Page 19 of Midlife Shifter Unexpected

Chapter 14

“I have to go,” I said, returning to the entrance of the kitchen. Carl the zombie dog looked at my boot. I felt too bad for him, wretched beast he was, with one ear flopping forward. He looked too cute. I stopped myself just before I leaned forward and gave him a scratch behind the ear. He was dead. But what were the parameters around being dead because he was moving and apparently, he ate, so who knew?

“I thought you were staying the night here?” Mae said. “I don’t think it’s really safe for you to be out there.

“I have to go home,” I said. “A sorority sister of mine from back in the day is showing up unexpectedly.”

“Unexpectedly?” Mae and Trina exchanged a look. “Nothing’s really happening unexpectedly. Maybe there’s something more to it?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with your world,” I said. “She’s just going through a hard time in her marriage and decided to come out and see me.”

“Don’t you have anything you can give me to suppress the werewolf tendencies that I might have tonight?” I asked.

“I can give you some teas to make you sleep. It doesn’t guarantee that you won’t transform, but a lot of times feelings will be inhibited by sleep. Most shifters won’t just casually shift in their sleep and wake up in their animal selves. It doesn’t typically work that way. It has to be a conscious desire to shift, or at least a basic animalistic one.”

“What you’re saying is as long as I fall asleep, I should be fine?” I said.

“Yes, and this should help you sleep heavily.” Trina handed me a small vial of tonic. “Just put it in a cup of tea.”

“Before you go, could you do something for us?” Mae asked.

“What is that?” I was already halfway out of the kitchen, through the foyer and toward the front door.

“We need some help in the cemetery.”

I stopped in my tracks and slowly turned around, looking directly at Mae. “You’re inviting me to the cemetery?” I asked, barely disguising my clear excitement at the very thought of walking on that hallowed ground.

“Why couldn’t you have asked me at a different time? Now is not really a good time. Jane is super smart and she’s intuitive. I don’t know a better way to describe it, but it’s like she can sense stuff. It’ll be hard enough not letting her know that I’m a werewolf, much less me showing up late and all flustered. I don’t think I can do that. I just need to get home and get centered.”

“It’s not going to take very long. We just need to do one simple thing,” Mae pleaded. "While you were outside, we were talking about it and trying to figure out what it was that you can do and what your special power is, besides being able to turn into a werewolf. We think it’s your sense of smell. We know there’s something wrong in the cemetery. We can sense it, but maybe if you went down there you can sniff it out.”

“You’re kidding me, right” I asked. "You literally want me to go in and smell your cemetery?”

“You don’t understand. I can’t explain it all right now, but we need to protect that cemetery at all costs. That is the whole point of this pentacle,” she said, holding up the pentacle for emphasis. “My whole purpose and being the Hayes, the whole purpose of The Estate, is to make sure the boundaries of that cemetery don’t ever get breached.”

“Based on my experience having grown up in this town, your family has been doing that really well for the last two hundred or so years. Getting into that cemetery was always the biggest thing on the kids to do list every year.” I wanted to edge toward the door, but Mae was standing in my way and clearly not about to move.

“We’re having a problem, and the reason why we’re coming together is to protect the cemetery. I’m just asking, could you spare a few minutes to go down there? We can do a full formal tour later, but I’d like you to go ahead and just get a first take on the situation.” Mae was strong and single minded. But she was more than that. She was vulnerable and needed help.

I looked at her, my heart melting slightly. Here was someone I could see a growing friendship with, and I wanted to not only encourage it but secure it. Even now, when things were going crazy in her life, she reached out to me to help and support her. Period.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll come with you to the cemetery, but I can only stay for ten minutes max.”

“I hear how important Jane’s visit is to you and we won’t keep you, I promise,” Mae said.

“Well,” I said with a shrug. “As unexpected as it is, I guess this place is important to me too.” If it was important enough for my ancestors to stick around and offer the protection of their lineage, then I guess there was a reason I was here to help out. It wasn’t what I imagined my mother had expected would happen for me, but I had no idea whether she knew about our werewolf status or not My guess is she had no idea either.

Mae jumped in my car and rode down the hill beside me. “I’m kinda new to all this too,” she said as I shifted the car into gear. “I just found out that I’m a witch and the High Priestess of this coven a few days ago. Since then, I’ve almost been killed by a vampire, have adopted a dead dog, and I rearranged my living situation. For the rest of my life, I plan on living in this house, so to discover you, my only friend in town, are also supernatural is something I’m really grateful for. I don’t want you to get too weirded out by everything going on. From what I’ve seen, Hilda and Trina seem to have a pretty good time with this magic thing and if we can get a handle on it, we can have a good time too.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t turn into a big hairy beast every full moon. .Is it a full moon now? I don’t think it’s a full moon, and I turned into a werewolf last night, so first I’ve got to get a handle on what it means to be a werewolf. You don’t actually have that problem. You have the problem that you get pretty green and purple sparkly lights out of your hand. See, I don’t think that’s quite the same problem that I have.” I ended in exasperation.

“I’m sorry,” Mae placed a hand on my elbow. “I don’t mean to upset you. I was just trying to relate,”

“It’s not you.” I glanced over at Mae. “According to that pentacle we are in this together, whether we like it or not,”

“Well,” she shrugged, “I like it. I don’t mind the supernatural stuff. It’s kind of fun anyway.

---