The Thing About Weres

Of the trailer’s two bedrooms, mine was the one with the bunk beds and the washed-out teal curtains that vaguely coordinated with the pink, green, and blue floral print on the comforters. No pictures. Nothing shiny or bright. At some point in its history, some DYI enthusiast had inexpertly faux-painted the walls.

I stood in front of my closet, puzzling over the state of my hand. My fingers should have been swollen, blister-red, and hurting like I’d slammed them in a car door. I’d been home puttering around the trailer for well over twenty minutes. But my mitts were feeling, on the whole, pretty close to normal. Maybe a little tender, but not too bad. I tilted them toward the light. Four straight fingers, a thumb with a hangnail, and a palm with a fate line that puzzled me. Normal. Pale flesh, completely unmarked by the fever blisters of payback pain.

“I love your skin,” Trowbridge had said back in May.

It was a damn good thing he’d fixated on that, as the rest of me wasn’t going to win any rhinestone crowns. My hair had grown to the middle of my shoulder blades and then, for no particular reason, had refused to sprout another inch. In terms of color, volume, and texture, it is, respectively, brown with a hint of chestnut highlights, depressingly limp, and baby fine. My full upper lip earned more than one or two speculative glances from the male members of the pack, but that thread of sexual desire usually died as soon as their gaze traveled upward. In the comfort of their furry worldview, there are only two appropriate eye-color choices: amber-brown or blue. Mine are a clear, light green, as pale as the sunlit crest on one of those big, rolling ocean waves that hurtle toward the shore. For the record—and I am so fond of debunking myths—my irises aren’t translucent. A Werewolf might notice that if they studied them, but few had ever demonstrated the courage to outstare me, and so they missed the flecks of blue and yellow swimming in that peridot sea.

See? It’s surprisingly easy to give a Were the willies. Pale eyes instead of predictable brown or blue. Pale skin instead of sun-kissed tones. A little bit of magic and a Fae pendant, and you’ve got the hair on the nape of their necks standing at attention like some dumbass sentry outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

With a sigh that would have made Cordelia proud, I walked into the bathroom and turned on the taps. I stared at my reflection as I waited for the water to run cold. Gad, what a sight. The whites of my eyes were pink. What had stalker-ghost looked like before she turned into stalker- ghost? I wet the facecloth under the weak stream of water dribbling out of the faucet and pressed it against my aching lids.

Better.

Blindly, I felt my way back into my bedroom. Questions swirled. Had the wolves killed Casperella? Perhaps they’d met a strange Fae wandering in their world, gone all wolf-territorial, and then buried the body to hide the crime? Is that why her grave is surrounded by a stone wall?

I dropped the facecloth into the laundry basket then stood naked by my narrow bed, contemplating my pillow. Tonight requires more comfort than the nightie Biggs brought back from Barrie. Trowbridge’s scent teased my nostrils and pebbled my nipples as I smoothed his age-soft T-shirt down over my hips.

Or had Casperella lived among them and somehow managed to offend the wrong person?

My stomach let out a gurgle. Stress did that to me. All the nausea meds in the world couldn’t fix my gut turmoil as well as a hit of pure sugar did.

Screw it. I went for my stash. Two Cherry Blossoms (three if I counted the one I’d left on the kitchen counter), two Kit Kats, and a bag of stale M&M’s. A moment later, the Kit Kat lay nested in my palm, wrapped in its cheery red paper, promising me the sweet crunch of satisfaction, a twelve-second sugar high, and a prompt collapse into sleep.

Good enough.

Wake up.

You’ve been dream-napped.

Wake up.

“I never took part in treason,” hissed the girl with the long blond hair. She stood by a window set in an arched framework of stone. Past her shoulder, the view could best be summed up as pastoral. Merenwyn’s fields were impossibly green, dotted with a small herd of shaggy cows with really wide, long curved horns. Pretty. In the distance, the silhouettes of two trees so close together that their trunks seemed to be one.

How can Mad-one tug me into her dreams?

She didn’t live in my world. She didn’t share a bedroom wall with me. I’d reviewed every moment of my visit to Threall, and I’m sure we’d never exchanged anything that could serve as an anchor, or a talisman. And yet, increasingly, I found myself being tugged back to this small cluttered room that screamed wizard’s snuggery.

I would have thought Mad-one too proud to let me witness her final hour in Merenwyn.

The Mystwalker looked very much the way she did in Threall—the same long nose, the same blue gown. But to my eyes, there were a few distinct differences. Her expression was tense. Her fingers were twisting at her waist in agitation.

Animated and anxious: two words I wouldn’t have used for the Mystwalker.

“I am blameless,” she told the old man in a low urgent voice. “I should not be asked to bear your punishment as my own. I knew nothing of your daughter’s love affair. I was ignorant of the potion you created for—”

The fraying sleeve of the old man’s robe slid to his elbow as he held up a single gnarled finger in a timeless shut-thee-up. Frowning fiercely, he funneled all his attention on the tome in front of him while Mad-one worried the tasseled end of her belt. After another string of words he lifted his head in satisfaction to watch sparks dance above the leather-bound manuscript. Then, I heard a distinct hiss—sounding awfully like a tire going flat—and as I watched the bright glitters of light faded, one by one.

“I have set the wards,” he said grimly, closing the book.

“Master,” she began again.

“It was rash to interrupt me, Tyrean.”

“I must speak before it is too late to do so.” Her voice was placating but anger had flushed her cheeks. “I have been your obedient servant since the day I was brought to the castle. Never have I shirked my duties. I have never pleaded fear when asked to travel to Threall—even when I was sick with worry that I would not succeed in finding my way home. And this is my reward? What you ask of me—” A look of desperation tightened her patrician features. “To stay in Threall forever? To guard your soul forever? Why am I being punished so? Within the space of three suns, I won’t remember how to return to Merenwyn.”

“I am sorry, child.” But he looked more hard willed than sympathetic.

“I beg of you,” Mad-one whispered. “Do not do this. Do not demand this of me. I am—”

“Your service will not be forever, Tyrean.”

Her control broke and the next stream of words came out rushed and shrill. “I am not a knave. Your sentence will be the Sleep of Forever!”

The Old Mage aligned the book’s edges so that it sat centered on the lectern before he slid off his stool. “Fate will deliver to me a nalera,” he said. “Once she has pledged her fealty, you will be released from service.”

“Admit that it is over,” she cried. “Let me finish my life here.”

He shook his head and this time his expression was genuinely sad. “You should never have allowed your feelings for Simeon to grow—it has made you so vulnerable to attack. Your foolish heart has made it impossible for me to leave you here, a weapon that can be used against me.” The Old Mage’s mouth tightened. “Before you judge me as heartless, consider carefully the fact that I could kill you now and remove that threat forever.”

“You won’t,” she said coldly. “Because you need a protector in Threall.”

He studied her for a beat. “True.”

“What will stop Helzekiel from destroying your body? While you slumber, it is as defenseless against—”

“I have friends among the Inner Circle who will ensure that no unnatural harm will befall my sleeping body should it come to that.” He fiddled with the quill lying beside the heavy tome. “Child, it has taken me this much loss