“Okay,” I said. “But first, I want you to tell me about my birth parents. You said I was a changeling.”
“Yes, what about it?” Mr. Ravenwood asked, checking a gold watch on his wrist.
“Who stole me from my birth parents? Why me? Who are they? Where are they?”
“So many questions,” he mused, strolling around my tiny room. I wanted to snap at him not to touch my bed, my things, but I held myself back, not wanting to give him an excuse to change the subject.
“I took you,” Mr. Ravenwood said. “Ravenwood Academy isn’t the only home for supernaturals in the world. There are other pockets of supernatural activity all around the world. You belonged in a unique one in that it’s laden with so many wards that it’s virtually undetectable from the outside. I never would have found you if I hadn’t followed someone there back when I was hunting down the last of the wolves.”
“Why’d you want to steal me, though?” I asked. “I wasn’t a wolf.”
“When I saw that all sorts of beings lived there, I needed inside information,” he said. “I needed a count of the wolves, but more than that, I realized what an asset it would be to have other supernatural species join ours in our mission. You see, faeries, witches, mages, demigods—they all have different gifts to offer. Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to find your home after I left it. There were too many spells laden over the area.”
“Then how’d you kidnap me?”
“I waited a few weeks, searching the area I knew I’d been, but it no longer looked familiar. Then one day I saw your mother leaving the valley. You see, even faeries need things from the store on occasion. When I saw her emerging from the woods, I understood the spells they’d laid. I could walk right through their valley and never notice it was what I was looking for. I was outmatched. My only choice was to follow her and take one of her children.”
“What?”
“I wanted your mother, but I knew she was too powerful. A little baby, though. I could have it raised by humans, then take over when I was ready.”
I thought of the Wolf boys’ childhood, which was so much worse than my own. At least Mr. Ravenwood had put me with a stable family instead of sticking me in foster care. Not that I was handing out Brownie points for kidnapping.
“Why bother swapping me out for a human?” I asked. “Why not just take me?”
“Your parents weren’t human,” he said. “They would have caused trouble, hunting you down and exacting revenge. It was much simpler to switch you out for a human baby who happened to be nearby. They might have suspected that something was wrong, but how could they know what? After all, they still had a baby. And I had you, little lamb. I had no interest in raising a child, but I watched over you from afar. When it was time to call you home, we recruited you to come to Ravenwood.”
“What?” I asked, a gasp escaping my lips. “I thought Mr. Wolf did that. He said it was because I was different.”
“And I let him think that,” Mr. Ravenwood said with a haughty sneer. “That is the case for some of his recruits, but they never amount to anything. He’s grasping at straws, summoning humans whom even their own kind find unsatisfactory. I’m the one who has the true power here. I’m the one who calls the supernaturals to Ravenwood. That’s why the academy bears my name. Mr. Wolf wasn’t calling you home, Timberlyn. Your shepherd was.”
My head spun as I tried to put it together. Mr. Wolf had said he found people who were treated differently and recruited them to come to Ravenwood, hoping they were the solution to his problem. But all along, I was never one of those. Mr. Wolf may have been a big shot in the community, and he may have had access to the headmaster and the records at Ravenwood Academy, but Mr. Ravenwood himself was so much more than that. He was so much bigger than a little academy on an island in Canada. This was all so much bigger than the Wolf boys.
“So… My real parents,” I said. “You said you traded me with a baby in the area.”
“Yes,” he said. “In a way, I was your maker long before you stole a taste of my blood. I’ve been keeping an eye on you since you were just a few months old.”
“And I was in the same town as my birth parents all along?”
“Not the same town,” he said. “The supernatural community there isn’t out in the open. They don’t live in a town. But yes, you were quite close.”
“Who are they?” I demanded.
He shrugged like it didn’t matter to him and therefore shouldn’t matter to me. “I don’t know. Some faeries, I imagine.”
I planted my hands on my hips and glared. “I want to meet them.”
“Oh, that’s quite impossible,” he said. “They have protections over them that make them impossible to find.”
“So, that’s it? You’re just going to tell me that I have parents somewhere in Arkansas, but you don’t know who they are or how to find them?”
“You humans are so obsessed with where you came from,” Mr. Ravenwood said. “That doesn’t matter, lamb. What matters is what you are now. Where you’re going. You said you didn’t want to join us, but when you took my blood, you chose to become what we are. You chose to join us. Now you are as we are, superior to humans and all those petty concerns. All you need to worry about now is waiting until
