by Lib Starling
When Darien finished speaking, Brooke looked helplessly between them, her lips thinned and the corners of her eyes crinkled with worry.
“Say something,” Roxy pleaded.
“You guys really believe this, don’t you?”
“It’s true, Brooke. You have to believe us. This is why Scarlett left town so suddenly.”
“Why,” Brooke chuckled, “because she was bitten by a werewolf? Come on, you guys.”
Darien sighed. “I know it sounds crazy, but…”
“I’m going to show you.” Roxy stood up and pulled her stay over her head.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Darien said quietly, his eyes on Brooke’s skeptical smirk.
Roxy ignored him. “I trust you, Brooke, and I’m about to show you something I’d never show to most people.” She pulled her sweater off and tossed it on the bed.
Brooke’s eyes widened. “Umm…”
Roxy kicked off her shoes and unzipped her jeans.
“You’re going to do this in front of him?” Brooke cast a nervous glance at Darien, who shrugged and leaned against the wall with an air of studied nonchalance.
“Don’t look at me, sister. You know naked girls don’t faze me.”
When Roxy had tossed her bra and panties on the bed, she gave Brooke one half-pleading, half-reassuring smile, then reached for her totem. The fox responded willingly, and the flash of white light erupted before Roxy’s vision. In a heartbeat she was standing on four slender paws, watching from the floor as Brooke leapt to her feet, then climbed atop the bed, shrieking as if Roxy had transformed into a giant tarantula and not a perfectly pleasant vixen.
“You were right,” Darien shouted over Brooke’s screeches. “She is going to have a heart attack. And I was so sure there would be pitchforks and torches. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed.”
Roxy reversed the shift. She calmly dressed while Brooke stood huddled against the wall, her shivers amplified through the mattress on which she stood.
“Holy shit,” Brooke babbled. “What the fuck.”
“I told you it was the truth,” Roxy said. She dropped her stay back into place and tucked it behind her sweater. “Now please, calm down. There’s a lot more we have to tell you.”
Brooke gasped a few times, then managed a shaky whisper. “More?”
“You need some special coffee,” Darien said. “It’ll settle your nerves.” He pulled a silver hip flask from one of his boxes and shook it; the contents sloshed and he smiled. “I’ll meet you ladies in the kitchen, if you can talk Brooke down from her perch, Rox.”
Hot coffee splashed with whiskey did seem to settle Brooke’s disposition. She sipped cautiously from her mug, never taking her eyes from Roxy’s face while Darien filled her in on what he tactfully called “the Scarlett situation.” Brooke accepted it all in silence, never interrupting or denying what she was told, though her face was as white as cream and a tinge of sickly green haunted the corners of her mouth.
“A witch,” she said flatly when Darien fell silent.
“Yep.”
“Witches are a thing.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“So what else is a thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“What else actually exists, that isn’t supposed to exist in the real world… in a sane world?”
“Well…”
“Are ghosts a thing?”
“Basically. But not the kind of ghosts that float around in sheets.”
“That’s great. Are faeries a thing?”
“Sort of. More or less.”
“Is Santa Claus a thing?”
“Will it break your heart if I say no?”
Brooke took a long swallow from her mug. “Actually, I find Santa’s relegation to the fantasy realm strangely comforting right now. Are vampires a thing?”
Roxy glanced at Darien with a minute shake of her head.
“Do you really want me to answer that question?” Darien asked.
“Jesus! Vampires are a thing? Is anybody safe? Are we all just going to be eaten by monsters? What is going on here?”
“Ah,” Roxy murmured. “Here come the pitchforks and torches.”
“I’m serious,” Brooke screeched.
Roxy grabbed her hand. “So am I. Listen, Brooke. You know us; we’re your friends. We’re not monsters. We’re the same people we’ve always been.”
“Yes,” Brooke said calmly, “except now I know that you can also turn into animals.”
