Chapter Fifteen
“Worth checking out, huh, Aradia?” she grumbled to herself. She had underestimated the difficulty of dragging an unconscious werewolf through a mile of forest. She’d kept off the road. She really did not want to explain the situation to a passing motorist.
Her blood soaked through the quick and dirty patch job she’d done on her wound, but she didn’t think she was at risk of losing too much blood. The bite itself was filthy with saliva and grime and bacteria, but she’d always proven naturally resilient against infections, so she was content with her own health for the moment.
She was tired, though. It was past three now, and using her powers as she had under combat conditions had taken a toll on her as well.
The Salem Police Department was not large, and given the time of day, was only lightly staffed. Am I really trying to rationalize breaking into a police station?
As stealthily as she could with Roy in tow, Aradia snuck around to the back of the building. Maybe I can find an extra set of keys to the jail cells, sneak Roy into one of them, and wait it out until morning…
She considered her options for a while before finally admitting aloud, “This is nuts. Time for a new plan, Rai.”
Her first step would be dragging Roy back into the woods. However, as soon as she turned, she found herself face to face with a uniformed police officer, and it wasn’t one of the two she knew.
Aradia’s breath caught in her throat. She was so scared that she didn’t notice his disheveled appearance, unkempt hair, untucked shirt, or twitching nose.
“What have we here?” he demanded in what Aradia thought was a very un-police-officerish tone.
“Just, um…” Aradia replied awkwardly. Avoiding eye contact, she mumbled, “Walking my dog.”
The man grunted in response and advanced toward her slowly. She backed up, stumbling over werewolf-Roy. She scrambled to her feet as he reached out to her and she wondered if she was getting arrested.
To her surprise, he reached right past her and inspected the wolf. She observed, not sure what to make of it. He felt for Roy’s pulse and counted as he timed on his wristwatch. Thirty seconds later and seemingly satisfied, the officer checked Roy’s injuries.
“So, uh, are you also a vet?” Aradia asked, not sure if she was joking or in earnest.
He ignored her. She briefly considered bolting, but there was no way she could leave Roy helpless in the hands of this odd man.
“You had a fair idea,” the officer said, “if a piss-poor plan on executing it. Give me a hand here.”
Aradia stood stock still.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” he said to a confused Aradia. “Animal control? Help me get him inside into one of the cells.”
She still didn’t know what to make of this guy, but it was her plan he was helping her complete. Reluctantly, she grabbed Roy’s legs and hefted him up. The two of them were able to carry him with relative ease.
When they got to the building, they carefully set Roy down. Officer Scruffy pulled out a set of keys and entered a code on a keypad beside the door. Aradia noticed he put his body between her and the keypad as he did so, blocking her from seeing the code. The pad chirped a happy noise, a green light flashed, and she heard the door click unlocked.
He held a finger to his lips and slowly exhaled, “Shhhhhh,” before motioning to pick up Roy again.
This dude is seriously creepy, she thought. Nonetheless, she figured he couldn’t be too bad of a character if he was guiding her into a police station. She obeyed his directive and again helped lift Roy.
Together they hauled him into one of the cells. She was pleased to see the other few cells were empty and nobody was overseeing the area. Crime must be down, she deduced.
When they’d completed their task, Aradia whispered, “Why are you doing this?”
Officer Scruffy thought for a moment, glancing from the incarcerated wolf to Aradia and back a couple times. Finally he replied, “Part of me thinks I should kill you.”
She backed up a step and said, “Whoa, really not an appropriate answer to my question.”
“Keep your voice down,” he chastised her.
“You just...” she caught herself speaking loudly, and tried again in a whisper, “You just said you might kill me!”
“I probably should,” he said quietly. His nose twitched again, and he looked contemplative. “I figure, though, if you can knock out a pureblooded werewolf, you must be hidden.”
“Werewolf?” Aradia repeated, playing dumb. “I think somebody’s been reading a little too much Twilight there, buddy. I was just, um, walking my dog. He’s an Alaskan husky. Mix. An Alaskan husky mix. That’s why he looks like a wolf. Sorta.”
He chuckled, but did not press the point.
“What did you mean by hidden?” she asked.
