The day before the Prom, Molly came down with the flu. No way she could go; she could hardly make it out of bed. “Oh, hell!” she swore, in angry tears when we visited her. “I’m letting you down.”
“It’s all right,” Bear said. But he was in grief. He had paid for everything, and now it was wasted. It was too late for him to get another date, even if he had the social grace to do it. He needed the support of Molly.
“Phil—” Molly said.
Oh, no! Was she thinking what I feared?
She was. “Mena knows the moves as well as you do,” she said. “My dress would fit her, with a little loosening in the bosom and hips. I think I could do that much, before I conk out entirely.”
“I—” I said, in a swirl of confusion. A public event, as a girl?
“We owe it to Bear,” she reminded me.
What could I do? “I’ll do it,” I agreed glumly.
So it was that I attended the Prom as Bear’s young date, using Molly’s dress, slippers, corsage, and makeup. She even managed to do my hair before she collapsed into the oblivion of the flu and medication. Yes, I was twelve, but Mena was a remarkably pretty girl, externally. My Phil handsomeness, I now appreciated, was probably a function of my Were status: there was a bit of the girl in me, carrying across. Conservation of appearance as well as mass, maybe.
We explained at the entrance that Bear’s date Molly had the flu, and I, as her friend from out of town, was substituting. All of which was true, if incomplete.
And it was glorious. I saw immediately that half the attendees were no more experienced than I was, making gaffs that embarrassed them and gratified me. I danced with Bear as we had practiced, thinking of myself as Molly, emulating her moves, focusing on making him look good. I drank punch in delicate sips, spilling none. Between dances I sat on the sideline and did not cross my legs.
Then came the other boys asking me to dance. I tried to demur, but then other girls took Bear onto the floor and I knew that this was a social coup for him I didn’t want to mess up. So we danced with others, and Bear was thrilled, and I was thrilled for him. Meanwhile I focused on not embarrassing him, by being the best dancer I could be, so they would know he had a quality date. It worked; I was amazed to find myself dancing with juniors and even seniors five years older than I. Not bad for a girl of twelve!
But there were negatives. Some of them danced me into obscure corners and grabbed feels, and I couldn’t stop them without making a scene. I simply took their hands and removed them from my buttocks as if the touches were accidental. It was harder to stop the looks down into my décolletage, or the too-tight embraces, or the rubbing bellies. But I realized that these were problems every girl faced, and consoled myself imagining their chagrin if they realized that they were doing it to a boy.
It was a relief to get back to Bear, whose hands behaved themselves. We finished out the Prom in excellent style.
And to my amazement, Mena even got an award for “most appealing visitor,” voted by the boys. I was more of a success than I had realized. I did not care to speculate whether the subtext was “most appealing ass.”
“Thanks!” Bear said as we got our ride home.
“Thank you for a wonderful evening,” I said graciously, and we both laughed.
We never spoke of it thereafter, because Mena had officially returned to her town, and Phil had not even been at the Prom. But we remembered our success. I understand that Molly got several requests for the address of her friend Mena, but she refused to tell.
Next year Molly’s family moved to another state, and she had no choice but to go with them, being only thirteen. I was heartbroken; maybe I was considered too young to be in love, but it certainly felt like it with her. We went on one final date the night before she left, and to hell with being too young; we had one thoroughly adult fling, the first sex for each of us. We exchanged letters for months thereafter, but gradually life got in the way, and we lost touch. But again, we remembered.
Then Bear made a remarkable contact. “There’s a club for Weres!” he exclaimed. “No listing of members, no ads in the media, but they know who we are. We’re invited to attend.”
We attended, I then being fifteen and he seventeen. It was like stepping into paradise. Every person there was a Were; we could feel it. There were fourteen, beside ourselves, and all of them sincerely welcomed us. They were from all around, some in town, some thirty miles away: all the known Weres of the region. Maybe only one person in ten thousand was born a Were, but we felt like a community.
It didn’t take us long to learn the rules of association: don’t inquire about what form of Were a person was, or about his or her Name. These things were kept private partly so that if any hostile force wanted to make a member betray the others, he would be largely unable. Also, there turned out to be other Supernaturals; Weres were merely a subdivision. There were Witches, Demons, Vampires, Incubi/Succubi, Ghosts, and Zombies, each with their own gatherings. The larger class of them was the Supes, for Supernaturals, and just as Weres looked out for Weres, Supes looked out to a lesser extent for Supes. Weres could learn to recognize the other types. All of them were hiding from the naturals, the ignorant mundane folk, who tended to react with dangerous fear. There had been too many pogroms, Witch burnings, Vampire stabbings, Demon exorcisms, and Ghost banishings. So it was best to treat other Supes with cautious courtesy, and never betray their secrets.
One more thing: they had classes in the power of illusion. All Weres, maybe all Supes had it, to one degree or another. It was invaluable as a supplement to changing forms; in fact sometimes illusion could substitute for form changing, and since it was instant, that could make a huge difference. We studied hard to master it.