“We told you this to help keep you safe. So you could get the shock out of the way now, so it wouldn’t surprise you later, when… if…”
“So who else is a shapeshifter?”
Darien drummed his fingers on the tabletop for a moment, delaying his answer. “Everybody at Blackmeade.”
“Everybody?”
“The entire student body and most of the staff. All the women who are staff are from shifter families, or are married to shifters.”
“So Chase…”
“Wolf.”
“And Alexander…”
“Also a wolf.”
She looked at Darien. “What are you?”
“Elk. I’d show you, but my antlers would get tangled in the light fixture, and it’s really embarrassing when that happens.”
Brooke’s thin smile was the first sign that she was warming to reality. The tiniest bit of tension drained from her body, and she sat back in her chair. “But if everybody at Blackmeade is… your kind… then why did you move in with us, Darien? I’d think it would be easier to stay around more people who are, you know, like you.”
He sighed. “It would be easier, if everything were cool. That’s why we have Blackmeade – a separate school just for shifters. And that’s why the campus is so far out of the way, so we can keep to ourselves. Obviously we can get along in the ‘real world’ just fine, but it’s so much easier to have a place where everyone is a shifter, and we all know what to expect from each other. But…”
He stared despondently at the tabletop. After a moment, Brooke slid her mug of coffee and whiskey toward him, and Darien took a sip.
“Ever since the Scarlett incident, things at Alpha House just haven’t been the same. First she was doing something to make us all shift out of control. Then there was a big confrontation between Chase and Alexander.” Darien studiously avoided looking at Roxy, and she, in turn, kept her eyes fixed on the kitchen floor. “Alexander is different now. Changed. I can’t say whether it’s a good change or a bad one. In many ways he’s a better man, but he’s not the leader he once was. Chase could have taken this place as the leader of Alpha House. He should have, really, after their fight. But Chase has skipped town, too, so the fraternity is left without a leader. The whole brotherhood feels odd now. Broken, like we’re all drifting apart; like we’re not brothers anymore. I thought it would be better to get out than to watch my second family fall apart slowly. I don’t know what else I can do, except distance myself from that feeling of disintegration. It depresses me too much to be around it. I know I can’t change Alexander back to the way he was, and to be honest, I’m not sure I would if I could. But Alpha House is rudderless now, and it…” He heaved a deep, slow sigh. “I just want out.”
Brooke took his hand. “I think this is all too weird for words, and half of me doesn’t even believe what you’re saying, even though I saw…” Her eyes darted toward Roxy and away again just as fast. “But you’re my friend – you both are – and I’ll help you guys however I can.”
Roxy hugged her. “Thanks. I knew we could tell you. I know you’d understand us both, after the shock wore off.”
Brooke patted Roxy’s shoulder as they embraced. “Just do me one favor.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t bring any fleas into the house. I can’t stand fleas.”
.8.
I t had been a record year for snowfall, and Jackson’s streets teemed with skiers in brand-name, puffy down vests, wra
pped just so in artful scarves or treading the snow-dampened plank sidewalks in their pricey insulated boots. High above the roads and shops, the wide white swaths of the ski slopes were scored by the faint traces of the winter’s runs, a net of silvery tracks crisscrossing the mountainside like an intricate spider web.
Roxy and Brooke perched on bar stools, tucking into their sandwiches under the heated awning of an outdoor patio. Skiers fresh from the slopes loved to grab their lunches while still bundled in their down-filled gear, and so outdoor dining remained an option in all but the worst weather. Roxy would have preferred a booth inside, but the restaurant was packed, so she warmed her fingers on her toasted Reuben and ordered another hot tea instead of her usual ice water with lemon.
Brooke peeked into her shopping bags as they waited for their second round of teas to arrive. Her parents had given her plenty of cash for Christmas, and now that the Browsing Buffalo had cut Brooke a little slack with her work schedule, she was ready to spend her wintery windfall.
