Chapter 6: It’s Not Garbage!

Half an hour later, we were back, and after one of the fastest showers I’d ever taken, we both got dressed in our new outfits.

Mine was a V-neck long-sleeved blouse with little rhinestones around the bottom and a low back so that I could show off my wings, plus a pair of super cute jeans that had rhinestones on the pockets.

Kegan’s was a black lace dress with a floor-length skirt and an elaborate beaded necklace that screamed, “Vampires, look how pretty my neck is!  Bite me!”

Kegan’s mom had bought herself something that she was now wearing, too: a red dress with a long, straight skirt and a pink belt around it.  Whatever she’d said, apparently she didn’t want to go to Bansheeway wearing ratty travel-appropriate clothing.

“Take care,” Kegan’s mom said as we headed down to the lobby.  “Don’t go anywhere without a lot of people.  Call me if anything unexpected happens —”

“Mom, we know,” Kegan said.

There was an awkward-looking boy standing in the lobby.  He was very tall and gangly and pale, with freckles and colorless blond hair.

My date? I wondered.

I walked over to him, just in case.

“Hi, you must be —”  Uh, what was his name again?

“I’m Georgie,” he said.

“Georgie”?  As in, with an “ie” at the end? I thought.

I’d be super embarrassed to go by a nickname like that if I were a boy and older than two years old.

“I’m from the werevulture clan,” he said.

“Okay.  Right,” I said.  I held out my hand for him to shake.  “I’m Lisette.”

He shook it.  “Georgie.”

“You already said that.”

“Oh, yeah.”

This was not shaping up to be a romantic evening.  Then again, I mean, we were total strangers.

Kegan’s mom then began to drill him, which made an awkward meeting downright humiliating.  Still, I learned some useful things about him.  He was a sophomore in high school, an entire year younger than me, his favorite subject was math, and his least favorite subject was P.E.

“What’s your favorite subject, Lisette?” Kegan’s mother asked me.

“Uhhh,” I said.  Did I have to pick one?  “Lunch.”

Kegan giggled.

“Kegan’s really good at math,” I said, pointing at her.

“Oh, really?” my date asked, eyeing her nervously.

If you’re reacting that way to her wardrobe, just wait till you see what she looks like when she goes insubstantial, I thought.

“Yeah, I’m in Pre-Calc,” Kegan said.

“Me, too,” the guy nodded.

Terrific.  I resisted rolling my eyes.  The two of them had better not talk math on our date.

Kegan’s date arrived fifteen minutes later, way late.  But he made up for it by being much better-looking than he’d been in his picture.

“Hi, Dominic!” Kegan called, waving to him.

He caught sight of her.  “Whoa!”

And another person was freaked out by the sight of her outfit.  Seriously, Kegan had weird taste.

“D’ya like it?” she asked, spinning around.

“It’s smoking hot!” he said, pointing at his own jeans and T-shirt.  “Am I underdressed?”

Kegan grinned.

Orrrrr apparently not, I thought.

“In that case, maybe we should make her change,” Kegan’s mother said suspiciously.

“Mommm!” Kegan shouted.  She shook her head at the guy.  “My mom is like that.”

“My mom’s like that with my sister, too,” he assured her.

Kegan’s mother then began to grill him for twice as long as she had grilled my date.  She finally agreed to let us go with a tone of voice that sounded very grudging.

“Finally,” Kegan groaned as soon as we had walked out onto the sidewalk.  “I thought we’d never get away.”

“Is she always that bad?” Dominic asked.

“Not always that bad, but you should’ve seen her when one of my dates had a tattoo.”

Dominic chortled.

My date was being silent, like he had ever since Kegan’s mother had finished interrogating him.  I was starting to get the impression that his grandfather had used “nice boy” to mean “shy nerd who could never get a date on his own.”

My little sister Annette would probably be really into him.  She loved shy nerds.  All of the characters she crushed on in movies fit that description.  In fact, I kind of wished she were here.  He was a year younger than me, which meant he was only two years older than her, and he was going to be a werevulture.

I thought about that, wondering if there were a way I could set him up with my sister.

And then I realized what I was doing.  Was I seriously thinking about setting him up with someone else five minutes into our date?  Some date!

Kegan burst out laughing at something Dominic had said.  The two of them were walking in front of us, and they seemed to be getting along really well.  I was starting to get jealous.

“So, why do you want to be a werevulture?” I asked Georgie, somewhat desperate to make conversation.

“I dunno.”  He shrugged.  “Why does anyone want to be turned?  Everyone else in my family is.  What about you?”

“My turning went wrong,” I said.  “I wanted to be a werehawk.”

“Why a werehawk?”

I shrugged.  “Everyone else in my family is one.  Except my little sister, of course.  Werehawks have a cool magical power, too.  They have amazing vision even as humans.”

“That sounds cool,” he said.  “Werevultures don’t have a power.”

“Well, turkey vultures don’t.”

He looked at me in surprise.  “You do?”

“Sure do,” I said, bragging.  “Do you know what taint is?”

He nodded.

“I can untaint tainted turning stones.”

“Whoa!”  His eyes flew wide open.  “That’s possible?!”

Oh, yeah, I realized.  He’s probably met lots of people who were survivors from clans whose turning stones got tainted.

“We only found out two months ago,” I said.  “I’ve read lots of books to figure out why people didn’t know, and I think maybe it was a secret the griffon vulture clans kept.  Most of the griffon vultures centuries ago were French royalty or nobility, so it’s totally possible that they kept secrets.”

