Empath (Book 1 of The Empath Trilogy)

  Ch. 9

  Within about fifteen minutes of leaving campus, we arrived at Tara’s house. It was a small Cape Cod common to that area. The houses here were all pretty similar, most of them having been built in the 1920’s with two bedrooms on the main floor and an attic upstairs. Small but homey, I had always liked them. We’d lived in one in South Carolina. They were not so large and sterile as a lot of the big houses being built out in the suburbs. The lights were on inside giving it a warm and welcoming glow.

  The lighting also made it easier to see that the color was light blue or grey with darker shutters and a red door behind a full length glass front storm door. The yard was landscaped with overgrown lilacs and hostas with some mulched wildflowers thrown into a kidney shaped garden just to the left of the sidewalk. A cottage getaway was not what I was expecting from Tara. Maybe I had misjudged the girl I’d only met once.

  With Stephen leading, we walked right in without knocking. The décor took me by surprise, it was not what one would expect for a college student, nor was the house for that matter. The front room was bright with a floor lamp and two matched table lamps illuminating the light hardwood floor and fluffy pale cream area rug. Two small, camel-colored corduroy love seats were on opposing walls with a large window taking up the majority of the front wall next to the door.

  The queen of the castle, Tara was sitting on the one loveseat to the left of a tall, thin man sitting next to her with his arms crossed loosely in front of him. He had hair the same color as Tara and Stephen, only his was a little longer, pulled back into a short ponytail. He was dressed in khakis and a blue Henley with a peek of tawny chest hair showing through the opening. When he looked up at me, I saw the same eye and face shape as Stephen and Tara. The resemblance was uncanny. He had to be an older brother, maybe in his early twenties.

  Continuing with my scan, I saw another woman lounging on the other loveseat who could have been the tall man’s twin. She had long, honey colored hair, and dressed in hip hugging jeans that covered legs that went on forever and a jewel green satin top that ended just above her belly button. I had to admit that if I could make it look like that, I would wear that kind of thing to the grocery store. She lay on the loveseat with her head resting on one hand, elbow on the arm of the couch and legs casually thrown over the other arm. She had to be about six feet, not much shorter than her brother.

  All of the Andrews looked up at us when we walked in. The conversation stopped, but didn’t feel hostile. The group appeared to be politely waiting for an introduction.

  “Tara, you’ve already met Claire.” Tara nodded, not entirely unpleasant, her lips were tight as she dipped her head. “Claire, let me introduce my older brother and sister, Troy and Tonya.” They were both reserved but kind as they nodded and Troy said, “Pleased to meet you finally. Stephen has spoken highly of you.”

  My stomach fluttered nervously and I looked over at Stephen who shrugged. “We’re a close family. We talk about everything.” He saw my shoulders tighten as I realized what he must have shared with them.

  He smiled gently. “Yes, they know about your gift, but don’t worry. You are safe here.” In my head, I thought calm and safe, though I would normally be freaking out with complete strangers learning all about my secret, even if they did call it a gift.

  It was also then that I noticed I couldn’t feel any of them. I guess I got used to my minor shielding working to reduce the “buzz” of people near me to just background, but this was even less, nonexistent. What I could feel was different than anything I had ever felt around people. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. “Are you doing this?” I whispered to Stephen thinking maybe he was helping me out.

  He met my hesitant gaze serenely, “We all are.”

  “What?” I looked at them and they were all so relaxed, like a pride of lions lounging in their den. It was hard to imagine they were putting forth the kind of effort it took me to shield the little bit I had managed so far. I was getting better, but still I had to concentrate so that I always looked like I was deep in thought, sometimes in pain.

  “You aren’t the only one around here with a gift, you know,” Stephen said with no small amount of pride and raised his chin, grinning smugly. I had figured as much, but I didn’t understand the feeling I was getting from all of them. There had always been something different about Stephen, only it was more pronounced when he was here with his family.

  Troy spoke up without changing his position next to Tara or looking at me, “Why you have invited her, Stephen? You know that tonight we have a meeting.”