He looked at her curiously, cautiously. After a tense silence he said, “If you’re still playing dumb, then fine, I can play that game. If you really don’t know, though,” he flicked a thumb in Roy’s direction, “just wait until he wakes up and ask him.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s usually about as forthcoming as you are.”
He smiled, and for the first time since she’d met him, he didn’t seem so menacing. “That’s good. He must be careful with how much he divulges. You should be too, though I suspect you know at least that much already.”
Abruptly he turned and headed toward a doorway into the forward portion of the structure. After keying in another code, he left Aradia and Roy alone.
Muffled by the door, she could make out a brief conversation on the other side. “Repairs still going on,” Scruffy called out. “Have to keep the area clear till morning.”
She couldn’t quite make out the response, but she got the gist of it as being another officer astonished at repair work being done at that hour.
“Thanks, Scruffy,” she whispered. Finally able to release her tension, she actually chuckled.
She pulled her phone from her rucksack and started a text to both her parents:
She did not get an immediate response, for which she was grateful.
There were a couple chairs lining the walls. She grabbed one and pulled it near Roy’s cell. She was careful to keep enough distance that he could not lunge and reach her, in case he woke up and was angry.
She cast a glance at Roy sleeping in his wolf form. When she hadn’t been looking he’d curled up in a ball, and his legs were twitching like he was having a running dream.
“What a weird night,” she muttered to herself.
It was a little over two hours later, at the first light of dawn, when Roy shifted back into his human form. Aradia had dozed a bit, but had never fallen into a very deep sleep. She was exhausted, but when the transformation began, her grogginess disappeared.
She could not help but stare as she watched. His fur retracted back into his skin, and his bones shrank and adjusted into their proper places. His skin grew tight and rippled, like the surface of a pond under a light breeze. His snout disappeared altogether, and his dog-nose morphed into a human one. His fierce, carnivorous teeth dulled and turned into that cute smile she knew so well. He slept through the whole process.
She hadn’t noticed in his wolf form, but he still wore some tatters of the clothes he had worn the previous day. That made her wonder if perhaps the initial transformation had come sooner than he’d expected it to. He’d been concerned about the full moon, so he must have known he would change. Why wouldn’t he have taken his clothes off? That would start getting expensive, fast, if he had to buy new clothes every full moon.
There wasn’t really much left of his t-shirt and jeans. He was still wearing, though, a set of elastic-looking boxer briefs. She noticed with a chuckle that he’d apparently cut a hole in the back of them, presumably for his werewolf tail.
I wonder where you find elastic underwear. I guess at a werewolf clothing store.
She had just seen him transform, and yet it was so hard
for her to believe that the guy now lying on the floor of the jail cell had fought her as a werewolf the night before. Looking back at her experiences so far in Salem, she supposed it did make some sense.
It explained his keen sense of smell, and his ability to keep up with her on the track. His strange warning about the full moon at his family diner made a sort of ironic sense. He’d been warning her about himself. I can’t believe he’d let himself turn into a werewolf outside like that. If it hadn’t been me he’d found, he’d have killed somebody tonight.
Just then, a horrible thought struck Aradia with such force that she feared she’d vomit. What if Roy had, in the past, killed people?
Aradia looked and studied Roy's form and thought back on what she knew of werewolves. She’d never really been too interested in fantasy, but she had True Blood and Being Human on her DVR. He’d definitely looked wolf-like, but he’d been much bigger than any conventional wolf. He’d had some very human features as well. She thought with a shudder about how he’d reared up on his hind legs and come at her. She glanced down at her still throbbing arm. Then she thought about those eyes, still so familiar even while his teeth were latched on to her.
She needed him awake, now.
”Roy,” Aradia prodded him with her foot.
Roy made a lazy growling noise as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. Slowly he propped himself up and rose to his feet.
He stopped, however, as soon as he realized where he was. "Why am I in jail?"
He was surprised when Aradia answered him.
"Would you rather be at the animal shelter?"
He jumped and spun around to face her. The two of them stood perfectly still, looking at each other.
Finally Aradia asked, almost conversationally, "So, you’re a werewolf?”
Roy sputtered, "Whoa, um… What do you mean?"
Aradia rolled her eyes and said, "C’mon Roy. I know what you are."
"You’re serious?" Roy repeated again, fear evident in his voice. His words were no longer slurring.
Aradia stared him down like she was at the final table of the World Series of Poker.
