Page 166 of Sigils & Spells

At midnight, when Minho’s shift ended he drove me home in his pickup truck, which was a lot nicer than Alice’s bananamobile.

The car ride was silent. I watched the streetlights ebb and brighten on the dashboard for a few minutes before Minho broke the silence.

“Are you ok, man?”

I didn’t look at him. “I hope so. I don’t know what happened.”

Minho made a hmph sound and parked outside our apartment building. “I’m worried.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, man.” Minho shut the car off. “Julian, just be careful.”

“I will be.” He looked at me like he didn’t believe me. I took a breath and looked him square in the face, saying with as much conviction as I could, the famous last words, “Minho, I will be fine.”

* * *

I knewbefore I opened my eyes that it had happened again. I was not in bed.

“Shit!’’ I opened my eyes and sat up, flailing. Naked. Again. This time it was dark. I blinked hard until my eyes adjusted to a pale silver light that I recognized after a second as moonlight. Trees. I was in the woods. Which woods, I wasn’t sure. I patted myself and the ground around me. Naked. And it was just me. My muscles ached.

“What the hell!” I groaned and let myself fall back into what proved to be moss and twigs and gnarled tree roots. No way this was something that asshat had put in her drink. I felt fine right now. Well other than being naked alone in the woods with sore muscles and twigs in my hair. I cognitively felt ok. I’d felt ok before too. What on earth was happening? I’d slept walked before but never ever like this. Normally I just went into the kitchen, drank milk and left the fridge open, but ending up buck ass nude in random ass places was weird. Beyond weird.

Suddenly, I looked up. Behind black twisting tree branches I could see the moon. There wasn’t much of a moon, just a little sliver, but something about looking at the moon situated a horrifying idea in my head. Horrifying. Exciting. Impossible.

“You are not a werewolf!” I said out loud. I instantly regretted it, as my voice sounded far too loud. Not that the woods were quiet. Ambient, indistinguishable sounds filled the space around me, but it sounded like it faded when I spoke. It all came back as loud as before. Bugs and branches and shifting. Like the forest was laughing at me.

I looked down at my hands. They were caked in dirt, almost like I’d been crawling. I’d seen movies before. And not to brag but I’d even read a few books before, and wasn’t this how it started? Inexplicably waking up in strange places, feeling wrong.

“Ok but the moon isn’t full, Julian.” I said to myself, ignoring how loud it felt. “Ok if you were a werewolf that would mean rethinking your entire world view. Also, that’s ridiculous. There has to be a logical explanation.”

But now that I’d thought it, and I couldn’t bring myself to unthink it. The more I tried to fathom a solution that felt more real, the more being a werewolf became the only option. I felt like Bella in Twilight, going down research rabbit holes on increasingly unhelpful websites, but I had just my own brain and no internet access.

After a few minutes of trying to unsuccessfully logic myself away from thinking I was a werewolf, I stood, patting moss and dirt off my–once again–bare ass. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. This was definitely worse than waking up in the stable. I was barefoot.

Another thought that seemed to corroborate my werewolf theory was how untorn my feet were. If I’d walked here all willy-nilly, wouldn’t I have stepped on twigs and branches and have bloody soles? But my feet felt perfectly fine on the moss. Dirty but not injured.

I wasn’t nearly as far from civilization as I thought I was. A light zipping through the trees and then disappearing told me I was only a couple hundred yards away from a road. If I knew the road I might not even have to hitchhike.

With a heavy sigh, I trudged towards the road, wincing every couple seconds as I stepped on every twig and acorn, as hard as I tried to avoid them.

Like before, I was completely buckass nude, so I couldn’t just walk onto the road with my thumb up. That was a great way to get the police called on me. Instead, I planned on looking for a road sign, maybe that could give me some bearings.

The road was dark when I reached it. It was too small to have its own street lights, so just the sliver of moon lit up the narrow stretch of road. I glared up at the moon, still a few trees back.

“If you did this to me, I’m gonna be pissed.” I said to the moon, and was pleased to see that absolutely nothing happened.

Across the street a few hundred yards away was one of those green road signs. I stepped onto the asphalt and headed towards it, hugging the edge so I could duck behind a tree if I saw any headlights, but the asphalt hurt my bare feet less than the underbrush. It was still warm from the hours of unforgiving sun, but the air was almost cool. It would have been a nice night for stargazing.

I squinted and the sign came into focus by moonlight. I recognized the road name. It looked like I was just outside of town, but it also looked like I was just outside of the wrong side of town. As in several miles from home. I groaned. My theory felt solidified again. No way in hell I had walked here in my sleep. At least not as a person.

I groaned again, looking at the moon, willing it to turn me back into a wolf so I could get home faster, but when, yet again, nothing happened, I started what was about to be a long walk back home.

I entertained myself by trying to see how much of Hamilton I had committed to memory, but I hadn’t been walking for more than 20 minutes—I’d just gotten to the Schuyler Sisters—when headlights lit up the trees ahead. I ducked behind a tree, peaking out. If it was not a creepy man I might ask for a ride.

I noticed after a moment that the car—well too tall to be a car, it looked like a truck—was crawling along. The lights I’d seen before had sped along, but the truck was creeping down the road. I frowned. Was something wrong with the car, or—

I stood and squinted hard at the truck. I knew that truck.

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