“Regular or extra-thick?”
“You know what? I’ll go with extra-thick.”
“Good choice.” The waitress nodded, winked at Justin, and went to put in the order.
Gwen sat back and looked around, taking in the red-andblue neon lights, the old black-and-white photos, the starburst aluminum panels behind the counter. She inhaled deeply. “I love that greasy-spoon smell, although I’ll want to wash it out of my hair by the time we get home,” she said. “I used to come here sometimes, back in my single days. My girlfriends and I would go out to the clubs, then stop here after they closed. It was fun.”
“Fun!” Justin waved a scrap of napkin at her. Gwen took it away from him and replaced it with a coloring book. She shook some crayons out of a box. Justin picked up a blue crayon, examined it, then broke it in half and threw both pieces on the floor.
“No, honey, like this.” Gwen opened the book to a picture of a teddy bear with an umbrella. She filled in part of the umbrella with red strokes. “See? You try it.”
Justin snatched the red crayon and scribbled on the teddy bear’s face. Two seconds later, the crayon was on the floor. Gwen picked it up, along with the two halves of the blue crayon, and colored the umbrella as she talked. Justin watched her.
“I didn’t expect to have him with me today. He’s too young to go with Nick and the others, but his babysitter was sick. She said she has the flu.” She stopped coloring and looked up. “Can you imagine not getting a flu shot? In this day and age?”
I knew what she meant. The fast-mutating virus that had caused the zombie plague three years ago was related to the flu. Since then, flu shots had become very popular. Norms tended to panic about any kind of virus.
“I feel like I should look for a new babysitter,” Gwen finished.
“Well, if she hasn’t dropped dead yet, it’s not the plague. She’ll recover.”
“I know. But she was so careless, skipping her flu shot. I can’t trust someone like that to take care of my kids.”
She put down the crayon as the waitress brought our food. I drowned my French toast in maple syrup. Gwen took a bite out of her massive cheeseburger, closing her eyes as she chewed, perhaps remembering those single days. Justin whined. She put some French fries on a napkin in front of him and spooned a little of her frappe into his mouth. He smacked his lips and made happy mmmmm sounds.
“So what’s up?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew: Maria. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Can’t I just have lunch with my sister? It’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and we didn’t get any girl time last night.”
That wasn’t why Gwen had asked me to lunch, and we both knew it. But I was happy to catch up with my sister until she was ready to talk about what was bothering her. I smiled to myself a little; Maria had acted the same way last night, letting me know she needed to talk and then having no clue how to get to the point. Like mother, like daughter. Justin waved his sippy cup and then bounced it off the floor. It landed near my foot. I scooped it up and handed it to Gwen. “Well,” I said, “we’ve got plenty of girl time now.”
For the next half hour, we swapped stories. I told some tales from work. Gwen laughed about the Drude victim who was terrified of cats, so his dream-demons took the form of cute, fluffy kittens. She talked about her boys—how Zack terrorized and charmed his kindergarten teachers by turns; how Justin had pointed at a cat and said, “Dog,” making a neighbor laugh, and then Justin refused to speak for a week.
After a while, Justin got squirmy in his high chair. Gwen lifted him out, and he amused himself by sliding off Gwen’s bench, crawling under the table, and climbing up onto mine. Then off my side, under the table, and back to Gwen. He repeated the expedition, over and over, with all the enthusiasm and determination of a mountain climber ascending Everest. I waved to Justin under the table, then looked up to see Gwen with tight lips and worried eyes. She was ready to get to the real subject.
“How’s Maria?” I asked. “You haven’t mentioned her yet.”
The line of her mouth got tighter. “It took her a little while to recover from her . . . experience last October. But she’s doing great now. Straight A’s in school. She really loves dance class. She’s got a recital coming up in a few weeks. I hope you can make it.”
“Email me the date. I’ll be there.”
Gwen picked up her spoon and stirred the remains of her frappe, watching the spoon go round and round. Abruptly, she pushed the glass away. “I think Maria’s becoming a shapeshifter.”
Good. Now her fear was out in the open, where we could deal with it. “She’s still so young, Gwen. It’s too early to tell.”
“She’s eleven years old. Two of her friends have already started getting their periods—I overheard them talking about it. And Maria is . . . she’s . . . starting to develop.” Gwen blushed, like the whole subject of Maria growing up embarrassed her. “All the pre-shapeshifting symptoms are there. The mood changes. The secretiveness. And she’s having shapeshifter dreams—she told me she spoke to you about those.”
