When the chrysalis hit his lungs, it wasn’t quite as painful as Jaylin imagined it would be. It felt like the bronchitis he’d caught Freshman year, or the first time he’d switched from light cigarettes. He wheezed when he breathed, his chest ached and burned. But for the past week and a half, the most Jaylin had done was sleep.
Quentin waited on him like an on-call nurse, rushing herbal tea and medicines to the sofa where he nested during the day.
He slept downstairs instead, where the kitchen was close and he wouldn’t risk a tumble down the staircase. And every night, one of the younger maids would creep from her quarters to see how he was doing.
There were three, Jaylin noted, that stayed here on a nightly basis. He seldom saw them around the house; instead these maids spent their time in the vast garden, collecting the produce and clipping all the little dying bits from the otherwise flourishing plants.
Of the three, there was one that came to check on him every night—the youngest of the woman, the soft and ashen looking girl with deep rings under her eyes. She told him that the Sigvards had taken her in off of the streets and treated her well in exchange for her help around the house. She reminded him of Olivia—the way her skin paled so porcelain and her eyes contrasted so dark and deeply troubled.
She was sweet though, sure to leave Jaylin a new glass of water each time his depleted, even when he wasn’t thirsty. He’d heard her name called a few times. Lillabeth. She was the only maid that crept from her quarters in the dead of night to watch over the house and every living thing in it. He wondered if maybe she might be an insomniac, or maybe the whir of the willow tree kept her awake, the same way it had deprived him of sleep his first nights here. But Lillabeth didn’t talk about herself much. She mostly just listened.
There was a peculiarity about her. The way she roamed the house like an apparition, appeared when she was needed and then so quickly, disappeared like she was only ever a trick of the eye. She was a strange thing, but Jaylin liked her company.
Then came the second night that Quentin disappeared. The night he didn’t return home until four into the morning.
Jaylin fell asleep on the sofa that night, but the persistent crooning of an owl had purred him awake. Quentin walked through the door with liquor in his step, but Jaylin didn’t greet him. He feigned sleep, eyes clamped shut while he listened in on the shuffle of Quentin’s keys and the way his heels dragged as he walked. He held his breath and heeded as the inebriated man carried himself up the stairs, down the hall and out of earshot, where the heavy doors of his study closed together with a ghoulish echo.
And from them drifted that song. The one he’d heard Quentin play once before. But this time, it was an even sadder imitation of itself. Every note dragged out longer than the next, each played in the wrong key—like a rusty old wind up music box, the gears turned by a slow hand.
You are my sunshine… My only sunshine.
When the chords pulsed through the walls of the Sigvard manor, Jaylin’s body was consumed with them. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt like every slip of the key, every staggering note was there for a reason. Like those were the bits of Quentin that had gone missing. The pieces that were needed to finish the puzzle. Those part were Anna.
Lillabeth left her room shortly after that, like Quentin’s song was summoning her all along. Jaylin watched her creep along the living room walls, blowing out each of Lisa’s candles. Then, like always, she plucked up Jaylin’s empty glass from the end table. Before she could leave to fill it, Jaylin asked her about Quentin’s song, why he played it.
For a moment, Lillabeth had looked like she wanted to tell him. But instead she tapped her fingernails against the glass and smiled. “He used to play it so beautifully.”
That was the last time Jaylin spoke to her, but she eyed him now from across the room, her pale lips bent into a small smile while she dusted the fireplace mantle. It seemed Lillabeth only ever smiled small.
On any normal day, the others wouldn’t wake until well after ten. But this morning in particular, the door batted open and Felix stomped his way inside with mud on his boots and blood soaking into the tattered shirt on his chest. Alex was at the top of the banister in no time, his mouth gaped open.
“Relax,” Felix griped before he could say a word, shedding himself of his jacket and dropping the wet fabric to the floor. Jaylin could smell the musk of it from the couch. “It was a doe.”
“Why the hell are you walking around like that?” Alex scurried after him as Felix bounded his way up the stairs. “Are you an idiot, Felix? No—let me rephrase that, because I already know you’re an idiot. Stop being an idiot.“
“Get off my arse,” Felix grated. “I haven’t showered in two weeks.”
“But—is there any news?” Alex’s badgering went on. “Any sign of them? Anything at all?”
