wolves & girls

There were a lot of things Rory hated about what she’d learned about herself. She hated the uncertainty that came with it, the way she felt unsteady on her feet now. She hated the way it made her feel as though she didn’t know herself, hated the way she felt like a stranger. She hated wondering how many people had lied to her about it, whether her father and siblings had been aware, whether family friends had known, whether her entire childhood had been a house of cards built around a secret everyone was in on but her. And she hated the apology world tour that came with the realization. She hated the humiliation of having to admit to people who she’d argued with that she’d been wrong after all, hated the suffocating way she had to hang her head and confess that her certainty had been disproven. Rory hated admitting she was wrong, and she had a lot of that to do now.

She figured Owen would be a decent enough place to start. He would be annoying about it, but things with him were less… complicated than they would be with someone like Clem, who Rory was still struggling with the idea of approaching. Owen had allowed her to duck back into the comfort of her denial even when he’d had proof of the thing she was pretending wasn’t there, after all, and that made him feel… safe. That made him feel like someone who wouldn’t laugh at her, who might say I told you so but not in a way that would make her stomach churn. And now that she was no longer denying things, maybe seeing the video he had would help her a little. Maybe it would allow things to make a little more sense. She’d already more or less admitted it to him online, anyway, when she’d talked about the ranger shooting her. Owen could be… a practice run, or something. Training wheels. 

She pushed open the door to his shop, the bell above it dinging her arrival. Hesitantly, she approached the counter, tapping her knuckles against it. “Hey,” she greeted him with a nod. “Um… are you busy? I was hoping maybe we could talk.” 

—

Despite running the store for quite a while now, Owen’s general affinity for customer service hadn’t exactly improved. Chet hadn’t really been rainbows and unicorns either so in a way, it was just a fitting way of upholding his legacy. Or something, it didn’t matter what excuse he brandished, Owen was never going to change his attitude. Case and point, the bell announcing someone’s arrival not five minutes before closing got an immediate eyeroll from the slayer. But at least his attitude did shift once he turned to find Rory, arms crossing as he raised a curious eyebrow at her hesitant approach. Gee golly, a total mystery what she might be here to talk about. 

“I was just about to close up, actually. Not busy after that but I am fucking starving so you’ll have to rendezvous at… my place if you wanna chat. Deal?” Of course, Owen could have brought Rory back to his actual place but, well, the fridge there was only stocked with beers. And Wyatt would be out for work all evening so what was the harm? Anticipating what Rory might want to chat about, Owen made sure to bring the laptop from his office before they were off to the cabin. 

“No touching shit, got it?” Owen ordered once he’d let Rory in, making a vague gesture towards the couch as he himself made a beeline for the kitchen. “Drink?” He was already grabbing for a bottle of whiskey to pour himself a glass, only slightly nervous for the conversation ahead. The last time hadn’t gone as horribly as it could have, worst case scenario being an out of control werewolf in his office, but Owen couldn’t claim it had gone great. He’d given in to Rory’s pleading to stay oblivious and whether or not that had been the right call, well… she had managed to get herself fucking shot in the meantime so who was to fucking say. 

—-

For a moment, she thought he might say no. If she was being entirely honest with herself, part of her almost hoped he would. This wasn’t really a conversation she wanted to have, even if she thought it was necessary. Owen saying no would be a get out of jail free card, a way to procrastinate something she’d already been putting off all her life. If she told herself she wouldn’t talk to anyone else until after she’d had her practice run with Owen and Owen told her he was busy, it offered her an excuse. She could avoid the difficult conversation with Clem a bit longer, could stop herself from needing to bring it up with others who had tried to tell her a truth she didn’t want to hear. 

But Owen did not turn her away. He didn’t tell her he had no time for her silly conversations, and she was a little disappointed. Maybe if he’d told her to fuck off, Rory could have used that as some kind of proof that these talks simply weren’t meant to be. She could have continued avoiding Clem, could have tried to make herself forget the feeling of Clem’s flesh in her teeth or the way her howls had mixed with the other girl’s screams in a horrifying chorus. Owen said they could talk, and Rory was almost angry at him for giving her what she’d asked for. She swallowed the feeling and nodded. “I bet your house is, like, weird as hell,” she commented, kicking absently at the floor as he started the process of locking up.

The delay was a little welcomed. It gave her just a little more time to pretend she was somewhere else (or something else), though it ended far too soon for her liking. In what felt like no time at all, she was being let into Owen’s cabin (he hadn’t struck her as a cabin guy) and moving towards the couch, glancing around her surroundings absently. “A drink would be great,” she agreed, eyes flickering from one corner of the room to another. There were subtle signs of another presence here, quiet indications that maybe Owen didn’t live alone. There were definitely two distinct scents clinging to the furniture, settled in too deep to belong to visitors who only dropped by occasionally. “Is your… whatever going to be home any time soon?” She questioned, not really wanting an audience to this conversation. “Like, do you need me to leave pretty quick?”

— 

Overall, Rory wasn’t as out of character as she’d been the first time the subject of those tapes had come up, when her insults had completely missed their mark and been sort of pathetic, really. She was scrabbling a bit now, too, her comments on where Owen lived a cheap (and untrue) blow that just had the slayer raising an eyebrow her way in a silent ‘do you want me to bring you with me or not?’ Ironically, they weren’t returning to Owen’s home, technically, not that his own apartment was any weirder than the cabin (definitely not weirder once you got a glimpse of the giant self portrait of Wyatt in one of the rooms, or the dog bed that thankfully wasn’t currently in plain view in the living room). 

It was strangely revealing, having someone taking in the space, especially someone who was looking at the cabin as Owen’s. Grateful for the distraction of pouring them both a drink as Rory’s eyes wandered, Owen found the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips at the way the shifter voiced her question. She was a rash idiot who was quite fond of pushing at his buttons but here, in the midst of a discussion Rory definitely did not want to be having, a more tentative side was revealed. One that clearly recognized the boundaries of not making guesses regarding his whatever if she wanted to stay. Owen also found that he was slightly impressed with how quickly she’d picked up on someone else living here, even if it simultaneously made him feel too seen. The fact that Rory was clearly the more exposed out of the two of them here did help ease his worries, however. “Not for a while,” Owen responded, having mixed some simple syrup and lemon juice into Rory’s whiskey on the presumption that she didn’t like whiskey straight (and if she did, he was more than happy for her to take the assumption as an insult). Even if Wyatt did show up while Rory was still here, he figured it wouldn’t hurt. Shifters and their fucking camaraderie. Never the one to willingly give up any information for free just because, Owen spared that detail from Rory for now. 

The drink was placed in front of Rory as well as the ominous laptop, which Owen kept closed for now. He’d argued that coming to the cabin had been the smart move to access some of the food in the fridge but he wasn’t hungry and Rory was getting antsier by the second. Maybe some part of him had thought the warm comfort this stupid place provided him would help Rory, too. “Alright. Let’s talk,” he said, sitting down opposite Rory, whiskey in hand and immediately raised to his lips. Even though he wasn’t forcing this conversation on her now, Owen still felt conflicted - that she was coming to him for some reason, that he was going to fuck her up beyond repair with the wrong choice of words. Maybe he could stall this until Wyatt eventually got home. Hearing all of this from another shifter had to beat talking shit over with a hunter you didn’t even know was a fucking hunter. 

—-

Though there were a few unexpected aspects of it — like the fact that it was a cabin and the way Rory didn’t think that matched Owen’s vibe entirely, or the undeniable presence of another person who definitely lived here alongside Owen despite the fact that he hadn’t struck Rory as the sort of guy who’d have a roommate or a live-in partner — Owen’s house wasn’t half as ‘weird’ as she’d implied it probably would be. She didn’t really know what she’d been expecting. Something strange like a dungeon, maybe, or an odd copy/pasted version of his weapons shop placed into a living room home setting instead. It was strange, in a way, to think about how much of Owen’s life she knew nothing about. She trusted him. She trusted him more than she trusted most people, felt safe when he was around. And yet, the picture she’d painted of his home in her head didn’t match the reality in the slightest. It felt jarring, but not in a bad way. It almost felt… nice, learning more about him.

She listened to him mixing drinks, unsure what he was making but confident he’d manage to find something that wouldn’t make her gag. Despite the front he liked to put on, Owen was a decent guy, and she figured he’d put actual effort into making something she’d actually enjoy drinking even if he’d probably deny it if anyone attempted to point it out to him. She wasn’t particularly surprised, though, when his response offered no real information as to who lived with him. Based on what she could see and smell, Rory thought it was another man, though that assumption could have easily been wrong. She didn’t push for more information, even if she sort of wanted to. She really wasn’t looking to piss Owen off, and asking questions he didn’t feel like answering seemed like a sure-fire way to get herself kicked out into the street. “Okay,” she said instead, shrugging a shoulder. “Just… let me know if you need me to split before they do, or whatever.” It was entirely possible Owen’s whatever wouldn’t like him inviting strangers into their shared space without asking first, after all.

Owen set the drink in front of her, and Rory picked it up immediately if only to give her hands something to do. Her gaze slid over to the laptop, though she tried to avoid looking at it for too long as if she was worried it might open up and bite her. (A stupid concern; Rory was the one prone to biting, apparently.) “Right,” she said quietly, bringing her glass up to her lips for a drink. It was strong, but not bad; like she’d suspected, Owen had made a good guess at what she’d like. “I um… First, I just… I wanted to say sorry. Or thanks? I don’t know. For… before. When you tried to show me this the first time, and I wasn’t… I wasn’t ready to see it. It was…” She trailed off, not really having the words to finish the thought. “Yeah.” Another sip. Maybe it would give her some of that ‘liquid courage’ people were always talking about. “But I think I need to see it now. I have… I mean, I remember some things. Bits and pieces, you know, but not a lot. I think seeing it like this would… help, I guess. Make it more real.” The phantom pain of the bullet Talia had removed from her gut surged. “Real in a way that doesn’t, you know, make me almost bleed out on somebody’s couch.”

—

Annoyingly, Owen couldn’t even really enjoy how surprised and out of sorts Rory seemed to be when it came to the cabin. Just as she was uncharacteristically quiet, Owen was fucking nervous and it made the whole ordeal way less fun. They could get this over with and then he’d make fun of her for what were probably assumptions about a serial killer basement and a full collection of those damn tails like the one she’d gotten for him. Nevermind that his own apartment probably came closer to what Rory might have imagined - dry, devoid of any real personality, sharp and not really properly lived in. Ignoring the memory of the bloodstain on the floor, since that wasn’t even technically there. As further proof that they were both really out of fucking sorts, Rory didn’t push further on Owen’s ‘whatever’ (a title Wyatt certainly wouldn’t have liked). Maybe that would come later, too. “Relax, I am definitely rude enough to kick you the fuck out if I have to.” 

His own throat burning from the whiskey, Owen was relieved to find Rory not grimacing at her own drink and fuck, did they need to get this conversation over with. He was tired of feeling this sorry for her, much preferring their previous dynamic of barbs and insults, which was something Owen didn’t want to look too much into, either. Not that he needed to, the fact that genuine fucking connections and emotions were less preferable than getting shot wasn’t exactly new information to Owen. At least Rory seemed just as uncomfortable with this switch up, stumbling her way to an apology that Owen was quick to physically wave off, and swallow down with some more whiskey. “It’s fine,” he rasped, after the slightly too enthusiastic sip, biting his lip to prevent further interjecting. A good thing, as Rory did actually get to the point. 

Nodding along, Owen allowed her to finish before he started reaching for the laptop, pointedly ignoring the image of Rory bleeding out from a gunshot wound. It was still too fucking recent, when he’d shuffled into this damn living room to find Wyatt with a gunshot wound of his own, tooth broken and arm a mess. Silently getting to work fulfilling Rory’s request and maybe silence wasn’t what she needed but it was all Owen had to offer at the moment. Pulling up the video, Owen did hesitate for a moment, catching Rory’s eyes. Fuck, was he the one about to back down, now? “Just… no freaking out and tearing up the couch,” Owen mustered because the silence was fucking defeaning, and it helped him manage to actually hand the laptop over. Let her watch it on her own time. 

—--

Tendrils of familiarity wriggled loose as Owen replied that he was rude enough to kick her out if he needed to, and there was some comfort to be found in the rudeness of the statement. This was the version of Owen she knew and (though she wouldn’t admit it) loved: the one who was brash and blunt and would toss her out the door himself if her presence became more of a hindrance than anything else. This other version — the one that was almost gentle in his hesitation, the one that softened his edges just a little so she wouldn’t slice herself to pieces — was almost a stranger. She’d only really seen this version in his shop, when he’d first tried to show her this footage and she’d begged for more of a reprieve. This was the version who’d let her be a scared little girl when she’d needed to be one, and the retrospect of it stung a little. It felt like a reminder of just how many people knew the truth about Rory before Rory knew it herself.

So she clung to that, rolled her eyes with more effort than she’d care to admit. “Wow,” she said, tone wavering only a fraction, “you’re capable of being rude? Since when?” She stared into her glass as she said it, as if she was speaking to the drink instead of the man. It was easier that way, she found; simpler. There was some relief, too, when Owen accepted her joint statement of gratitude and apology without fanfare, though she hadn’t expected him to draw any more attention to it than necessary. He was just as uncomfortable as she was with this kind of thing; she didn’t have to be a genius to realize that much. He didn’t want to focus on it, either. Like Rory, Owen would prefer to get the heavy shit out of the way first so that they could move on and go back to ribbing each other. (God, she hoped they could go back to ribbing each other when this was finished.)