Roy burst out laughing. “You’re really serious?” he asked as he laughed. He kept it up for a while, but Aradia kept her face stony straight.
"Aradia," Roy began while holding up his hand. "Look, I don’t know what drugs you’re hopped up on, but I’m sure once it's worn off you’re really going to laugh about this."
"Roy, I saw you," Aradia stated.
"Saw what?" Roy asked.
"I saw you as a wolf last night. I read your mind, I figured out who you were in your wolf form, and just a few minutes ago I saw you transform back into a human. I know for a fact that you are a werewolf!"
Roy opened his mouth to argue once again, but then clamped it shut after her words reached him. “What do you mean you read my mind?"
Aradia had considered not telling Roy about her own powers, but after all the freaky stuff that had happened, she decided that it was better to take the gloves off and be perfectly honest with him.
"I said I read your mind. I probed it. It’s something I can do. That's how I knew you were the wolf that attacked me."
"Attacked you?" Roy repeated.
His gaze fell upon her left arm. All of a sudden, his face turned as white as a sheet of high gloss printer paper.
Aradia expected him to deny it even more furiously, but instead he rushed her and grabbed hold of her shoulders.
"My God, Aradia, I am so sorry. I am so very sorry, but I swear to God I did not mean to turn you. Don’t worry, though, I won't abandon you. I will help you adjust to your new powers, okay? I’ll introduce you to the others of the pack. We will protect you, and teach you our ways. It will be hard, and it’ll take some adjusting. You will be fine, though, I swear!"
"Roy...Roy...Roy...dang it Roy, would you shut up!" Aradia shouted in the middle of Roy's ranting.
Roy's look of pity only deepened. He felt a bit like a policeman who had taken a bullet for a child, a child who instead of thanking him, had turned around and bit him. He was hurt, but she had no understanding of her situation. He couldn’t help but pity her.
"I’m sorry, Aradia," Roy responded. "You were right though. I am a werewolf. And now, so are you. I was just trying to let you know that I was willing to help you get used to it."
Aradia’s head spun. “Okay,” she said. “First things first, we need to get out of here.”
“We need to talk,” Roy said.
“Walk me home. We can talk on the way.”
“Um…” he said, glancing down at himself, bashful for the first time in the conversation.
“Fine, I’ll walk you home. Let’s go.”
They headed for the rear door. “Hey,” Roy said before she pushed it open. “You don’t suppose this is alarmed or anything, do you?”
“Hmm,” she replied. “I don’t think so.”
She pushed the door open. Neither of them heard anything unusual, but they hurried for the tree line just the same.
"I’m sorry, Aradia, but despite what you may have read in books and stuff, it really only takes one bite or scratch from a werewolf to turn you."
Aradia responded, "Do you remember biting me?"
Roy had the decency to blush. He shook his head and said, “No, I don’t know. I don't always remember what I do when I transform. Most of the time I can control it okay, but on a full moon…"
Aradia didn’t know what to think. A werewolf? Really? She sighed and asked, "How long does it take for the bite to heal?"
They crept through the woods as they talked. Roy led the way, as Aradia had no idea how to get to his house. They stayed out of line of sight of the road. Dawn had broken, and Aradia wanted to explain being out with half-naked Roy almost as little as she wanted to explain being out with unconscious werewolf-Roy.
He replied, "It won’t heal until the next lunar cycle, when you undergo your first change. Until then it will… well, it’ll be pretty nasty. Why?"
Aradia had taken the opportunity in the jail cell to retreat her arm, replacing the impromptu bandaging with a more thorough one. It had been a couple hours, but she had an idea of what to expect. "Well Roy, feast your eyes on this." With that, Aradia ripped the bandaging off her injured arm and held it out for him to view.
It did not look good. Her arm was red, puffy, and swollen. Her veins were clearly visible beneath the skin which had become pale and almost translucent. Upon first glance, an observer would think she needed immediate and emergency medical attention.
Roy looked at it more closely than that, though. He saw that the puncture marks made by his fangs and bicuspids had closed and scabbed over. The flesh around the edges of the wound was less ragged and distressed than he’d have expected. It was quite a trauma, but her body was managing to repair it.
"But how?" he managed in shock. "I mean, I am sure I bit you..."
"You did," said Aradia solemnly, nodding to the bite.