“No, now fuck off.”
Jaylin heard a door slam, then the upstairs shower head came to life. He felt a tinge of guilt, thinking about it. All that time, Felix had been out watching over his mother. His friends, his family—while he was here, napping in luxury.
Right on cue, Quentin’s chipper voice voyaged down the hallway. “Felix is back?”
Alex must have replied with a nod, because Jaylin heard nothing more after that. Not until Quentin was jogging down the stairs while he buttoned up the open shirt on his chest. Two weeks of living with him and somehow Jaylin still flushed at the sight.
“How you feeling?” Quentin gave his collar a tug into place and reached out with gentle fingers. “Let me see it.”
Jaylin wiggled his arm free from the blankets and held it out, turning his eyes from the atrocity. It’d started less than a week ago, at the tips of his fingers. His flesh rotting black like a frostbitten plague. The color had spread past his wrist now. His fingers felt stiff, but it didn’t hurt. Quentin said the pain would start when it reached his bicep.
“You’ll just have to keep it hidden when you see them.”
“See who?” Jaylin asked, rubbing at his numb fingers.
Quentin smiled and Jaylin cursed the telling heart palpitations it gave him. “Your mother. And that friend of yours, what was her name—”
“Tisper?” Jaylin nearly leapt to his feet, but the dizziness in him struck him back down. “But I—my hands, Quentin.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“When do I get to see them?”
“I’ll take you home when you’re feeling a bit better.” Quentin took a seat on the table in front of Jaylin, wiping his hands down his knees in that nervous tell of his. “You don’t have to come back with me, but I think you should consider staying here, with us for a while.”
“Really?” Jaylin asked. “But Felix said there’s no sign of any scouts—”
“That’s why I’m worried,” Quentin said. “They’d never give up this easily. Something’s going on in the East, and until I know what it is, I want you close.”
–
The days went by so much slower when Jaylin hadn’t much to do but watch TV. Quentin left the house around six, attired in that square suit of his. When Jaylin asked where he was going, he replied “work” and backed out through the front doors with a charmingly tilted smile.
For every hour, it seemed the black of his hand had reached farther. By nine, it had swallowed up his forearm. It wasn’t only the darkness, but the shape. The structure of his entire appendage. He could rotate it and see how the bones had changed; how his knuckles sprouted out like thorns; how his skin had sunken and the tendons in his hands grew more perceptible, how they budded through his skin. Far from human. Far, far from it.
He’d been observing it in the glow of the television when he heard a sudden sound. Low like rolling thunder. Jaylin twisted himself around, kicking and shoving his way to the arm farthest from the windows. Beyond them, he could see nothing but the night, but Jaylin could hear it. The same sound he’d heard in the library the night Felix and Quentin had come to his rescue. The clack, clack, clack of claws on wood.
His eyes traveled with the noise, creeping along the veranda, passing just beneath the teary windows panes. The clicking sound stopped at the front doors and a silence fell deafeningly hush on Jaylin’s ears. Then there was a slam on the wood—not like someone had knocked a tad too strong, but like someone, something had thrown itself against it.
“F-Felix,” he spouted, but by the time the door had given in and blown open with a shudder, the black wolf was charging. Jaylin hadn’t seen him come down the stairs—hadn’t heard him turn. But Felix was there, snarling and bounding to the intruder. He kicked off of his back feet and launched himself in the air, but he was stopped by a hand, shackled around the muzzle of his throat.
Jaylin could only see the gold, glittering rings on the fingers that held Felix by the neck. He rang out with a quiet whimper, then he was tossed to the ground, flung aside like a pest. He curled into himself, melted away from fur and claws, into the naked body of a man. Jaylin could smell the blood before he even caught the red pigment on Felix’s skin.
Jaylin staggered out of his seat, gripping his arm in a feeble endeavor to hide the black of his flesh. It would give him away—it would tell them just what he was. That was what the scouts wanted to begin with, to prove that it was inside of him. He didn’t know why, but they wanted the lichund and by the look of his hand, the lichund wanted out.
Felix had propped himself up on one arm and gripped his side with a grimace. He looked to the woman who stood in the doorway now, just as nude and bloody as himself. “Imani,” he said her name like a curse beneath his breath. “The hell ye’ doing here?”
