She didn’t need to tell me twice. I stood up unsteadily.
“And next time, pay attention to your teacher,” she added as I felt my way to the door and pushed it open.
Uh huh. Right, I thought. It’s her fault for being so boring.
Once Flyers’ Ed was over, I ambled out of the school entrance, fiddling with my phone and planning to call my parents to pick me up just as soon as I finished reading about vila weight limits and the reason why so few of them were bodybuilders.
Then a chill ran down my neck, and I had the terrifying feeling someone was watching me.
I spun around, my heart hammering. Was I in danger? I was an enormous bird, but there were plenty of weres that were larger, and vampires were faster. If I could have flown away right then, I would have, but I still didn’t know how, and after the nurse’s warning this evening, I didn’t dare try.
Stupid for leaving the school grounds alone at nearly nine at night, I told myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I scanned the area with a paranoid eye. Were there any trees I didn’t recognize that might be a kapre? Was there a werebird in one of those branches watching me?
If I had to run, I would run back to the school, which was only a five-minute walk away. I tensed my leg muscles.
And suddenly, Loretta Vampireclanjiangshi was standing in front of me.
I jumped back, startled. The woman who had baby-sat me and my sister last night was a vampire, and vampires were fast, but nobody was that fast. Certainly not a jiangshi.
A rakshasa? I thought. Illusion magic. Has to be.
“H-hello?” I stammered.
“Hello,” she said solemnly. “Your name is Lisette, right? I’ve been given permission to invite you into our clan.”
I stared at her blankly. “… What?”
“I’m part of a clan for misfits without one for their own species,” she said. “I checked, and there is no werevulture clan anywhere near this area. Would you like to join ours?”
This had come completely out of nowhere, and I still had the prickling feeling I was in danger. “Uh . . . why would you be in such a clan?” I asked cautiously. “Jiangshis aren’t rare.”
“That’s correct,” she said.
I knew it! I thought furiously. I knew you weren’t a jiangshi! You big, fat liar!
But that didn’t explain what she actually was. Or why she had waited to invite me until she could corner me all alone. Or whether she would take no for an answer.
“What if I said no?” I asked cautiously.
She smiled. “You’re worried because you don’t know me.”
“You’d better believe it,” I shot back.
“Go home and talk with your parents,” she said. Her arm moved, and I tensed, but she did nothing more than reach into the pink plastic purse dangling by her side and pull out a business card. She handed it to me. “It’s not a secret organization,” she said. “The phone number’s on there. Our next meeting is in three days. Your parents can come, if you want them to.”
I took the card warily. The card said Rarity Clan, which seemed as accurate a description as any for what she’d said.
“How can I trust you?” I blurted out. “You lied about your species. You said you were a jiangshi, and you’re not!”
“I never said that,” she said.
“You did so!” I said furiously.
“No,” she said calmly, “I told your sister my name was Loretta Vampireclanjiangshi. It is. The clan I’m part of now is not an official one: it has no turning stone. I am still legally recognized as being part of my parents’ jiangshi clan, which I joined when I was twelve years old. As such, whatever my species, I have right to claim the name.”
I supposed she had a point, but there was absolutely no denying that she’d been deliberately misleading. If I’d chosen to stay in my parents’ clan, I could technically have claimed the last name Wereclanhawk, but I would never have dreamed of lying to people that way. Whatever you were technically allowed to do, people expected your last name to declare your species.
“You know, we have a lot in common,” she said into my silence.
I grunted, strongly disagreeing.
“My turning went wrong, too,” she said. “Just like yours. And I became a species that’s very rare and has had no clan for centuries.”
“What species?” I asked curiously.
She smiled. “If you want to know that, you’ll have to come to the meeting. I don’t usually show people unless they’re friends. But suffice it to say, I am a vampire and I don’t suck blood.”
Show people? I thought.
She vanished.
I gasped and blinked. A rakshasa! I thought. She’s definitely a rakshasa! That was clearly an illusion, and they don’t suck blood, they suck light!
Except that . . . there was a rakshasa clan in town. I knew for sure because Annette had griped about a classmate who liked to use illusion magic to play practical jokes on people.
My fist tightened around the business card. I didn’t like feeling manipulated, and there was no doubt she’d been trying to draw me in.
Still . . .
Rarity Clan. I stuffed the card into my pocket, just in case.
Chapter 6: Rarity
No surprise, my mother was thrilled by the idea of me having been invited to a new clan.
“You have to go, Lisette!” my mom cried, turning around from the front seat of the car. Her eyes were wide with excitement. “This is perfect! That’s exactly what you need!”
My father, who was driving the car, said nothing. Dad was probably thinking it over. That usually took him awhile.
“I’m not sure about this,” I said, bending the card between my fingers. The slick cardboard kept making a noise each time I let go and it sprang back. Fwip. Fwip. Fwip. “I think she’s hiding something. Actually, I think she’s hiding a lot.”
Mom shook her head. “People are allowed to have privacy, Lisette. Can you honestly say you wouldn’t prefer to be thought of as a hawk if nobody could tell the difference?”