  “I have asked Claire to come here because of her gift. I’ve advised her that we can help her to develop it. That, and I know we have a meeting which is why I’ve chosen tonight to invite her.”

  “I’m not certain about her ability to control herself,” the lioness purred from her perch across the room. Tonya swung her legs down and, smooth as a cat, stood in one fluid motion. She was the tallest woman I had ever seen in person. “She feels wild and out of control, yet you say she has been working by herself for weeks. I have to wonder if she is worth the training if this is any indication of her potential.”

  This was getting trippy. I couldn’t follow what they were talking about. I thought of the tea party in Alice in Wonderland and wondered if Stephen was the Mad Hatter or if it was Troy who was running things. That, combined with the formality, it was not indicative of what I knew of Stephen at all. Wait, what did I know about this family or Stephen? Maybe his family had gone to boarding school somewhere in Europe or something. I had seen that sort of thing in the movies, those people always seemed so much more elegant and formal. Real people didn’t talk like this though. And I was getting very nervous of them talking about me as though I was not really human or here.

  “Stephen, maybe you should just bring me home if I’m unwelcome.” This situation had crossed over from strange to downright bizarre. Oddly enough, though, I wasn’t panicking at all.

  “Claire, I told you that we could help you to develop your talent, but in order to do so, there are some things you need to know. Things about how the world really looks, not how we’re taught to see it. Do you remember the first time we met? Have you wondered how I knew that you were special?” Hazel eyes burned into mine with such intensity, I found myself leaning in and I nodded assent, not even thinking to snort at his use of the word “special.”

  He sighed, “I need you to hear me out. As strange as some of this is going to sound, I want you to remember that I am your friend and I won’t lie to you.”

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to sound calm, “Okay, I’ll try.” I felt some anxiety leaking through. Were my newfound shielding abilities keeping me from feeling the full range of my own emotions? Were their abilities lulling me into a false sense of security? I should be running away.

  “Let’s sit down. Tonya, do you mind?” He asked her breaking his gaze from mine only briefly.

  She gave up her claim on the seat, spun and glided into the kitchen without a word.

  Stephen and I sat down next to each other, our knees mere inches away from each other. Years of practice made me cautious not to touch and I automatically scooted backward. “My family and I are gifted, like you. We all have special abilities and use these abilities to train others like you to better handle their gifts. However, your talent is stronger than any I have worked with before.” At this, there was an odd rumbling from the kitchen. “I’m pretty sure it’s stronger than any of us have worked with, which is why I’ve called you here tonight.”

  “I don’t understand, Stephen, you said that you could help me. I’m sure you can work with mine, even if it is different.” Hearing how I was different, even among others like me, only served to solidify for me how freakish I really was.

  Stephen ran his hand through his hair, leaving it sticking up in some funny ways. It gave me something else to look at
other than his eyes and I was grateful. “It isn’t that simple. You see we are able through a special talent that we share as a family, to absorb most of the outside influences and essentially block you from outside stimuli as you learn to manage your own shields in a sort of safety bubble. But yours work differently, they go back and forth instead of just one direction. I haven’t seen their equal before. We might need to call in a favor from another family more capable, but that would put us in debt to them.” Something definitely growled in the kitchen. Not a dog, though. It sounded like a pissed off cat. I hoped it was locked up; cats hated me.

  “Who is this family? Are they cousins or something?” I was definitely missing part of the puzzle; I didn’t understand why owing a favor was such a big deal. Stephen wasn’t telling me something. “I can repay them, I’m sure. You don’t need to owe anyone anything on my behalf.”

  Tara stood up and was surprisingly graceful for her farm girl build. “I told you she wouldn’t understand. This is beyond the understanding of her kind.”

  “Oh? My kind? What kind would that be?” First impressions definitely served here. Tara was a jerk and she was an easy target for the anxious flare up I felt coming on.

  Troy put his hand on Tara’s wrist to stop her, and she turned to face him. “Let’s put it out there and see what she does.” That kind of control meant he had to be the leader here. It was good to have him stop Tara’s attitude, except I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. It was getting a bit too intense here for me. I started to think about how I could get Stephen to take me home.