Her dark eyes cut to Jaylin and he felt his breath seized from his lungs. Never had he seen a woman so beautiful.
Her skin was so dark, the night nearly swept her away. It held a kind of naturally purple luminescence that reminded him of how Sadie’s skin would glow beneath club lights. But there was no ambiance to help this woman—she was something of fantasy.
She wore gold around her long, slender neck, thick blocks chained into a choker. The same style hung from her ears, and her fingers were dressed in layers of studded rings and a single pewter claw on her index digit—smelted and etched in ways that made the metal look like lace.
The woman was unbothered by her own naked body, moonlight melting over the curves, shimmering from her iridescent skin like there were crystals burrowed beneath that first thin layer of flesh. Her eyes stuck fiercely to Jaylin’s blackening hand while she adjusted the pewter claw into place.
“Hello Felix. I see his chrysalis has started.”
Felix pulled himself up to, blood dripping from the tips of his fingers, splattering onto the floor at his feet. Jaylin froze where he stood, watching as Lillabeth paced from the room, her demeanor as rational and expressionless as always.
“Relax.” The words rolled from Felix’s tongue as he canted his head in Jaylin’s direction. “She’s not one of ’em.”
“You mean the scouts?” Imani asked, stepping from her puddle of blood. She drifted to the staircase, footprints sticking to the floor for every step she took. She followed up the banister with little regard for the mess she smeared on the railing.
Jaylin knew now why the carpet was red.
“I’d like some tea,” she called as she passed up the final steps. “Oolong. Something tropical.” Then she was gone into the upstairs bathroom.
Jaylin was trembling. Maybe from the cold air now permeating the Sigvard’s mansion, or maybe from seeing the shift happen for only his second time.
“Where’s she going?” he asked, watching as Lillabeth returned with a towel in her arms. She passed it to Felix, who cleaned the blood from his face and wrapped the towel around his naked waist.
“Shower,” Felix said. “She’s always pulling this shit. Shows up wolf, throws me off guard. Think she just enjoys the reaction.”
His legs weak, Jaylin looked for the nearest seat, perching himself down on the edge of an antique chair. “Why does she do that? Why did she come as a wolf?”
“Imani practically lives her life as a wolf. She’s a runner,” Felix explained. “Thrills for it. Wouldn’t surprise me if she ran all the way from Phoenix.”
“Arizona?”
“Aye. The great Imani LaRue. Alpha of the South West.”
“The entire South West?” Jaylin gaped. “And—and how did you turn so fast, you—”
“Years a’ practice,” Felix said, his scruffy smile splitting into a grin. It wasn’t often that Jaylin saw the whites of his teeth. “Anyway, I’m sure you’ll meet the lot of them soon enough. Once one of ’em knows about ya, they all do. So y’know, be prepared for all that mess.”
Lillabeth and another of the maids had rolled in a bucket of soapy water and began to mop the splatters of blood from the floor where Felix had changed. Jaylin took in their faces—none of them surprised. None of them shaking like he was.
“They?” he asked, dragging his gaze back to Felix. “They as in who?”
“Alphas,” Felix said, scratching at the scruffy red beard that had grown in over the weeks he was gone. “Then there’s the other wolves. And of course the scouts, like the two who already came for ye’. Three if you add the one Bailey killed.”
“Why?” Jaylin asked, thumbing at the rough black texture of his skin. “What do they want from a lichund?”
“Oh, child…” When Jaylin took a gander at the stairs, Imani leaned over the railing with a towel wrapped over her bust, curly black hair sopping wet and dripping onto the floor at her heels. “You’re a creature of the dark.” She used her own locks to tie her hair up on her head, and floated elegantly down the steps, around the single maid who’d taken the responsibility of scrubbing the stains from the carpet. “I mean…you do know what a lichund is, don’t you?”
He knew of it, but did he know what it truly was? All Jaylin knew was that whatever it might be, it was inside of him. He shook his head and swallowed the horrible feeling in his throat. He didn’t much care for this woman.
“Take a seat.” She sneered as she wandered closer, perching at the edge of the sofa and crossing one long, glistening leg over the other. Even after a wash, she smelled strongly of blood.
His hesitance bid a smirk from Imani. “Look at those instincts, already kicking in. When did it start?” she asked Felix.
