Page 47 of Junk Magic

I was true to my word, reaching up and turning on the water, and running it as hot as I could stand it. But I didn’t get in. I just stayed where I was, staring at my wound, the one I’d evaded my whole life. And wishing . . .

What? That it had worked? Because in that case, I’d be dead now.

The Corps might have had to assign a couple dozen mages to take me down, if I’d turned into a creature like Colin. But if that’s what it took, then that’s what they’d have done. Overwhelming me with sheer numbers, and with enough magic to exhaust whatever reserve I had of my own. And Sedgewick, damn him, would probably have been there, pad in hand, taking notes on which spells worked the best and how long I lasted.

I should be on my knees, thanking every god I could think of that I’d been born the way I had!

But I wasn’t on my knees, and I wasn’t thankful. I was mourning, yet again, stupidly, uselessly, desperately, for something that I could never have. I thought I’d buried this, dealt with it, moved the hell on years ago.

Because that was the smart move. That was the only smart move. The other way . . . lay madness.

And yet, here I was, slumped against the wall and on the edge of sobs, feeling inadequate, incomplete, broken all over again. Mother had always said that I wasn’t any of those, that I was exactly who I was meant to be. I’d known that she was lying, but I’d never guessed, not once, not until today, just how much.

I let my head come to rest on the slick tile by the shower. It didn’t help, but at least I couldn’t see the mirror anymore. And the flat human face I’d always secretly despised.

I couldn’t see much of anything, with the heat from the shower having combined with the too-cold air conditioning to form enough steam to fill a Turkish bath.

It boiled around the tiny space, so thickly that it was hard to make out my hand in front of my face. That was a problem, because my eyes couldn’t help my very confused brain to sort things out anymore. I was no longer sure what I would see if I looked down. A damp, bruised up, very human body or . . . something else.

I got into the shower to distract myself in the hard-hitting spray, because the one advantage Cyrus’s place had was decent water pressure. But it didn’t help, either. If anything, the steam was even worse in here, whiting out everything.

I lathered up, trying to wash the crazy off along with the sweat, blood and dirt of the past two days. But it felt weird; my hands were clumsy and the wrong shape, and my body was strangely unfamiliar under my touch. But, if I closed my eyes, I could almost see that other form, that other me.

Could see my hand gripping the bar of soap hard enough to have it squeeze up through my fingers, while slipping from human pale to the elongated, fur-covered paw of a predator. Weres, even normal ones, didn’t really look like wolves, and not just because of the too intelligent eyes. They were far bigger, stronger and faster, but there was also a human elegance there, a sleekness not found in their animal counterparts, a strange, savage beauty.

My mother had had that. I had a flash of memory of her coming home from a run, the early morning mist wetting her fur. I’d only been a child, and she had been a huge, tawny wolf with brown in her mane and gold in her eyes. She’d curled around me, her tail tickling my nose, protective of her lone, disadvantaged cub. The one who couldn’t Change.

I’d wondered then what I would have looked like, had I had her gift. Had we been able to run together, hunt together, do all the things that Were mothers normally did with their offspring, and which we’d never been able to share. I could see it now, that elusive, other me: I had brown fur maybe, or possibly black; I wasn’t sure. But I could glimpse enough to know that I would have been duskier than her, sleeky dark and dangerous, a proper daughter for a brilliant, courageous mother. The kind she deserved—

Goddamnit!

I pried the mangled soap off my fingers, stripping them down with quick, savage motions, and got out of the bath. I fumbled into my clothes without even bothering to dry off, too busy pushing my thoughts back, pushing them down. I didn’t want to know what I was missing. I didn’t want to see! Just stop thinking, I told myself fiercely. Just stop everything!

I bent over and ran a comb through my mane of soggy hair, jerking out clumps along with the tangles, uncaring that it hurt. I wanted it to hurt, wanted it to bleed, wanted to have something, anything, to distract me. It sort of worked.

Until I pulled the boots back on. The heavy, steel toed things that I wore in my capacity as a war mage weren’t designed to fit wolf paws, especially not the elongated feet of a Were. But I shoved them in anyway, because I didn’t have those, no matter what my very confused brain currently thought.

The clunky footwear didn’t go well with my “See Red Rock Canyon” T-shirt, which had started out as crimson as its namesake, but was now a washed out pink and a little girlie for the boots. And neither complimented my pale, freaked-out expression. But right then, I didn’t care.

I didn’t care about anything.

I went back into the living room in a temper.

“It’s times like these I wish I had a car,” Cyrus said as I came through the door.

The mundane phrase stopped me, catching me off guard. As did the fact that he wasn’t waiting to pounce on me. He had one of the freezers open and was bent over it, looking for something.

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“For the food.”

“What food?” I looked around, but the only comestible in sight was the coffee, sitting in a carafe on the counter. It didn’t smell good. The familiar odor, usually so welcome, made my nose wrinkle in distaste.

But Cyrus didn’t seem to notice.

“For the wake.” He’d looked up from the freezer he’d been pawing through with an elongated package in his hands, wrapped in white butcher’s paper. “We’re going feed the boys first; it’s still too close to a full moon to leave them hungry, and I don’t want anyone doing anything stupid. Then we’re going to see Jayden off according to Were custom, out in the desert. Sound like a plan?”

I just stood there. I had no problem with the plan. Jayden was vargulf, meaning that there were no cemeteries open to him, unless we buried him alongside humans. And I thought he’d prefer the wide-open spaces, the huge bowl of the sky, and the beauty of the desert to that. I was just a little surprised.

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