Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

She didn't expect him to show up every day. But he did. At the same time each morning too. Like they had penciled it into planners neither of them actually owned. Every morning at nine thirty, meet up with standard enemy to have an enormous existential crisis, she thought.

Even though she wasn't sure he was her standard enemy anymore.

Or that what they were having was an existential crisis.

It felt more like being with the friend you longed to have back, sharing things you never believed could be possible. Though of course, that was overwhelming in its own way. Sometimes something he'd said would hit her, while she was in the middle of doing something mundane like mopping the floor. And it would feel as if her heart had snapped to a stop. Twice she had to clutch her chest to make sure it was still going.

But even after she was reassured, the sensation of everything being so heart-stopping wouldn't fade. Of course it wouldn't. The veil between worlds was really starting to peel back for her now—and oh, she could see why Seth didn't mind the downsides of any of it.

Why would he, when it was this awe-inspiring to behold?

She looked in the mirror in the morning, and somehow nothing about her was the same. One second she was as ordinary as could be. Then the next that glow he'd talked about would suddenly reveal itself in a faint shimmer of gold.

And that wasn't the only amazing sight.

There was also what she saw when she went outside in her socks to grab the paper. The low hang of a delicious fall mist—at first a soft gray, like always. Then suddenly it was shot through with other colors. Wild colors that never existed in the human world. There were slivers of deep blue, and streaks of purple, all swirling and seething and intertwining. Beautiful , it seemed to her, in a way that made her heart feel like it was bursting out of her chest.

And it did it even harder when she came back inside, and spoke into the empty air of the house. "Gram," she said. "Why didn't you tell me?" Then of course expected no answer at all.

But she got one. She got one. She saw the keys on her laptop being depressed all on their own just as she stepped toward it, open on the kitchen table, ready for her to send that email to Nancy to thank her for the fruit basket. And after a second of holding her breath, there it was. Her beloved Gram's words.

I was afraid for you, my darling.

Just one sentence, nothing further—as if that was all she could manage from whatever place lay beyond—but it was enough. It was everything. It was more than Cassie could have ever dreamed. The people you loved didn't simply end .

There was something more.

There was loads more. And all real in ways she could never in a million years have imagined. It seemed too fantastical to believe it. But even if she could have doubted, Seth was there to reinforce it all. She came out onto the front porch, the next morning, to find the paper, and found him already parking his butt in the lawn chair. And once she had settled onto the step, notebook in hand, he just launched right in.

"Okay, so the first thing you need to know about fairies is that they are super gross," he said, and she just couldn't help it. She snorted with incredulous laughter.

"No fucking way," she said. "Fairies are fancy."

But knew from his raised eyebrow that she was wrong.

"So you now believe there is a god of some kind, and that there are apartment-living vampires, and trolls under bridges who make you answer their riddles three, but fairies who fart on each other are where you draw the line," he said.

And yeah, there was no way around that.

"I didn't say I drew the line. I just—"

"You just what? Need proof? Okay. Get your jacket."

"No, honestly I don't need to see anything. You don't have to show me."

"But I want to show you. I think I should show you. I think being shown all this stuff is what you need right now," he said, and as he did he stood, as if to show how firmly he was resolved. Which probably would have worked better if the lawn chair hadn't gone with him.

He had to spend the next few seconds wrestling his wedged butt out of it.

While she made absolutely zero effort not to laugh.

"You know, you can hardly blame me for being slightly incredulous about any of this when I am currently watching a supposed werewolf being felled by garden furniture," she said—much to his obvious irritation. He tossed the chair aside and gave her a fuming sort of look, hands on his hips.

"Don't say ‘supposed.' You've seen me."

"Yeah, but what I've seen is somewhat overridden by… this."

She waved her hand at everything. Much to his disgruntlement.

"You're such a liar," he said. "I know for a stone-cold fact that this only makes it more believable to you. That it only makes it feel more like reality. Because it's like you always said: in the movies everything is always cool. But real life? Real life is a mess ."

So now of course she was trailing in his wake again. Stunned that he'd remembered, trapped by his logic. And unable to argue when he added, "Now are we going? I have more messy stuff to blow your mind with."

She simply grabbed her denim jacket, like he'd suggested, and found some fucking walking boots, because apparently he thought she needed them, and then followed him across her garden, in the direction of the woods.

Even though the woods now seemed a lot scarier than they had once seemed.

No no no, I'm not quite ready for whatever is in there, she thought.

