by Jenn Burke
I looked at Iskander—really looked at him, not only with my eyes, but with all of my senses. I didn’t do this often—at least, not consciously—but I knew how each member of my family felt. Hudson was a pillar of concrete, cracked but still strong. Lexi was a woman dancing around a bonfire, laughing out her joy. Evan was a broken baby bird, desperate to heal and reach the clouds again. And Iskander—he was usually a tidal pool, calm and serene, a protector of the life that took refuge in his embrace.
But not now.
Now, Iskander was...discordant. He felt like two people yelling over each other, trying to dominate and be heard. Dr. Kozlow, Lexi, Juanita, Victor—they’d all said Isk would need to adapt to his new existence, but had we given him a chance to? It wasn’t like when Evan had first become a vampire—he’d had to learn to drink blood and control his predator instincts, but there’d been no real animal component to that. Isk, though...he had animal magic inside of him, magic we’d expected him to get used to without giving him the best environment to do so.
Despite the urgency that was tugging at me to hunt down the guy who’d sold the drugs to Isabel and Logan, Isk was here, alive, and he needed help.
“Nope. No work today. Hudson will cover the office,” I declared.
“I will?” At my raised brow, Hud coughed. “I will. Sure. Of course. And what will you, Evan and Iskander be doing?”
“Something I’m pretty sure I’m going to hate,” I admitted with a rueful grin. “But I think Isk is going to love.”
* * *
Love might have been too strong of a word.
“Camping? In October? Are you nuts?”
I caught Iskander’s expression in the rearview mirror, and it perfectly reflected the tone of his words. I was crazy, this was stupid, and the world was shit.
“Okay, number one—we’re camping in what is essentially the backyard of Aurora House. So it’s not really camping.” The LGBT youth home was set on a farm near Nobleton and had acreage a wolf could explore without running into other shifters or nosy neighbors. Kee, the home’s coordinator, had thought my request was beyond weird, but they were well versed in weird stuff by now. I mean, the group home had a resident ghost who showed up when the kids needed some extra support. And Kee had been one of my first believers. So, yeah. Weird was relative.
“You’ve got a tent packed in the trunk,” Iskander said. “That’s camping.”
“Fine. Whatever. We’re backyard camping.”
“Like we’re twelve.”
I narrowed my eyes at Iskander in the mirror. “Number two—you’re going to be wearing a fur coat, Evan hardly feels the cold, and I can do the half-ghost thing, so no, this isn’t a crazy idea.”
“Just wait until you need to take a piss,” Iskander griped, looking out the passenger window.
I refused to admit that was another point for him. “Number three—you need this.”
“I don’t need this.”
“Who was bitching about feeling like he didn’t fit in his own skin this morning?”
“I needed to run, not—” Iskander waved a hand “—spend hours as a wolf. I don’t need that.”
“Yes, you do. Even Sam thought this was a good idea.” So had Dr. Kozlow, when I’d called to get her opinion and make sure I wasn’t going to do more harm than good. “You haven’t taken the time to get to know your shifter self.”
“That’s bullshit.” Iskander sulked, looking out the window.
I smirked at Evan. “He’s doing a pretty good emo teenager impression, don’t you think?”
“Ten out of ten.”
“You’re both assholes.”
“Assholes who want the best for you,” Evan pointed out.
Iskander grunted, and I turned my attention back to the road.
I was glad I’d waited until halfway to Aurora House before telling him the real purpose of our visit. He’d been reluctant enough to get in the car for the ride out there when he thought it was for a run. Revealing I’d packed a tent and extra clothes and whatnot had not gone over as nicely as I thought it would, but at least he didn’t demand I turn the car around.
I was going to count that as a win.
The sight of Aurora House, with its century-old red brick and its rainbow-hued porch, sparked mixed feelings in me. I’d volunteered here with Lexi last year and helped to renovate the place, but afterwards...a lot of strange paranormal stuff had happened here. But it was a good place, where kids were accepted and supported regardless of their gender or sexuality, and where I’d first had a good conversation with a ghost—the original owner of the property—who had no intention of moving on but would rather stick around to help out here and there.
Kee waited for us at the front door, wearing leggings and a sweater tunic, with a bright scarf wrapped around their head and draped over their shoulder. They opened their arms in greeting when I got out of the car, and I obliged by lifting their slight form in a giant hug.
“Good to see you,” I said. “How are things?”
“Same shit, different day,” they said with a laugh. “Do you want to come in?”
I looked back at Iskander, who’d gotten out of the car, and noticed how his shoulders were up around his ears. He’d only been out here a couple of times, so it probably felt like foreign territory. I didn’t want to stress him out any more than necessary. “Maybe later, when we’re cold.”
Kee explained that they had nearly two hundred acres in a relatively thin but deep strip, part of which was fields gone fallow and the rest was forested. “It’s all fenced. If you need anything, come knock on the door anytime.”
“Thanks, hon.”