  A sigh from the couch next to me brought me back. “Claire, what do you believe about the paranormal?”

  If he didn’t look so serious, I would have laughed right in his face. Paranormal? My life seemed to be constantly going round this theme, but I was the daughter of a man who did not give a lot of time to fairy tales and ghost stories. I was raised to see things as they were and nothing more. My curse was the only hiccup in Dad’s rational theories on life but that didn’t mean everything was real. Out of respect though, I tried to make my point in a non-offensive way. “Books and movies are my only exposure and I’m not certain that those are based in reality. After all, look at what the books say about things like ESP. They aren’t all in agreement. Not even close. I think if there was any truth to them, they would be more in sync with each other.”

  “What about your gift? Doesn’t that make you believe there’s something else out there? Jenkins’ book?” This was from Troy again, who was sitting forward in his seat, elbows on his thighs looking directly at my face.

  I was really hoping we were just having a philosophical discussion, but I was careful not to offend, regardless. I was in the minority here and didn’t want to test Stephen’s loyalties if I could avoid it. “My gift, as you guys call it, is a weird fluke that is just an overly emphasized, but perfectly normal, thing. Everyone understands other people’s emotions to a point, I just get them in more detail.” That was something I had tried to convince myself of before; I was just really observant.

  Troy cocked his head to the side, staring right into my eyes. “First off, you can feel people’s emotions not just understand them and Stephen says you can channel people’s emotions as well. That is definitely beyond the norm. That makes it para normal.” He said this last as two words to emphasize the point.

  The little detail that had been nagging gently at the back of my mind kicked me then, Troy knew something even Stephen shouldn’t have known. No one should have known because I had never told anyone. My fury swelled in my chest. “How do you know I can channel? I know I have never said that to you. Ever.” I stood up. I was pretty sure that I could walk back a block to the gas station we’d passed on the corner and wait for a cab there. I was about two seconds from walking out the door. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I didn’t want to be here anymore; that much I knew for certain.

  Stephen touched my arm, very lightly. His touch was just a whisper, but there was a flash of something. I didn’t know how to describe it. In my head flashed my terrified face when I was falling into him, then my fear of feeling him. I tried to remember what he had said that day in the coffee shop after I first met him. He’d said that I “blasted him” when I touched him. I had thought the word “ouch” but had not felt any pain myself. Since then, I had admitted to him that I feel people but never the most frightening part of my talent, the fact that I could lose myself completely in someone else and channel them. That was also the part that I had yet to master control of, the part I wasn’t sure I could control.

  My breathing was speeding up; I was starting to hyperventilate. “How do you know that? Can you read my mind?” I sat back down, my mind going numb with shock. The phrase, “You have to listen,” running through my head brought me back to the present, and I tried to focus on what Stephen was saying, my heart began to slow back down.

  “No, but you and I have more in common than you think. I kind of figured things out when you landed on me. I felt a lot of power there.” He sat back into the cushions behind him with a sigh, “You can feel other people’s emotions rather strongly, yes?” I nodded. “If someone is having a strong feeling and they touch you, you can’t help but feel what they are feeling, right?” Slowly, wide eyed, I nodded the tiniest bit. “Well, I have a similar ability. You feel people by their emotions, I see them by their intentions.”

  “I don’t understand.” I was totally confused now and was thinking very strongly about running outside right now despite the compulsion I felt to listen.

  “How do I explain?” Stephen looked up at the ceiling and put his hands on his head, mussing his hair again. He looked about twelve years old. He stared right at me, appearing decided. “Think about your parents,” he instructed me.

  “Why?” I had no idea what was going to happen but I didn’t want to give him any information about my family that could be used to harm them or me.

  “I’m going to show you what I do.” He waited for me to process all of it and gave no more than a slight muscle twitch of the eye when he saw me cave.

  “Okay.” For some reason beyond my comprehension, I followed his instructions and closed my eyes, thinking about Mom. She was probably worried about me by now, I thought, I should take them up on their offer to come take me to lunch. It was just so easy to get lost in my new life. When I got back to the dorm, I would have to call and invite them down for the afternoon. I could try out my new shielding on them.