She sat quietly as Owen opened the laptop, staring at the screen until it blurred. Was she really ready for this? Experiencing hazy memories was one thing, but this… This was the kind of thing there was no coming back from. Any doubt she clung to would be shed the moment Owen pressed play. Rory took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment and opening them again with a nod. “Jesus. I’m not going to shred your couch or anything. I don’t think it even works like that.” Distress had only caused her to shift a few times, and it was always far bigger distress than… whatever that screen could show her. She took the laptop, staring at the still image on the screen. Small, grainy, but unmistakeable: that was her, standing over in the corner as Owen spoke to his patron. She steeled herself, and pressed play.

Immediately, the scene began to move. It flickered with the kind of static security cameras always seemed to be plagued with, noise dancing across the screen. She watched herself stiffen, watched the shift ripple through her. She watched herself try to fight it, watched the shock flicker across Owen’s face. And then, she watched the beast burst forth out of her skin, large and looming. A small, strangled sound escaped her throat. That was her. The wolf, the monster. That was Rory. 

—

Slipping back into all sharp edges and dry humor was tempting, it would be easy - or at least Owen wanted to think it would be. Maybe he’d spent too much time softening those edges for it to be such an easy feat now, or rather, others had managed to soften them without him noticing until it was too late to undo. A lot of the damage had been done by Wyatt, obviously, and the fact that they were doing this surrounded by Wyatt and the reminder of practically every vulnerable moment wasn’t helping. Eve had done her part, too, somehow, as well as Jade and even Rosemary, even if his hackles were still raised towards the witch. Hell, even Cortez had stood to gain from all these months and years of sanding down Owen’s defenses, even if he hadn’t and would never get the same treatment Rory was currently receiving. Fuck, maybe even taking part in the sarcastic jokes and barbs was still all for her benefit, to ease the werewolf’s nerves. “Yeah, it’s this new thing I’m trying out, kinda like it,” came the dry reply and the irony wasn’t lost on him. Owen sure was trying out a newish sort of approach here - he just wasn’t sure how much he actually liked it. 

Time stretched as Rory stared at the laptop, psyching herself up in a way Owen couldn’t help her with. This, she needed to do on her own, even if Owen itched to egg her on. Well, more than prematurely accusing her of scratching through their nice couch. Or his skin and muscles, for that matter. So he scoffed and shrugged at her halfassed assurances until finally, her finger found the spacebar. 

Owen hadn’t watched the footage a great many times over but enough to predict exactly when Rory’s face would do– yeah, that. She sounded pained and Owen’s fingers twitched, tongue running over his teeth, seeking the burn of more whiskey but afraid to make any big movements like raising his glass while the wolf on the screen was tearing into the balam. So he just watched Rory, watch horror and recognition and a whole lot of other emotions rip through her, all but counting down the seconds until the footage on screen froze once the wolf made its escape. There was no need for Rory to watch as Owen allowed the balam to have a swift death instead of a long, painful one. 

“You want a refill?” Owen asked finally, getting to his feet and reaching for Rory’s barely half-empty glass before she could even answer, moving back into the kitchen with a purpose, the purpose pretty much being an escape from not knowing what the fuck to say or do now. Perks of being an emotionally fucked up only child. 

—---

It was easier to lean into dull barbs than it was to think too long or too hard about the harsh truth that awaited her on that laptop screen. Bickering with Owen like this was a familiar thing. There was no heat behind either of their words; it reminded Rory a lot of bickering with her siblings, both as a kid and as an adult later on. You threw things at each other that would have been harsh, maybe even unforgivable coming from anyone else, but the existence of some quiet affection beneath it all dulled things from a deadly blade into a foam sword. The fights were make believe, like children playing pretend. Rory would toss something sarcastic at Owen, and he would respond with something dry, and it was a balm settling into a wound that didn’t quite know how to heal properly. “You’re not bad at it,” she joked, “but much better at being a sweetheart.” She let the sarcasm drip from the words as if either of them needed it to know that what she was saying wasn’t true, as if someone might mistake Owen for something soft otherwise. He wasn’t soft, and never claimed to be. But Rory didn’t really need soft, anyway.

She wasn’t sure what it was she did need. She watched the events on the screen play out, and it felt like what she imagined it would to watch a dream you’d had once on a movie screen. She remembered these events, hazy and uncertain. With each new frame, her memory hardened, became clearer. She watched the wolf look around the room, and she remembered assessing the threats. She remembered deciding that a wild animal with teeth and claws was more of a threat to her than a man. She remembered pouncing, meeting the balam in the air.

The fight had been a short one. Even with a larger balam, the wolf was bigger. Rory remembered, now, what it felt like for her claws and teeth to tear through flesh. She remembered the sound, too loud and too jarring, remembered wanting to get away from it more than she wanted to kill Owen (though she remembered wanting to kill Owen, too). She watched the form, herself but not herself, leave the shop, watched the balam bleed and writhe on the floor. It took her a moment to realize the video had stopped, took a moment to realize the footage had stilled not because no one was moving, but because there was nothing left to show. She felt sick.

She’d almost forgotten Owen was there until he spoke, his voice suddenly sounding like the loudest thing she’d ever heard. She jumped as his hand moved towards her glass, flinched away from the shadow without knowing why. The footage had proven, hadn’t it, that she was predator instead of prey. She was the monster under the bed, the killer in the closet. The movie ended not with Rory as the final girl, but with someone braver and better than she was finally burying the knife in her chest. “I wanted to kill you,” she said quietly. “I probably would have, if you hadn’t…” She trailed off, thinking of how easy it would have been for this story to have an even darker ending than the one she’d just seen play out. “Why — Why would you ask me to come back there? Or let me come here? Fuck. Fuck. You shouldn’t ever want to speak to me again. Jesus. What the fuck?” Her hand trembled as she moved it to push her hair away from her eyes. Her face was wet; she didn’t remember crying. She hated herself for the tears, hated herself for the disguise they painted across her face. She had killed a balam. Someone like her mother, like her father, like her siblings. Someone like Guillermo. She had killed a balam, and she was crying as if she was the victim instead of the perpetrator. What the fuck was wrong with her?

—

Fuck, maybe the forced nonchalance hadn’t been the right move but what the hell else did Owen have to go off of other than what he himself might have preferred in this shitty situation? No chance he’d have wanted to be stared at like a cornered animal, would have wanted to look up to catch nothing but pity in the other person’s eyes. Owen definitely wouldn’t have flinched at the hand reaching out but he would have disliked it, more so because it might have meant a comforting touch. Rory just seemed afraid but she had no reason to be afraid of Owen, which meant… At least he had plenty of experience with knowing he was the monster. 

Despite Owen’s shitty choices, abandoning Rory on the couch to linger instead in the kitchen, the shifter started speaking, and honestly at that. His stomach rolled over at the pain in Rory’s voice and it had nothing to do with her momentarily wanting to kill him. He’d been a threat and she’d have to get in the back of a long line for that, anyway. Telling Rory she was far from the first person to want him dead probably wouldn’t help now, though. “It’s fine, I can handle myself,” Owen promised instead, the words weak but the meaning hopefully came through that it was fine. Even if she’d managed to land a hit or two on him, it still would have been fine. 

And then Rory spiraled further, voice starting to tremble with tears and fuck, he really wasn’t the right person for this. Owen was barely okay at being there for someone like Wyatt, a relationship that had gone through the fucking trenches, allowing for something that made sense in its nonsense. Rory needed something much different but all she had at the moment was Owen. “Alright, cool it,” Owen tried, voice an odd mixture of soft and annoyed, as he left behind the glasses to rejoin Rory on the couch, giving her the same space as before. “This isn’t about what I think, which hasn’t changed for the record except I’m not a huge cat person anyway so almost an improvement, really - but fuck what I think. Or anyone else might think. Just… what are you thinking? Aside from just feeling totally fucked over.” 

—

He could handle herself, he assured her, and Rory let out a sharp, half-hysterical laugh. Hadn’t the balam in the video presumably been able to handle himself just fine, too? Hadn’t he had claws and teeth at his disposal and still — still — been turned into a bloody mess by Rory’s base instincts? Owen, as far as she understood it, was human. He had no defense to a thing like her. Even if she’d attacked him and survived, he would have been changed by it, right? She thought of Clem, of her teeth sinking into the other girl’s flesh and the way Clementine was something else now. It was almost worse, wasn’t it? A monster that didn’t just kill, but made others into monsters, too? It was luck, she figured, that Madison had somehow been immune to her teeth. She doubted Owen would be able to make the same claim.

She felt now the same way she had on Talia’s couch when reality crashed into her, minus the silver bullet being dug out of her gut. It felt, again, as if the world was falling to pieces, as if she was the one who’d torn it apart. It was one thing to remember things she’d done, hazy and half-there like a dream that had seemed so vivid when you were asleep but was already dissipating the moment you opened your eyes from it. Seeing it play out in recorded footage — grainy and low quality, sure, but very real all the same — was another matter entirely. Rory felt sick with it. She swore she could still taste the blood.

Owen rejoined her, the cushion dipping slightly as he sat back down beside her. It was both a comfort and a jolt; she wanted to throw herself at him and wanted to run away from him at the same time. “I care what you think,” she admitted in a small voice, hating how young she sounded. She didn’t want to be a kid, wasn’t sure she deserved to be treated as one. She’d torn people apart. She’d almost torn Owen apart. Shouldn’t there be consequences for that? “I —” She swallowed. “I should have to pay for it. Shouldn’t I? For… killing people. Shouldn’t there be some kind of — some kind of karma, some kind of something?” 

—

Oh, Owen knew the meaning of that sort of laugh - it was slightly more desperate than the sort of dark and dry humorless laughs that had forced their way from him when there was nothing else to do or say, but he got the point. Rory was not impressed with his handling of this situation, nor was she very reassured. To no one’s shock, really, least of all Owen’s. Would it turn her spiral into a complete tailspin if Owen revealed now that he actually was sort of qualified to fight off a werewolf, give or take a few differences in genetic material here or there? Probably. Not like this whole thing was actually about whether Owen was in danger or not - it was so much bigger than him. He could see it in her eyes, the fear and regret, could all but read the disgust from her clenched fingers and distant gaze. At least she wasn’t entirely responsible for the beast inside her, the one she hadn’t even properly known existed until now (fine, a few months back but delusion was a hell of a fucking drug). Owen was very familiar with his own monster - there was no blaming the moon for his crimes. 

Rory’s admission caught him off guard, Owen’s careful and stilted movements pausing as he stared her down. Why in the hell did she care? 

For a beat, Owen was stuck wondering how in the fuck people kept falling in traps he wasn’t even meaning to put down but the train of thought leaving selfish bastard station was luckily cut off. This wasn’t about him. At all. Owen could indulge his own ridiculous spiral later because Rory was far from finished with her own. “Okay,” he answered lamely instead of explaining how his opinion had zero value when it came to morals or muder or karma. Just as well, he was terribly unequipped to handle her followup questions. Yes, shit always seemed to find a balance. Owen’s reward for all of the bloodshed was being forced to live with it. But Rory wasn’t a monster, fuck whatever judgement some young and dumb ranger might be inclined to pass on her. 

“You don’t think how you feel right now is karma enough?” Owen asked, genuinely finding her current suffering to be a fitting punishment for crimes not even committed while she was conscious. Hell, most of the people Wyatt had killed through the years while totally lucid, Owen just shrugged off. This felt like a no-brainer and yes, Owen and all the vampires he’d ruthlessly torn through for decades obviously knew he was a hypocrite for it. “But fuck, Rory, I am not the fucking person you should be asking this shit. I’m not a good person. But maybe that makes me fucking qualified to say that you, even though you’re a little shit who is really fucking good at being annoying, are a decent enough person. Don’t know about your wolf, maybe they’re a total fucking bastard but…” Owen trailed off, giving a noncommittal shrug, again quite certain that he was saying the wrong thing. “You can try to fucking do better, now that you know, I guess.” 

—--

Was that how it worked? Was feeling bad for something enough of a punishment for having done it to begin with? Gut instinct told Rory no, but right now, her gut was a little biased. She kept seeing it play out over and over and over again, the grainy footage from the security camera. A balam going about their own business brutalized and torn apart because someone — because Rory — was so deeply seeped in her denial that she couldn’t open her eyes long enough to recognize that she was something dangerous. How many others were dead because of her? How many were hurt? She thought of Guillermo, of the bloody scarf that became all that was left of him. Would it have happened if Rory hadn’t scared him off? Was that on her, too?

The feeling in her gut, even as suffocating and all-encompassing as it was, didn’t seem like enough of a price to pay. Not when other people had paid the price with their lives, not when there was blood on her hands (or on her teeth). The scar on her gut — the one carved into her by Daiyu’s silver bullet — burned as if reminding her the sort of punishment she really deserved for all of this, and she tried to swallow the feeling. If she thought about it for too long, she’d do something embarrassing like start crying. The thought alone was enough to make he stomach churn.

Owen told her that she was a good person — or at least a decent one — and that, too, was something laughable. She choked on a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh, even if she didn’t think there was anything else it could have been called, either. “I kill people,” she said tightly. “I — God, I tear them apart with my teeth. I can remember it now, remember how it — how it tasted. I remember liking it. That’s not — there’s nothing good about that. There’s nothing good about me. I’m not, Owen, I’m not, I’m not a good person, I’m…” Her breaths came hard and fast, lungs feeling as though there was not enough air in the room to fully satisfy.