But by that point it was too late. She couldn't back out now. She'd acted like she was barely rattled by any of it, instead of wildly vacillating between fear and awe. In fact, by the time they made it to the tree line, her heart was practically beating in her face. When he disappeared between two old oaks, she came incredibly close to telling him to stop. I changed my mind. I don't need to see any fur ther evidence that the world has cracked right open and spilled its sloppy supernatural guts , she imagined herself saying. Yet somehow, instead, her feet kept walking one in front of the other. She followed him, right into it all.

And was immediately assailed by how mundane it had seemed, before.

And what it was like now.

Every tree looked about fifty feet taller and wider and more ancient than she remembered; the snap and crackle of the undergrowth beneath her feet felt much louder than it once had. And the shadows were definitely darker. Darker, and deeper, and hungrier. They seemed to seethe around her, in a way that almost looked normal when she stared at them directly.

But the second she turned away, she could sense them reaching out. She could feel them watching her, in this strangely familiar manner. Like they were just waiting for her to drop her guard, somehow, so they could get her.

And the worst part was, she couldn't even say for sure that her impression wasn't real.

There was now every possibility in the world that it was.

It made her almost stop, about half a mile in, and call out to Seth's plaid-shirt-clad back, is there such a thing as a shadow creature? Then only hesitated because she realized that he did not seem perturbed in the slightest. He just strolled along like nothing was going on. So probably nothing was. It was just that her mind had broken, a little bit.

And for very understandable reasons that just kept coming.

"Oh shit, I forgot that the bridge is out," he called back to her abruptly, as she emerged from the trees into the clearing where he stood. And then she saw the cliff edge—which lay about three feet beyond him—and below it the gorge and river, and on either side the battered remnants of the decades-old footbridge.

Like something out of Indiana fucking Jones.

"What do you mean, you forgot ? When was the last time you were here?" she hissed, and to his credit he appeared to consider her question.

"I think it was, like, last Wednesday. Or maybe Tuesday. Wait, let me think."

"You don't have to think about what day it was; that's not the important part."

"Then what is?"

She flung a hand at it. "How you got across it, Seth. How you got across."

"Well, you know. I kind of. Just maybe sort of… jump."

She'd known it was coming. Of course she had—there was no other possible explanation for his blasé attitude toward the missing bridge. Yet still, that one word knocked the breath out of her. She found herself looking over the huge chasm in a wondering sort of way. Then up at him, with one eyebrow so far raised it felt like it had lifted off her forehead.

Though, naturally, he did not accept her incredulity.

"Don't look at me like that. I told you my reflexes are different now."

"Yeah, and I thought you meant you can catch a cup when I knock it off the table. I didn't think you meant that you are now Superman, and can apparently leap tall buildings in a single bound."

He gave her a withering look. "Okay, this is hardly leaping tall buildings."

"No, honestly it's better. That has gotta be a hundred feet wide."

"Gimme a break, it's not a hundred ," he scoffed. But then she could see him eyeing it, and the scoff buckled into something that looked a lot more like the clenched-teeth emoji. "Give or take. Hardly anything."

"You're really thinking now about how nuts it is that you can do this, right?"

"Look, it just sounds different when somebody else freaks out about it."

"I'm not freaked out."

"You will be when I make my next suggestion," he said, and all she could think about was The Incredibles . The Incredibles , when Mr. Incredible hurls Mrs. Incredible hundreds of feet up into the air so she can catch their baby.

"I swear to god, Seth, if you say you want to throw me across."

"No, god no, I'm not going to throw you."

"Well, thank fuck for that."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm just gonna carry you."

He said it like a kindergarten teacher telling their class that they were super going to enjoy playing on the swings today. All bright and eager and peppy, she thought. Even though he had to know his idea was completely deranged.

And if he didn't, well. She was going to tell him.

"Oh fuck off. Fuck you. Fuck all of this. I'm out," she blew out.

She stormed back toward the trees, intent on doing just that.

But then he called after her. He called after her.

"See, I knew you were going to react like that," he said, and with just enough exasperation that she had no choice. She had to whirl around on him and throw her hands up. He was acting like she was being the unreasonable one.

"Of course I am. You just said you wanted to somehow lift me into your arms and then leap over a canyon. When, to be honest, even the idea of you doing it without someone my size clinging to you is, at best, preposterous," she snapped.

And waited for him to snap back.

Only somehow, it wasn't happening. He was just staring at her with this odd expression on his face. This kind of grave, tense sort of look that made no sense to her at all. And what he finally said didn't make it much clearer.

"Don't say ‘someone my size' like that."

"Why in god's name not?"

"Because it makes me want to fight you in your own defense," he said. Fiercely too, like it really mattered to him. It really made sense—even though it didn't. He was being ridiculous.