“That’s just puberty. There’s nothing specific to shapeshifting in what you call her ‘symptoms.’ Most eleven-year-old girls go through those things.”
“Not the dreams.”
“She’s had a few flying dreams. Everyone gets those.”
She sighed, exasperated. “I’m not a norm, Vicky. I went through the change myself. I know the signs.”
“Okay, so let’s say she is becoming a shapeshifter. Things are different now, not like when we were growing up. There’s no shame in it, nothing to hide. Her friends will probably think it’s cool.”
“Yes. Things are different. And that’s what scares me. Do you think the authorities have forgotten what happened in New Hampshire? They’re watching us, watching Maria. If her abilities activate, there’s no way they’ll let her live a normal life. What if—” Gwen fumbled for a napkin from the holder and pressed it to her face. When she looked up, her eyes were wet. “What if they take my baby away from me?”
Finally I understood. I reached across the table and held Gwen’s hand. “You think they’ll force her to live in Deadtown.”
Gwen nodded, sniffing. “We can’t move there.”
Yeah, I could see that. Nick was fully human. As an inactive demi-human, Gwen was legally the same as a norm. The boys, too—even if they carried the Cerddorion shapeshifter gene, they’d never develop the ability to shift; that was restricted to females in my race. Out of the whole family, Maria was the only one who might be “monstrous” enough to fit in.
“She could live with me.”
Gwen quickly blinked the horror out of her eyes, but I’d seen it there. “Where would she go to school? Who’d be her friends? Zombies and werewolves?”
“They’re people, Gwen. Just like you—and me.” I knew what she meant, though. Gwen had always sheltered her kids, giving them the most comfortable suburban lifestyle possible. Maria wasn’t ready for Deadtown.
“We’ll have to leave the country. Emigrate to Canada, maybe. Or the UK.” Those countries had more relaxed laws that allowed paranormals to mix with the human populace. “But I can’t convince Nick. He doesn’t want to move.”
“I don’t want you to move, either. Let me talk to Kane. Maybe you can apply for a waiver to allow her to stay in Needham.” It didn’t seem likely. When the monsters came out into the open, more than three years ago now, werewolf families in Massachusetts had been forced to move to Deadtown or one of the three secure “villages”—which were more like penitentiaries—adjacent to the state’s werewolf retreats. The law had uprooted families who’d lived quietly among their neighbors for decades. It didn’t seem like that law would make any exceptions for an eleven-year-old shapeshifter.
“Gwen . . .” I knew I’d regret what I was about to say. “You know that Mab would take her in.” Gwen frowned. At the same moment, Justin bumped his head on the table and began to howl. She pulled him onto her lap and rocked him. I kept talking. I knew she was listening, even as she comforted the baby. Or was as close to listening as she’d ever get on this topic.
“I don’t mean for training. Even if she’s a shapeshifter, Maria’s too young for that. And training would be Maria’s choice, anyway. You know Mab would never force her.” Gwen kissed the top of Justin’s head and didn’t look at me. “Mab has a beautiful home in a part of the world that accepts our kind. Jenkins and Rose still work for her—you remember what a softie Rose is, don’t you? I don’t know what went wrong between you and Mab, but—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Okay, okay. I wasn’t prying. But Mab is a good person, loving in her own way. And she cares about family.”
“I do not want my daughter anywhere near that woman. Do you understand?”
“But—”
“Off the table.”
I heaved a frustrated sigh. Sending Maria to live with Mab was by far the best solution—if Maria did turn out to be a shapeshifter—and Gwen wouldn’t even consider it.
Justin stared at me, his wide eyes still shiny with tears, as if he were trying to figure out why Mommy was mad at Aunt Vicky. I blew him a kiss. He smiled, then twisted and hid his face in his mother’s shirt.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen with her, Vicky. But I might need your help. If Kane can do something on the legal side of things, that would be wonderful, and we’d all be very grateful. That’s not what I’m talking about, though.” Gwen stroked Justin’s hair as he leaned against her chest, his eyes half-closed. “If Maria starts shifting, I . . . I don’t think I can help her. It’s been so long. When I made my choice to become a human”—her voice took on a bitter edge—“or as close to human as I can ever be, I was determined to fully live the life I’d chosen. I locked a lot away then. Maria will need someone who can show her how to deal with that side of herself.” Her fingers stopped moving in Justin’s hair. “I’m asking if you’ll do that for her.”