"But a werewolf bite can't possibly heal like this. It will stay open and raw until the next cycle."
“Can this mean I won’t be a werewolf?” she asked him.
“I… I don’t know,” he replied. “Maybe. I’m not an expert on this kind of thing. Aradia, how?”
"Well," she replied, "I did say I read your mind. I also knocked you out while you were still in your wolf form. I don’t think a strong healing factor is that big of a deal, all in all."
Roy walked on in silence, completely stunned.
Aradia was feeling much better. Roy was right, she couldn’t be sure of anything until the next cycle, but her fate was no longer sealed.
She’d finally broken through Roy’s barriers and gotten him talking, and she wasn’t about to let him stop now. Coolly she asked, “So are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, or am I going to have to go all Michael Vick on you again?"
“These dog jokes are going to get old real fast,” he replied. He did allow a cautious gri
n at Aradia's joke, though, and added, "Okay, I’ll tell you what you want to know, but on one condition."
"Name it," said Aradia, eager to finally get answers.
"Full disclosure. I tell you everything about me and my kind, you promise to tell me what you are."
"You mean you'll show me yours if I show you mine?" asked Aradia, coyly raising an eyebrow.
Roy snorted and said, "Yeah, something like that."
"Okay," said Aradia.
Roy was a little taken aback. “I’d expected you to be a bit more hesitant at revealing your secrets.”
Aradia just shrugged and said, "Roy, if I’ve learned just one thing, it’s that it's better to tell the truth, especially to your friends, and we are friends, aren't we?"
Roy stopped and looked Aradia square in the eye. He said, "Rai, not only did you stop me from killing anyone but you personally put me someplace safe and stayed by my side the entire night." His eyes grew tender and locked intimately with hers.
Aradia just shrugged casually and said, "Hell, the real reason I stayed was because my dad’s office is in the same complex. I’ve done a lot of tidying there recently. I was worried you might wreck the place."
Roy, crestfallen, asked her, “Really?"
"No," she said with a teasing smile, and nudged him to start walking again.
He grinned his goofy ear-to-ear grin and Aradia asked, "So are we friends or what?"
Roy smiled even wider and affirmed, "Definitely."
"So, tell me why my best friend is a werewolf."
He took a deep breath. "Ok."
It took approximately two hours for Roy to explain everything to her. They reached Roy’s house long before he was done with his tale. He took a quick break to dart inside for some clothes. He returned promptly and picked up where he’d left off.
He was indeed a werewolf, and he was not the only one Aradia knew. All four of his brothers were werewolves, as was his father and presumably his mother. He really wasn’t sure on his mother, because she had left right after his youngest brother was born.
“Why don’t you just ask your dad?” Aradia asked.
“We don’t really talk about her much. Dad gets upset, and my brothers and I hardly remember her. Most of us don’t remember her at all.”
“Why do you think she was probably a werewolf, then? Because you all are werewolves?”
He shrugged. “I dont know. Many people say only pure bloods can make offspring werewolves.”
“So do you think your bio-mom was a werewolf?” she pressed.
“It’s just… uncommon… for a hidden to mate outside his kind.”
“His kind,” she repeated distastefully.
He raised his eyebrows. “It is how it is, Aradia. You’re the one who asked.”
She sighed. “I know I did. Go on.”
He explained that his pack included his brothers, father, cousins, aunt, and uncles. It was basically his entire family. “Except for the Ortega branch,” he added.
She paused at the name. “You mean Officer Ortega?”
He nodded. “They’re not werewolves. I’m not sure how we’re related, to be honest. By marriage through a great-aunt, or something like that.”
“I thought you said werewolves only mate with other werewolves?”
“I said it was uncommon to be otherwise. Not unheard of though.”
Together he and his werewolf relatives were known as the SilverMoon pack. The moniker stood to reason, given that they pretty much lived at the diner as if it were a second home.
Roy explained that he was a full-blood werewolf, meaning he’d been born one. Aradia, if she were a werewolf, would be an initiate. Roy reluctantly admitted that initiates are generally looked down upon in werewolf culture.
“Hey, you said ‘hidden’ earlier. What did you mean?”
“That’s what we are, all of us. Rai, there aren’t just werewolves living in Salem. We’ve got vampires, fairies, shapeshifters, gargoyles, unicorns, elves, gnomes, and plenty of other things you didn’t think existed living here too.”