“Shit if I know,”—he scratched his jaw—”two weeks ago?”
“Ahh,” Imani drew her long neck out and rested her sharp chin in her palm. “So he’s only a baby.”
Jaylin looked to Felix, whose usual rock hard stoicism had withered from his face. He seemed tense now, his throat rising and falling in restless swallows. His eyes flickered to Jaylin, and in the half-a-second their gaze had met, it felt as though they’d shared a thirty minute conversation.
“Why are ye’ here?” Felix asked. “Quentin’s been out.”
Lillabeth cut through the room with a mug and a searing kettle of tea in her hands. She set them down on the coffee table and poured a serving for Imani, the thin straw-like loose leafs still spinning on the water’s surface.
“Word is traveling. Thought I’d come to see for myself.” Imani took the tea into her palms and blew at the steam. “The Bad Moon is coming, Felix.”
“The bad—” Jaylin had begun to ask, but Felix cut him off with a growl.
“We know. We have it handled.”
“From what I understand, the East isn’t happy about those two wolves you detained.”
“Detain—” Jaylin tried again.
“From what I understand, we don’t give a cock shit about the East,” Felix said. “Keeping good with Ziya now, are you?”
“Ziya?” Once more, Jaylin piped in.
“My private affairs are none of your business, Felix. But you know as well as I do, I have no interest in camaraderie with Ziya.”
Frustration boiled in Jaylin’s gut. “Someone, tell me what’s going on!”
Both sets of eyes turned to him, piqued by his outburst. His face heated a little, but he crossed his arms over his chest and dared ask, “What’s the bad moon?”
Imani gestured him closer and Jaylin obeyed hesitantly, seating himself in the furthest position possible from her. “Do humans still believe we turn on the night of a full moon?” she asked, tilting her tea to her lips.
“Humans don’t believe you exist,” Jaylin sniped, taken aback by his own temper. He bit his lip and relaxed himself with a deep sigh. “But yeah… that’s the idea.”
“They’d be wrong. We turn when we please. The moon empowers us and on the fullest of moons, it’s almost euphoric to turn. As recreation, most of us give into that euphoria. We turn and we hunt and we kill our own game on our own territory. But then there are your kind…” Imani spat out the word kind like an ugly taste.
Felix growled with threat, but Imani continued.
“Your kind doesn’t have the processing capabilities to break your chrysalis on a simple night, or even a full moon for that matter. The beast in you comes out only on a super moon. We call them Bad Moons for a reason.”
“Imani,” snarled Felix.
“Because a Bad Moon, be it blood or blue, breeds evil.”
“For god’s sake shut the hell up,” Felix growled again.
“It always astounds me, Felix, the ways you speak to your superiors.” Imani raised her chin, set her cup down and lifted herself from the sofa. “Seems Quentin needs a shorter lead for his mutt.”
Jaylin watched Felix’s jaw go tight.
“Don’t let Qamar find out about this, Felix.” Imani rounded the table, and Jaylin couldn’t help but flinch as she passed. There was a power to her that frightened him. Frightened him because he didn’t know its real intentions.
“We have it handled.” Felix’s words were forceful, and as he rose to his feet to show her the way out, Jaylin couldn’t help but follow. This woman set his nerves aflame and it felt just a bit safer by Felix’s side.
Imani’s lips peeled back into a smirk. “As long as you know.” Jaylin watched as she approached the doors, shedding the towel from her body. “I’ll be in town a while. Tell Quentin to be expecting me.” Then she stepped out into the open.
The second she hit the veranda, it was like a wolf had ripped itself right from her flesh. It was just the way Eduardo had changed, but there was something more elegant about watching her bones twist and deform beneath her skin. Something disciplined about the way she had timed it, leaping off of the steps and imploding into a cloud of vapor blood—thousands of tiny flecks hitting the cement like rain drops shaken from a tree. And by the time she’d landed on the ground, Imani was no longer the beautiful woman Jaylin had seen before, but a beast of silver fur and glaring ember eyes. A wolf, doused in the blood of its former self.
She looked back at Jaylin for just a moment, and turned her head toward the horizon where the moon peaked just over the tree caps.
Then, in a few short paces, she was gone.Â
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