—

So this was what it looked like to really, truly feel regret about killing people. It didn’t matter to Rory that she hadn’t had much of a choice, she was carrying every last body on her shoulders, it seemed. Owen knew what it was to feel disgust over the lives he’d claimed but he couldn’t say with certainty whether he’d felt real regret - he’d had a choice, forced as it had been, and he’d made the wrong one. Hating himself for it didn’t seem as genuine as Rory’s repentance came across now. Of course, she hadn’t been brought up with the sole purpose of killing - she hadn’t even been brought up aware of the damage she could cause. Another argument for why she wasn’t a bad person, just a troubled one. 

“Rory,” Owen tried as the words tumbled from her, strained and pained and hurting and leaving no space for any argument from Owen. Join the club, he wanted to scoff but that wasn’t helpful - this wasn’t a club anyone should willingly want to join. You’re not your wolf, he could have argued but Rory had its memories, it was Rory in almost every way that mattered and shifters were hunted for their crimes regardless of any disconnect. Maybe she would have stood a chance without the lies, the delusion - if she’d had some control. Not having control was a curse, one that Owen could relate to all too well. But words wouldn’t help here, no amount of Owen relating to her with his own woes would make Rory feel better, at least not while she struggled to breathe. For a selfish beat, Owen considered letting the kid hyperventilate herself into passing out for a moment’s peace, for him to get his thoughts in order and maybe say something useful once she woke up. Not a great sign that the only real downside he saw to that plan was the possibility of it waking up the wolf. 

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Owen chastised as softly as he could, scooching over the remaining distance between them to grab Rory’s shoulders, demand her attention. “No panic attacks allowed on my couch, you gotta breathe. In through the nose - no, that was a shit inhale, I need a much deeper one than that.” Yet another one in the bank for ‘talking a shifter down from a panic attack.’ What the fuck had become of his life. “You can continue the pity party talk later but only once you start actually breathing. Don’t make me have to fucking hug your or something because I will but neither of us will like it.” 

—

Owen said her name, but the syllable wasn’t quite enough to cut through the thought spiral she was locked inside. All she could think about was the blood on her hands, on her teeth. The balam she’d killed, the stranger in the woods whose heart the librarian had stolen from her jaws, the man she and Talia had made a meal out of, the ones that were just brief flashes of blood and bone. And that wasn’t even counting the ones she’d torn into without killing, was it? That wasn’t counting Oliver, who had felt her teeth before he’d died and had never been given an apology. It wasn’t counting Madison, whose skin tore like paper when her jaws found it. It wasn’t counting Clem, whose life she’d probably ruined. (When a hunter inevitably came after Clementine, would that be Rory’s fault, too? When someone shot her with a silver bullet, would it be just as much Rory’s burden to carry as the scar marring her own torso now?)

The air was thin and the room felt far away and she wondered if she would suffocate before the wolf came out. That thought only panicked her more, the imagined scenario in which she shifted without meaning to on Owen’s couch and tore his head from his body in a flash flickering behind her eyelids like a movie played from an old theater projector. He wasn’t afraid of her, despite what had happened in his shop. He should have been. He should have been terrified, should have wanted her nowhere near the quaint cabin he shared with someone nameless and important, should have looked at her with the same disgust she felt towards herself now. But Owen was brave, or stupid, or both. He was softer than he pretended to be and softer than she deserved. 

His face entered her field of vision, voice sharp but not unkind. He directed her to breathe, and she did her best to do so even if the breaths were trembling, shaky things. It wasn’t for her own sake that she listened; she didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to be responsible for another flickering image like the one she’d just seen displayed on his laptop screen. She would not tear Owen to pieces in his own fucking living room. She would not. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to focus on his hands on her shoulders. After a moment, she felt just settled enough to speak. “You — You probably give such shitty hugs,” she said, voice unsteady. “You’re all elbows.”

—

Each breath followed the next one, still shaky and panicked but slowly starting to constitute actual breathing instead of just useless gasps for air and Owen was genuinely surprised that his half assed attempts were proving even remotely successful. Rory’s eyes were slowly focusing again, no longer lost to whatever memory or hypothetical she was losing herself in and freaking out over, joining Owen instead here, on the couch, where things weren’t fantastic but at least not as bad as they were in her head. His fingers still dug into her shoulders, just tight enough to give her something to focus on, and for him to feel every rattling breath she managed to force herself to take. 

Rory’s voice was strained when she finally spoke but it was a damn win in Owen’s book and he scoffed out a laugh. “And you’re a little asshole,” he countered, unsure whether or not she was trying to goad him or not but not wanting to miss it if this really was Rory’s roundabout way of asking for a hug without actually asking for one. If he was wrong, Owen would find out quickly enough - he could handle Rory pushing away and calling him stupid. Relinquishing the grip on her shoulders to instead pull her in for a hug, a slightly awkward and uncomfortable one due to their positions on the couch and also their positions in one another’s life, Owen swallowed down the doubt and discomfort, the ever present conviction that Rory deserved someone who could have handled this way better than he ever would. 

“You got people, alright? Maybe not good fucking people but you got them. Us. Blood on your hands or fucking claws or whatever aside. Whether you think you deserve to or not.” Owen knew all too well what it was to have people refuse to give up on you even at your fucking worst, knew the feeling of wishing they would just open their damn eyes and see what a lost fucking cause they were fighting for. Except Rory was far from a lost cause and Owen realized he would do a whole fucking lot to try and get her to see that. 

—-

His hands dug into her shoulders in a way that might have been uncomfortable under any other circumstances, but here it was a lifeline. She clung to it with everything she had, let the feeling of his fingers pressing into her skin ground her. She was here; she was with Owen; Owen was alive. She had not killed him, though the video made her wonder how close she might have come to doing so. She forced herself to push that thought aside, too, forced herself to focus instead on the hands pressing into her shoulders. She breathed. She could still do that, at least.

He called her an asshole and her laugh was brittle and uncertain but genuine all the same. Whatever she’d been expecting from him, whatever she’d thought he might give to her, it wasn’t this. She hadn’t had Owen gives a hug on her bingo card in any form, and the shock of it left her stiff for a fraction of a second before she relaxed into the embrace. He was warm and solid and comforting, and she brought her arms up to wrap around him, gripping tightly at the fabric of his shirt for a moment. Hugging wasn’t a thing she did often, wasn’t a thing awarded to her with any real amount of frequency especially now. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it. She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed it.

She had people. Owen was one of them. And if you’d told her a year ago, when she was bullying him outside a bar, that this would be the case, she might not have believed it. But he was here, and he gave a shit, and Rory had needed that even if she probably didn’t deserve it. “Thank you,” she breathed quietly. “That’s — Thank you.”

—

Owen wasn’t surprised by Rory immediately tensing up, had expected as much and more, if he was being honest with himself for a change. Instead of that brief moment of freezing turning into Rory shoving herself free and cussing him out, Owen felt the much smaller body in his arm give in and relax, curling in tighter. It was pretty fucking novel. Rosemary had forced him into a few hugs but she’d never clung on this tight and Owen had always wondered if the witch thought the hugs would do more for him than they ever did for her, a person who was marginally more normal and generously gave out hugs. 

Physical contact just for the sake of comfort, not violence or desire but just comfort, was a very miniscule part of Owen’s life. It existed to some degree, mostly as it pertained to Wyatt, the casual touches brought on by domestic comfort always increasing in frequency the longer Owen allowed himself to feel at home here - a hand lingering on the small of Wyatt’s back as Owen passed, waking up in the night with the shifter curled against him, knuckles just barely touching when they had a rare moment of peaceful lounging around. It was all interspersed with the other kinds of touching but Owen thought he never would have offered this hug to Rory if not for the months of priming by yet another shifter in his life. 

Rory made no move to end the hug early and Owen simply tucked his chin on top of the unruly head of hair, his own muscles not immune to eventually relaxing into the hug, too. Her gratitude almost went unheard, muffled as it was by the embrace, but Owen caught it and it stirred something unnamed in his chest. He felt that he’d mostly done a shit fucking job at this but Rory seemed to appreciate it all the same. Plus, there was no ulterior motive here. Genuinely, Owen had just wanted to fucking help this dumb kid before the next bullet she met managed to land somewhere more lethal. 

If the shifter didn’t think herself worthy of any harm that might come her way, Owen figured that was a decent enough start. 

Darcy wasn’t an idiot. Well, not in the usual sense. She knew that people didn’t go online asking about chains, citing the reasoning being sex. Not unless they were fucked up. Then again, maybe Rory was fucked up. Maybe it was a dare, maybe it was something else. Who the fuck knew. What Darcy did know, though, was where to get chains that were foolproof. For free. 

The question of just how much time she spent in cemeteries had gone severely underanswered. Not a lot of time, had been a lie. Surprisingly, she spent more time in them before, back when she didn’t have anyone to bury, than she did now. She wasn’t sure what was more fucked up. The before, or the after. To anyone else, it was probably the after. Darcy waited in front of The Wormhole; a fucked up bar that not even she and Cricket bothered wandering into. The thought of Cricket acted like a sledgehammer, practically knocking the air out of her. Darcy sucked in a breath, watching as who she presumed to be Rory, headed towards the passenger side door of her jeep. She reached over, struggling slightly to throw it open for the other woman. 

“Hey. Ready to get kinky?” She waited for Rory to buckle her seatbelt before she pulled away, heading in the direction of Gallow’s Grove. It wasn’t that far from where Rory worked, so if she got cold feet, she could run off. Darcy would probably go in and get the chains anyway, dropping them off at her workplace, especially since now she knew where to find Rory.

— 

Rory knew she needed an immediate solution to her werewolf problem. Talia had promised to help her learn control, and that was all well and good, but that was a long term thing. Control would take practice; control would take time. Rory wanted to get there eventually, of course. She wanted to be able to shift without putting anyone in danger, wanted to be able to spend her months not worrying about what she might do when the moon was full or worrying that an unexpected shift might leave her with someone else’s blood in her mouth, but she wasn’t there yet. She needed something for the short term; she needed something to bridge the gap.

So… chains. It wasn’t a perfect solution. She could really only chain herself up on the full moon, when she knew a shift was coming, and there was no guarantee the chains would hold. She’d seen enough movies and television to know that a werewolf breaking containment was a super common trope, and it stood to reason that it would be a risk in real life, too. But, fuck, wasn’t it better than nothing? Wasn’t doing something a better option than just crossing her fingers and hoping her wolf wouldn’t eat anyone this week? This was some version of Rory taking responsibility. This was Rory doing the best she could. 

Luckily, she’d found someone willing to help her out. It had taken a little bit of time to schedule the trip to the graveyard — Rory hadn’t been able to get off Talia’s couch for more than a few minutes at a time until after the full moon healed her gunshot wound — but today, Darcy-from-the-internet was picking her up at the Wormhole after work and taking her to check out some chains from a graveyard. Sketchy as hell, sure, but Rory wasn’t super worried. She ate people, apparently. She could probably handle whatever. 

Sliding into Darcy’s car, Rory buckled up and offered the other woman a nod. “Ready,” she agreed. The car pulled forward, and Rory let herself lean against the seat. “So, you spend a lot of time shopping in graveyards? How’d you come across chains?” 

—

Something animalistic had been carried in with Rory, but Darcy didn’t bother to point it out. She didn’t really give a fuck if the person beside her was a shifter, or if they owned a bunch of dogs at home. She rolled down her window, grabbing her vape from the cupholder. Drawing it to her lips, she took a long puff, expelling the vapor into the air. The smell of cotton candy filled the cab of her jeep, anyway. At Rory’s question, she grinned. “Hey, if the shit’s abandoned, it’s finder’s keeper’s, you know?” She looked at the brunette out of the corner of her eye, then back to the road. “They use them for the gates. It’s supposed to keep people out, or keep people in– I don’t really know, but they’ve got loads of shit.” 

Maybe it was bad karma, picking through the leftovers of something abandoned, but Darcy didn’t give a shit about that, either. The drive was a short one, and eventually, she pulled up to the already open gates of the cemetery. It was covered in ivy that’d yet to regrow from winter’s blow, and Darcy had to admit, she liked the vibe it gave off. It was favorable to when the green stuff was there. That meant it was alive, and a cemetery was better left off to things that were dead, weren’t they? 

She took another puff from her vape before dropping it back into the cupholder. The winding road that led to the mouth of the storage shed was overgrown, and potholes practically covered every couple of feet. It wasn’t anything her jeep couldn’t handle, at least. Plus, she’d done this hundreds of times. Usually with somebody else in the passenger seat. “Used to come here a lot, it was a good spot to run to and get high in.” Finally, the storage shed was ahead of them. Darcy could see the drab green roof. “Alright.” Putting the jeep into park, she twisted around to look at Rory. “We’ve got… what, two hours ‘till it’s dark?” She wasn’t worried about what crept in the dark, but she wasn’t necessarily trying to get anyone killed, either. There was a good chance Rory was a shifter like her, but there was no telling the type, or if she’d be willing to fight, and Darcy really wasn’t trying to die today. 

—- 

She got a whiff of it, the animal-scent that clung to Darcy. She knew it was mostly in her head, but Rory swore her nose had gotten better since she’d realized what she was, like her brain now understood the enhanced scent a little better and allowed her to use it a little more. Darcy was probably some kind of shifter, and there was a little bit of relief that came with that realization, as if someone being a shifter made them automatically a little more trustworthy. It didn’t. Rory knew that. There were probably plenty of shifters out there who were, like, cartoonishly evil for one reason or another, just like there were humans who were like that or vampires who’d trap you in a basement and torture you for no reason at all. Someone’s nature didn’t make them good or bad. Rory knew that. Still… at least she could rest easy in the fact that Darcy wasn’t a hunter with a silver bullet ready and waiting. That was an experience Rory really didn’t want to repeat any time soon. Or, like, ever. 