“Why haven’t I noticed them before?” Aradia asked. “Why hasn’t anybody noticed them? How can we have fairies and werewolves running around in secret? I feel like it should be on the news, or something.”
Roy's face grew serious the moment she made that remark. He then said, voice quiet, “There is a generic name for our people. All of us. Humans call themselves the human race. My race of people and the other races like mine are together the hidden race. That’s what I meant earlier when I said ‘hidden.’ We call ourselves that because the highest, most important law we have is that we must remain hidden from the human world.”
Aradia asked why she had not met any hiddens when she lived in Arizona.
Roy explained, “Many hiddens choose not to live among the humans. Instead, they live in their own separate communities, even cities, where only their kind dwell.”
“But not Salem?”
He chuckled. “No, not Salem. The hiddens out west are old school. They keep to themselves. Most places, really. There are some more progressive hiddens though who choose to integrate.”
“With other hiddens?”
“More with humans. There’s some of that everywhere, really. Hell, you might have had a faerie or a vampire in your class and not known it. Some places there’s more of it than others.”
“Salem?”
“Hidden central,” Roy explained. “Salem, Paris, Tokyo, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Beijing… a few other places. It’s a growing trend the last century or so.”
“Who else that I know is a hidden?”
“Well, just about every third student at Salem High is a hidden.” Disdainfully he went on, “Dax and the Coppertone boys are vampires. Tristan’s a fae.”
“Fae?”
“That’s what they call themselves. They think it sounds cooler than fairy.”
Aradia snorted, thinking how ironic it was that a jerk like Tristan could be a fairy. Ironic, she thought to herself, and yet strangely satisfying.
“Most hiddens you meet will be fae, werewolves, vampires, or shapeshifters.”
“You said there were a bunch more?”
He shrugged. “It’s kind of a regional thing. Like humans. Most humans from a certain place look a certain way. They talk about having different races themselves.”
Aradia nodded, finding the analogy helpful. “But all sorts of people came to America.”
“And even in America, anybody who isn’t white is called a minority. Depending on where you live you’ll mostly have some combination of people who are white, black, Latino, or Asian.”
She nodded again.
“Hey, why did you stand me up?” Aradia asked unexpectedly.
“Huh?”
“I’ve been wondering. It seemed kind of funky, and now that I know about the whole hidden thing, maybe I can get a straight answer.”
His brow furrowed while he tried to connect the dots. Then he saw it. “Oh, the day I met you.”
“First day of freshman year, lunch. You said you’d meet me, then you never showed. Where were you? Something hidden?”
“Yeah. My brothers were chewing me out.”
“Why?”
“For racing you.”
Aradia thought that over. “You’re not allowed to take part in sports?” she asked, although she had a good idea of what he really meant.
“Nah, we can, we just can’t go all out. It’s not a hard and fast law. Honestly we don’t have many of those. But staying hidden is the key. Running like that draws too much attention.” Ashamedly he said, “I let myself be a showboat.”
“Hmm,” was all Aradia replied. She knew exactly what he meant. Ever since that day, De Sylva had been pestering her to join the Track and Field team. Of her own accord, to protect her own secret, she’d actually made sure not to run at her full capacity in front of the coach again. “Maybe that’s a good policy. Okay, tell me more about hiddens.”
He conti
nued dispensing information. Aradia found plenty of it distasteful, but she absorbed it all. One thing she found truly interesting was that, according to Roy, he was not allowed to associate with other types of hidden.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m a werewolf,” he replied, as if that was a full and complete answer.
“Before you said hiddens in Salem are more progressive.”
“We are. We don’t wage wars with each other,” he replied, quite seriously.
“You said you integrate.”
“We do. We go to school together, some of us work together. We make an effort to generally get along, when we have to. But we don’t hang out or go to barbecues on weekends.”
“But why not?”
“Aradia, I have my people to worry about. I can’t jeopardize my pack by associating with those who are not. I would risk exposing us all to danger!" Roy answered.
Aradia drew away from him. She said, "So basically, you are not allowed to hang with other hiddens because they are different."
"Exactly," said Roy. Aradia was silent. Upon reflecting on what he’d just said, he added. "No... no... wait, it’s not like that."
"Then what’s it like, Roy?"