We gathered up the stuff from the trunk of my car—the tent, the sleeping bags, provisions, extra clothes in case we did get cold, and various other camping things. Roughing it wasn’t my favorite pastime, but I’d done it enough with Hudson in the eighties to have a good sense of what I was doing.
I hoped.
Once we were far enough from the house that we wouldn’t be seen, I stopped and said to Isk, “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
I waved a hand at him. “Shift. We’ll get your clothes.”
He tried to look stern, as though he wasn’t all but vibrating with the need to shed his human form, but that effort lasted only a handful of seconds before he was scrambling out of his clothes. In moments, there was wolf-Iskander, bouncing around us in an adorable expression of joy, and I felt vindicated. He had needed this.
“Go on, run,” I said. “We’ll follow along behind you.”
He didn’t have to be told twice.
Evan and I picked up his clothes, folded them, and stowed them neatly in the backpack he was carrying. Every so often, I’d glance up to catch a glimpse of Iskander bounding through the tall grass, at total odds to his gruff demeanor in the car.
“Thanks, Wes,” Evan said quietly.
I didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. “He was out of sorts.”
Evan snorted. “That’s one way of putting it. I told him not to fight it, to figure out how to live with it, but he didn’t want to.”
We started in Iskander’s wake, taking our time because there was no way we were going to catch up to him without using vampire speed or my half-ghost thing.
“Isk likes to be in control,” I said. “This whole thing is the antithesis of that.”
“He’s hardly talked to me since the barbecue.”
“What?”
Evan shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
“I think he’s embarrassed by, you know. The growling.”
“Okay, sure, that wasn’t one of his best moments, but what the hell? It’s not like we haven’t all told him, multiple times, that we know he’s working shit out.” I narrowed my eyes at the wolf tail bouncing throug
h the crackly golden grass up ahead of us. “Iskander!”
Isk stopped, turned, and ran back to us, his mouth open and his tongue hanging out. I resisted the urge to praise him—this was one of my friends, not a dog.
“Have you not been talking to Evan?” I demanded when he reached us.
His tail drooped and his mouth closed.
“That’s the dumbest thing ever.” I scowled. “When you’re done with your run tonight, you’re going to sit and talk with Evan. Make up for some lost time. Got it?”
Iskander whined, then approached Evan cautiously, as if he weren’t sure of his welcome. He swiped his tongue across Evan’s fingers before racing off again.
“I think that might have been an ‘I’m sorry,’” I said.
Evan cupped his licked hand with the other, rubbing it gently. “I think you might be right.”
* * *
It was around 3:00 p.m. when Iskander disappeared.
We’d made it to the edge of the woods Kee had told us about, and I decided that was a good place to stop and set up the tent. Isk had ventured off into the trees, and when I looked up again, he was gone. Evan would have gone after him, but I held him back.
“This is why we’re here.”
“But—”
“C’mon. Help me with the tent, and I’ll show you how to start a fire.”
He yanked the tent pegs out of my hands. “I have been camping before, you know. A lot more recently than you.”
I lifted my palms in an apologetic gesture. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
I unrolled the tent and started smoothing it out. Evan grabbed the opposite side and helped. A chill had settled over us as the shadows got longer, and I was going to be glad to have the tent up and the fire going. I could go half-ghost any time, but I didn’t want to if I didn’t have to.
“I don’t actually like camping,” Evan admitted as we started threading the poles into the tent. “But I’ve been.”
“Not a good experience? What didn’t you like?”
“The bugs. My dad trying to ‘toughen me up.’” He blew out a breath. “He tried to force me to do stuff I didn’t want to do.”
I stayed quiet. Evan didn’t talk about his dad much. His parents had thrown him out of his house when he came out right before he finished high school, and when he’d tried to reconcile a year or so later, he discovered his dad had passed away and his mom didn’t want Evan anywhere around her.
“He was always calling me a sissy,” Evan continued. “I don’t even know if he knew what he was saying. I don’t think he thought I was gay—it was more that he wanted me to be this image of what he thought a man should be. Strong, competent in the woods, capable of fishing and deboning my catch, surviving in the wilderness...or sports. God, he wanted me to be a hockey player.”
“Not your thing?”
“None of it was. I wanted to sketch the world around me, maybe turn them into paintings. But that wasn’t what a man should do, in my dad’s eyes.”
“His loss.”
“You think?”
“I know.” I abandoned the tent for a minute to grip Evan’s shoulder. “Your dad had a narrow, old-fashioned, stupid idea of what makes a man a man. I grew up surrounded by that too, and I can tell you it’s wrong. He was wrong. Being a man is about more than your physical strength or your he-manliness in conquering the wilderness. It’s about integrity, and passion, and being strong for the people you love, in whatever form they need that strength.”
“That’s not me. I’m leaning on you guys all the time. I’m not strong for—”
“Bullshit. You’re stronger than you know, and you’ve got the integrity and passion part of things down.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So you think Iskander...”
I lifted a brow.
He wrinkled his nose. “I’m too young for him, aren’t I?”
I bounced my raised brow.
Evan narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what the hell that look means.”
“It means don’t count yourself out before you even try.”