Bear found a girlfriend in the gathering, a remarkable WereSerpent two or three years his senior but socially knowledgeable and happy to take him on. Paradise doubled!
And now he was dead. I wept together with Syd, both of us desolate for our separate reasons. She was the girlfriend he had found at the Were gathering. It was how we had come to know each other, both being close friends of Bear.
“Maybe we should shut down the office and go home,” I said.
She raised her tear-stained face. “We can’t. We have to deal with the Witch.”
So we did. We’d turn her project down, then go home to mourn unfettered.
What an opening week this had turned out to be!
Chapter 3:
Sydelle
Witch Nonce arrived promptly twenty-four hours after her first appearance at my office. I did not waste time with pointless politeness. “I can’t take your case.”
She gazed at me with those large blue eyes. “Tell me why.”
“We have problems of our own. My best friend has just been killed in an accident.”
“That was no accident.”
“So I’m in no condition to focus on—” I broke off. “What?”
“A Vamp was killed last week. Then my cousin. Now your friend. All were made to seem like accidents or suicide. Actually they were murder. We have a common cause.”
I stared at her. “How can you know that?”
“Witches have avenues. Phil, I can’t say that these killings are linked, but I strongly suspect it. I think we have a serial killer—of Supes. I want to locate the one who murdered my cousin. You want to find the one who killed your friend. The Vampires have similar motive. We have to work together.”
I looked at Syd. “Can this be right?”
Syd concentrated. “It is right! My premonition agrees.”
“The gold is yours regardless,” Nonce said. “Likewise my friendly thighs. I believe you can solve this ugly mystery, Phil. Commit.”
“He commits,” Syd said.
She had made the decision for me. I didn’t resent it; I was grateful. It meant that she now approved of our collaborating with the Witch, friendly thighs and all, and believed that this would lead to the answer we all wanted: who had killed Bear, and why?
This sent me into another tour of memory, this time of Syd.
It wasn’t long before Bear introduced me to his new girlfriend, Sydelle. She was older than he, and not really pretty, but she had compensating virtues. Notably her precognition, her sense of what was to come. It was necessarily vague, because specifics led quickly to paradox, as she explained, but it served to guide her when in doubt. It had guided her to make shrewd investments, and she was financially comfortable. It guided her to Bear as her ideal man, and really, he was. He was a big unhandsome lunk of a young Were, needing social and supernatural guidance, eager for the willing companionship of a woman. It might have taken her all of five minutes to persuade him that her interest was genuine, and he was immediately in love with her. I was younger but more cynical, distrusting this.
“Talk to her,” Bear said. “You’ll see.”
We arranged a time and setting, her house, I being fifteen, she twenty, but I was the cautious one, concerned for my friend. And Sydelle persuaded me. It took longer, maybe ten minutes, but was just as certain. Her candor was devastating.
“You can see I’m no beauty,” she said. “But I long for love. To be genuinely appreciated for myself by a man, not for my money or intellect or appearance. And Bear does. I’m the first woman who showed real interest in him, and he can’t keep his hands off me. He desires me, and I desire his desire. We had sex four times in the first hour we were alone. I’d give it to him a hundred times in a night if he were capable of it. The fact that we’re both Weres is almost incidental. I love him.”
I knew as she spoke that it was true. She was not playing Bear; she truly loved him.
“He wants the two of us to get along, because you’re his best friend and he trusts you,” she continued. “And so do I. I will give you my Name.”
Her Name! “But—”
“I have given it to no one else but him, and now you. I want your complete trust in me. Because you and I will go far together.”
“Now wait!” I protested. “I’m not going to—”
She laughed. “Not romantically, silly! As friends. We can do a lot for each other.”
“A lot?”
“My primary is WereSerpent. My secondary is premonition, or intuition. My tertiary is the usual, a bit of illusion.” She smiled. “I could be prettier than I am, but Bear doesn’t need it.” For a moment her dull features sharpened into beauty and her bosom swelled; like most Weres she could indeed enhance her appearance. “It’s the second that guides me to Bear, and now to you.”
“The premonition?” I asked, swept along by her attitude. She had a compelling personality.
“It’s necessarily vague, because specifics tend to invoke paradox. If I knew I was going to die in an airplane crash tomorrow, I wouldn’t catch that flight, which would spoil the prediction. It’s also limited to me: how I am impacted by a coming event. The closer I am to a person, the more my premonition relates also to that person. I knew that Bear and I would hit it off, that he was well worth my while, and that has been amply vindicated already. When I met you, I knew that we would have just as powerful a connection, albeit of a different nature. That it will do us both good in significant ways; change our lives, in fact. We just have to find out what that nature is.”
“I really don’t see how,” I said. “I’m just a teen boy. I don’t know anything.”
“You are young. It’s your potential I’m picking up on. There’s something special about you, as there is about me. We owe it to ourselves to discover what it is. Let’s start by changing. In Weredom there is truth.”
“I—I’d have to get naked,” I said, disgruntled.
“As would I. Once again, Phil: we’re not lovers. This isn’t sexual. This is Were.”