Fwip. The very question annoyed me. It showed that Mom had still not gotten over the fear and disgust she’d shown when I’d first shifted, no matter what she’d said. “No, I wouldn’t,” I said. “I don’t want to be thought of as anything but what I am.”
“Well, not everyone’s the same,” Mom said.
Fwip. Fwip. Fwip. I didn’t say anything.
Dad cleared his throat. He glanced back at the rearview mirror before flicking his eyes back to the road again.
“Honesty’s important,” he said. “If you don’t think you can trust her, don’t go. An opportunity you don’t want isn’t an opportunity.”
I hesitated. I’d been leaning that way, but being told not to go made me wonder what I’d be missing if I didn’t. One dishonest person didn’t mean the entire clan was worthless. What if I’d judged the entire werehawk clan by Alec after one day of knowing him, and it had been the day he’d made fun of Kegan?
I’d wanted a clan. I’d wanted one badly. And here was one basically sitting on my lap. Shouldn’t I give it a chance?
“You’ve been wanting a clan,” Mom told me. “You have to go. You have to give it a chance! This is an amazing opportunity!”
My fists clenched tight on my lap. “It’s probably too good to be true. I mean, don’t you think newly-turned teens without clans would be the perfect target for recruitment into something shady?”
“Maybe not perfect,” Dad said. “Perfect would be runaways or people with a criminal record, probably. But your point is good.”
“Lisette,” Mom said with exasperation, “do you know how hard it is for people to get vetted for the Full Moon Supervisory Service? Loretta Vampireclanjiangshi not only works there, she came highly recommended. She’s never had a single complaint. Half the families who’ve hired her say that the time always passes quickly because she’s so pleasant to be around!”
Something about that sounded off, but I w
asn’t sure what it was. I frowned, wondering.
Mom seemed to take that as agreement. “It would be good for you to go. Make some new friends.”
That riled me. “What is wrong with Kegan?!”
“Nothing’s wrong with Kegan,” Mom said. “But she’s your only friend. It would be better if you had more of them.”
I glared at her. You had better not have a problem with banshees, Mom, or we are not going to be on speaking terms.
“Go or not. It’s your decision,” Dad said quietly from the driver’s seat. “If you feel anything’s wrong, you’ll leave. I trust your judgment.”
Great. That didn’t help me make up my mind any better. He could at least have banned me or told me not to go.
I bent the business card and let it spring back. Fwip. Fwip. Fwip. What this really reminded me of was the time Dad had walked out of a store after a pushy saleswoman had tried to force him to buy a piece of jewelry that was perfect for Mom.
“I liked it, and I would have liked to buy it, but I wouldn’t want to buy it from her,” he’d explained to Collette, Annette and me as we’d walked to another store.
At the time, we’d been annoyed because that had seemed idiotic. He’d wound up buying her a Mothers’ Day gift that wasn’t nearly as perfect for her, and that was also more expensive.
But now I thought I understood how he’d felt. No matter how good the clan might be, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of it after the way she had tried to convince me. No matter how good it might be, I didn’t want her sneakiness to have succeeded.
But on the other hand . . . Dad had gotten Mom a much inferior present.
Fwip. Fwip. Fwip.
“I’ll go,” I said at last. “But I want Dad and Kegan to come with me.”
Mom looked hurt. “What about me?”
What about you? I thought. You’ll just try to convince me it’s amazing when it isn’t. And you might be rude to people who’ve turned into species that might be considered disgusting. After all, if a species is rare, that probably means nobody ever wants to join it.
“You can stay home with Annette and make sure she does her homework,” I said.
Mom looked very dissatisfied.
“I’d be happy to go with you,” Dad said. “What time is the meeting?”
“It’s . . .” I glanced down at the card. “I guess we’ll have to call and ask that. And where it is. All I know is that it’s in three days.”
“I’d like to go too,” Mom said in a wounded voice. “Collette can make sure Annette does her homework.”
“The last time we asked Collette to do that, we caught her and Annette watching trashy talk shows,” Dad said mildly.
“That was ages ago!” Mom protested.
“That was two months ago,” Dad corrected. “And I keep finding the TV set to that channel whenever I turn it on after we’ve come home.”
Oops, I thought. I’d have to warn Annette about that.
The car turned a corner and pulled into the driveway of our house. Dad shifted the car into park, removed the key, and got out. Mom was close behind him. I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out, too.
A chill breeze billowed down the back of my shirt, which was open all the way down to my shoulderblades. I shivered and hunched over as I ran to the front door. As I stood behind Mom, shivering, the obvious occurred to me. I concentrated, and enormous wings stretched out behind me and downy feathers prickled across my arms.
Much better.
“Can you fit through the front door like that?” Mom asked skeptically as Dad unlocked the door and turned the handle.
“I’ll pull them back before I go inside,” I said.
“Which will take more time than you would have been standing outside in the first place.”
“Maybe I was anticipating having this extra conversation that’s making me stand outside longer,” I said pointedly, jabbing my finger in the direction of the now-wide-open front door.
Mom glanced behind her, looked taken aback, and hurried in.
Fifteen seconds later, feathers itching back into my arms and bones popping and shifting, I was finally small enough to fit through the door.