Roxy had been glad enough to accompany her on the spree, even though her own funding was much more limited. A day out with her best friend was just the thing she needed to take her mind off of troubling distractions. Lately Roxy’s dreams had been misty and confusing, full of fleeting images of Chase as both man and wolf, and much more near, more vivid visions of Alexander.
Brooke drew a long felted scarf from her bag and wrapped it around her neck, rubbing it luxuriously against her cheek with an austere frown that was too exaggerated to be real. Roxy stifled a snort of laughter; her eyes dodged to the side. The middle-aged women at the table next to theirs, both with perfectly dyed hair and faces that were a bit too immobile to be innocent of the Botox needle, wore similarly lovely scarves, and both women were speaking loudly over their soups and salads of plans to “summer in the Carolinas.”
“Ugh,” Brooke muttered, dropping her new scarf in its bag again. “I can’t wait until ski season is over.”
“It’s my first winter in Jackson Hole and I already can’t stand it,” Roxy agreed.
“Just wait until you’ve had a couple more years of this stuff. You’ll start dreading the first snowflake of the season.”
“At least there’s plenty of business at the Buffalo when the slopes are packed.”
“Yeah, but the tips are terrible. Summer hippies tip way better than winter richies; you’ll see what I mean when the first of the National Park crowds start pouring in.”
Their pot of hot water arrived, a narrow ribbon of steam escaping from its spout, and the girls eagerly poured and waited for their tea bags to brew.
Brooke lifted and dunked her bag by its paper-tabbed string. “Darien seems to be settling in well.”
“You seem to be settling in well.”
It had been a week since Darien’s move-in and Brooke’s heart-stopping shock, but she had adapted well, picking right back up with their friendship as if she’d always known her two roommates’ secrets.
Brooke shrugged. “I just pretend like the two of you have some unfortunate disease that can’t be treated.”
“What?” Roxy scoffed. “You wouldn’t feel that way about it if you had the disease. It’s pretty awesome.”
“Oh, sure, make me feel inadequate.” But she grinned, and Roxy knew it was all in good fun. “I really don’t want to experience it for myself. Honestly. Ever since you told me, I’ve had these weird dreams that I’m stuck in an animal’s body. It’s always a different animal, but it’s creepy as hell.”
“It was creepy for me the first few times.” Roxy glanced at the two wealthy women with their scarves. Their conversation about the Carolinas continued at full volume, but Roxy was still wary about discussing shifting in public. You never could tell who might be listening. “I’ve been taking lessons from Darien and Alexander.”
“Alexander? You’re brave. Or maybe stupid.”
“He’s been really great. He apologized, you know. Groveled, actually.”
“Oh, well that makes it all better.”
Roxy rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. I told him I can’t trust him anymore, but he doesn’t seem to resent that. He still does his best to teach me, like he genuinely wants me to learn for my sake and not for any selfish reasons.”
Not just to be near me. It was still too strange for Roxy to say it aloud – too unreal to admit that she, as round and soft as she was, could be desired by so many beautiful men. The fox inside her seemed to yawn with amusement, as if to say, And why not? Aren’t we beautiful, too?
She cleared her throat and sipped at her tea, trying to disguise her flush at the thought. “Anyway, I think Darien is right. Alexander really has changed somehow. Most of his cockiness is gone. He’s a pretty nice guy when he’s not parading around all full of himself. Or,” she added with significant emphasis, “thinking he can get anything he wants just because he wants it.”
“You think it was the fight with Chase that changed him?”
Chase. The sound of his name raised a bleak echo in Roxy’s heart. She blinked and stared beyond the roofs of downtown shops, watching the red gondolas creep slowly up the dark line of the ski lift.
“Maybe,” she said as if it didn’t matter, as if she didn’t care about Chase one bit.
Brooke’s bar stool squeaked as she sat up with a sudden, almost frantic movement. Roxy blinked and glanced around. Brooke was staring into the crowd of passersby, her eyes squinting with suspicion.
