“I…” I clear my throat, the idea of not telling her what happened flashing briefly through my mind, but I dismiss it. “Yes,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Something happened to my body. I can’t even describe it. It was like…”
“Like you were transforming?” asks Josie gently.
I nod. “These two guys came in here while I was sleeping. They were trying to steal from me, or… or worse.” I shake my head. “I was scared. They came towards me, and then it was like I started changing. My skin turned red. It looked sort of like yours was when you first showed up. There were these scaly things popping up on my arms, my teeth turned into fangs, my hair got thicker… and then I breathed fire.” I take a shaky breath, hardly believing the words even as they come out of my mouth. “I guess I scared them away, because they ran. I don’t know if they’re coming back. That’s when you guys arrived.”
Josie’s eyebrows raise slightly, but Samantha just nods slowly, knowingly, like she’s seen this all happen a dozen times before. “For what it’s worth, Millie--can I call you that, by the way?” I hesitate for a moment and then nod. Samantha continues, “For what it’s worth, Millie, you’re not alone in this. I’ve seen more people your age in this exact situation than you can count.” She takes a breath, as if steeling herself before making a big announcement, and then says, “The truth is, you’re a shifter.”
I stare at her blankly. “Huh?”
“We use the word shifter as a shorthand for ‘shapeshifter’,” Josie adds.
My expression must be giving away how confused I am, because Samantha says, “I get that this must be coming as a surprise to you. Up until tonight, you probably thought shapeshifters only existed in stories, right?”
“Yeah,” I say dryly. “That’s because they do only exist in stories.”
“Do they, though?” Samantha asks, holding her hand up in the beam of moonlight that’s coming in through the window. As if on cue, her skin begins to turn red again, the color deepening until her whole hand is the same shade of bright scarlet. She snaps her fingers, and suddenly her hand starts to glow, radiating white light as if it were a luminescent bulb. “Can you really say that this is anything other than magic?” she asks me, meeting my eyes with her own.
I scoot back, my head spinning with fear and confusion. “How are you doing that?”
“Josie and I are witch shifters,” Samantha says. “Yes, you heard that right--witches. We have the ability to turn into another form. The red skin, the black eyes, the magic… that’s all witch stuff, and we access it by… well, by shapeshifting.”
“So you’re saying I’m a witch?” I ask, shaking my head in disbelief. “Like Harry Potter?”
Josie chuckles. “Hardly.” Samantha shoots her a warning look, and she quiets, returning her dark eyes to me.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Samantha says, closing her hand as it returns to normal. “There are more types of shifters than just witches. Dragons, vampires, wolves, sirens…”
“And up until now, you probably didn’t know any of those things even existed,” adds Josie, tucking her legs under her. “You’re probably thinking we’re crazy, right?”
I let out a long breath, biting my lip for a moment. “I don’t even know what to think anymore.”
“Well, that’s progress,” Samantha says. “Confusion is normal at this point. The truth is, you shapeshifted back there when those guys attacked you. The fear response is what activated your powers. That happens a lot when shifters come into their own--usually right around your age. As witches, we have charms in place to locate and track the source of any new shifter magic--in this case, you.”
I run a hand through my hair, feeling more tired than ever. “This is crazy. I don’t… I mean, what? You guys show up here out of nowhere and tell me I have magic powers, and you’re acting like this is all normal.”
“That’s because it is normal,” says Josie. “For us, at least.”
I stare at them, looking from one to the other. Their expressions are frustratingly calm and casual. I feel like my life has been turned completely upside-down, like I can’t get a grip on anything that’s happening to me anymore. The rational part of my brain is fighting against all this, telling me they must be lying, this must be a joke, magic isn’t real, humans can’t transform… But the other part, the part that knows deep down that this isn’t a dream, is whispering that I might as well listen to them, that this is as good of an explanation as any for what happened to me earlier. You were wondering why you breathed fire, that part of me murmurs. You know it’s physically impossible, but it happened anyway. Who says this isn’t the reason?
I find myself thinking back to that growing feeling of being out of place, that sense of non-belonging that I’ve felt growing inside me all my life, that cool, foreign energy that I felt coursing through my body. It’s all too much, and I just want to go to sleep for about a year. But that’s not happening, and I know it. “Let’s say I believe you,” I say slowly, pursing my lips. “Let’s say I believe that shapeshifters are real, that I’m one of them. Why did you come find me? What do you want with me?”
“That’s the big question,” Samantha says, nodding approvingly. “If you thought this was like Harry Potter before, Millie, you have no idea what is coming.”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a reason most humans don’t know that shifters exist,” she replies deliberately. “You can probably imagine what would happen if all of society knew about magic and magical beings. Scientists would never leave us alone. There could be fighting, discrimination, full-on wars, for all we know. That’s why we let them