"Well, um," Roy hesitated before explaining. "With other werewolves, you share a kindred spirit. You are of the same people. Even with different packs, we’ve all got the wolf in us. You understand one another. With people who aren’t werewolves, they don’t know anything about you. They live differently than we do; they obey different laws and sometimes disrespect our way of life. They call us 'animals' or 'mutts.' It’s just how it is."
"Seems to me, Roy, that while we of the human race have gotten rid of segregation, your people still practice it."
Roy snorted disdainfully. "There’s a big difference."
“Yeah?” she replied sarcastically.
“Yeah,” he said, anger rising. “My people are segregated for good reasons. For safety, our own and everybody else’s. Yours were simply ignorant bigots.”
Aradia had had enough. She was tired of arguing. Instead she made a mental note that this was an issue she would need to confront again, when she knew more and was better prepared.
She then got up and said, "Okay, Roy. Whatever you say."
"Hey!" Roy snapped. She shot a warning glare at him. He clamped his jaw shut and seemed to suddenly realize he was yelling. “Hey, Rai, I’m sorry. I, uh… so soon after a change, we can get a little heated.”
“Werewolves?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s… well, it’s something you’ll have to learn about us, if you want to still be my friend.”
She sat back down and took his hand. “Roy, of course I still want to be your friend. But lose the whole ‘kind’ thing.”
“It’s not that simple, Aradia.”
“Maybe not. But make an effort, okay? For me?”
He thought about it. “Okay,” he agreed.
“I have another question for you,” she said. “At the party, we were talking about Dereck, you remember that?”
“Yeah. Sure I do.”
“I felt like you were keeping something back. You seemed dead certain about why nobody was talking to the authorities, but I didn’t buy your explanation for why. Was it a hidden thing?”
He nodded. “It’s… well it’s our highest law not to let detailed knowledge of our kind out into the human population.”
“That just doesn’t make any sense to me, though,” she replied. “Humans know all sorts of supernatural stuff.”
“Mistakes get made over time,” he replied. “More recently, the hidden community’s engaged in an active campaign of spreading disinformation. That way if somebody finds something real out…”
“Plausible deniability,” Aradia said.
Roy nodded.
“So you think that’s why nobody who knows anything is talking.”
“And no hidden who knows anything will talk, not if that information might lead the police to knowledge of the hidden race.”
“What’s your take on the murders, Roy?” she asked. “From a hidden perspective.”
“I’m not really following too closely, but look, it’s one of two things. Either a human’s committing the murders, or a hidden is. If it’s a human, I’m not much help to you. But let’s say it’s a hidden. Then you’d need to stop thinking of this as a human crime, with human motives. The killer isn’t trying to evade human authorities. He’s trying to evade hidden ones.”
Without thinking about it, she held her hand up to protect her eyes from the ever rising sun. Realizing what she was doing, she said, "Yikes. It's been quite some time." She looked at her watch. “Double yikes. I need to get going. Hey, do you have plans for tonight?”
Roy beamed. “You mean, like a date?”
“What? No,” Aradia said matter-of-factly. Realizing how callous she’d come across, she went on, “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean plans like those sort of plans. I meant, plans for when you turn. Transform. Change. Whatever you call it.”
“Oh, uh, transform is good,” he said awkwardly and dejectedly. “Or change. Either way. And, well, I do. Have those plans.” He said the last bit hesitantly.
Aradia did not miss the intonation. “You do, but…”
“Well, I had arrangements last night, too.”
She rubbed her arm mindlessly and winced. “Yeah, we saw how that went. Maybe a new plan is in order? I mean really, Roy, you could hurt somebody.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“I don’t think I do,” she said coldly.
“Aradia! You aren’t hearing me. We have… preparations we take.”
“What kind of preparations?”
“It’ll be better if I show you.”
She shook her head. “No, I have to be going. My parents are probably freaking right now.” She had intentionally turned her cell phone on silent hours ago. Plausible deniability, right Rai?
“Another time then,” he said. “Like a date, maybe?”
More like a PETA inspection of the zoo’s wild animal section, Aradia thought. She wasn’t going to let another night go by without being personally assured, one way or another, that he’d be locked up. Out loud she just said, “I’ll call you later.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Roy.