“I mean, I guess,” she allowed with a shrug. She had no moral qualms about snatching things from graveyards, though she had no real stake in the matter. The only person Rory knew who was buried in a graveyard was her grandfather, who’d died when she was far too young to actually remember him. She thought with a pang of Guillermo and Oliver, but quickly shoved both from her mind. She found it far easier not to think of them, of the fact that neither was really buried anywhere at all. “Keep people in? What is this, a B horror movie? Nobody’s keeping anything in the cemeteries.” Mostly because the monsters in Wicked’s Rest wandered the streets just fine. Some of them weren’t even dead monsters — Rory figured she was probably proof of that.

The drive was decent. Wicked’s Rest was a nice, scenic town, which probably explained some of the tourism. Rory liked the views, even if she wasn’t entirely certain she liked the rest of the town very much anymore. “Did you grow up here?” She asked, curiosity clear in her tone. “I didn’t. Back where I’m from, it was an old sawmill we’d use to run off and get high at. I guess a cemetery is probably more… thematic, or whatever. And less dusty, probably.” She unbuckled her seatbelt, nodding her head. Part of her wanted to ask what happened when it got dark, but… she kind of already knew the answer to that. She’d seen plenty, in her time here. “Okay,” she agreed. “Lead the way, then. Show me where all the best stuff is. You will be judged based on our findings, so better make it good.”

—

Darcy pushed her tongue against the back of her upper lip, sounding off with a soft click. “You’d be fucking surprised.” She had grown up with so much information being pushed into her brain from a young age that it was hard to not think about all of the things that went bump in the night. Of course, most of the time, Darcy thought of them as source material. She knew it was different for others, though. Deciding now was not the time to think about Corey and Bridget. She unbuckled her seatbelt, eyeing her vape. There wasn’t any real reason to bring it along, but she pocketed it anyway. “This town has a lot of shit it’s trying to keep under lock and key, whether it actually wants to put that effort into it or not.” Maybe with the magic of Wicked’s Rest faltering that didn’t hold true anymore, but growing up it did, and what else was she other than her teachings? 

“Yup.” Darcy gave Rory a once-over. “You seem the type to choose a sawmill. You’re looking for chains for the whole sex thing, so I mean…” She didn’t bother elaborating. Whether or not Rory wanted to come clean about what the chains were really needed for was her own decision. All Darcy was here for was helping her get them. That, and a chance to take her mind off of the utter bullshit her life had been thrown into. “I always get a five-star rating, babe.” She unbuckled her own seatbelt, getting out of the jeep. She wondered how comical it looked, a girl her stature (and really, Rory’s), getting out of the vehicle she’d chosen as her own. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road.” She waited for Rory at the door. It was already cracked open, and once she pushed it open further, a few rats skittered away from the light that flooded in. 

Darcy moved towards the back door of the shed. It was unassuming when standing outside. One would think that it was just a single story building, but underneath was where most of the items were held. The upstairs was in disrepair; an old wooden desk with initials carved into it and cigarette burn marks, as well as a few chairs that had broken legs. It wasn’t anything to write home about, and Darcy figured Rory was already judging her. “This way.” The door was small, matching herself and Rory almost perfectly. (It was also comical, really.) “Do you need a light, or…?” Not every shifter had a sight meant for the dark, after all. “If you do, just use your phone.” There were a couple of things that had made their home in the expansive basement, but none of which were lethal, or dangerous at all, especially when you knew how to handle them.

—- 

Maybe trying was the key word there, then. Wicked’s Rest wanted things to stay locked away, but it didn’t do a very good job of keeping them that way. Wasn’t Rory kind of proof of that? Hadn’t she carved a bloody path through this town without even knowing it? She wondered if it was a lost cause, trying to find chains to wrap around herself every full moon. What were the odds that it would even work? And what about the unexpected shifts that had been growing more and more common, like the one that had seen her running through the woods for Daiyu to take a shot at? “Cemeteries, though?” She questioned, still a little hung up on that aspect of things. Undead shit was real, apparently, but Rory’s only experience with them had been Mateo, who certainly didn’t need to be chained up in any kind of cemetery. 

She rolled her eyes, biting her tongue to keep from asking what the hell that was supposed to mean. She had advertised that her chains were for a sex thing, though she wondered if this other shifter might now suspect that this wasn’t quite the case. What kind of shifter was she, exactly? Not a werewolf and not a balam, but other scents were still newer to Rory. She hadn’t quite learned how to tell from a single whiff. Had this woman? Did she know what Rory was, just sitting in the car with her? If she didn’t, was it safe to tell her? Rory didn’t trust strangers as easily as she used to; this town had done a lot of work there, making sure she understood the consequences of blind trust pretty fucking intimately. “You’re not going to be a prude about that, are you? Totally didn’t take you for the type.” They could dance around the subject, she figured. If the other shifter brought it up, Rory wouldn’t deny it. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to bring it up first, either. 

Sliding out of the jeep and closing the door behind her, Rory followed Darcy to the shed. It didn’t look like much from the outside, really; a big, dusty shed in the middle of a big, dusty cemetery. She kind of doubted they’d actually find anything decent inside, but she’d decided to trust Darcy enough to check it out, anyway. Maybe there would be something worth taking home; maybe it would just give her a good story. Either way, Rory was in it, she guessed. “I don’t need a light,” she replied as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She could have taken out her phone for show, but it felt a little pointless. “Do you?” She wondered if that narrowed down what kind of shifter the other girl was. Maybe it would have, if Rory had known a little more about all the various types. “So, are there any spooky things in here I should be on the lookout for?”

—

Darcy snorted at Rory’s question of whether or not she was a prude. “Sorry, did I come across like one?” With a shake of her head, she turned around to face the other girl. It was impossible to say exactly what she was– the majority of shifters that Darcy had spent her time around had been other bugbears, but it wasn’t possible that she was mistaking the strangely familiar animalistic scent as some kind of kin to her. Her father had always told her to treat other shifters with respect, that despite their differences, they were all in this world together, fighting the same battles. It was an interesting take, considering he married a ranger of all people. But then again, even the ranger side of things hadn’t been exactly… normal either. 

“But no, I don’t actually give a shit. I hope you have fun. I’ll try and make sure they’re clean, at least. Wouldn’t want you needing a tetanus shot or something after using them, right?” It was a little funny to Darcy, she had to admit, that somebody like Rory would advertise needing chains for sex in the hopes of saving face. Darcy had to commend her boldness. 

“Hmm? Nope.” She pushed further into the stairwell, grabbing the rusted over padlock, twisting it slightly so that it easily came undone. The actual mechanism that kept it locked had broken a long time ago, and really, it was just for show. Even if it’d been locked, Darcy had perfected lockpicking a long time ago. At Rory’s question, she shrugged. “I mean, it depends on your definition of spooky. Do you get scared easily?” Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, maybe she’d have a bit of a snack. She’d take it as repayment for her services. Besides, it wasn’t like her dad was here to scold her anymore, anyway. 

— 

“Not at all, actually. That’s why I didn’t take you for the type.” She actually kind of liked Darcy’s vibes, though she was careful to stuff the thought down deep. The last shifter around her age whose vibes had been acceptable enough to consider friendship with had been Clem, and that had crashed and burned pretty spectacularly in a way that was pretty much entirely Rory’s fault. (Though looking back, she wasn’t sure that friendship ever could have lasted in a long term sense; there was that hazy memory of her teeth tearing into Clem’s flesh, the uncomfortable implication that came with it. That friendship was always bound to fail, she figured; it was probably better it had happened sooner rather than later, even if she probably did still need to bite the bullet and tell Clem the rest of what she’d learned.

Things with Darcy, at least, couldn’t possibly be that kind of complicated. Whatever she was, she wasn’t a werewolf, and that meant Rory definitely played no part in her becoming this. More likely, this was the way she’d been born, like Rory and her siblings. That was some quiet comfort, at least. “Clean is definitely preferable,” she agreed. “Though, like, totally going to disinfect the shit out of them, obviously. Even if there’s no risk of tetanus, I do not want to know what kind of diseases I could get from using graveyard chains without making sure they’re cleaned first.”

So she didn’t need a flashlight in the dark. That… might have narrowed things down, if Rory knew anything about anything that wasn’t a balam or a werewolf. Maybe she should just ask, but that felt a little rude. “Definitely don’t get scared easily,” she replied with a snort, as if the idea was preposterous. Sure, she got scared sometimes; who didn’t? But only in the face of life threatening danger, really. She’d been scared in the vampire’s basement, when she’d thought she was going to die; she’d been afraid, too, when she shifted back into human form on Talia’s porch with Daiyu’s silver bullet stuck in her gut. But a graveyard? There was nothing scary about that. “Do you?”

—

“Shit, at least my reputation is intact.” Darcy didn’t care about what Rory thought of her, not at a baseline. Of course, things were a little different now that she knew the other woman to be a shifter, but it didn’t shift things too dramatically in her head. If anything, it just meant that there was another person who could think she was deeply flawed for the way she was brought up. But then again, Rory was the one seeking out chains, so maybe she wouldn’t exactly give a shit, especially if Darcy let on that there was no need to worry; that any feasible threat had already been put down. It was a fucked up way of thinking, and she knew that much, but disconnecting herself from her situation was easier than facing it head on. 

Darcy nodded, “don’t worry, we’ll find you what you need.” She hoped so, at least. She was talking big for not having stepped foot behind the storage door in quite some time, but she remembered the pile of varying chains, all meant to keep the front gate and certain mausoleums locked up tight. “A friend and I used to come and smoke here, it’s why I know about it.” Cricket’s name dies at the back of her throat, a shattered object that Darcy’s still struggling to pick up the pieces of. “But yeah, definitely suggest soaking them. Who knows what kind of freaky shit goes on here.” 

She pushed the door open, revealing a series of shelves, all stacked with varying items best kept in a graveyard. Slabs of concrete, granite, and plastic casings sat in the corner of the room, while on the opposite end of the wall were a series of chains hanging from both the ceiling, and the wall itself. Some were evidently rusted over, while others looked as though they’d never done anything other than be submerged in the darkness. It wasn’t as damp inside as she remembered, either. “There you go.” She pointed towards the wall, then made her way to one of the shelves that had a couple of different items, some of which were probably cursed. “Nah. Nothing really scary about a place like this, especially not when I know it pretty well. I can map it out, even with my eyes closed.” Turning around, she leaned against the wall as she observed Rory, “you can probably pick whichever ones.” They all looked equipped to handle whatever Rory needed them for. 

—- 

“That’s the important thing here,” Rory agreed, half a grin ghosting her features. Darcy didn’t seem like the kind of person to concern herself with her reputation in earnest, which made Rory like her all the more. She’d always had a soft spot for other shifters; call it a quiet desperation for belonging after growing up in a house where she didn’t, always the odd man out of everything even before she’d learned she was literally a different fucking species than the rest of her family. She wanted Darcy to like her the same way she wanted every shifter to like her. It felt more intense now than it had back when she’d felt secure in knowing she was a balam, with a spirit in her chest that would never leave her. These days, she mostly just felt alone.

She wondered if she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. It was something in the expression on Darcy’s face, something in the way her features shifted ever so slightly when she talked about coming here to smoke with her friend. Rory wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking for it, but there was definitely something there. Some part of her wanted to ask; a larger part knew she shouldn’t. She forced herself to sit in the latter, letting the moment pass. No way was she going to have Darcy thinking she was nosy. “Yeah, for sure. I’m not afraid of ghosts, but I’m not looking to get tetanus, either,” she joked, hoping the jovial nature of the conversation could… help Darcy, somehow. As stupid as that probably was to hope for.

The inside of the storage shed was a little creepy, Rory had to admit. She was more amused than put off, though, running a finger absently over a tarp in the corner. “This place looks like something out of Dexter,” she commented. “Totally a serial killer’s lair.” But also totally a jackpot. She moved towards the chains hanging down from the wall, grabbing the one that looked the cleanest and testing its strength absently. “How did you even find all this? I mean, I know you said you used to smoke here, but… You just stumbled in one day?”

—

“I don’t know which one you should be more afraid of in a place like this.” Darcy figured that if Rory were a shifter, she definitely knew about other things, and ghosts were just the tip of the iceberg, and it wasn’t like she had been sworn to any kind of secrecy; it had only ever been about protecting herself. They were complicated feelings, that much she knew. It was hard, finding that line drawn in the sand, and most days, she hated herself for it, especially because she often spent time stepping over it. It was like she was asking for trouble. 

Ignorant to Rory’s gaze, Darcy kept her own trained on the wall, sweeping over each individual chain, trying to pick out the most appropriate. But it wasn’t really her right to do so, was it? She was just here to help. “Dexter? What’s that?” Evidently, it was something ‘creepy’. “Sorry, I didn’t really keep up with shows and shit like that, not really my speed.” Most of her time was spent either outdoors, or by Cricket’s side, and most of what they discussed had been music. 

“Huh? Yeah, I guess.” She paused, looking around. Not much had changed from those days. The only thing that did was her company. Darcy reached up, scrubbing her hair out of her eyes, resting her palm atop her head. “There’s not a whole lot to do here, you know? So kids get into places they shouldn’t, and that’s how it happened.” Darcy walked over to one of the shelves, moving it slightly. “Here’s where everyone used to check in. Looks like it hasn’t been added to in ages, though.” She ran her fingers over the etchings and permanent marker. In the corner were her and Cricket’s names. “You wanna add yours, too? Talk about the sex dungeon you’re building?” 