  “So when are you going to have them over?” Stephen asked, breaking into my thoughts.

  Rolling my eyes at him, I answered sarcastically, “That isn’t hard to figure out. It’s like a phony magician. All you have to do is read me. Here I am, a college student away from home and you have me think about my parents. It is going to either be ‘I’m happy I’m away’ or ‘gee I sure miss them,’ you have a fifty-fifty shot at being right.”

  He patiently tried to explain his point, “Well, as you explained about your gift being one that is just a normal human response heightened to a special level, so is mine. I can go downtown and show you who is going to commit a crime, when a girl decides to go home with a guy from a bar, anything like that. I read emotions like you do, but I can’t tell much until the person makes up their mind. That is when I can see what they are going to do.”

  “So can you tell the future?” My eyes widened in disbelief. No wonder he was so calm all the time, nothing surprised him.

  “No, but if the President decided to go to war, I could tell. That doesn’t mean it will happen because it isn’t that simple to go to war, but I could tell that is what he decided to do. I can see his intentions. It has come in handy a few times when we’ve needed to figure out if someone is telling the truth.”

  “Like a human lie detector?”

  He seemed pleased. “Yes, that is one way we can use it. I can also
see if someone is able to handle strange information.” He looked meaningfully at me and I smiled a bit shyly. “My gift compliments yours very well. That is why we,” he gestured to his family still in the room. I had forgotten about them, “Have called you here. We have someone who specializes in helping people like you. I brought you in because your gift is so strong, I worry for you if you don’t get it under control.”

  Tonya stuck her head out from the kitchen. “You are forgetting the most important part, dear brother. Or don’t you want to tell her what you’ve been doing to her all this time?” Her expression was smug, and cruelty lit her eyes.

  I looked quickly back to Stephen, my own eyes narrowed in suspicion, voice just above a whisper, “What have you been doing to me?”

  Stephen looked guilty and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand as he looked up at me and said, “There’s more to what I can do.”

  “More? How much more?” No longer scared, now I was angry with him. Having my legs cut out from under me every few seconds was keeping my fuse short.

  “Once I touch someone, I get a feel for them. After that, I can make suggestions to them.”

  “Everyone can make suggestions, why do you need to touch someone? Get a feel for what?” I was struggling to make the connection that was once again just beyond my reach.

  “We all have an energy feel. You feel it when you touch someone, right? You get their specific feel and can pick them out of a crowd later?” Seeing my reaction, he knew he was right and went on. “Once I touch someone, I get a feel for them and can find them if I’m within a certain range. I can make suggestions to them.” He saw that I still wasn’t making the leap. “In their head.” And that was where he said it, I watched his mouth remain closed but the words appeared in my head in the same tone as several others had that evening.

  My sudden intake of air helped to lift me up off the couch and move quickly toward the door. Stephen jumped up too. I was so furious at him, at all of them, for bringing me here to toy with for their own amusement. When I jumped up, I lost focus and my weak shields slid, allowing the disorienting chaos of their unique chatter to slam into me and I wobbled on my feet.

  Stephen reached to grab me, but when he touched me, I skittered back, this time falling into the loveseat. “You bastard!” I shrieked at him. I’d gotten a flash of peace at his touch. He was trying to do it again. “How dare you try to control my thoughts, you have no right! People’s heads are private. And what about the rest of you? What do you do? Do you go into people’s heads too? Or is that just Stephen’s special gift?” I spat this last bitterly. It was vulgar, what he was doing. He had been telling me to be calm, to listen, he had been manipulating me this whole time and I was angry with myself for having trusted him.

  “Wait, Claire,” Stephen reasoned quietly. He started to put his hands out to me, but saw my fury and slowly put them back down. “Think for a minute about what you have heard me say to you. I’ve asked you to be calm when you were scared and asked you to listen when you were not sure if you should. I promise you that I didn’t ever try to sway you or do anything unethical. I apologize that I ever went into your thoughts, but this situation called for it. You need to get yourself under control before you get yourself or someone else in trouble. With our abilities being so closely related, I thought I would be able to help you. When I saw how strong yours was, I even hoped that some day you could work with us; you would be a great asset to us.” He once again sounded so sincere.