It was later in the day, and Roy was letting Aradia into his family’s home. Amazingly, they were the only two there. Aradia assumed that meant the SilverMoon Diner was packed.
"Oh?" asked Aradia as she crossed the threshold. "How does it work then?"
The question had been whether Roy only shifts on a full moon. "I can change into the wolf whenever I want. It’s not a clear division between the me you know and the me you saw last night. There’s some of each of us in the other. After I change, I’m more wolf-like for a while. That’s why I was quick to anger this morning. It has a mind of its own, but I’m generally in control."
“So,” she dragged out the word, not exactly sure how the phrase the next part, “you wanted to bite me?” Her tone was somewhere between playful and accusatory. For effect, she held out her forearm. She’d applied the last of her healing salve at home and finally had the chance to properly dress the wound. It looked neat and tidy, but Roy still grimaced, knowing what lay beneath the bandages.
"No!" said Roy shaking his head furiously. He led her deeper into the house and opened a door to the basement. Aradia noted that there was evidence of recent damage to the walls and floor. "When the moon is full the wolf takes over almost completely. We lose every ounce of control. It’s the only time we’re really dangerous. Any responsible werewolf has a plan for the full moon."
“And your family?”
“Very responsible,” he replied, guiding her downstairs.
"So what about last night?" asked Aradia.
Roy had never looked so serious. “At first I figured I must have just gotten loose,” he said. “So after you left this morning, I che
cked out the place.”
He flipped a lightswitch.
“Holy guacamole,” Aradia muttered.
The lights flickered on in a very seventies B-grade scifi creature feature kind of way. The fluorescent bulbs lit what looked a lot like the prison she’d been in only that morning. Cells lined both walls of the basement. There were actually more cells here than there had been at the jail. The big difference, though, was that here there were no windows.
“Yeah, it’s a standard feature in werewolf homes,” Roy replied.
“Major selling point?” she asked in a low tone, checking out the area. “Or celling point, I suppose.”
He raised an eyebrow, not catching the play on words.
“One for each of us,” he said. “Outside, in the wild, on a full moon, we might hunt in packs, but confined we’d turn on each other.”
“Hey, what was with the torn clothes?” she asked.
“They tore when I changed,” he replied simply.
“Duh. I mean why were you still even wearing them? You knew you were about to change.”
“Oh,” he replied. “Well, we don’t change until after sunset.”
“Right, you told me that this morning. So why not take them off at sunset? Lay them outside the cell, put them back on in the morning. Boom, safe, done.”
“We don’t change until after sunset,” he repeated, “but not always right away. There’s no real way of knowing. Sometimes we change as soon as the sun’s down, but other times we can go past midnight still in our human form. Usually it’s around nine or ten, but we can’t know in advance. It just sort of happens. And when it happens, it’s fast.”
“I’m not getting it,” Aradia said. “Why not just strip at sunset, save yourself the clothes.”
She saw he was blushing like a tomato, but didn’t see why.
“Oh!” she said, understanding flooding her. “It’s your whole family in here, and you’re all wearing those weird, skimpy elastic underwear.”
His blush deepened, passing red of tomato, hitting that of beet. Talking to his feet, he said, “It wouldn’t be so weird, but my aunt’s down here for the change too.”
She returned to her inspection of the room and its facilities. After a bit more studying, she abruptly turned and looked at him from across the room.
“These cells look pretty sturdy,” she said. The whole setup gleamed with factory shine.
“We keep them in good condition. Lives are at stake.”
“What I mean is, I don’t see you breaking out of one of these.”
“I didn’t,” he replied.
She made a curious noise.
“Look,” he said, bringing her to a cell on the right side of the room.
She checked her watch. She still had several hours before sundown.
There was a key in the door, turned to the open position. She hadn’t noticed it earlier.
“This is the cell I used last night. The doors lock automatically. There’s two ways to unlock them. One, a timer. It opens an hour after dawn, just to play it safe.”
“Two,” Aradia butted in, “that key.”
He was mildly annoyed that she’d stolen his thunder, but he nodded his agreement. “The key’s mostly just in case one of the kids locks himself in here by accident. Otherwise we’d have to wait until dawn the next day.”
“And you keep it…” she asked.
He doubled back toward the weird dungeon’s entryway. “Right here,” he said pointing to a hook next to the door.
