Page 1 of No Potions Needed

Chapter One

Othoni

Earthside, Appalachian Wolf Pack Territory

“Don’t you think we should wait for Teddy or someone to meet us? They did say they’d be here,” I asked Mori as he shouldered his trunk. We’d spent the last few days on a train traveling from the Hemlock Wolf Pack Territory to the Appalachian Wolf Pack Territory. It wasn’t bad as far as traveling went. Mori and I hadn’t told his parents or mine how we actually planned to travel. The Other World would’ve been quicker but I spent so much time locked up in the small village of my birth that Mori couldn’t pass up the chance to show me a huge swathe of the continent.

“We could but I want to talk to this guy without anyone else there. I want to see what he’s really up to. Teddy is ready to rip this old wolf apart and I don’t want his energy pissing all over my read of him. Not that I blame Teddy. If he shot me, his mate would’ve been SOL on this promise. Seriously, SOL. I don’t do that shit. I don’t do guns. Nope. Anyone who has ever read Nightshade Bear history wouldn’t touch those metal blasphemers of doom with their enemy’s butt crack.”

“Ooookay,” I drew out the word. “So, we’re going to carry our trunks all the way to town?” I arched a brow. “I know you’re hiding bear DNA somewhere inside of you but…”

“Are you magical or not, Othoni?” Mori sighed. “Levitate that Frost-damned thing if you don’t want to carry it.”

“Oh, yeah,” I laughed and waved a hand. “It’s so strange.”

“What is?” Mori asked, leading the way through the crowd of strange shifters. Most of the travelers at the train station were wolf shifters, but I spotted a few bears, foxes, and even a handle full of dragons.

“Sandy haired guy is a vampire,”my inner jaguar pointed out.

He lounged in a try inside his inner sanctum sunning in a beam of light that came from some unknown origin. I envied Mori. Not only did my best friend grow up surrounded by magic he was actually allowed to use, he actually knew exactly who he was too. Unlike me, who didn’t even know where that damn sunbeam came from.

“What’s strange?” Mori asked again.

“Oh, being able to use magic for just about anything I like,” I shrugged. “My carrier always told me not to show off or to save it for important things. I like your parents’ thoughts on the whole thing a lot more.”

“Magic is a muscle. You have to use it to make it stronger,” we said in sync and laughed as we walked past a guy with big, blue feathered wings. I didn’t get a good whiff of him and was about to ask Mori if he thought he was a harpy or a bird shifter, but my friend was already crossing the street away from the train station and I had to jog to catch up. When we shifted, I outran him, but in human form Mori power walked like he was leading an army into a mildly important battle.

“Mori!” I hissed. “Wait up! It’s like you’re running from spirits, and I haven’t even seen any dead people yet!”

“Shush!” Mori said, glancing back over his shoulder but slowing down so I could walk by his side. “Don’t be so loud with that. Most folks won’t recognize you, but I look like someone mashed my parents together. I’m not here to tell everyone about their dead friends and family. We’re here to talk to a crazy old wolf. Though….”

“Though what?” I asked him but Mori shook his head.

His long dark hair fell out of its green and brown scrunchy, and he grabbed at the accessory before it hit the well-kept pavement and was lost forever.

“We both know whatever is going on with that old wolf is probably death bed visions. Almost every old person I’ve known to move on has been visited by their dead people,” Mori whispered.

“Oh!” I said, catching a salty, greasy whiff of something tasty. “Let’s find out what smells good and have lunch there! Breakfast was forever ago.”

“We’ll eat at the B&B. I’m sure they’ll have something for us. We don’t have time to dilly-dally around if we’re going to talk to Dern without everyone around,” Mori sighed and I hissed half-heartedly at him.

“But I like eating like the bears do,” I fake whined.

“Later, Ni, later,” he said and led the way down the sidewalk.

The further we walked away from the train station the more trees and flowers there were to be found and the less not-wolf shifters we encountered. Most people didn’t look twice at us even with our trunks levitating at elbow height next to us. In the end Mori hadn’t wanted to carry his around town either. Maybe the wolves here weren’t strangers to magic or maybe their parents taught them better than to question strangers about their personal affairs.

Mori stopped and sniffed the air before glancing at his phone. His screen was filled with mixed texts from Teddy, Marsin, and Dern’s doctor, Jacob. All of them had arrived at the train station about three minutes after we crossed the street. Mori smirked and waved for me to get the lead out as he hurried past the B&B where we’d be staying. With a flick of his wrist, his bracelets jangled and our trunks zipped away from us as if they were caught in some invisible jet stream that deposited them neatly on either side of the front door.

“Show off,” I whispered.

“Don’t you sound like your carrier,” he teased me.

“It smells like rain. Like staticky rain,” I announced as my jaguar stretched his hind legs inside his inner sanctum. “Maybe we should go inside.”

Mori paused and glanced up at the sky. Finding it blue and cloudless, he shrugged and continued on his way. Mori feared no weather. He’d walk through a hurricane for a good burrito or a homemade pot roast. I on the other hand never grew used to the thundering storms of lightning and rain that brought the floods to the lower lands surrounding the village of my birth. Even back in the Nightshade Territory I couldn’t sleep when the sky growled and rumbled and threatened to exhale a twister.

“It’s not going to storm today,” Mori announced as if whatever gods and spirits controlled the weather were at his beckon call too. Heck, maybe they were. His carrier did seem to know everyone and their uncle after all.

---