— 

Ghosts were something her family had spoken of, on occasion. They could see them only if they shifted to the point of doing so; it was something her sisters had used to tease her when she was a kid. She could recall it now, Celeste’s eyes glowing a catlike yellow as she’d gasped. There’s a ghost right behind you! She’d screech theatrically, and Rory would whirl around and will her eyes to shift, too. Never to any avail, of course. After a while, she’d come to understand that her sister was only fucking around. Better still, when she’d asked her brother about ghosts, he’d shrugged. I haven’t even seen many, he admitted. Most of them don’t want to hurt people, I guess. Only the ones who are really pissed off. Tetanus was definitely more of a threat, and so she only shrugged off Darcy’s warning. 

She wondered if Darcy knew more about ghosts than she did. She wasn’t sure what all kinds of shifters had the capability of seeing ghosts, didn’t know which of them could do what her siblings had been able to do or how they had to bend themselves to do it. She knew so little about other shifters. Even werewolves, she knew only what Talia had told her and what she’d experienced herself. Glancing over at Darcy, she shrugged. “It’s a show about a serial killer. It’s…” She bit back the urge to say stupid, to pretend she didn’t like something she did just to avoid even the barest amount of vulnerability. “...pretty good, actually.”

Small towns with nothing to do were familiar to Rory, who had grown up somewhere similar. She wondered if it was a universal thing, kids wandering into places they probably shouldn’t have been in in search of some way to pass the time. Probably. Curiously, she followed Darcy over to the shelf, smiling faintly as the other revealed the names scrawled onto the wall. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, actually, that would be cool. You got a marker?”

—

Darcy realized in that moment as she watched Rory’s back that she could play into the situation; that she could stretch illusionary fingers towards her, scrape them through the parts of Rory’s mind that thought she was immune to the fear this place could inhibit. The desire to deal with the aftermath, though, quickly became something exhausting, even if only in thought. Pressing her lips together, she fished the vape out of her pocket, puffing on it, sending the vapor in the opposite direction. Still, it hung in the air. The scent of cotton candy, hot and sticky paired with their summer evening, stuck to Darcy like a ghost of its own making as she watched Rory. 

“Huh. So you like creepy shit, too, then?” She was definitely not a bugbear– Darcy could tell that much by just looking at her, paired with the fact that she smelled a little more damp than she did woodsy in the way that other bugbears did. Was it dander? She couldn’t be sure. She took another puff off of the vape, sliding it back into her pocket. Exhaling, she didn’t bother turning her face this time. “I’ll give it a watch, let you know what I think.” Nothing ordinarily frightening did anything to her, so she wondered if the story would be compelling enough to keep up with. 

“Nah, but I have my keys.” She unhooked them from her beltloop, handing over the keychain to Rory. On them were several keys that hadn’t been used since the fire, as well as several beaten and faded keychains. “Use that one.” She pointed to the longest key; the one that used to open her front door. “It’s the sharpest.” Darcy chewed on her nail as she brought her fingers to her lips, watching Rory in quiet anticipation. “You shouldn’t have to carve that too hard,” she mumbled around her thumb, “the walls are pretty fragile.” 

—- 

“Sometimes,” Rory replied with a shrug. The cotton candy scent of the vape filled the air around her, reminding her briefly of her teens. Rory had been more fond of cigarettes — choosing aesthetic over taste — but her oldest sister had vaped. The smell of Darcy’s reminded her of laughing when Cordelia made her swear not to tell their mother about the collection of vape pens in her bedside table, forcing Rory into a promise she wouldn’t have broken even without the threat of Cordelia breaking her pinky implied alongside it. “I like horror, but I wouldn’t really call this show that. It’s more… drama, I guess.” Horror was the shit that made you feel unsettled, made it hard to sleep at night. Serial killers, for Rory, were almost mundane, at this point. The popularity of true crime — a genre Rory didn’t really care for herself, despite Celeste’s fondness for it — took away some of the impact that the concept of a serial killer might otherwise carry.

She wondered if part of that was because of her own activities, the ones she hadn’t recalled until recently. What reason did a serial killer have to be afraid of other serial killers? Maybe her subconscious had always been aware of what she was, had always tightened it around her like a life vest she didn’t want. She pushed the thought away now, not wanting to dwell on it much longer. She had far better things to focus on here; she wanted to let herself focus on them.

Darcy offered her a key, and Rory took it. Dutifully, she selected the longest key and moved to position herself beside the wall, scraping it experimentally against the wall. Darcy was right; it carved into the material with ease. Rory grinned, scraping her name beneath where Darcy’s sat beside another — Cricket. Rory didn’t ask for clarification, even if the curiosity tugged at her gut. When she’d finished adding her name, she leaned back to inspect her work. It was messy, but legible. Not bad. “Guess it’s immortalized now,” she said, offering Darcy her keys back. “Rory was here. Everyone will know it… until this building collapses, or whatever.”

—

Darcy paused, looking at Rory. She didn’t seem the fragile type, but the bugbear knew that any discussion of not being scared wouldn’t really go in the other shifter’s favor. There was no point in comparing it. “Drama?” Darcy pushed her tongue against her back left molar. “I’ll give it a watch, let you know what I think.” Were they going to speak after this? Probably. After all, Darcy was helping Rory find something for restraint, and whether it was for herself, or somebody else– that question hadn’t been brought up, and really, she didn’t need to know the answer, but did you really just go on to be strangers after an interaction like this? Maybe, actually. 

But Rory was carving her name into the wall, just next to where Cricket’s was; a faded memory that still felt fresh. She thought of the moment that Cricket had written her name– fuck, Darcy could even remember the way her hair had been pulled to the side, and the way a sheen of sweat beaded off of the nape of her neck, how Darcy had flicked the visible skin, making fun of her for nothing other than taking too long. Having Rory here with her now– her name being carved into the same wall… surely it meant they would be in each other’s lives past this moment. 

“Yup, that’s the point.” Darcy took her keys, hooking them back around her belt loop. “One day we’ll be forgotten, blah blah blah, but these walls will always remember us, blah blah blah.” Darcy put on a monotone voice, reaching up to create a talking gesture with her hand. “Sounds like some corny teen movie, right?” Even if she didn’t know the shows all too well, she at least knew the movies dredged up from the 80’s and 90’s, all thanks to The Video Vault. “Alright, well let’s get your shit and leave before someone else decides to show up.” The last thing she wanted to deal with was company, even if she was sure it wouldn’t be that much of an issue; after all, they were two shifters, after all. 

—

There was a quiet thrill at the idea of Darcy letting her know what she thought, though Rory didn’t let it show. She shrugged as though it meant nothing, as if she weren’t forever the youngest sister trailing uncertainly behind six older siblings begging for a belonging she couldn’t achieve. Darcy was not one of her siblings, but there was something similar in the way she, too, was a shifter; like Rory, but not like Rory. The same, but different. Maybe that was the best she could really hope for outside of people like Jackie.

Darcy spoke like a cliche that knew it was a cliche, and Rory laughed like someone who was in on the joke. It did sound like something out of a cheesy movie, and she liked that. She liked, too, how her name looked beside Darcy’s, liked how it looked beside Cricket’s even if she didn’t know Cricket at all. She liked the idea of some part of her still being here, even after she had moved on. 

She didn’t let herself look at it for long. They’d come here for a purpose; Rory intended to achieve it. Wiping her hands on her pants, she handed Darcy her keys back and moved back to the chains. “Yeah,” she agreed, “we should finish up here.” The time of feeling like a person ended the moment she looked back to the chains hanging from the wall. She was a monster once more, a thing in need of confinement. But with Darcy’s presence beside her, she felt a little more at ease.

The Chimera had become something of a second home to Rory in her time in Wicked’s Rest. She’d spent a lot of time here, rubbing elbows with other shifters and working to make connections she hoped might help her with her ultimate goal of controlling her shifting. These days, though, she was a little more uncertain about it. These days, she was a little more uncertain about everything. 

Doubt sat heavy on her shoulders, weighing her down as she quietly fiddled with the glass she’d been nursing since her arrival. She’d been more careful with where she sat tonight, avoiding taking up any seats next to anyone who smelled lupine or feline. She felt oddly tainted, like everyone who saw her must know that something was wrong with her. It was a bad feeling; it was a familiar feeling. Rory had felt this way for most of her life. All attempts to outrun it only ever seemed to come up short. 

The end result to her selective seating found her sitting alone at the corner of the bar, an empty seat beside her. She quietly hoped no one would take it, which was an unfamiliar thing. Most of the time, Rory liked sitting next to a stranger at the Chimera. She liked being able to talk to other shifters, liked learning what they were and feeling the implicit trust that came with knowing that the person beside you was at least kind of like you. Now, though, it felt more like a threat. She thought of Talia, and the way she’d tried to explain to Rory their shared jaunt in the woods after the last blackout. She was no longer sure she wanted to meet people like her.

The bar was crowded, though, and someone took the seat beside her before long. Rory sighed in quiet relief at the fact that it was at least someone who was neither a werewolf nor a balam, though she didn’t know the scent of them well enough to figure out what they actually were. The bartender came to serve them, eyeing Rory with a look that said she’d need to order another drink soon or give up her seat. She sighed, preparing to throw back the drink to order another when a commotion at the far end of the room caught her attention. Someone’s argument was getting louder, but the bartender seemed unconcerned. Rory made a face. “No need to make it everyone else’s problem,” she muttered, swallowing the remnants of her drink and nodding to the bartender for another.

—

It had taken her a year and a half to find The Chimera. And fuck had Viv been grateful when she had. She liked the other bars well enough. Liked the Wormhole in all its dive bar glory. But she couldn’t let loose there. Not fully. The Chimera was different. No one there was human. There was nothing wrong with fur, or claws, or tails. They were all the same in that they were all different. That was one of the things she missed most, about home. She missed her family- how none of them were the same. Fae, undead, shifters- all of them, one big, happy, slightly dysfunctional family. 

Viv hopped up into a seat at the bar, stretching as she settled in after a long day at work, pretending that she was so happy to take people’s orders. Before long she had a beer in her hands, and she took in the people around her. Viv had never been particularly gifted at guessing what kind of different people were. Until she spied a fang, or a scale, she played a little guessing game. She wasn’t sure where she’d rank the woman, but something in her gut said she wasn’t like Viv. 

She was pulled from her mental guessing game as two guys at the end of the bar were getting rowdy. Viv rolled her eyes, glancing over at the woman next to her with a wry grin. “Someone needs to tell them to take their dick measuring contest outside. No one gives a fuck.” She raised her glass in a little salute. The shouts were getting louder as the argument continued. “Hey, five bucks says pint sized lumberjack throws the first punch.” She jerked her chin where the shorter of the two men was standing like a bear, trying to make himself appear bigger. Bugbear, maybe?

—

She snorted at the other woman’s response, deciding immediately that she liked this stranger. Despite appearances, it wasn’t particularly hard to earn Rory’s favor, especially not if you were a shifter. To Rory, a person was decent to be around so long as they weren’t painfully cheery or annoyingly optimistic. Of course, they also couldn’t be depressing, either. So… maybe there was a fine line to walk, but with one sentence, this woman managed to dance across it like an acrobat. “Seriously,” she agreed. “Like, pretty sure we’ve all got better things to do than listen to them argue.” The bartender would probably toss them out, but not for a while. They weren’t exactly quick to throw people out of the Chimera. You had to really earn it. (Rory had, a few times.)

Turning to look at her newfound companion, Rory found her lips twitching into a smirk. She leaned back to study the two men at the center of the argument, caught a whiff of both of them. The smaller guy with the beard smelled like the guy who’d fought her for the privilege of licking a giant rock once, which meant he was probably a bear. She couldn’t get a good feel for the other one, though; too many shifters in one place muddied the senses a little. Still, Rory wasn’t one to turn down a bet, even if she knew she might not win it. “Okay, sure,” she said, “you’ve got yourself a —”

Before she could even finish her sentence, a chair crashed into the bugbear. But it wasn’t the man he’d been arguing with who’d thrown it — instead, it was a burly woman who hadn’t been involved in the fight at all. Her eyes flashed yellow, and the bugbear stood and roared loudly, the shift already rippling through his skin. Rory knew this was well on its way to chaos… and the exit was all the way on the other side of the bar, with the fight in the middle. “Well, shit.”

—

It hadn’t even been a full minute by the time Viv lost a five dollar bet. She really should have known better than to make bets or promises in a town that seemed to be dead set on a cosmic level to ruin her fucking day at every possible turn. Still, even down five bucks, at least watching a feral looking woman reducing a chair to splinters as she wailed it against one of the men fighting at the end of the bar was entertaining. She could accept losing five bucks for that sort of spectacle. 

Viv let out a low whistle, taking a long sip of her drink as she watched the man at the end of the bar bones stretch and twist, and hair turned to fur as he shifted into— hey, she was right!— a big ass bear. “Welp,” she sighed, pushing back from the bar casually as the bugbear at the far end of the room let out a roar. “So much for a casual drink.” Animalistic grunts and shrieks added to the cacophony of the fight that seemed to be spreading across the bar like ripples in a pond. 

“You any good in a fight?” Viv stretched out her back, arms reaching high overhead as the pins and needle tickle of scales that dotted her arms and cheeks crawled across her skin.  At least she didn’t have to fully transform in order to give herself an edge in a brawl. 

