The Thing About Weres

I watched, head turned, until Cordelia’s white tail was swallowed by the forest’s dark. And then the air was quiet, until the ravens spread their wings and left.

I wanted to break the silence that was stretching wire thin between my twin and me—to call out his name or to send him a thought picture—because he was walking toward me, and he needed to stop. Don’t come any closer. Just stay where you are so I can inspect you for changes first. You’re a stranger to me, you shouldn’t be, but you are. Still, he kept coming, eating up the ground between us, and I knew that I had only seconds to reconcile myself to this—this Shadow of a boy that had filled my memories with laughter and light.

Why hadn’t I recognized him?

Even though he’d donned his hat again there were obvious similarities between the brother I lost and the man crossing the field, if I’d only known to look for them. Lexi had grown tall, but then again, that should have been expected; my twin had always favored my father’s side over Mum’s. And lean—of course, he’d get the Were-lean gene. Then there was his jaw. I’d always thought the rest of his face would eventually grow into it, but, very obviously, it hadn’t. It was, as it had always been and likely always would be, the most dominant of his features; triangular and a little too long, finishing with a stubborn, solid chin —an upside-down pyramid with the top shorn off.

Who could miss a jaw like that?

But where was the wide Joker smile? The irrepressible, “I’ll do it first” twinkle in his green eyes? The man wearing a carefully blank expression—and he was a man, this Fae who’d long since shot past his twenty-second birthday—wasn’t the same kid who used to send me thought pictures during Ms. Webster’s history class.

A game changer, that’s what the Shadow was.

In one sweep, he’d destroyed the series of images I’d created in my head to comfort me when I felt my most twinless and alone: my brother at thirteen, a year after he’d been stolen away by the Fae, looking much as he had at twelve, except perhaps cleaner and better dressed; my twin at seventeen, his hair a little darker, his face filled out, sending a wink to a blushing female. Gone. All those imaginary head shots I’d created, envisioning him growing in tandem beside me, changing from a restless greyhound into something more languid and refined; perhaps an aristocratic Fae.

I’d been wrong. This was no nobleman.

The Shadow walked toward me, hip first—a street fighter balanced on the balls of his feet—until the gap between us could be bridged easily if either of us had the courage to reach out and touch the other.

Leather and sandalwood teased my nose. He’d affected a perfume, a deliberately cultured one. “They smell like dogs,” my twin used to gripe. “I’m glad we have no scent.”

Not Lexi, not Lexi, not Lexi.

I studied the fawn stitching on his black boots, not yet ready to speak, turning words over in my head. Bad ones. Genocide. Manipulator. Thief. Liar. And he must have felt it, too—that distance, that perplexing turn on the map of reconciliations—because my brother didn’t choose to embrace me. Instead, he sank down onto the backs of his booted heels, then slid his suspenders off his shoulders, and pulled off his shirt.

“Here,” he said gruffly.

“Thanks.” I accepted the garment awkwardly. It was dove colored with an indistinct paisley design. Lustrous small gray buttons mocked my swollen hands. “It’s too nice. I’ll ruin it,” I said with a nod toward my midriff. “I’m a little…” My voice fell off. “Bloody” would be the best description. It was everywhere, coating my stomach, staining my bra, smearing my arms, graffitiing my jeans.

Don’t faint.

“Don’t mind that,” he said softly. “You’re fully healed beneath it.”

But I couldn’t tear my gaze from the red smears. My brain shut down—there’d been too many axis shifts in one short night—and for a bit, all I could smell was the scent of my own blood, sweet and floral like crushed sweet peas.

“Hell,” he chided, and when I didn’t respond—who calls me Hell anymore?—he touched my head. Just once. Very lightly. But a spark shot between us, and it startled me out of that blank place I’d sunk into.

“No one calls me Helen anymore,” I told him. “It’s Hedi now.”

“The sun potion heals wounds, even almost mortal ones, if given in time.” Then the man Trowbridge had labeled bankrupt of kindness tentatively stretched out a hand, and held it in the air between us, a fragile bridge hoping to span a turbulent sea.

Permission to touch? his eyes asked.

They’re greener than mine. I’d forgotten that.

He took my silence for approval. “Stay still,” he ordered, leaning on one knee to squeegee the gross stuff off my belly. “See? Nothing there. All healed.”

I bent my head. Smooth, unmarred skin. No hole. No gash.

He sat back on his heels, resting his arm on his knee. His hand was large, long fingered, big knuckles like Dad’s. Not pretty. Capable. Smeared with my blood. “Raise your arms,” he ordered. My brother talks with a Merenwynian accent now. I lifted, and held them like that, curiously obedient, as he threaded arms through sleeves, and head through hole.

Gently, he eased the gray shirt down to my hips.

I shook my head. “It’s ruined.”

“Not a problem.” A glimmer of a smile. “It’s not mine.”

“Then whose is it?”

But he didn’t answer, because his expression had grown tight again, and … frightening. “Give me the name of the beast who hurt your hands.”

“No one did this to me,” I said, thinking guys with wide mouths can flatten them awfully fast. “It’s just payback pain. It always happens after I use my talent. When my magic returns to me—by the way, that was my magic you pinched—my hands do this.” I held up one flaming paw. “It’s only temporary. It’ll blister, and then eventually heal, if I give it enough time.”

“Payback pain,” he repeated in an odd voice, stretching his fingers.

“You don’t get payback pain?” Why not?

“Not the type that hurts my hands,” he said, with a bittersweet smile at the moon. “You don’t change into one of them, then?”

“No. I can’t transform into a wolf,” I said flatly. Can you?

Look at me, Lexi.

A small animal plucked up its courage and waddled for deeper cover. Leaves rustled, a twig cracked. He twisted toward the sound, nostrils flaring.

“Raccoon,” I said. “Creemore is overrun with them.”

“Possum,” he murmured, still staring at the dark forest. “Your nose was never as strong as mine.”

“Who says?” I responded instinctively.

“Your brother does.” Just as quickly, he’d fallen back into the old rhythm, finishing the volley as he’d done back in the days when he’d been only ten minutes older and two inches taller than me—with both eyebrows raised, as if to say, “You challenging me, shrimp?”

And there it was. My brother’s left eyebrow had always been lazier than the right. The sight of his left brow raised slightly higher than its twin scored a sharp nail over the glacier holding my heart hostage.

Love welled.

“Hey,” I said, wishing my hands weren’t hot and swollen fat so that I could do something, anything, with them—fold them over my heart or maybe touch that long sweep of wheat-colored hair—to show him, to tell him —

Now I recognize you.

“Welcome home, Lexi,” I said softly.

He blinked before allowing a wonderful, big huge Lexi grin—his mouth so wide that his top teeth gleamed— to warm his face. “You haven’t grown much, runt.”