He brightened. “Yeah?” A second later, the brightness in his eyes and voice dimmed. “I don’t know, Wes. I don’t want to fuck things up. He’s a great friend, and what if I... What if it doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t want me like that, and I embarrass myself? I don’t know if I could continue seeing him all the time.”
“If he doesn’t want you, that’s a problem with him and not you. Got it?” I swiped a hand over his floppy hair, messing it up a bit. “But I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.” I nodded over at the trees, where a familiar wolf stood. He was staring at us...but mostly at Evan, I thought.
“What’s he want?”
I spun Evan around and gave him a little bump in Iskander’s direction. “Go see.”
“Uh—wait. You need help with the tent.”
“I’ve got it.”
“What about the fire?”
“Got that too.” Another push. “Go.”
Evan took a few steps toward Iskander, and Isk went down in a play bow. Evan and I laughed, because, honestly? That was so not Iskander. Then he spun around, his ears back and his eyes wild, tongue flapping—clearly an invitation to play—and Evan ran toward him. Iskander barked and took off back into the woods, vampire-fast Evan close on his tail.
I returned to my tasks. Every once in a while, I heard a yip and a bark, and a bout of laughter from Evan, so I figured the reconciliation was going well. I got the tent set up with two sleeping bags—Isk would probably sleep in wolf form—and then set about getting the fire prepared. I gathered firewood from the trees and stacked it in the pit I dug. Lighting it all on fire was harder than I remembered. Eventually I gave up trying to do it the human way and willed the wood to catch. Yay god-magic.
I leaned back on a surprisingly comfortable boulder and watched the sky darken. The fresh air and exercise must have caught up to me, because the next thing I knew, it was fully dark and giggles were coming from the tent, and loud shushes. Then the sound of kissing.
I smiled, satisfaction curling through me. That hadn’t been my intention when I suggested this outing, but I wasn’t going to complain. I also wasn’t going to hang around to listen.
“Leaving the car keys on the boulder, guys,” I said loudly. All movement and noise in the tent halted. “I’ll haunt Hudson, but if you need me, text. I can be back here anytime.”
“I, uh...” Iskander cleared his throat. “I think we’re good.”
“Have fun!” I said brightly as I concentrated on Hudson’s essence so I could travel through the otherplane to his side.
“Oh, shit,” Evan whispered. “We almost had sex in front of Wes!”
“Not quite in front,” Iskander assured him.
“But—he’s like my brother. How could I—”
“You were a little distracted,” Iskander purred. “Want me to distract you some more?”
I smiled at the nonverbal assent Evan gave as I whipped through the otherplane to Hudson’s side.
Chapter Thirteen
“You ready for this?” Hudson asked as I joined him in our home office the next day—Saturday—after lunch. He had his hands interlinked behind his head, his elbows jutting out, as though he were a proud peacock showing off his feathers.
“Hit me.” I sat down and opened up my laptop.
“Our drug dealer, Gee, is the one...the only...” Hudson beat out a drumroll on his desk and ended with a finger pointed at me. “Walter Gordon.”
I groaned. The employee of Ren’s we’d been following, the shifter who’d sampled his own product, died, and plowed his car into a tree. “Of course he is. That’s going to make questioning him difficult.”
Hudson’s expression dimmed. “Yeah. But the good news is, we’ve alrea
dy got a significant amount of research on him.” He turned his laptop around so I could see his screen. “Here’s the social media analysis Evan did. Notice anything?”
I skimmed the list and saw one name pop up frequently. “He liked the Fox and Pheasant Country Club in Richmond Hill.”
“Indeed he did. Checked in there every month, to be precise. On the full moon. I think it’s a shifter club. Which, you know, weird, but definitely not the weirdest thing I’ve seen in Toronto.”
“Wow, look at you. Being all investigatorly and shit.”
“Well, since I was voluntold to stay in the office yesterday instead of joining in on a camping trip...”
“Uh...did you want to go camping?”
“Of course I wanted to go camping. Even if it was a backyard camping kind of thing.”
“Sorry, Hud. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yeah, you were, but about Iskander. That’s okay. But I’m hereby making it known that I want to reenact our Algonquin camping trips.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Minus the El Camino, right?”
“No promises.”
The doorbell rang and Hudson pushed himself up out of his chair. “That’ll be Kat.”
I squinted at him. “Did I know we were expecting her?”
He shot me a sheepish look as I followed him out to the foyer. “I might’ve forgotten to mention it.”
Kat had visited shortly after we moved into the new place, so she didn’t waste any time admiring the house. Instead, she slapped an envelope against Hudson’s chest. “I need a coffee.”
“Rough morning?” I led the way to the kitchen while Hudson hung a left into the office.
“Rough life.” She hopped up onto one of the stools at the island and propped her chin on one hand, her eyes drooping more with every minute it took me to make her a cup.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.” She sighed. “Maybe. My husband asked for a divorce.”
“Shit, Kat. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It’s not really a surprise. I knew he was getting tired of the long shifts and missed plans, but I didn’t know he was that tired of it, you know?”