I was still fascinated by the fact that we could actually communicate in wolf form. It made running and hunting infinitely easier. It also spared me the awkwardness of having to quickly shift back in order to talk to someone. Naked.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” I asked in a low huff.
He didn’t respond. Instead, his nostrils flared. Mine instinctively mirrored his, and I caught the foreign scent—suddenly stronger again. Finally! Judging by Dmitri’s eyes, he’d also smelled it. A thread of charcoal and spices, lingering in the comet’s wake.
The three of us ended up chasing it once more. We were able to track it for a bit, as it grew steadily stronger. But then it lessened again, and it disappeared completely once we reached the edge of a lake. Dad, Dmitri, and I didn’t need to exchange any more ideas. We all knew that something was off.
The lake itself was eerily beautiful, a sheet of glass reflecting trillions of stars and a half-moon that cast a shimmering white glow over the forest that surrounded the water. Ripples came from the center, morphing into lazy waves that lapped at the rocky and muddy shore. Insects chirped all around. A couple of nocturnal birds serenaded one another just above, moving down an arching branch.
And the smell of burnt trees persisted, though nothing was on fire here.
“Odd” didn’t even begin to describe what we’d just witnessed.
“I take it your shift session went well?” Dad asked, albeit sarcastically.
“We did a triple shift,” I said, knowing it would make him proud. “Dmitri, Jovi, and me. You said you weren’t coming,” I added, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Well, here I am,” he replied with a shrug. “I know my children well enough to smell when they’re about to get into some kind of shenanigans.”
“Of course you do. Only, this fire fae incident wasn’t our fault. We didn’t do anything wrong,” I shot back, smiling. “We just saw him in the woods and followed him.”
“Yeah… That much I figured from the scents and the paw tracks. You kept your distance. Good.” Dad gave me a wink, then shifted his focus to Dmitri, who, in his fierce, black wolf form, was wearing the sweetest puppy eyes ever. “That aside, congratulations to you, my boy. You did it!”
A second later, Dmitri’s tail was wagging like crazy. “Thanks, Dad. I can’t control this, though. I guess I respond really well to compliments,” he said, glancing at his tail.
I chuckled. “I swear, if I had a treat, I’d throw you one.”
Dmitri growled at me. It sounded menacing. Not that I cared. Wolf or not, he was still my little brother. I could poke as much fun as I wanted.
“Why don’t you shift back now?” Dad asked him. “It’ll be good practice. Then you can get into wolf form again. The more you do it, the easier it gets.”
Dmitri didn’t respond this time. The faintest whimper escaped from his throat as he lowered his head. I burst into laughter, realizing his problem.
“He can’t turn back,” I said. “Ah, man.”
Dad whimpered softly—his wolf way of laughing—and nodded at Dmitri. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll wear yourself out soon enough and turn. Don’t force it. It’s okay. You did well, given the amount of time and effort you’ve put into it.”
Leaving my brother aside for a moment, I wondered how much Dad had seen of the fire fae—if he’d actually spotted him.
“Did you see that fae, Dad?” I asked.
He nodded. “Though not as close as you did. It took me a while to track you down, since you all went around in circles for a while.”
“Yeah, that was mostly Dmitri. And me. We were chasing animals,” I murmured, slightly embarrassed at how easily distracted I could get, even in wolf form.
Dad shuddered, stifling another laugh. “Sounds like the Blackhalls, all right,” he replied, then switched back to his stern and serious mode. “Anyway. By the time I saw you and Dmitri, you were chasing after the guy. Did I see it right? Was he a fire fae?”
“Yeah. And he was from Sherus and Nuriya’s delegation. I recognized the royal insignia on his tunic. He just started fires, talking to himself… It was really strange,” I said. “Jovi went back to get Lumi. We were hoping she’d be able to help him. Dmitri and I were trying to find the guy after he burst into flames and bolted. Vanished, completely.”
Dad thought about it for a moment, then looked around again, his brow furrowed.
“The trail got cold here,” he replied. “I can’t see or smell him anymore.”
