Again, she saw a hint of hesitation. Then, in a strangely steely voice, “No. No I don’t.”
“Because you hate what you are?”
“I don’t hate what I am. I mean, I hatesomethings about it. The pain of turning, the inability to control it, the weird injuries. The fact that I searched for years for solutions to the pain and the inability to control it and the injuries, and all I had to show for it was getting scammed out of a thousand dollars by a vampire who sold me tomato juice sprinkled with glitter. And, of course, whatever your grandmother could cobble. But, I mean, you have to know that I find the rest of it completely cool and awesome.”
“So tell me why no wolf buddies.”
He looked away. “The other ones in this area—they’re just. They’re not… good people. They’re not good wolves,” he said, and seemed to hesitate again before continuing. As if what he had to say was difficult to express, or maybe something she wouldn’t understand. “They do… mean things. And harass people. Or threaten to harass people.”
He had to know, though, how easy it was for her to relate to something like that. “You mean like the Jerk Squad used to do to us,” she said to help him. But that just seemed to make it worse. Now he was rubbing the back of his neck. He wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Kind of, yeah.”
“So I should definitely avoid local wolves then.”
“You won’t have to. I made sure they won’t ever come near you,” he said, suddenly so grave about it that her heart tried to flutter.
Though she held it in check. She reminded herself of other similar promises he had made in the past.I won’t let those jerks hurt you again,he’d whispered, once, as he applied a Band-Aid to some war wound they had given her. A book they had thrown, she thought it had been.
But whatever it was, it hadn’t mattered.
He’d huddled with them and whispered about her barely a year later. Stopped talking when she got close. Carried on when she was far enough away. And things like that? Well, they cut worse than the corner of a Stephen King hardback.
They made her sink into silence.
And when she finally spoke, it wasn’t to believe in his solemn vow to look after her.
“Do you still see those jerks?” she asked. Sure that he was going to shrug in response. More happy than she would have liked when he didn’t.
“Never. I haven’t since a little while after that night I did what I did,” he said firmly enough that she could believe him. She could let that remove a weight from her mind. And even more so, when he continued. “All the things I thought they were, all the things I thought they might help me get—it was all just bullshit anyway. I mean currently, my main source of income is selling goblin droppings to weirdos. I live in my dad’s old condemned hunting lodge. And I still feel like I have more now than I ever did when I hung out with them.”
After which, she kind of had to fight not to thank him.
In fact, it was only the other wild things he had said that saved her.
“Dude, a second ago you told me you were happy being a werewolf. And now you’re telling me that being a werewolf means you have to collect poop for a living and live in a place that has horrible dead-animal heads on every wall?” she asked. Convincingly, too, because he didn’t even seem to notice how full of hearts her eyes were.
He just gave her a withering sort of look. “Okay, for starters, I took the dead-animal heads down and gave them funerals,” he said. So now she was thinking of how much they had wanted to do that as kids. Though it was fine, because he didn’t seem to clock that she was doing that, either. “And for seconds, I don’t consider the poop thing a career. Being a supernatural being is what I wanted to be when I grew up, and that’s what I am. And that is only reinforced by stuff like goblins giving me their weird butt marbles.”
And now shedidknow what to say. She leaned forward and practically gasped it.
“Their poop comes out likemarbles?”
“Swear to god.”
“That’s incredible.”
“It is,” he said. Then, pointedly, “Allof this is. And that’s why I’m okay, even if there are downsides like not having much money and living in a monument to my shitty father and sometimes wishing I had someone to be a dork with about it.”
Like me, she thought. I’mthe dork.
And just as she was mentally dismissing that idea, he went and proved it correct. “You know, you’re asking me an awful lot about werewolves, and who I am as a person, and not a lot about witches. Or anything else, for that matter. I thought you’d super want to know about other stuff that you can hardly believe is real,” he said.
Like he was just dying to get into it all with her.
And that was terrifying. But it was exciting at the same time.
Too exciting to refuse. “Well, you know,” she said. “I was getting to it.”