—

Rory couldn’t exactly celebrate winning a bet when the whole room was dissolving into utter chaos around her. She was no stranger to barfights — working at the Wormhole meant she’d been spectator to many — but there was always something a little unsettling about being thrown in the middle of a stranger’s beef. Rory was good enough at keeping a neutral expression, ensuring the woman beside her likely had no idea that she had any sort of discomfort at all, but she gripped her glass a little tighter as she watched the violence unfold.

“Hard thing to find, in this town,” she commented, unable to hold back a wince as the bugbear swiped a paw through the air, catching his opponent with a claw. It wasn’t a deep enough cut to put anyone at risk of bleeding out, but Rory couldn’t imagine it was particularly comfortable, either. Someone else jumped up at the sight of this, evidently taking offence to the move as they ran at the bugbear. Someone else seemed upset by that and swung at the newcomer. More and more people joined in on the fight, and the bartender’s screams for them to all simmer down fell on deaf ears.

The woman next to her stretched, scales crawling over her skin. Some kind of reptile shifter, then? Rory still didn’t know all the different types, despite spending time at the Chimera. She was usually hyperfocused on finding balam, after all. “Uh, decent,” she replied, “but I can’t shift on command, so I’m pretty sure I’m better off making a run for it.” She had no shame in admitting that. A shifted shifter fighting someone in human form was never going to be a ‘fair’ fight, after all. “You?”

—

“Ain’t that the fucking truth.” Viv groused. She pressed her glass to her lips, tilting her head way back as she swallowed down the rest of her beer. She flicked her tongue across her lips, refusing to waste the last few amber drops. The girl didn’t seem scared shitless, which counted for something in Viv’s book. She did seem vaguely familiar. It took her a few moments to realize she was used to seeing the kid on the other side of the bar. “But I guess bar fights here are more interesting than at the wormhole, huh?” 

She couldn’t shift on command, though. That made their current predicament more difficult. “I can hold my own. But in case you didn’t notice, im not the most imposing fucker here.” She gestured to herself, petite figure perched on a bar stool, legs dangling above the floor. “At least, not right now. And I really don’t feel like eating some furball to prove a point.” Viv hopped off her chair, and glanced around the space that was growing rowdier by the minute. “Alright, two options. Push through the chaos, or sneak through the back. Your call, kid.”

—

It wasn’t until the woman mentioned fights at the Wormhole that Rory felt the faint tug of recognition on her gut — she knew this lady. At least, kind of. Not well, or anything — she definitely hadn’t known she was a shifter before running into her here — but she’d seen her before. Usually, Rory was serving her drinks and exchanging the occasional eye roll with her. This, she decided, was a lot more fun. “Yeah,” she agreed with a snort, “people at the Wormhole don’t usually turn into bears mid-fight. Which, honestly? Works out better for me. I’d rather experience this kind of fight as someone who isn’t going to be stuck cleaning up whatever shit they break.”

No, she definitely wasn’t the most imposing person here. Neither was Rory, for that matter. And as annoying as the fight was, Rory didn’t really want anyone involved to be eaten (if this woman was serious about doing that). She didn’t like the idea of anyone being hurt, much less fellow shifters. Considering her options, she looked across the bar. “Through the back is probably the least amount of trouble,” she replied. “And the smallest chance of getting sat on by a bear. Wanna hop the bar?”

—

“Not our circus,” Viv shrugged, ignoring the people near them that were starting to get carried away with the energy shift. “Don’t know why anyone would pick a fight with a bugbear. Scary as shit when they want to b—“ No sooner had the words left her mouth, than nightmare fuel appeared on the far side of the room. “Yup, not our circus, not our circus.” The lamia hissed, as a massive set of pincers seemed to burst through the wall. She’d seen Grizz at work enough times to know that it was very likely a hallucination, but she didn’t feel like waiting around to find out. 

“Hopping the bar’s a solid plan.” Viv boosted herself back up onto the bar top, and swung over onto the other side. There was an eerie clicking noise from where the massive pincers (and the new addition of a few dozen glowing yellow eyes) were terrorizing the patrons nearest to the brawl. Viv shivered and grabbed a random bottle from the bar well, and waved the other girl along. “Add this to my tab!” She shouted at the bartender as she pushed past them to make her way into the back. 

—

The other woman seemed to know more about bugbears than Rory did, though Rory recognized that this wasn’t a difficult thing to achieve. Though she’d been raised a shifter, her family had been rather integrated into human society. Rory knew plenty about lamia, knew a thing or two about werewolves, but she didn’t know much outside of that beyond what she’d learned in this town. She was learning more now, watching the fight with wide eyes. “Dude,” she breathed as giant pinchers burst through the wall. She was too busy being impressed to be afraid. 

She was so busy, in fact, that she didn’t realize the other woman was moving until she was already on the other side of the bar. Rory blinked as the woman waved for her to join, pulling her attention away from the fight in order to hop the bar and make a hasty retreat alongside her new friend. “Tag me if you post this on TikTok,” she called back to the bartender, turning to give them a quick salute on her way out.

As they moved towards the back, something jumped the bar, skirting by Rory’s legs and in front of the other woman. Small, brightly colored, holding a knife. Rory faltered, blinking down at it. “Is that a… baby knife clown?”

—

The bugbears were really fucking going for it with their antics. Viv almost wanted to take in the sights and be impressed, if it weren’t for the scary-as-fuck visions dancing before her eyes. At least Grizz knew how to make his hallucinations the fun sort of scary. The kid was shouting something about Tik tok as she made her way over the bar behind Viv, but the lamia was not hanging around to find out more about whatever fucked up social media trend the kid thought this could have been for. 

The basement of the old house The Chimera hid itself away in had a flight of stairs that served as the emergency exit. Viv didn’t live the thought of going up a rickety flight of stairs in a seemingly condemned building, but it was probably fine. They turned the corner, and stopped short at what lay in their path. A tiny clown with a knife. “Be so fucking for real right now.” She grumbled. “My dad is a clown you assholes. Don’t make me scared of fucking clowns.” The knife in the tiny clown’s hand rotated in a circle, and a creepy music box version of pop goes the weasel echoed over the din of the bar fight in the next room. “Oh fuck you,” she grumbled, trying to skirt her way around the tiny clown. As the melody hit pop!, the tiny clown hulked out and grew three times in size. “Fuck—“ Viv grabbed the other woman’s wrist and hauled ass toward the stairs. 

—

“Your dad is a clown?” Rory had, like, so many follow-up questions for this woman. Of course, those questions would probably need to wait; the baby knife clown was moving towards them menacingly, then growing into a much larger knife clown with a creepy giggle that sounded as though it had been recorded on a staticky tape recorder some twenty years prior. It was definitely all sorts of unsettling and, yeah, okay, pretty scary; Rory could have done without the whole thing. 

Luckily, her newfound ally seemed to be in agreement with her there. A hand clamped around her wrist, which was a good thing since Rory was a little frozen with the creepy clown of it all. She stumbled up the stairs, the other woman towing her along. Behind her, she swore she saw the stairs melting into tar, flowing down like a waterfall whose top grew ever closer to her feet. “We need to speed up!” She squeaked, pushing at the other woman’s back to encourage a little more speed. “Go, go, go!”

—

“One of them is— shit!” Viv ducked as the expanding baby clown’s knife grew in size with it. She knew the visions couldn’t hurt her, but the instinct to duck and cover when a massive knife was growing toward her head was strong. “Whichever one of you fuckers made the creepy clown, I’m fucking eating your bitch ass!” Viv shouted into the bar. It wasn’t a great threat, but she didn’t have time to workshop creative death threats. 

They were sprinting up the stairs— the stairs that appeared to be melting like something out of a Dali painting. The sight was enough to have her legs vanishing from sight as they merged into one long tail, and she slithered them both up the stairs and out into the evening air, slamming the door into the face of the big baby clown. Wild red eyes looked at the woman beside her, and she started to laugh. “You good?” Viv asked. 

—

She had gay clown dads? Rory was seriously pissed at the clown baby’s sudden decision to turn into a giant clown baby, because it was interrupting a conversation that had just become incredibly interesting. Like, if one of her dads was a clown, what was the other one? Did her clown dad wear his clown outfit around the house? No, right? Probably no? Rory needed answers so fucking bad. “God, take an extra bite for me. This is pissing me off!”

The soles of her shoes stuck to the stairs as they melted beneath her, but not to the point of freezing her in place. Rory fell down onto all fours to gain better traction, though she remained in human form as she did so. (The last thing this situation needed was an out of control werewolf. If she ate this snake lady, she’d never find out more about her gay clown dad.) Her hands stuck to the ground, too, and for a moment, Rory thought she was a goner. But then, the snake woman shifted, tail taking the place of her legs as she used her slippier form to get them both up the stairs and out the door. Rory breathed a sigh of relief as the door slammed shut between them and the giant baby clown, slumping against the brick wall behind her. “I’m good,” she replied, letting out a breathless laugh of her own. “Fuck. That was so fucked up. Why a clown? Why a baby clown?”

—

Viv’s chest heaved as she slumped down into a pile of pink scales. She was so used to the visions a bugbear could conjure up. Grizz’s more often than not had been of the fun-scary variety. The thrills and chills associated with a circus and side show. But seeing what some other bear’s imagination had created had sent her heart into a full gallop in her chest, even though she knew it all to be an illusion. Fucking bugbears. Her face wrinkled into a petulant scowl as she glared back at the door. “Fucking least creative bugbear I’ve ever seen. Melting floor? Seriously? Assholes.” 

She shrugged at the woman’s question. “Who the fuck knows. Probably saw Poltergeist one too many times. Thinks they’re so fucking funny. Clowns aren’t even scary. They’re fucking funny. They’re fun. Stupid fucking asshole…” Viv carried on her grumbling as she stretched out before her body contracted back in on itself, the long tail of the lamia crunching back into her much more compact human form. “Think we can get free drinks out of this mess the next time we’re in?”

—

It was clear that this woman knew far more about shifters than Rory did. She wouldn’t have known the things unfolding in the bar were an illusion without the other confirming it, and she certainly wouldn’t have known it was the fault of a bugbear. There were a thousand questions in her mind, both about the shifter aspect and about the woman in general. How did she know all of this? What was she, with the snake scales and the tail? And what was the deal with her gay clown dad? 

She sat back a little as the other shifted into human form, snorting a half-laugh at the question. “Maybe,” she said. “Probably. But I’m not sure I can wait for ‘next time’ to drink this off. Want to find another bar with me? We could decompress a little.” Her heart stuttered a little, the same way it always did when she was trying to befriend someone; as if rejection was a sure thing, hanging heavy over her head. She pushed the feeling down, not wanting to dwell on it. “I’m Rory, by the way.”

—

Going to the library for information was probably a bad idea. It was also kind of a pointless venture, since Rory could just as easily ask Talia any questions she might have had about werewolves. But… she felt bad, leaning on Talia as much as she had been, and there was something to be said for the illusion of normalcy, too. Going to the library would make her feel normal. Checking out books about werewolves would make her feel normal. Trying to understand what she was without anyone else’s help or input would help her feel independent, too, which was a sensation she felt was sorely needed right now. She hated relying on other people, hated feeling like she needed someone else to tell her what was going on. So, library. Bad idea, but also good idea. Most of Rory’s ideas were like that.

She had a bundle of books in her arms. Most were about werewolves, though she’d gathered a few about other topics, too, in some attempt to make herself look less suspicious. She made her way over to the counter, preparing some excuse about a school project to better explain the selection to the librarian behind the counter. But then, the librarian behind the counter straightened enough for Rory to get a good look at his face, and that armful of books she’d been toting fell to the ground all at once.

She recognized him. The memory was hazy; most of her shifted memories were. She thought it had been during the surge, maybe, when she was angry and hungry and not much else. She remembered chasing him, remembered attacking him, remembered how badly she’d wanted to kill him. She remembered after, too; the sound of a scream in the distance that drew her in, the way she’d lifted a half-dead stranger into her jaws, the librarian — feathered and strange — forcing her to drop the stranger only so he could snatch the heart from their chest and take it for himself. She was afraid of what she had done to this man, but she was afraid of this man, too. The two fears warred with each other somewhere deep in her gut, and she couldn’t help but stare at him in response.

—

It had been a quiet start to the summer — perhaps suspiciously quiet, but Eden wasn’t going to complain. He’d always been a person to dwell in the past or worry about the future, rarely letting himself live in the moment. So what if this period of peace was potentially the calm before the storm? The least he could do was enjoy his respite for now; it wasn’t like he could predict anything that happened in this strange town anyways. 

He could, however, predict what was going to happen at the library on a day-to-day basis. Helen was going to complain about technology or the ghost that they never fully managed to get rid of. Mrs. Jones was going to roam around the place with her eerie aura and send a chill down his spine. Some teenagers were going to come in and make a mess of some sort, leaving books out on the tables or throwing stationary at each other. Eden had had his fair share of encounters at the library, but he was grateful that his shifts were largely monotonous and mundane. That was why he’d chosen this job, after all. 

A young person approached the circulation desk with an armful of books, and Eden sat up in his chair. “Hello. Please give me one moment,” he said as he tore his eyes away from the computer for a second, nodding in acknowledgement to the patron before focusing back on the email he was typing. Whoever had put in the order for a new shipment of Heated Rivalry had put down 100 instead of 10, and the siren was frantically trying to reverse the order before they got shipped out. In the meantime, he heard several thumps from the other side of the counter as the waiting patron’s collection of books fell onto the ground. Eden winced ever so slightly, hoping that the fallen items didn’t include one of the old books that could be brought apart by one wrong breath. 

