Nathan
We heard Christine yelling in the house, so my dad and I ran inside. We were waiting for a fight to break out, and I’d thought her scream had signaled the start of it. They’d left the door cracked for us, and my dad raced past me and into the kitchen. I sped up, but fur blocked every path that I tried to take to get around him. His message was clear. Stay back.
I wasn’t going to let him or anything hold me back from getting to Christine, but as we walked into the room with them, I saw that she wasn’t gearing up for a fight. Not with the coven anyway. Surprisingly, she was yelling at Pop.
“I’m going!” Chris yelled.
“You are not! You will sit here with your father and make sure he’s safe. You are getting yourself worked up for nothing.”
I barked, an order for them to fill me in.
Chris pointed to the television, and our lives changed again. Seeing her face next to Lydia’s face was mortifying and overwhelming, but in my fur and standing next to my dad, I didn’t feel the true effect of it. Or maybe that was because our world had rocked so many times in the last week, that I’d gotten used to the feeling. Maybe I’d accepted that nothing was stable in our lives—not happiness or peace or fun days of playing with your new father.
My first instinct was to shift and hold her, but her scent made me stay away. She didn’t want to be coddled. She smelled determined and ready to fight.
“The Council is having a ceremony for the new treaty today,” Chris said. “And Mom is going to deny having a copy to fix the news story. But it’s clearly a setup. She’s already there and she can’t leave. I’m going to help her!”
Her dad tried to calm her down, but I saw the look in her eyes. She wasn’t listening, and she was already adorning her hands with more rings from her new jewelry box.
“The Magical Council is made up of some of the strongest wizards of our time,” Pop said. “They are more than capable of assisting your mother if something were to happen.”
“They are more than capable of setting her up as well,” Chris said. “Pop, you know that. We still don’t know anything about this coven other than that they possess people. She could be with them right now.”
I nudged my dad’s side to get him to head out of the kitchen. He didn’t know Christine like I knew Christine. There was no sense in staying to watch her bicker with Pop. She was going, no matter what, which meant that I was going, too.
My dad followed me out of the door and down the paved walkway that led to the pool house. In the last twenty-four hours I’d learned what it would’ve been like to be in a pack—to be heard without saying anything, understood from simple motions and short growls. Every one of his movements meant something to me.
The sharp turn of his head in my direction meant: stay back. Stretching his front paws with his tail in the air meant: run with me. And rubbing his face against mine meant: stay with me.
He wasn’t ready to let go of his son, and I’d never in my life had a father. I wasn’t ready for him to go back to Anchorage, either. That was selfish of me, but he knew the risk he was taking by being here. He knew everything about me now.
We’d spent the night on the floor in the pool house, laughing and crying, as we caught each other up on our lives. We talked about things that made me shift, and things that made me laugh, and I’d told him things about Chris that I’d never even told Paul. Having a dad was everything that I’d ever wanted with John and more.
He’d called his wife a few times, and he’d promised that he was on his way home. Then he’d shift again, ask to play again, and would end up staying even longer.
I didn’t know what to say now that it was time for him to leave.
I jerked my nose up at him. I’d meant: Go home. He shook his head. I jerked my nose again, and this time, I thought: Your wife and daughter need you.
He nudged my face with his nose, and it felt like he’d said: My son needs me.
He was as stubborn as Christine. I wasn’t going to change his mind. Zain was coming with us.
With forty-five minutes until the ceremony, we shifted and he called his wife again. It was their fifth phone call or so. From her tone, I gathered that she’d expected him to say that he would be home soon without really coming home soon.
I heard her clearly on the other end. “Zain Scott,” she said, “Should I send you a suitcase?”
“No. I’ll be home later for dinner. Dali, would you like to come over for dinner?” I nodded. “We’ll be there. I love you. Put Mina on.”
“Fine,” she said. “I told her that you were working. I’ll see you later.”
The little girl who he’d named after my first mother, said, “Dad, did you find your son?”
