. “Mab has a beautiful home in a part of the world that accepts our kind. Jenkins and Rose still work for her—you remember what a softie Rose is, don’t you? I don’t know what went wrong between you and Mab, but—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay, okay. I wasn’t prying. But Mab is a good person, loving in her own way. And she cares about family.”
“I do not want my daughter anywhere near that woman. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“Off the table.”
I heaved a frustrated sigh. Sending Maria to live with Mab was by far the best solution—if Maria did turn out to be a shapeshifter—and Gwen wouldn’t even consider it.
Justin stared at me, his wide eyes still shiny with tears, as if he were trying to figure out why Mommy was mad at Aunt Vicky. I blew him a kiss. He smiled, then twisted and hid his face in his mother’s shirt.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with her, Vicky. But I might need your help. If Kane can do something on the legal side of things, that would be wonderful, and we’d all be very grateful. That’s not what I’m talking about, though.” Gwen stroked Justin’s hair as he leaned against her chest, his eyes half-closed. “If Maria starts shifting, I . . . I don’t think I can help her. It’s been so long. When I made my choice to become a human”—her voice took on a bitter edge—“or as close to human as I can ever be, I was determined to fully live the life I’d chosen. I locked a lot away then. Maria will need someone who can show her how to deal with that side of herself.” Her fingers stopped moving in Justin’s hair. “I’m asking if you’ll do that for her.”
A warm feeling swelled in my chest. “Of course, Gwen. You don’t even have to ask.” But I was glad she had. For the first time in months, I felt like Gwen wanted me to be a part of her family, rather than shutting me out like I was some kind of threat.
“Promise me one thing, though,” Gwen said.
“Sure.”
“Promise me that you won’t . . . you know, make it too much fun. You know how shapeshifting is at first. Like playing
make-believe, only it’s real. You have to promise that you’ll explain the downsides to her, too.”
“Wait.” That warm feeling cooled off by several degrees. “You want me to discourage her?”
“Not that so much.” But the way she toyed with her spoon, refusing to meet my eyes, showed it was exactly what she meant. “Just . . . well, you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. What downsides?” I took a sip of cold coffee to keep my voice from getting shrill. “I’m a shapeshifter, Gwen—that’s my choice. I’m not going to pretend I regret it because you chose differently. I won’t try to influence her to embrace shapeshifting, but I won’t push her to choose normhood, either. And neither should you. It’s got to be Maria’s own decision—and we don’t even know for sure yet that she’ll have any decision to make.”
Gwen looked like she wanted to argue with me, but she remained silent.
“Besides, she’ll have years of dealing with shapeshifting before she can make a choice.” Don’t say it, Vicky. Don’t. “Unless you want her to get pregnant at twelve or thirteen.” Damn it all, you said it.
“Of course I don’t want that,” Gwen snapped. “I just . . .” Her voice softened and tears reappeared. “I want to protect my little girl.”
I took a deep, calming breath. I felt like a jerk. This wasn’t about me or my sister’s judgment of my choices. This was about a young girl who might be about to plunge into a very frightening and confusing time in her life.
“I’m sorry, Gwen. You can count on me. If Maria starts shifting, you know I’ll do everything I can to help her.”
“Thanks.” Gwen smiled, but her eyes held even more doubt than tears.
11
THE DOUBT IN MY SISTER’S EYES HAUNTED ME AS I WALKED from South Station back to Deadtown. If Maria started going through the change, she’d need the unconditional support of her whole family, the kind of support that Mom had offered Gwen and me when we were that age. When I got home, I’d give Mom a call, ask her to talk to Gwen. My sister might appreciate the advice of someone who’d made the same choice she had. But Mom had also explored life as a shapeshifter, killing her share of demons before she met Dad and fell in love. If anyone could see both sides of the issue, it was Mom. And anyway, I’d been too haphazard about keeping in touch since she moved to Florida.
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