He hurriedly typed out the rest of his message and pressed send, expecting to see the patron picking her books up off of the ground when he spun towards her. Instead, she was staring at him like a deer in headlights, and Eden raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Are…you okay, miss? You look like you’re scared that you just murdered the books. I assure you that most of them can survive a tiny tumble.” It was his attempt at incorporating more humour into his professional demeanor, as per Barb’s request. 

—

He seemed so normal now. He was typing away at his keyboard, he was talking to her without looking, he was all furrowed brows and concentration as he leaned closer to the screen. He didn’t look like someone who sprouted feathers and ate hearts. He didn’t look like someone who was dangerous; he didn’t look like a murderer.

Of course, neither did Rory. 

It was stupid, she knew, to be afraid of this man. It was insulting, even. She was the monster under the bed, the thing that chased him through the woods unprompted. He had been terrifying after, but one could argue that at least some of it had been in self defense. (Not the… heart eating part, though. That part, Rory thought, was something else. But could she really judge him for it when she knew she’d done far worse? Her heart was pounding, and it didn’t deserve to be. Her hands were shaking, and it wasn’t really fair. She was the one who had attacked him first. 

And still, her books tumbled to the floor in a way that seemed louder than it should have been, the sound of the impact echoing sharply through the library. Her fear didn’t care what logic had to say; her fear knew only that this man had scared her once, not that she had scared him, too.

He finally looked up at her, his expression a little confused but not at all unkind. Would it have been easier if it had been? If he’d been looking at her like he had in the woods, when he’d snatched the body from her jaws and pulled the heart from its chest? She swallowed, trying to make herself look a little less afraid. She still wanted these books, but she also didn’t want to give away that she was the one who’d chased him in the woods. The phantom pain of the silver bullet that had torn through her gut reminded her how dangerous people could be when they knew what you were. “Um, sorry,” she mumbled. “I thought I saw a mouse, and I’m, like, super afraid of mice.” A lie, but a necessary one. She needed some kind of an excuse here. “Do you, uh… Do you have any more books like this? I’m working on a project. For college.”

—

For a split second, Eden was concerned that this was a silence of recognition. There was a low chance that she was a fan of his, but then again, it wasn’t something he could entirely rule out. However, the longer they stared at each other in silence, it was clear that she was frozen out of something much less pleasant than awe. 

“Uh…” he said hesitantly, unsure of what more to say, really. He didn’t want to seem pushy, but if this patron didn’t need anything from him, then he would appreciate not being stared at as he tried to work. When she finally did speak though, a part of him wished that she’d take it back. “A mouse?!” Eden couldn’t help how shrilly that came out, immediately clearing his throat to retain some sort of composure. “Where exactly did you see it? Or, thought you saw it? Just so I can make sure that you really did not see a rodent.” Standing up from his chair and smoothing out the front of his shirt, Eden emerged from behind the desk with a slightly panicked look in his eye. He scanned the perimeters of the circulation desk, then the nearby aisles until he was absolutely positive that there were no little movements. 

“Books, right. Let’s get you some books…” he said when he felt a bit more settled, although he made a mental note to do a thorough sweep of the place when he was closing tonight. Eden knelt down, stacking the dropped book in his arms as he looked at each title. “Let’s see. Heated Rivalry…” Huh. Maybe the library did need 100 more orders of the book. “The Werewolf in Lore and Legend, some vegan cookbook, A Lycanthropy Reader…” He mumbled the titles to himself, squinting at the odd combination of books for a school project. Though as he picked up the remaining few off of the ground, Eden was beginning to notice the predominantly furry focus. “I’m assuming your project is about werewolves? Supernatural happenings? I’m sure we can find you something in our folklore section.” He placed the girl’s books behind his desk for later, then ushering her towards a section near the back of the library. “My name is Eden, by the way. Hopefully I can be of help today.”

—

There was something almost comical about seeing him react to an imaginary rodent she hadn’t actually seen. Here was a man who she’d seen, in a hazy, half remembered moment, pluck a still-warm heart from a dead chest and swallow it down his throat. He was a monstrous thing in the same way she was, a dangerous one. And yet, the mention of a mouse on the floor was enough for him to shriek out something shrill enough to make her ears hurt a little. 

“Uh…” She looked down as if searching for a mouse she’d never seen to begin with, then shrugged. “It’s gone now. So. I guess you guys should set out traps or something.” Sure, those traps would probably never catch anything, but that was no skin off Rory’s back. She had no real intention of coming back here after this, not now that she knew this guy worked here. Rory defaulted to avoidance when uncomfortable, and seeing a guy who belonged in a memory she was trying really hard to forget entirely took her to a place beyond uncomfortable. 

She tensed a little as the man came out from behind the desk, heart pounding in a way she hoped he couldn’t hear. (Would he chalk it up to the imagined mouse? Or could he tell it was her, somehow? Rory recognized people, sometimes, even if they’d looked different the first time she saw them. A werewolf’s nose was an impressive thing, but she had no idea if a siren’s nose was similar. Did he know it was her? What would he do if he did? She’d attacked him. He might have something to say about that, might want some kind of revenge. Or — or he might want to ensure her silence, since she’d watched him eat a fucking heart. The scar on her gut where Daiyu’s silver bullet tore through her ached faintly, as if in warning. This world was far more dangerous than Rory used to think it was.)

While she didn’t really want to spend any more time with this guy, she also didn’t want to tip him off. She let him flip through her books, nodding absently. “Uh, yeah. Werewolves. Shapeshifters.” She let the second one hang for a moment, wondering if it would get a reaction out of him. “Folklore is probably a good place to start.” She followed him to the section, drumming her fingers against her thigh absently. “I’m Rory.” 

—

“Traps. Of course. Excellent suggestion, thank you,” he nodded affirmatively, adding it to his mental checklist. He did not want to think about who was going to be emptying the traps if they were to catch something, but that was an issue for future him. For now, Eden’s focus was on helping this patron, even if her current on-edge behaviour was slightly questionable.

The folklore section was spread across four aisles located near the back of the building. Despite its relatively tucked away location, it was one of the most popular sections in the library — second only to the ‘romantasy’ section that he was still mildly terrified of. “Well Rory, folklore spans from here to there, but creature-specific books should be all throughout this aisle…” he said, slowly scanning over all of the shelves with the ‘supernatural’ labels. Of course Eden knew exactly where the books about shapeshifters were; he’d spent plenty of closing shifts taking pictures of pages, trying to learn more about sirens and others like him in general. Wasn’t that his whole reasoning for joining the library in the first place? 

But he didn’t want Rory to know about his familiarity with these books, God forbid she asked him why he knew so much. So Eden spent a minute pretending to fumble around the shelves, running his finger across tattered spines as he muttered the different topics out loud. “Vampires…cryptids…ah, here we go. Supernatural: A Guide To The Creatures Who Roam The Night.” Well that was just an insulting title, wasn’t it? The cartoonish stereotype that all ‘creatures’ stalked around in the dark was why humans were so scared of them. (Then again, could he really blame them after the things that he’d seen himself?) Eden suppressed his look of distaste as he handed the book to Rory, then turning to busy himself with the next shelf. “That one seems like a general overview. You look that over and I’ll try and find a specific werewolf book for you. What sort of project is this? Research paper? Argumentative essay?”

—

She couldn’t determine whether the librarian was being genuine or sarcastic. Maybe if she hadn’t been so caught off guard at the sight of him, she would have known. She hated that thought, hated feeling flustered at the idea that this was another person she’d hurt. It felt daunting here in a way that it didn’t with Madison or Clem, who she at least knew. This man was a stranger. Not only did she have to swallow the guilt of knowing she’d gone after him, she also had to contend with the question of whether or not he’d feel the need to seek vengeance for it.

In any case, he didn’t seem in a hurry to attack her, and he probably wouldn’t do it in his place of work. In the library, she was likely as safe as she could be, even if she felt unsafe. She followed Eden to the folklore section, which was far bigger than she’d expected it to be. She looked at all the shelves, feeling a little overwhelmed at the sheer volume of things. “There’s… a lot of books here,” she commented, which felt like a stupid thing to say in a library. Of course there were a lot of books in a library; wasn’t that the entire point? 

Eden scanned the shelf carefully, as if taking in the titles for the first time. She took the book he indicated, flipping through it absently. “Uh, it’s, like… a research paper. Historical.” That was probably her best bet here, wasn’t it? There was some truth to the stories people wrote about the supernatural. Werewolves were affected by the full moon, vampires drank blood. Rory quickly flipped past a page about the latter, trying not to think about the crazy vampire’s basement she’d found herself locked in, the one where Brigit had died. Flipping from that page to another found her staring down at a different image instead — a creature half bird, half person, with an impressive wingspan and a feathered face. Subtly, Rory glanced up at Eden. It didn’t look exactly like he had, though it was similar enough. 

“‘Sirens are creatures from Greek mythology,’” she read aloud. “‘Typically depicted as humanoid females, they have alluring voices and are sometimes shown to have wings and other birdlike features. Some mythology depicts them as mermaid-like.’ Wow. You hear less about those than werewolves or vampires, huh?” She eyed Eden, trying to gauge his reaction.

—

Eden chuckled at the girl’s observation. Books in a library was an obvious thing, but he’d actually had a similar revelation that she’d had when he first arrived here. The Wicked’s Rest library was more thoroughly stocked than he had expected, but its folklore section was what was most impressive. Of course, it had started making more sense once the town’s nature had revealed itself to him.

“Ah, well lots of sources needed for a research paper. We better stock you up,” he said as he started scanning from the top shelf, brow furrowing when he remembered that most of the creature books were organized alphabetically by author, not by species. Considering the sheer amount of species, perhaps it’d be worth spending time reorganizing the space. 

“Now what is this doing here…” Eden frowned again as he plucked out a copy of Twilight from the shelf, definitely not the genre of folklore that they were looking for. “I’ve never actually read this myself, but I know there’s werewolves involved if you’re interested,” he said sheepishly, trying out another attempt at humour. Luckily for him, it seemed like Rory was more focused on whatever passage that she’d just come across than listening to his bad joke. He put Twilight aside so that he could reshelve it later, straightening up when she looked like she wanted to say something. The girl hadn’t been overly chatty like some patrons were; he liked that. 

The next few words out of her mouth, however, he liked much less, as she started reading a paragraph that he’d undoubtedly read himself before. His hand that was reaching out to the shelf wavered ever so slightly as Eden’s instinct to freeze took over. It wasn’t the first time that he’d heard talk about sirens out in public, but there was something about this situation specifically that was putting him on edge. Perhaps it was the fact that he was being directly addressed, or that the quiet nature of the library meant that anyone could overhear their chatter. What an unfortunate coincidence that that had been the passage she’d chosen to read out loud out of any of the other hundreds of pages. 

“Hm, yes. Not a common creature, it seems.” Eden rolled his shoulders back, forcing his body to relax as he did his best to keep his expression neutral. Acting may have been second nature to him, but it didn’t mean he was immune to shock. All he could do was recover as quickly as possible, hopefully before anyone could notice anything off about him. “But all myths at the end of the day, right? Vampires, werewolves, sirens, anything of the sort,” he said firmly, turning back to the shelf as he swallowed down the increasing desire to hide himself.

—

The lie she’d banked on seemed to be a good one. A research paper would explain a wide variety of books being checked out, and wasn’t likely to raise any eyebrows. That was a good thing. If he didn’t know what — or, more importantly, who — she was already, Rory didn’t want to clue him in with something as simple as checking out one too many books about it. 

She glanced over as he removed a rogue book — Twilight, classic — Rory snorted. “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head, “I don’t think that’s what I’m after.” She’d never read the book, but she had watched the movies when they’d seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years, mostly in the interest of watching a film that was bad. She definitely knew enough to know that the werewolves in that story (and the vampires, for that matter) were pretty far removed from reality. Whatever she turned into, she knew it wasn’t a literal wolf. (Maybe it would have been easier for her to wrap her mind around if it had been. After all, her siblings turned into literal ocelots, and that went over just fine. A literal wolf would have been closer, at least, to what they all had going on.) 

She watched Eden carefully as she read aloud from the book in her hand, though she was just as careful to make it look like she wasn’t watching him. Sure enough, there was the briefest wavering as her words reached him. It was a subtle thing — she’d have missed it if she weren’t looking at him — but it was certainly there. Was it a good sign? The fact that he hadn’t expected her to know he was a siren meant he probably didn’t know that she’d seen his feathers firsthand, didn’t it? It did little to quell the quiet anxiety thrumming in Rory’s chest, but she filed it away all the same. 

“No romantasy books about them that I’ve seen, anyway,” she commented, as if she assumed that was what he meant by ‘common.’ In her head, though, she was wondering if he meant the more realistic version. Were sirens rare, like balam? She’d met two in town already — Eden and Ishan — but was that an unexpected thing? Maybe she’d ask Ishan about it. She didn’t think she’d ask Eden. “Yeah,” she agreed, “all myths. Obviously. If there were people running around the woods with feathers, we’d probably know it. Right?”

—

The urge to check if Rory was looking at him was too great, and Eden snuck a glance at the girl from where he’d settled himself at the shelf. She was looking back down at the book, seemingly unaware of any strange behaviour on his part. The fact only did a little to calm his creeping anxiety. “Good for them, staying away from the monopoly that romantasy has had on the supernatural genre,” he said, trying to convey his words with an air of lightheartedness that would hopefully pass as humour once again. 