  My blocking was not fully back up and I could feel that his intentions were honest and he truly believed what he was saying, making me want to believe him, regardless of how utterly insane this was.

  I looked around at his family and saw that they were all very still, watching me for my reaction. Even Tonya had her forehead resting on the kitchen doorjamb with one eye hidden behind the wall, and the other one focused on me. The one I could see looked very worried, it was the only hint of real emotions I’d seen from her.

  Taking a deep breath, I looked back and met Stephen’s gaze. Moving to touch his knee in front of me, I retracted my hand at the last minute. Instead, I pleaded with a word. “Sit.” Seeing his hesitation, I added gently, “Please.” He sat wordlessly and closed his eyes, relieved.

  Unable to bear the image of him so still and unlike the Stephen I knew, I glanced away and found Troy’s gaze, which wasn’t hard seeing as it was leveled directly at me while he studied my reaction. “What do you need me to do to get this started?”

  Troy’s eyebrows ticked up as he considered me. “Claire, there is more that you need to know before committing to this. Not all is as it seems here.”

  “My friend has offered to find help for me; I need to be responsible for any resulting obligations, what else is there?” Trying to lighten the mood, I added, “We are talking about an entirely different reality than the one I normally operate in, I think I’m being perfectly reasonable.” Besides, I really didn’t see any other options. If I could get help with this cursed gift of mine and keep his family free of an obligation they clearly did not want, then I just didn’t see any question in the matter. And if someday they needed me to help them out with something. I could do that. The idea that something good could come of this curse; now that would be an interesting twist.

  It was Tara’s turn to speak and she appeared to be reconsidering me very cautiously. “Ours is not a family like any you have known before. Because we have not introduced an outsider to our clan in a long time, I am not sure how to do so.” She appeared to be deep in thought and had gotten up to walk to where Tonya stood at the doorway of the kitchen.

  I could see that there were some pictures arranged on the wall in a circle surrounding a large oval shaped mirror. Tara motioned for me to join her in front of them. Taking a moment to look first at Stephen, who nodded that it was okay, I rose and walked to stand with her.

  We stood looking at the pictures, and judging by the cars, clothes and general condition of the photos, I could see that some went back a few generations. The unmistakable family resemblance was uncanny.

  “Is this your dad?” I asked, pointing at a picture of a smaller, slightly built man smiling at me from under a fedora. The suit and car said 1930’s. “He looks just like Stephen.”

  In a cautious voice, Tara answered, “No, that is Stephen.”

  I kept my eyes on the pictures, not certain what she was saying. My head was whirling. How could Stephen be that man? That would make him over seventy years old. What about the rest of them? Did they want me to believe that they were all ageless? Immortal? My brain stuttered on the word.

  “Here I am”, she pointed to a larger woman standing in a WAV uniform, next to a battleship and a tall, thin man in an army uniform circa World War II. “And that is Troy with me. This is a great one of Tonya,” she smiled as she pointed to a flapper in a glittering dress and feather headband complete with beads and cigarette between her fingers, her head thrown back laughing. She was a lot less intimidating when she laughed. Tara raised her voice a hair as she half turned toward the kitchen, “Do you remember that one, Tonya?”

  A soft, warm chuckle came from the kitchen doorway behind me. “Those were possibly my favorite years. The roaring 20’s, indeed.”

  Stephen came up beside me and mouthed, “I can help.” Operating in a fog, I nodded my acceptance and felt the languid comfort of calm flow through me. Right now I was okay with a little help handling this. He was my friend and I knew that he was trying to help his family and had not done anything wrong with my head, only enough to keep me here to listen so that I could make up my mind with all of the information I needed. Maybe I was crazy or getting caught up in whatever this whole charade was, but I still trusted him no matter what weirdness I was hearing. Whatever the reason, he had genuine concerns for his family should he have to make a deal with this other family, making my obligation clear. Any price
associated with this deal would have to be handled by me. I didn’t have a lot of money but I was honest and I would find a way to make it up.