“I—I’d get a—I can’t control it.”
She laughed again. “Do you think I haven’t seen it before? If it bothers you, cover it with illusion.”
She had more answers than I had objections. “Do you know what my form is?”
“No. Bear didn’t tell me, respecting your privacy. Just that it was odd. I can tell that myself. It wouldn’t even be any of my business, except that my premonition informs me that it is. We need to be close enough to know each other’s secrets.”
I would have argued further, but my own secondary was telling me that she was sincere and knew what she was doing. There was a deep core of rightness in her that I had to respect. So I told her. “I’m a WereWoman.”
She gazed at me, surprised. “You change genders?”
“Yes. I turn into a girl.”
“You’re not an Incubus?”
“No. Once an Incubus has sex, he has to become a Succuba, and she can’t Change back until she has sex with a man. Passing the— the semen back and forth. I’m not that way.”
“Remarkable! I didn’t know there was such a thing. But I suppose it makes sense, in the sense that some folk consider men and women different species. But it certainly is odd.”
“I’m odd,” I agreed.
“Let’s get to it. I’ll go first, if you prefer. As a python I won’t care what state you’re in.”
I bit the bullet. “No, we can do it together.”
We stripped and in moments stood facing each other, naked. I saw her bare breasts and the mound of her pelvis, and sure enough I got a stiff erection.
“Actually, you’re handsome,” she said. “You’ll be a fine man.”
“Too handsome,” I said. “I used to get teased. Before Bear.”
“Of course. When I was younger I got teased for being a late bloomer. Now I will Change.” She focused, and I heard her Name in my mind: “Sss.”
Then I said my Name, and started my own Change. My swollen penis quickly shrank, replaced by a swollen vulva and vagina. The flesh on my chest filled out into breasts. My pelvis widened. My legs thickened. My hair lengthened. I became Mena.
Meanwhile Sydelle formed slowly into a sixteen-foot-long serpent. She lifted her snake head, and I reached out my hand so she could sniff it. We had shown each other our Were forms.
Actually hers was more remarkable than mine. Most Weres were wolves, and most of the rest were large mammals. To become a reptile—that was rare. To be one without limbs was rarer still. I was impressed.
But I sensed that more was needed. I could not exactly read her mind, but I picked up on her need. She wanted something from me. What was it?
I focused, and got it. She wanted me to trust her. How could I demonstrate that? In another moment I got the answer.
I stepped close to her, reached down, and hauled up the center of her body. She weighed the same in serpent form as in woman form, about a hundred and twenty-five pounds. I hauled a segment of her up close to my belly. Her head moved around me, sliding across my shoulders, and her tail section wrapped around my hips and legs. Soon she spiraled around me from head to foot. Pythons were constrictors; she could tighten up and suffocate me if she chose.
She didn’t. She slid on around and down and off me. Then she hissed her Name and started shortening and thickening into her human form. As she did, she stayed close to me, in contact, so that I felt the changes against my body. I stood there, unchanging, sensing that that was what she wanted.
At last she was the woman again, plastered to me breast to breast. She kissed me, then separated. “Good girl. You trusted me.”
“Thanks,” I said somewhat lamely. “I’m Mena.”
“You read my Name. I saw your surprise.”
“I did,” I agreed. “It just came to me.”
“That may be your special secondary: to fathom Names. That will give you power over other Weres, especially if they don’t know it, and maybe over other Supes too.”
“Maybe so,” I said, surprised.
“You’re remarkably pretty, even without illusion or makeup. A combination of the two should make you virtually irresistible to men.”
“I don’t want to be like that!”
“Ah, but you need to be. Not s
o that men will mindlessly chase you, though of course they will, but so that you have control over the situation. A smitten man is a malleable man. You have to use what you’ve got, and you’ve got a lot.”
“I’m a man, inside!”
“Of course. Just as I am a human person inside my serpent form, to the extent feasible.”
“Feasible?”
“There’s not room for a human sized brain in my serpent head. Some brain tissue gets converted to muscle. So I know what and who I am, but I’m not smart. When we work together, you will need to guide me.”
“Work together?”
“It is slowly clarifying. I think we are destined to go into business together, with our forms an integral part.”
“What business?”
“Something that requires private information about clients. Maybe you could become a private investigator.”
“I don’t know anything about anything like that!”
“Think of it, Mena: As Phil you can be a PI. But a female client does not tell you everything, which hinders your ability to help her. So you set up a meeting with your associate Mena, and she wheedles news, woman to woman, that Phil couldn’t get. It could make you a superior PI.”
“But I have no training, no expertise.”
“You have three years to get it. Not by formal schooling; by anonymous online courses. By day you can be a schoolkid; by night, and in summer, a forming detective. You can do it.”
“Three years?”
“Until you’re of legal age to go into business for yourself.”
The idea was beginning to appeal. Me—a private eye! But I was not so foolish as to think it would be that easy. “Those online courses cost money, especially if they’re private. And a PI needs a front office, and a secretary and computer and stuff. I have like two dollars to my name.”
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