Page 5 of Junk Magic

“Which we’d get more use out of if you hadn’t brought half the city.”

“They’re sound sleepers.”

I doubted that, especially tonight. The moon wasn’t up yet, but as soon as it rose, the boys would be off, transformed and chasing unfortunate little creatures all over the wilderness. Leaving the camp basically deserted.

I perked up.

“Dinner first,” I told him, because those hot dogs were smelling seriously delicious.

They were good, as it turned out, and so was the company. That surprised me a little. The vargulfs I’d met in the past had been suspicious, angry, alienated types with little to say. And that was when they were talking at all and not trying to gut me.

But that was sort of understandable when you realized what most of them had been through.

The Were community was governed by a very strict caste system, with the older, richer, more influential families at the top, and everyone else spread down the ladder at different levels. Everybody except the vargulfs, that is. They didn’t have a clan, and thus had no access to the money, protection, and rights that afforded, including the right to set foot on clan property. More than one vargulf had been killed simply for entering the wrong business, without first checking to see who owned it.

The clans said it was necessary to keep their people safe, that vargulfs had gotten that way for a reason, and that they were dangerous. And sometimes, that was true. A person could be thrown out of the clans for any number of things, including some pretty bad stuff. Many vargulfs were every bit as dangerous as the clans made them sound.

But there were other reasons why someone could end up without clan affiliation. Being born on the wrong side of the blanket, for example, to a father or mother who didn’t choose to claim you. Or being born to someone who was already vargulf themselves. Or having done something that displeased your clan leaders, even if said something was not worthy of lifelong exile.

And the bad part of it was, there was no way back again. Once you were out, you were out, unless you could convince some other clan to take you. But guess how many of the insular clans wanted to waste resources on someone who hadn’t been wanted even by their own families?

Yeah, just about that many.

It was something Cyrus was trying to change.

Born to privilege in Arnou, he’d never thought much about the outcastes of the Were world until he became one himself. At first, he’d thought exile would be easy. He’d even thought that it might be fun, surviving for a while on his wits, free of the responsibilities of being essentially Were royalty, just him against the world.

It hadn’t been fun. He’d confessed to me once that killing himself had started to look like a really good option, just a couple of months in. He’d never before realized how much he’d relied on the clan, how much of his strength he drew from it, how much of his identity, until it suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

And that was while having something these boys had never known: hope.

Hope that the war would end, and Sebastian could risk telling everyone the truth. Hope that he could avoid getting killed until that happened. Hope that there would come a time when he would wake up from this nightmare, when clan affiliated people wouldn’t cross the street to avoid him, and when he could hold his head up again.

Hope that somehow, someday, he could go home.

But what if you didn’t have a home, and knew you never would? It wasn’t too surprising that a lot of vargulfs didn’t last long. And those who did were easy pickings for the less respectable elements in Were society, who knew that the outcastes could be exploited without the risk of having a family come down on your neck.

Because these boys no longer had one.

Although you’d never know it tonight. They were laughing, talking and eating—especially eating—like they didn’t have a care in the world. It looked like Cyrus had bought out half a grocery store, and he needed every bit of it.

Young men can eat, but young werewolves can eat everything, especially on the night of a full moon. I could tell that Cyrus had taken the guys shopping with him, because there was all sorts of junk food scattered around the fire. But there were a few grown up items, too, including potatoes roasting in the embers.

I grabbed one, burning my fingers, and loaded it up with the some of the bacon that one of the guys was frying in a pan, shredded cheese, and chives. Who had thought to bring chives I didn’t know, but they went well with everything else. Including the two chili dogs that were slid onto my plate by a short redhead.

“You can’t just eat a potato,” he said, ducking his head shyly.

Actually, I could, and probably should. Thanks to Hernando’s tamales I needed to drop a few pounds before my next fitness evaluation. I suddenly wondered if that was why the Corps’ cafeteria was so terrible, to keep us all slim.

It was a theory.

But I guess the moon was affecting me, too, because I wolfed it all down, while the guys joked and laughed and talked. It was obvious that they’d forgotten for a moment who they were and where they fit—or didn’t fit—into the world we lived in. Which I guess was why they started debating how it got that way.

“Everyone was a vargulf once,” one pointed out. He was the stereotypical Were—tall, gray-eyed, and dark-haired—and maybe sixteen or so. I thought his name might be Colin. “I mean, nobody had clans at the beginning, right?”

“Of course, we had clans,” one of the others said. He was a dishwater blond with uncharacteristically bright blue eyes. Cyrus had introduced him with the very un-clan-like name of Noah. “We’ve always had them—”

“We couldn’t have,” Colin argued. “We were cursed into being, and after the first ones Changed, their families probably threw them out. Just like us.”

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