He laughed. “Stop spying on your mother. I’ll see you later, and I’m bringing your brother to meet you.”
Since he’d told them nothing about the ceremony or how dangerous it was to be around me, when he hung up, I said, “Do you understand where we’re going and why?” He nodded. “And you still…”
“Still going, Dali, and we’ll make it to dinner, too.” Denial. It must have been denial. He called someone else and used a completely different tone than he’d had with his wife and daughter. “I found him,” he said. The person on the other end didn’t speak. “I found Dali. Get Grace to send you to the Magical Council’s headquarters in half an hour. He needs us.”
The person hung up without saying a word, but I was completely sure that I’d just put even more people in danger.
****
The hour felt like a few seconds, and soon, we were linking up for Pop to move us all to Rome—where Lydia and the Magical Council were about to sign the new peace treaty. My dad and I were in our regular bodies and wearing magical amulets like everyone else. And because Pop had lost the battle with Christine, she and her dad were both going.
We hadn’t called Paul and Emma.
We landed in the marble foyer of the Magical Council’s headquarters. Chris and her dad were wearing hoods, but they didn’t need the disguises. There were too many people here for anyone to focus on them. Apparently news about an impromptu treaty signing could spread at warp-speeds.
A crowd had formed outside of a door labeled Grand Courtroom in gold letters. People shuffled past us without giving us a second look.
On the walls surrounding the entrance to the courtroom, there were portraits of very serious and probably very dead people. They were all wearing red robes. The guy who’d attacked us had worn a purple robe. Would he wear that again today? Suddenly, every hint of purple in the crowd caught my eye. A little girl in a purple dress. Purple polka dots on a woman’s scarf. The purple ring glistening on Pop’s finger.
I kept my eyes on the crowd, trying to construct a picture in my head of the wizard who’d almost killed me. He could’ve been the man to my left who smelled like chewing tobacco. Or the guy to my right who smelled like must.
Someone yanked my arm with way too much force, and I spun around with my fist clenched. A breath away from my father’s nose, I froze. He was standing with three men—two older ones that looked like him and a guy around my age. They laughed at me, and I slowly lowered my fist.
What a way to be introduced to the pack I would’ve belonged to. I sucked at first impressions. With John, I’d been wrapped in a bloody blanket with ugly scars. With Chris, I’d been naked, and I’d threatened to kill her father in a jealous fit the first time we’d talked. And here I was again, being just as charming.
“Dali,” my dad said. “Relax.”
Christine and the rest of our group didn’t notice that I’d stopped walking. They entered the courtroom, and I lingered at the door with the ghosts. They all smelled like snow. Like … home. I didn’t particularly look like any of them, even my dad. They all had this rugged look to them, with sharp angles in their faces and bulky shoulders that made them look like they worked with their hands.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
One of the older guys hugged me hard. If I had weaker bones, he would’ve shattered them. I assumed that he was my uncle. “Don’t you dare apologize. I can’t believe it’s you. It’s really you.”
It was a strange feeling to hug a stranger who knew me. I didn’t know whether to cry like he was crying or to pull away and shake his hand like a normal stranger. I just stood there and let him hug me. My dad’s other brother yanked me away from the first one.
More people shuffled around us as he squeezed me and cried. “I’m Mick.” He pulled away slightly, his hand still on the back of my neck. “This is my son. We call him Mickey. You used to play together. I’m sure you don’t remember that.”
I didn’t, but it wasn’t the right time to say that. I just hugged my cousin because I knew it was coming. His grip was tighter than his father’s.
“Nate?” Chris sounded panicked, so I let go of my cousin and ran to the door. “Nate?”
“Right here,” I said, and grabbed her hand. She breathed a long sigh of relief and slapped her hand over her chest. “I stayed behind to meet some people.”
I tugged her hood over her forehead, suddenly afraid that her disguise wasn’t much of a disguise at all. This wasn’t the best place for the famous girl from the news who’d almost exposed magical kind, especially not after she’d been exposed as Lydia’s daughter.