“I guess Lumi will check the woods, just in case. That was pretty erratic behavior.” I sighed. “And dangerous.”
“Agreed. I’ll bring it up with Sherus and Nuriya once we’re back in the castle,” Dad said. “Now, let’s turn back. We’ll find Lumi and Jovi somewhere along the way. The witch’s scent is so distinctive and powerful, I’ll have zero trouble catching it.”
Dmitri and I nodded slowly, and the three of us made our way back through the woods, retracing our own steps and scents. By the time we met up with Lumi and Jovi, the mystery of the fire fae somehow felt even murkier. No matter what angle I looked at it from, I couldn’t understand what was driving the young guy to behave like that.
My top two theories were equally sad and somewhat scary, though one was more extreme. The first was that the fire fae was simply ill and in need of some kind of professional care. It happened sometimes. Pressure, grieving, a tragedy, or a dramatic change in one’s life could upset the way one’s brain functioned. After the Blackout, many of our agents and fire fae allies had come down with various forms of supernatural PTSD—nightmares and depression, mostly, but some had glitching abilities, too. So, in retrospect, our troubled fire fae could be suffering from something similar.
The second theory was the more chilling one. It involved some kind of magic and/or possession. After what I’d heard him say, it sounded as though he was just one side of the conversation. There had to be a voice in his head, pushing him to do something he clearly didn’t want. Maybe that same voice was also responsible for his fire ability going haywire. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this had anything to do with a Hermessi. They’d sworn not to possess fae again, claiming they had no need for that anymore. Plus, I didn’t know whether a fae could even attempt to resist a possession the way that guy had. From what I’d heard from our Stravian GASP team, when a Hermessi wanted to take over a fae, they just did it. No question of debate or arguing. No… somehow, I wasn’t ready to make that assumption yet. Not without additional information.
An investigation was going to take place, and we were certainly going to address this with Sherus and Nuriya, too. If they were missing someone from their delegation, we could follow that lead and get to the bottom of this before others got hurt.
Because, as the universe had already proven where our worlds were concerned, others always got hurt. And GASP had a solemn duty to stop that from happening. Heck, it was my duty, too. Calliope was my home. I couldn’t, in good conscience, let anyone suffer on my watch.
Raphael
I’d been a free Perfect for a year, but I’d managed to avoid weddings and other large social gatherings outside Strava. Not that I wasn’t interested in or curious about how Elonora and her people handled these events, but I was too busy growing as a GASP agent. It gave me a sense of purpose, a feeling of belonging I hadn’t felt before.
Besides, I was a little over a year old, with an expected lifespan of hundreds, if not thousands, of years—maybe even forever, if my vampire genes offered me more than my insane reflexes. Ta’Zan had never specified our lifespan, only that it was much longer than most other creatures. So, I had plenty of time to soak in the social stuff across the entire In-Between. Come to think about it, no one in my species knew how long we’d live. Our genetic makeup offered an idea, but, without any Perfect predecessors, we were going to find out on our own. Technically speaking, we were designed to live for a long time and were damn hard to kill. For me, that was enough. I loved living enough to look forward to it.
I’d tried to pay more attention to the fire fae incident mentioned by Dmitri the other day—something about him and his brothers wolfing out and stumbling upon a flaming dude in the northern forests of Luceria. Emphasis on “I’d tried.” The issue was quickly handed over to Sherus and Nuriya, king and queen of the Fire Star, who promised to investigate. If it really was one of their own acting out in the woods, they were going to handle it.
In the meantime, the rest of the In-Between and The Shade were focused on the big wedding. Harper and Caspian. I liked them both, though we didn’t get to hang out as much as I would’ve wanted. They were busy with GASP activities in Eritopia—twenty planets were more than a handful, even with Field, Aida, Draven, and Serena at the helm, plus the Daughters, Lumi, and so on. They had quite the crew, though. I was impressed. I also had a lot to learn from them.
Glancing around me, I couldn’t help but feel a little odd.