  Immortality. The word slid through my mind while I continued to follow the march of the family through the decades. Well, maybe it was possible. If ESP and paranormal were real, then why not agelessness? What made people immortal though? My heart skipped a beat and I caught my breath. “Are you,” I squeaked out the word, “vampires or something?”

  “Or something,” Stephen replied softly. “Troy, I’m not certain how to proceed. Do you think I should just show her?” Stephen and Troy looked at each other for a minute, Troy gave an almost imperceptible nod and Stephen moved away from me.

  I looked up at him, watching him back away until he gave me a last wink, turned and glided into the kitchen. From behind the wall, I heard his voice call out, “It’s better that I show you what we are, it’s sort of hard to understand any other way.” Then I heard a ripping noise, like he was tearing a dishtowel or something in there. At the same time, I felt a prickling along my skin. I glanced down at my arm to see the hair standing up, when a movement coming from the kitchen caught my eye. It was the biggest cat I’d ever seen; it was a mountain lion.

  “Stephen!” I called in a panic. Was this the pet I had been hearing in the kitchen earlier? My mind tried to make sense of it. Looking at the cat now, my disbelief grew. Somehow I knew it was him. I just didn’t believe it, but he felt the same. This was like one of those late night movies where everyone wore skimpy clothes and the werewolves ate everyone. I wondered if I was going to be lunch. Was this why they felt so strange? I had thought they felt similar to animals but not quite the same, something in between.

  The mountain lion walked over to me, purring deep in his throat. Maybe he was trying to make me feel more at ease; unfortunately, it wasn’t working so far. I felt him say Stephen in my head. Fighting my fear, I reached out my hand to him and he padded forward softly on his large paws before he rubbed his cheek on my fingers and looked up at me, still purring. This was Stephen yet when he touched me I felt nothing more than if I were touching an animal. My lips curved pleasantly while I regarded his hazel eyes with wonder.

  Before I could think whether it might offend him, I asked aloud, “Can I pet you?”

  He rumbled low and came over to rub on my legs as if he was just an ordinary housecat, only this one liked me. His rippling fur was beautiful under the soft lights in the room. Golden brown with a chocolate tipped tail, he was the epitome of grace and beauty. “Do you have the claws and the teeth? Are you like a real mountain lion?”

  He raised a front paw in a completely human gesture and spread his digits to show me his extended claws, before moving his face to within inches of my own and smiling at me to show me the largest fangs I had ever seen outside a museum so close they could kill me. Somehow I couldn’t be afraid though; it could have been the very human hint of amusement I saw in his eyes. If he was in his human form, I knew he would be smiling and laughing right now.

  Remembering the rest of the family was there with us, I looked up at Tara. “Can all of you do that?”

  “Yes.” Tara narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Are you not afraid of us?”

  “Not of Stephen. He wouldn’t touch me.” I put the emphasis on the ‘he’, not being so sure of the others. Stephen had said they all had gifts, he wasn’t kidding.

  Tonya giggled, a totally girlie giggle and added, “She’s got that right.”

  I shot her a look. Not everyone could look like her but she didn’t have to be rude. But then got distracted when I caught sight of the pictures out of the corner of my eye. “Is that why you guys don’t age?”

  Troy spoke up from the couch, still sitting very calmly at his original perch, “We do age, just at a much slower rate than humans. Our change brings our bodies to physical maturity, and then we slow our aging significantly. It is not uncommon to live several human lifetimes without significant changes in our appearance.”

  There it was, ‘humans.’ They were not human. Even though I was looking at real purring proof of that, knowing that my only friend was the biggest cat I’d ever seen outside of a zoo, it was fairly hair-raising to hear him referred to as a non-human.

  “What are you guys? I know you aren’t werewolves since you aren’t wolves. What are you called if you turn into cats?”

  Their patriarch answered patiently, “We are werecats; there are a number of different kinds of wereanimals. Werewolves are just the kind Hollywood decided to exploit.” Troy sounded almost offended, as if he wanted to have been in the group made popular. Odd, I hadn’t pegged him as a glory hound. Or glory cat?