Mom gave me an I-told-you-so look as I stepped into the front hall.
I ignored her.
“Dinner’s in ten minutes,” Dad called up the stairs. “Annette? Collette? Ten minute warning!”
I pulled out my phone and checked my messages. I’d texted Kegan while waiting for Mom and Dad, but she hadn’t answered me yet. I dialed her number.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Mom sighed. “We have dinner in —”
I turned my back on her and headed to the living room, where I flopped onto the sofa, listening to the phone ring. After eight rings, Kegan finally picked up.
“Hello?” she asked.
“You’ll never believe what happened to me after school,” I burst out. “Did you see my texts?”
“Not yet,” she said. “I was working on this ridiculous homework problem. Matrices, yech. What’s up?” she added mischievously. “Did Bryan Giantclanogre ask you out?”
“Huh?” I asked, momentarily distracted. “No, he didn’t. I’m over him, anyway.”
“Since when?” Kegan demanded, sounding offended.
“Since I found out he only dates cheerleaders.”
“You should tell me these things!” she exclaimed.
“I’m telling you now,” I shrugged. “Anyway, this is far more important. I got asked —”
“— to Homecoming?” she gasped. “Oh, please tell me you got asked to Homecoming! Please, please, please! I’m going with Donald Specterclanhaltija, and I found the most amazing dress, and they have another one just your size —”
Uh huh, I thought, not even wanting to imagine what she thought amazing. It was probably bedecked with spiderwebs or actual bloodstains. “No, I’m not going to Homecoming,” I said, annoyed. “This is more important. Listen —”
“You’re not going to Homecoming?” she wailed. Her voice had taken on a hint of that high-pitched shrillness it had developed after she’d turned banshee. “You have to go! You have to! Even if you don’t have a date —”
“I got invited to a clan!” I shouted.
Kegan immediately silenced. “… Whoa,” she said after a moment. “You mean, like, the vulture clan that’s all the way across the country?” Her voice started to rise in panic. “Wait, you’re not going to move, are you?!”
“Good grief, Kegan,” I sighed. “No, I’m not going to move. It’s not a vulture clan at all. It’s this weird thing called Rarity Clan. Ever heard of it?”
“What’s a rarity?” she asked.
“What do you mean, what’s a rarity?” I asked, baffled.
“What kind of bird is a rarity?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a werebird. It means, like, rarity. Being rare. It’s a clan for people who don’t have clans because there aren’t enough of their species in the area.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding taken aback. “How would that work as a clan? They couldn’t turn people.”
“They don’t have a turning stone,” I told her. “It’s not an official clan. It’s just a place for people to hang out during the full moon and stuff.”
Or so I assumed. I actually hadn’t asked about that. It was possible they didn’t.
Nah, they had to. There’d be no point otherwise.
“Oh,” she said. She sounded disappointed. “That’s not really a clan. That’s, like . . . a club. You might as well join Were Scouts.”
“Well, it’s sort of a clan, and they asked me to join,” I said defensively. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Come with you where?” she asked.
“To the meeting,” I said. “The first meeting I go to. To see if I want to join.”
“Would they want me there?” she asked skeptically. “I have a clan. And I’m not a were.”
“Neither are lots of the other people there,” I
said. “It’s not just rare weres. It’s rare whatevers. The person who invited me is some sort of vampire.”
Assuming she didn’t lie about that, at least, I thought.
“That’s a really weird clan, Lisette,” Kegan said after a pause. “Are you sure they’re legit?”
“Um.” I chewed my lower lip. “No, I’m not sure. That’s part of the reason I want you there. You and Dad. To watch my back. Just in case.”
“Don’t you think you should just . . . not go?” Kegan said.
I hesitated. If I told her my misgivings, Kegan would start insisting that I stay home, and then I’d get in a fight with either her or Mom about it, plus I’d always wonder what I’d missed.
“I’ve gotta give it a chance,” I said. “It’s not like there are any other clans lining up at my door.”
“Dinner!” Dad called from the kitchen.
“I’m sure if you asked your parents, they’d let you stay in the werehawk clan —” Kegan began.
“Gotta go, it’s dinnertime,” I said quickly, hanging up, glad for the excuse.
I did not want to stay in a clan that didn’t want me. No way. But she wouldn’t understand that, not when her mother’s clan had been so ecstatic to have her join.
Chapter 7: Those Exist?
We pulled up to what looked like an abandoned warehouse.
“Are you sure about this?” Kegan asked nervously from the back seat. “This looks like somewhere from a horror movie.”
She was right. The empty industrial neighborhood and rundown building looked like somewhere monsters would live. Or where criminals kept their headquarters on TV.
“You can’t judge them based on that alone,” Dad said mildly. “It may be the only place they could afford to rent that was large enough to hold numerous diverse species during the full moon. I assume a new clan doesn’t have much in the way of funding. You should have seen the apartment my wife and I lived in when we first got married.”
I drew in a deep breath. He was right. I’d told myself I’d give it a chance, so I might as well do it.
I unfastened my seat belt and opened the door. Dad followed me out.
Trials of a Teenage Werevulture (Trilogy of a Teenage Werevulture Book 1) Page 5