“What is it, Brooke?”
Brooke craned her neck as if she was trying to see through the press of tourists. “I could have sworn I just saw Scarlett.”
“What?” Roxy’s heart pounded, her pulse tight in her neck and the blood rushing in her ears.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am.”
Roxy fished in her purse for her phone. Her stomach was a knot of tension and nausea. She tapped to bring up Darien’s entry, and tapped again for a text. But before she could compose a message with her shaking fingers, her totem lurched inside her, cowering and bristling as if it had come under attack.
She dropped her phone from numb fingers.
Brooke stared anxiously into Roxy’s eyes. “Are you okay?”
“I…” Roxy clutched at her stay, trying to draw some comfort from its presence. But it felt cold and dead in her fingers, and her fox gave a sudden, dizzying twist within. “No. I’m not okay,” she gasped.
Brooke was on her feet in an instant, hurrying Roxy into the restaurant’s bathroom. A woman was finishing up washing her hands at the sink; Brooke looked around desperately, holding Roxy’s shoulders in a determined grip, then threw open the handicapped stall and shoved Roxy inside. Roxy caught a glimpse of the strange woman’s suspicious frown as the stall door closed. A moment later she heard the restroom door swing, and they were alone.
“Oh my God,” Roxy moaned. She didn’t know whether she wanted to throw up or fight, whether she wanted to break down in hysterical sobs or punch a hole through the restroom’s metal stall partition.
“Is it your fox?” Brooke whispered.
“Yes.” Her stomach heaved, and she threw out her arms, bracing herself against the bathroom wall. Sweat gathered on her brow and soaked her armpits; she shuddered as the floor seemed to ripple and sway beneath her.
Something had hold of her totem. The fox struggled and snapped its jaws, but the thing that gripped her would not let go.
“Get out,” Roxy cried, pounding a fist against the wall in helpless fury.
“Fight it, Roxy!”
Roxy had never known she could feel so helpless, so outside of herself. She seemed to watch the scene from a great distance, floating in a void beyond her struggling body, beyond her frantic and terrified totem. She tried to stand upright, but sagged back against the wall as her fox inverted, pulled to the surface with a wrenching pain that ripped a yell from her throat. She couldn’t decide whether the sound was more fox or human. But she fought that tearing pressure by pure, animal
instinct, thrashing back at the force that gripped her with a determination that surprised her distant, observing consciousness.
The white light flashed, and she knew she was in a shift. In the space of one frantic heartbeat, she saw the scene spread before her: the snowy clearing, Alexander’s white wolf lying placidly at her feet, bits of ice and broken twig still clinging to his shaggy ruff. She felt the burning cold against human skin, and the mingled fear and pleasure of standing naked before him.
Reverse it. Quickly. She heard Alexander’s voice ringing as clear as a bell in her head, but it sounded like Darien’s voice, too, repeating every lesson she’d learned in her three months of practice.
Roxy seized hold of her totem once more and pulled. The fox snapped back inside her, and her stay heated against her chest. She had never felt any warmth so welcome before.
She sagged into Brooke’s arms, sobbing in relief. “It’s over.”
“Oh my God,” Brooke whispered. “Are you okay?”
“I… I think so.” She tried to still her racing heart, concentrating on the feel of her totem, searching for any hint that the force – Scarlett – still had some grip on her fox. But the fox was safe – curled tight within her, defensive and shivering – but safe.
“What the hell just happened?”
“Something tried to force me to shift.”
Brooke was silent for a long moment. Her mouth compressed into a thin line. “You did shift. I think. For a second, it was like I could see… both of you. Occupying the same space.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m making any sense.”
“Nothing is making any sense right now.” Roxy pulled a handful of toilet paper from the dispenser and wiped her eyes. She couldn’t stop crying, and had no idea whether she wept tears of relief or fear.
“This forced shifting – it’s what Scarlett did to the Alpha House boys, isn’t it?”