"There's nothing to defend me about. It's not a crime to be fat. Despite how much you seemed to enjoy trying to make me think it was," she said. Though as soon as the words were out, she wanted to take them back. Because, okay, they were true. They were fair enough.

But oh god, his reaction on hearing them.

He jerked like she'd slapped him. Then his face just dropped . Every bit of animation went out of it; all the light seemed to leave his eyes. And it took him a long, long time to say anything. Like it was a real struggle to put how he felt into words.

"Is that why you think I did what I did? Because I enjoyed the idea of making you feel horrible about yourself? Cassie, that was not the reason. There was no reason. I told you, it was just an accident. It was all one big accident."

"Yeah, but you've never really explained how this supposed accident could have happened."

"Because I don't have a good explanation, Cass. I just have a bunch of excuses, like—I honestly thought you would do a great job icing that cake for the talent show. I wasn't just trying to prank you. I didn't even know it was supposed to be a prank, to be honest. Jason just bugged me into repeating words he was saying, into a microphone I didn't know was there, that was all. But of course none of that makes what I did okay. So it didn't seem like there was any point in telling you," he said, all in a tumbling rush. As if he thought the words were too silly to linger on.

Even though they weren't, at all.

They almost made her scream why didn't you just say these things to me?

But then she saw his face—the rueful look all over it. The way he was nodding to himself. And she knew he had the answer before it came. "But now I see the point," he said. "I get it, in a way I just didn't before. In a way I couldn't before, because the idea of you meaning that little to me is so impossible a concept that I had no clue it could ever be a thing that you believed."

She fell silent then.

She had to—there were no words left in her, after that. All she could do was stand there, watching him be all sheepish and ashamed and baffled by something lovely and heartbreaking. He doesn't even understand that it is , she thought, and felt her heart lurch in her chest. Tears stung her eyes; all she wanted to do was tell him what his words meant to her.

But luckily, she didn't have to. Because then he added, "So, you know, I get it if you don't trust me to do this—" And before he could go on, she cut in.

"I trust you to do this. I trust you, Seth," she said.

Then watched as his eyes drifted slowly closed. As he turned his head up to the sun, like he'd been in the dark so long he'd forgotten what it was like to feel light on his face.

And only after he'd drunk his fill of it did he walk over to her. Slowly, like she might startle and run away. Gaze always on hers even as he bent, and slid a hand behind her legs, and another around her back, and then just scooped her up. Right into his arms, so fast and so sure it kicked a little sound out of her. She had to grab him around his shoulders, fingers digging in—and tight enough that it felt like an apology was needed.

"Sorry," she said, as she went to pull back.

But he stopped her before she could.

"No, hold on," he told her. "Hold on tight."

Then he backed up, right to the tree line.

And he ran. Oh god, he ran . He went so fast that he turned the world around them into a blurry tunnel of green and white and blue and brown. Like they were in a car, she thought. Like they were on a train, watching the landscape streak past.

He has to be hitting seventy , she thought mindlessly.

So of course she knew what the jump was going to be like. She knew, she knew, she could sense it coming—and doubly so when he tensed and crouched. All she could think of was an enormous wild animal, roiling with muscle and sinew, ready to pounce.

Yet even so, she wasn't prepared for the punch of it.

The way the momentum flattened her against his chest, hard enough that it hurt. How she wanted to scream and couldn't because all the oxygen in her had been knocked right out. And oh god, when she managed to open her eyes. When she glanced down, and saw the sheer amount of empty air they were briefly suspended over. The swirl of that river beneath them, so suddenly small.

It was impossible. It was unimaginable.

And then he hit the ground on the other side, and somehow things only got more mind-blowing. Because it didn't send them both careening into the trees, or cause a big jarring jolt to go through her body. Instead, he seemed to control the whole thing, utterly. He stayed on his feet, and sort of slid. She looked down and saw his sneakers forming two deep furrows in the dirt. And as he did all of this, he just put a hand to the back of her head. He laid his arm diagonally across her back, like a seatbelt. To absorb all the impact, she realized.

And it worked.

She felt almost nothing.

Apart from a great rush of awe, of course. Oh god, she had never felt so much awe in her life. Because holy fuck, he was really something that incredible. He could really do those things. He had supernatural powers, and they were amazing and beautiful, and oh she just couldn't stop herself from saying so, she just couldn't. Not after that.

It all came tumbling out, as he set her down on her feet.

"You are truly a magical thing," she gushed.

But here was the strangest part—she didn't even regret it.