“Hmm, I guess that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘who let the dogs out’?” Aradia said grinning.
Roy gave her a dirty look.
Aradia retorted, "I wouldn’t be so judgmental of my jokes if I were you, Roy."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because then I would be tempted to come up with some joke about how you get your 'time of the month'!"
Roy looked completely aghast, which made Aradia grin wickedly as she rushed past him through the basement’s exit.
Roy ran after her. Upstairs he got a pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator. He gestured with it toward Aradia, and she nodded. He poured two glasses.
“You may have been joking, but you were right,” he said. “Somebody let me out.”
“Okay,” Aradia said soberly. “Who?”
“I’ve got my share of enemies,” he replied melodramatically.
Aradia stared him down for a few seconds, then burst out laughing.
“What!” he exclaimed. “I do!”
“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “Sure you do.”
He started to blush. Aradia knew she was being a little mean, but he looked so cute she could only laugh harder.
“Look, Roy,” she said, “the werewolf thing, yeah, it’s pretty badass. But don’t overplay it, ‘kay?”
He considered his options, then reluctantly nodded.
“Until we know who it was, I suggest keeping that key somewhere else. Why not take it into the cell with you at night?”
He thought about the suggestion. “Yeah, that works. We still need to figure out who it was.”
“Well, we can rule out vampires, right?” she asked. Roy had spent a fair portion of their long conversation earlier briefing her in the chief weaknesses of his fanged foes.
He considered, then agreed. “The first time they enter a mortal dwelling, they must be invited. After that they can come and go as freely as they please. Remember that.”
“I got it, thanks,” she said, angry at Roy’s loathing of another race. “So what about fae? They seem like jerks.”
“They are,” he replied, “but this isn’t their style. They’re more… white collar criminals. Ponzi schemes and that sort of thing.”
“Hey!” she asked. “Bernie Madoff, was he a fae?”
Roy shrugged. “Not to my knowledge, but you never know.”
“Okay, so probably not a vampire, probably not a fae. Shapeshifter?”
He squinted, then shook his head. “Probably not. They’re political, but they’re generally pretty straightforward.”
“That’s ironic,” she replied.
“I suppose,” he said.
“You think this is related to the Vampire Murders?” she asked.
“I can’t prove it’s not, but I don’t see any obvious relation.”
“Yeah, neither do I. What about one of those other races you mentioned?” she asked. “You said there were lots of them.”
“Maybe. It could have been anyone, really. Whoever it was knew enough to be afraid. They left the key in the door. I don’t think they opened it. They just unlocked it then got out of there. Eventually I must have kicked it open and left.”
“Roy,” she said gently, “they didn’t need to know much to be afraid. One werewolf was… well, terrifying. A whole roomful would be close to a nightmare.”
He puffed his chest out and smiled. “You thought I was terrifying?”
“Let’s get back to the bad-guy hunt,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Have you considered humans?”
He shook his head again.
Seriously, he’s going to give himself a concussion with how much he’s doing that.
“Not an option,” he said. “I told you about the law.”
“Only about a million times.” She shrugged. “Maybe somebody slipped. Or maybe you were followed last time you turned. Who knows?”
Aradia finished off her lemonade and glanced at her watch. “Well, time flies!” she said. “I’ve gotta head out and finish my weekend homework. This has been educational, but they don’t quiz on this stuff at Salem High.”
He hurried in front of her, blocking her path. "Hey, remember your promise."
"What?" asked Aradia.
Roy rolled his eyes and said, "You know. I showed you mine. Now you tell me what you are."
"I can't do that," Aradia said without missing a beat.
Roy's expression turned furious. "We had an agreement!”
"What I
mean is, Roy," Aradia interrupted and turned around to face him. “I can't tell you what I am because I honestly don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"Exactly what I said. I don't know what I am," she repeated.
Roy tried to determine her level of sincerity. She looked him in the eye and let him judge.
After a while, Roy inhaled sharply. "You really don't know, do you?"
Aradia nodded grimly.
He walked her to the door and asked, “So you aren't going to tell anyone about me, are you?"
Aradia looked back at him and gave a half smile. “Roy, you’re my friend and I would never betray you. Plus, you told me about the whole hidden law thing. But come on, even if I told someone that you are werewolf, would anyone believe me?”
He chuckled. “I guess not.”