  He must have seen what I was thinking in my expression because he went on to clarify, “The werewolves are fine, but they have gotten progressively more difficult to handle since becoming celebrities. They were quite proud to have been singled out by the movie and book industries. Now, they are impossible to work with when the situation demands.”

  Funny, I had a picture in my head of a party and the werewolves strutting around, noses in the air, snubbing all of the other groups. I couldn’t resist a giggle.

  As this new knowledge filed itself into my consciousness, I had more questions. “So, since you guys are giant cats, what could you possibly be afraid of from this other family? Are they werecats too or are they some other animal?”

  Troy and Tonya exchanged a glance and Tara suddenly had an urge to straighten the pictures on the wall, taking all of her concentration. Stephen walked into the kitchen again and I felt the tingle on my skin again as I heard a small popping sound. I watched the doorway expectantly. Within about a minute, Stephen came back through the doorway behind Tonya, running his hand through his hair and tugging his shirt down. Wow, rapid dressing; another one of his talents. He was the one to answer me.

  “The wereanimals are not an issue. We are ruled by a council, which disallows clans from fighting amongst themselves. All grievances are brought before the Council which rules on what actions must be taken to resolve the issue in the best interest of the community.”

  This just got weirder by the minute. Wereanimals, snobby werewolves, a Council to handle fighting; it was so civilized. “You guys have your own little world.”

  Tara bristled, “It is not a little world, thank you. We have existed for as long as humans. And since the inception of the Council a thousand years ago, we have lived a far more civilized existence than you people have managed, I might add.”

  “She means no harm,” Troy shot a cautionary glance at Tara on my behalf. I had one more ally it seemed.

  Trying to placate her, I apologized, “I’m sorry, Tara, I didn’t mean any offense.”

  She shrugged, obviously still huffy. Turning back to Stephen, I asked again, “So who is the problem with, if not weres?” This was so unreal to be sitting in a normal house, in a normal living room, and to be discussing the social problems of supernatural creatures previously believed to be mythical up until about a half an hour ago.

  “Vampires.” Stephen said it in a dull tone.

  My heart skipped a beat and I shuddered despite myself. “Vampires?” I whispered. That was a word that inspired a true sense of fear down to my very core. Undead, unkillable, blood sucking machines that hated people for some unknown reason. Strike that, they loved people. They loved to drink our blood. I had seen the movies, and now I knew they were real. In an instant, nighttime got a whole lot scarier. My arms wrapped around my middle.

  Stephen waved me back to the loveseat. “Claire, let’s sit. This is a lot to take in,” his tone changed from gentle to something I hadn’t heard from him yet, defensive. As we were halfway to the loveseat, Stephen’s whole demeanor had changed. He lifted his nose, sniffing the air. “And we aren’t done yet. They’re right on time.”

  Looking around at the rest of the family, I saw that Tro
y, Tonya and Tara had come into the middle of the room, gathering together, forming ranks to greet the midnight visitors. All of this was still registering when I heard the doorbell ring, making it real.

  “Why did you have to invite them here to my house?” Tara hissed, her eyes narrowing. I could picture her tail switching. It was so easy to see her as a cat; that would explain the moodiness.

  Troy diplomatically held up his hand to quiet her. “You know the late hour draws attention on my street. They have come to discuss matters. Nothing more.”

  I understood then that the other family, the one we had been discussing handling my training, was here now and they were vampires. There were vampires at the door! And in my fear, I felt the shock of disbelief, “They use the doorbell?” How odd that they would do something so absolutely ordinary.

  “Claire, you do not have to be afraid here.” Stephen’s tone was somber. His was not just a statement meant to reassure, he was making a promise. For the second time that night, I took a leap and believed my friend. My hands were like ice as my nerves took hold of my body, I forced my arms to my sides to at least appear less petrified than I was.

  Troy walked forward to open the door and I realized I was holding my breath. He looked back at me just as he was about to open the door. “You are protected here as a guest of our clan. You have nothing to fear for your safety.” He smiled briefly at me as he opened the door to the most frightening thing I could ever conceive to be walking the earth.