Even though she'd sounded so breathless, even though her hands were somehow still on his chest as she spoke, even though she knew she was looking at him with wildly marveling eyes and a dizzy grin plastered over her face, she didn't. And after a moment, she processed why:

Because he had made it all right to.

Because he'd said those things and undone one of the barriers between them. And now he was looking down at her upturned face, the same way he'd looked up at the sky when she'd said she trusted him. All faintly disbelieving relief and surprised happiness.

Like he couldn't believe she would be so open and warm toward him.

And that just made her want to be more so. To be sweeter. To take his face in her hands and say that everything was okay now. So she did. She clasped him there like a long-lost friend, finally seeing someone after years apart. Not bothered about it, not worried, no fear of anything going wrong. Then she watched, delighted, as his expression mirrored hers. It lifted into something like awe, too. As if she had done something just as magical, somehow.

But it only lasted a second.

Then for some reason, it started to melt. It slid down, from sheer bliss to something else. Something that could only be described as panic. And it panicked her, for a moment. She almost pulled away, embarrassed.

But then he jerked back.

He groaned. He clutched his stomach.

And she knew. She knew.

"Oh my god, are you turning?" she gasped out.

Much to his distress. "I don't know. I don't know what's happening," he said. Like he didn't want to accept it, either. But was being forced to, anyway.

"What do you mean you don't know what's happening?"

"This feels new. It feels weird. I can't explain it."

Oh fuck, she thought. The soup. The soup has done this .

"I told you that you shouldn't drink anything I made," she groaned.

But he just shook his head in a vigorous, jittery sort of way. Like he could shake the wolf out of him, alongside the denial. Though, of course, it didn't have any effect at all. When he finally managed to answer her, she could see the razor edge of those teeth, glinting beneath the curve of his upper lip.

"I can feel your magic fighting it. But whatever this is, it's strong . It feels like it's burning me up from the inside out. Like some kind of fever," he gasped out, in between all the pacing and heavy breathing and her own futile attempts to calm him down.

"Then maybe do the things you said. The meditation-type stuff."

"I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. It's going too fast."

"So look at me. Watch my hand."

She held it up as she spoke. Then she did something she remembered from TikTok: close your hand into a fist as you breathe in, slowly unfurl it as you breathe out. Only she forgot the instructions, and he couldn't concentrate anyway, and oh god she was about to get eaten in the woods by a werewolf.

"No no, that's making it worse. It's getting worse. It's getting really intense. Oh no, oh wow, that is so much heat. I think I just need to, like. Take my clothes off," he said. And it was funny, the way he did it. It was hilarious—like watching someone stoned out of their mind come up with an idea that only they thought was smart.

But the problem was: it was also him stripping off.

When she had barely been able to cope with his bare body, in the best of circumstances.

And that really put a dampener on her urge to laugh. "No no no, don't do that. Don't do that. I can just fan you," she found herself babbling as he attempted to get out of his shirt by pulling at the buttons with his teeth. But of course fanning him with her hands wasn't going to help him. And not just because it was incredibly silly.

Oh no—there was also the fact that it put her extremely close to him.

Her. A juicy whole person. Who he had almost eaten the last time.

" Cassie, stay where you are ," he snarled the second she got close. Those teeth flashing, eyes suddenly stark, bones pressed against his skin even more brutally than they had before. Then he skittered away from her, half on all fours and half upright. Like he was almost mostly animal.

Though, thankfully, he was still human enough to search his pockets. And he found what he was looking for: a bottle full of the stuff. Her medicine, she knew.

Only his hands were shaking too badly to unscrew the cap.

He kept trying and failing to get a grip. And then he got a grip, finally, and misjudged the pressure. The bottle somehow flew out of his hands, so close to the edge of the cliff it almost went over. He had to scramble to get it back, and even after he managed he still couldn't do it.

And now it was making him angry. It was making him frustrated, in a way that definitely wasn't helping the state he was in. As she watched, his plaid shirt—drawn taught over his hunched back—seemed to ripple right down the center. Like something was pushing against it from the inside, to the point of popping the seams.

So she took a deep bracing breath, and stepped closer. One tentative foot after the other, until finally she was next to him. Then she crouched, close enough that he definitely registered her presence. He grasped what she was doing, through the haze of whatever this was. And he tried to scrabble away from her immediately.

But he was too frantic, and too clumsy. He barely managed an inch.

She didn't even have to reach to take the bottle from him, and unscrew the cap, and offer it back. And doing it wasn't scary either—not even when he snarled and snatched it off her. Because, true, she saw those rows of extra teeth. Yes, the sound was deeper and more guttural than any human could have managed.