Turning his attention back to the task at hand, the librarian continued to scan for any werewolf-specific books. Of course, his gaze coincidentally landed on one about sirens instead. Even if this specific text was about their inaccurate oceanic counterparts, just seeing the word was enough to spook Eden after the last few minutes. He couldn’t help but push that book deeper back into the shelf, as if trying to hide it away from Rory’s view. She’d hadn’t lingered on the topic of sirens which was a good sign, but now that she’d been introduced to the concept, he couldn’t risk anything else catching her attention. 

“Right, we would know if people were running around the woods with feathers,” he repeated after her with an affirmative nod. “Or I guess in your case, with fur.” Only he did know about those people — he’d seen it with his own eyes and experienced it in his own body. It was necessary for Eden to shut down the narrative; it was survival. However, every time he pushed his existence down, the more ashamed he felt of simply existing as he was. 

“Ah! Here we go,” he said suddenly, a genuine excitement in his voice as he pulled out a book with a werewolf on the cover. He was excited that he finally found something potentially helpful, but he was mostly excited that they could now pull the conversation as far away from sirens as possible. Eden stared down at the cover, fingers grazing the image of the werewolf as he studied it. The creature looked very similar to the one that had attacked him in the winter. He let out an involuntary shudder at the memory, recalling the adrenaline of the moment and the emotional weight of the subsequent comedown. “Wouldn’t want to be the protagonist in the movie getting chased around by this thing,” he said with an awkward laugh, trying to play off the shudder as one stemming from his vivid imagination.

—

“Unless they could use the good press,” she replied. Were she more daring — which was to say, were she the version of herself she had been months ago, the one who thought she knew all there was to know about what she was and was confident in herself because of it — she might have thrown in a not-so-subtle comment about hearts just to see how he’d react. But that Rory had died when a silver bullet tore through her, and the Rory left now was not as daring. This Rory didn’t want to see the librarian squirm, lest that squirming cause him to look a little closer in her direction. This Rory wanted, mostly, to get the books she was after and leave rather than start problems. She wasn’t sure she liked this Rory very much.

She continued watching Eden out of the corner of her eye, continued tracking his movements. He pushed one book a little further back onto the shelf, obstructing it from view; Rory had a feeling it wasn’t a book about werewolves, and so she made no effort to retrieve it. Let Eden hold onto his secrets; fuck knew Rory intended to hold onto hers. 

For a moment, Eden turned her game back on her. He said in her case and there was a heartbeat where she felt certain this meant he knew. But would he be so calm if he did? She wasn’t exactly skilled in reading heartbeats — she could hear them, sure, but she wasn’t a comic book superhero who could interpret what they meant — but she didn’t think Eden’s spoke of someone planning an attack. She forced herself not to react to the comment with anything more than a shrug, even if her own heart stuttered a little. 

The moment passed quickly enough, as Eden pulled down a book with a promising cover. Rory shut the one she'd been flipping through, which had still been open to the page with sirens. She peered over Eden’s shoulder at the werewolf pictured, trying to match it with her hazy memories. Did it look like Clem had, or Talia? Did Rory look like that, when she was shifted? For a moment, she simply stared at the illustration, breath caught in her throat. “Uh, yeah,” she said belatedly. “I bet it puts up a crazy chase. Probably pretty hard to get away from.” Her chest ached, and she pushed away the memories of people she’d chased who hadn’t escaped in the way Eden had. “This is great.”

—

“I think they are satisfied with the way that they’re represented now,” he said, quickly biting his tongue as soon as the words left his mouth. Pausing, he forced himself to carefully think about how he was going to phrase his next sentence. “I mean, look at how out of hand the depiction of vampires and werewolves has gotten. I’m sure the sirens enjoy the peace and quiet from the limelight. If they were real. If any of this were real.” He was really talking himself into a hole now, something that tended to happen when his heart started racing.

Eden looked down at the book’s cover like it was the most interesting thing in the world, trying to buy some time to compose himself. Once handing it off to Rory though, he was too far gone in the memory of his personal werewolf encounter. The creature on the cover stared back at them with piercing eyes, sharp teeth bared as it prepared to take its next victim. Eden remembered looking at a face just like it in the woods that night — a face that would’ve killed him had he not been able to protect himself. “Yeah, surely. Real slim chance of getting away,” he nodded halfheartedly, eyes now staring off into the distance as he tried not to ruminate. 

Catching a glimpse of the circulation desk down the aisle, Eden decided that it was time to wrap things up. He always strived to do his job thoroughly, but in this case, he wanted to send Rory on her way as soon as possible. Between the coincidental siren conversation (that his paranoia was starting to convince him was not a coincidence; perhaps she was a mole sent by his blackmailer) and his resurfacing feelings about werewolves, he wanted nothing more than to get back to his desk. Doing one more speedy scan of the shelves, Eden picked out two more books — one werewolf-specific book and one about the supernatural in general — and waved them in front of Rory. “I think these four seem like a good start, plus the others you have up front. Don’t want to overwhelm your brain with too much knowledge at once, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, Eden started walking down the aisle back into the main area. He hadn’t realized how dark it was in the folklore section in comparison to the rest of the library, but once the overwhelming fluorescent lights hit his face once more, he let out a breath he didn’t remember holding. He glanced over his shoulder just to make sure that Rory was actually following him, then once at his desk, added the new books to the stack that she’d dropped earlier. “Do you have a library card? If not, we’ll just have to make you one real quick,” he said as he settled back into the familiar comfort of his chair. “I’ll need your full name, address, contact information…oh, and a picture.” Eden tapped the webcam perched on top of his computer. “Don’t worry, we don’t scan your face or anything. It’s just to prevent identity theft.” Lord knows how many people had tried impersonating him before.

—

If she hadn’t known what he was already, she liked to think this particular reaction would have revealed it to her. That was probably an unrealistic thought, or an arrogant one. Rory had never been particularly observant; if she had been, she might have figured out she was something different than the rest of her family before she got to her twenties, might have realized she was the odd one out before there was no one around for her to look to for the comparison anymore. Still, her default was to cockily assume Eden had given himself away, as if she were some great detective. He spoke about sirens as if he knew them firsthand, and wasn’t that a tell? If she tried, she could convince herself it was something more than confirmation bias. She knew, deep down, that that wasn’t the truth. She decided to let him off the hook, anyway, shrugged a shoulder and nodded in some nonsensical combination of gestures. “Right,” she agreed. “If any of this were real.”

It was real. They both knew that. She watched him without watching him, observing him while making it look as though she was still looking at the book. The way he’d looked at the cover, the way he’d handed it over with some haunted look in his eye… Was he remembering the same thing she was? Rory felt haunted by the hazy memories that had come back to her with Daiyu’s bullet but to Eden, she was the ghost. To Eden, she was the monster under the bed, the thing that had chased him through the woods and terrified him. And he was a monster, too, maybe — she could still see that heart disappearing down his throat in her mind’s eye — but that didn’t make Rory any less monstrous. Nothing he’d done could excuse what she was. She knew that. 

Eden seemed to want to rush her out, and it felt like a relief. She was glad for it, found that she no longer wanted to be here, no longer wanted to be doing this. She wanted to go home and read these books and try to find some way to understand herself even though understanding herself felt like some large, impossible venture. She wanted to never see Eden again even if she was the monster and he was the victim, even if she’d goaded him with the book just to see what might happen. She followed him towards the circulation desk without argument, the two new books tucked under her arm. “Right,” she agreed. “I’m not much of a reader, so… It’s probably going to take me years to read these, anyway.” And she’d have Madison return them for her when she was finished, she thought. She didn’t want to run into Eden again.

There was the matter of a library card, which Rory actually didn’t have. (Last time she’d been here, it had been with the intention of stealing a book. Which, okay, she had, but only because said book had been sentient and a little bit of a misogynistic asshole. Anyone would’ve done it.) “Oh,” she said, shrugging. “Uh, right.” She filled out the information, messy scrawl hard to read but not impossible. And the, she positioned herself in front of the webcam for a photograph. “Ready when you are, I guess.”

—

He liked the idea that he was helping encourage young people to read, even if it was only for the sake of a project. Eden just hoped that werewolves were something that Rory was actually somewhat interested in. “Well, everyone’s got to start somewhere. Just remember to come back and renew them if you need more time past the loan period. The late fee isn’t massive, but it’ll add up with this collection you have,” he said calmly, feeling his creeping panic starting to dissipate as he snapped back into work mode. It made him feel more like himself — more human, less like a monster hiding in plain sight. 

Eden took the form, reaching for his discarded glasses as soon as he saw the scrawl. It wasn’t the worst he’d ever seen, but still unfathomable for someone who prided himself on neat handwriting. Then again, he had learned English from the best tutors in Shanghai, ones who didn’t give him the choice of illegible script when he was repeatedly writing down pages of sentences. Eden tried not to squint too much as he typed up each line, not wanting to make the girl feel ashamed of her messy penmanship. 

“Alright, I’ll give you a countdown,” he said as he navigated to the webcam app, counting down and giving the girl a thumbs up once the picture had been taken. “Now just give it a second to run through the system.” Eden drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited for the printer to spit out the card. For some reason, the settled silence always felt much less awkward when he was on this side of the desk, as if it was a barrier protecting him. “There we go,” he smiled once the card popped out, looking it over to make sure that everything was correct. The picture was clear — much clearer than they used to be, thanks to the new webcam he begged Barb to let him get. Now pictures weren’t a grainy, blurry mess, and he could actually make out the patron’s features. 

Eden wanted to tell Rory that he was admiring the new webcam quality, not creepily staring at her face. However, his breath hitched when he looked into picture-Rory’s eyes. There was a familiarity there that he couldn’t quite place, one that he hadn’t noticed earlier as he was too busy with the books to get a good look at the girl. “Uh, sorry. Here you go,” he said, finally scanning the card and handing it off across the desk. He looked Rory — real Rory — in the eye as he did so, and the weight of familiarity hit him again, only this time, it came with an unexplained dread settling in his chest. 

Without a word, Eden started scanning the books one by one, his heartbeat getting louder in his ears with each of the folklore titles. It wasn’t until he got to the book with the werewolf cover that the recognition hit him. He’d looked into those eyes before when they were chasing him through the woods, when they contained a hunger that they wanted him to satiate, when they glared back at him after tearing another human apart. 

It was hard to forget the eyes that looked at you when you were about to die. Only, he hadn’t died. He had shifted, which was now feeling like an even worse fate to Eden than dying. “You…” he started to say, hands frozen over the last book as he hesitantly looked up at Rory. This person, this kid, had tried to kill him, and maybe he should’ve let her instead of exposing his true nature to her. “I think we, uh, need to talk.” The siren abruptly stood up from his chair, mouth open as if he wanted to say more, yet unsure of where to go from here.

—

Nobody ever looked good in a webcam photo, and Rory made a face as Eden studied hers with an intensity that made her feel uneasy. She wasn’t particularly self conscious about the way she looked — at least, not in the way her sister used to be, staring in the mirror and pulling and poking at her face with an insecurity that practically rolled off her in waves so intense Rory used to swear she could smell them — but she was still a woman in her early 20s, and she wasn’t entirely immune from the insecurities that came along with that. 

When he handed the card to her, she took it quickly, meeting his eye with a slight incline of her chin as if to challenge him a little. But there was something about the way he was looking at her now, something about the way his eyes carefully scanned hers that put her on edge. He hadn’t been examining the photograph in the way she thought he had, she realized. There was something else here, some other motive, some other drive.

It wasn’t until he looked down at the covers of the books that it clicked for her. Recognition. He’d seen something in her eyes. (Were they the same, when she was shifted? Was she a monster with humanlike, honey brown eyes that were full of a rage and hunger she swore she didn’t feel the same way in this form? The thought unsettled her, made her feel uncomfortable all over.)

Quickly, she gathered up the books and the library card, shoving the latter into her pocket. Eden stood, said they needed to talk, but Rory was already making a beeline for the door. “Sorry!” She called behind her, “Can’t talk. Gotta run!” Her heart was pounding, her palms sweating, and her legs felt like she was on fire. Hoping he wouldn’t go so far as to follow her, the young werewolf pushed her way out onto the sidewalk and practically sprinted towards home.

—

Eden wasn’t one for revenge, not after seeing how it consumed his mother and others like her in their colony. It was hard to gloss over the fact, however, that the girl standing here had tried to kill him, would’ve killed him if he hadn’t been able to defend himself. It was as if they were back in the woods when the librarian stood, as if he was standing taller to protect himself once more. But instead of attacking like she had when they first met, she ran. He should’ve seen it coming; it was what most people would do in a confrontation like this. 

People. Humans — that was what they were right now, their animalistic side buried deep inside them. Or perhaps Rory’s wasn’t buried at all, perhaps she co-existed with the animal in her in a way that his shame could never fathom. There was recognition in her eyes too — she remembered that night. Conscious yet different during her shift, carrying the weight of the animal’s actions into her human life like he did. The siren was much more humanoid than the wolf had been — how long had she recognized him for? Clearly she still remembered. 

Eden’s racing thoughts were too loud, like they always were, but it was too late to do anything about it now. The girl was out the door now, and he did not want to make a scene by chasing her down. He sat back down, his heartbeat practically thumping in his ears. How was he supposed to get back to work now? With a sigh, the librarian closed his eyes momentarily as he tried to collect himself, opening them back up to see the girl’s information still on his computer screen.