But he didn't do anything except drink, deeply.

And as he did, she got to see a million things she'd been too afraid to take in that night in the basement. Like the way his face had been completely reshaped. How those heavier bones turned his cheeks from sharp to something bulkier and more brutal.

Something that should have been ugly, really.

But somehow it wasn't ugly at all.

And the eyes were even less ugly than that. They flicked to her as he drank. Watchful, she thought. Like the beast inside him believed that she might steal the bottle back. Like it was guarding its prize. And oh, it was something to see. The flicker of light in them, dancing over the water-pale color. The black of his lashes and his brows, against that nothingness.

He was beautiful like this, she realized.

Even as her heart tried to shy away from that idea.

You've got to be a little bit afraid, and not just of the wolf , that wounded part of her tried to say. But even as it did, she was reaching forward. Because she'd seen something underneath his suddenly shaggier hair, and for just that one moment it overrode every bit of sense in her.

She had to look.

And when she did, there it was: the curve of his ear, now a sharp little point. Like a Vulcan , she thought, and couldn't help letting out a little sound of delight. Plus she knew she was grinning goofily. She couldn't seem to budge it from her face.

But it was fine, it was fine. Because he didn't seem to care.

Instead he turned his head into the fingertips that were still touching his hair. The way an animal did when it wanted to be stroked. And sure enough, the moment she pushed her hand into that thick fur, he rubbed into it. He made a sound, low down in his throat. A warm rumble, of the kind anyone would have called a purr.

Though god, it was amazing to know it was.

And so much so that it was almost a disappointment, after that, to see the wolf start to dissolve. Those bulky bones seemed to ripple, strangely, before they slowly sank back to something like normal size. Color bloomed in his eyes, like ink in water; those ears cracked and snapped and returned to a smooth curve.

Then last of all, he came back too.

He looked at her, half smiling through shuddery breaths. And so of course she saw the one thing that hadn't disappeared yet. Those teeth, those sharp and numerous teeth, still hanging on long past all the rest of the incredible changes.

Because they're stubborn , her mind suggested, and the strangest feeling followed. A kind of burr under her skin. A prickle, intense enough that she knew it wasn't anything ordinary. And sure enough, there were suddenly words in her mouth that she hadn't even known she wanted to say. But did say anyway. "Rub some on your gums," she instructed him.

Then in answer he reached up and gingerly touched his still sharp teeth. Like he hadn't realized they were there until she suggested they were. "Starting to sense how to do this stuff, huh?" he said with a kind of weary but amused knowing.

And though part of her wanted to say, "What do you mean?" or deny what he was suggesting, she couldn't. He was right, and she knew it. The prickly feeling had always been in some witchy corner of her soul, telling her what to do. Telling her what was wrong and how to fix it.

More than that, in fact. It made her shrug. "I already think I know how to make the potion stronger," she said, and wasn't surprised when he went with what she was trying to discuss. Because being recently wolfed didn't really matter to him.

This did. "Honestly, I don't think the strength of it is the whole problem."

"Yeah, I don't either."

"So you can sense that, too."

She considered. Looked inward, searching for something that would say what was true. And sure enough, there was the prickle again. Quietly working away in the background of her mind. Pushing some thoughts forward, others back.

Until finally the answer coalesced, the same way answers did for things she knew well.

"I can feel that whatever happened might need something else to make it better. It seems, I dunno. Keen-edged, like hunger or something close to hunger. Kind of like you're missing a nutrient out of your diet. An important one that you really need," she said, then had to laugh. "Oh god, I sound nuts."

"You sound amazing. Like an honest-to-god witch."

"Well, you knew I was one. You're the one that believed."

"It's one thing to believe it, and another to see it start to happen."

"And yet you thought I was being so annoying with my incredulity."

She gave him a look, and he had the decency to nod his head like yeah, okay, okay, I get it . And in between doing what she'd suggested—rubbing the potion on his gums—he asked, "You still want to go see, then? Wash some of that incredulity away?"

Though it surprised her how much she wanted to.

The way excitement sprang up in her, where trepidation had been.

"Only if you're okay," she said. But he didn't even hesitate.

"I am. It's gone. Heck, you probably know it's gone."

She paused, and thought. Did that inward look again.

Then sure enough: "Fuck. I do. Wow, I really do. This is so weird."

Which got a laugh out of him. A carefree laugh, of the sort that confirmed she was right. This was the way things were now. Witch senses. Sudden werewolves. And the thing he said as he stood and helped her up.

"And it's about to get weirder. Come on, let's go find a fairy orgy."