“Wow,” he said.  He looked really impressed.

“Actually, ‘lots of books’ might be an exaggeration,” I added, driven by honesty.  “I’ve read two.  And a half.  The second one I tried was really boring.  But I read them without my dad forcing me to!”

“I love reading stuff about history,” he said.

Of course he did.  He and Annette would really get along.

“So you’re the same clan as royalty?” he asked eagerly.

I nodded and grinned.  “Yup.  Maybe you would’ve been too, if the griffon vulture clans on this continent hadn’t switched to turkey vultures before the revolution.”

“Lucky.”  He looked jealous.

Compared to a turkey vulture, I’m definitely lucky, I thought.  But I didn’t say it.  That would’ve been rude.

“Do you have a lot of people in your clan?” he asked.

I shook my head.  “Just me.”

“In the whole country?”

“In the whole world.”

“Wow.”  He fell silent for a moment.  “My parents talk about how important it is to keep the clan going because we’re the only one left in the country.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to be the only person of your species in the world.”

“It stinks,” I said frankly.  “I have a turning stone now, so I’m allowed to turn people and start my own clan, but nobody wants to be the first one to turn.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“The chances of failure,” I said.  “It’s not one that was just dug out of the ground.  It used to belong to some other clan, and nobody knows which one.  In fact, it used to be tainted.”

“It could be a werevulture turning stone!” he said excitedly.  “There were a lot of those that got destroyed because they were tainted!  Maybe one of them wasn’t!”

“That’s what I’m hoping!” I cried.  “If it used to be a werevulture turning stone, turnings that go wrong will just turn people into some other kind of werevulture.  They won’t have my awesome power, but we need to have more werevultures anyway!”

“Yes!” Georgie cried, his eyes alight.  “We get people coming to us all the time to turn their children.  Maybe some of the really rare vultures will consider it worth a chance to see if you could turn their children into a species that no longer has a turning stone!”

“Whoa!” I cried.  The thought had never occurred to me.  “You’re a genius!”

Georgie’s face colored.

“I’ll have to ask your grandpa if he has contact information for anybody who isn’t turned yet and whose family didn’t originally come from a turkey vulture clan,” I said excitedly.  “They’d be the perfect guinea pigs!”

Georgie still looked embarrassed.

“Unless it turns out that my turning stone is secretly wereguineapig, and I make them real guinea pigs,” I joked.

He didn’t laugh.

“Like, seriously, thanks,” I said.  “You are a genius.”

“I’m really not,” he said, waving his hand embarrassedly.

Why did Annette like shy boys?  It was annoying when people couldn’t take compliments.

Still, my thoughts buzzed.  It was amazing how good an idea this was.  It was the perfect solution.  It’d never occurred to me to look at other vultures.  It’d never even occurred to me that there might be scattered survivors across the country who were werevultures and had kids, they just didn’t have a clan!

I could do the same as what the turkey vulture clan was doing.  I could offer to turn anyone who’d always planned to be a werevulture, and whose family didn’t have a clan to go to.  This was exactly what I’d needed!

“Hey, have we decided where we’re going?” Kegan called, looking back at us.  We’d reached a crosswalk, and the orange light was up to tell us not to cross it.  “I suggested the biggest mall, and Dominic said the Statue of Liberty.”

“We could go to the New Yeti Historical Society Museum,” Georgie said shyly.

I gave him an incredulous look.  Was he from another planet?

“Ellis Island is open four hours later than usual today because it’s closed tomorrow for the full moon,” Kegan’s date said.  “There are malls everywhere.  That’s something you can only see here.”

He had a point.  “Okay,” I said, nodding.

Georgie looked disappointed.

The crosswalk light turned white, so we crossed, along with a flood of other people.  There were tall giants, short abatwas, and hairy basajauns.  Some people had horns, or tails, or wings.

Which reminded me!  As soon as we reached the other side and were no longer quite as surrounded by the crowd, I shifted to half-form.  My wings sprouted out of my back and I unfolded them, flapping dramatically.

“Whoa . . .”  Georgie looked stunned.  “Is that what griffon vulture wings look like?”

“Yup,” I said, pleased.

“They’re gorgeous, right?” Kegan said.  “She’s stunning when she’s all-shifted too.”

I took that as my cue, and shifted down into a one-and-a-half-foot-tall vulture.

“That is pretty,” Kegan’s date said.  “Enormous bird, too.”

I preened.

“Turkey vultures are bigger,” said my date.

I hissed and stretched my wings out to their full lengths, which was a much larger wingspan than any turkey vulture.

“Hey!” a faun objected from four feet away, where my right wing was brushing against him.  “Pull those things in!”

I cackled evilly.

“You’d probably better,” Kegan’s date said.

Reluctantly, I folded my wings, and a stream of grumbling people walked past the spot where my gigantic wings had been blocking off the sidewalk.  I shifted back to half-form and kept my wings folded.  I still had an eight-foot wingspan when I was in half-form, but it was much less striking because I was taller.

“Hey, can we get something to eat?” Kegan asked suddenly.  “I just realized I’m hungry.”

“Sure,” Dominic said.  “What’d you have in mind?”

“Probably a burger.”

“Cool.  I’ll pay for yours.  You can even super-size it.”

Kegan giggled and held his hand.

Georgie looked awkward.

“I’ll buy my own,” I said with a sigh.

He looked relieved.

We made it to the nearest McDuergars, where Kegan took forever making up her mind while she stood in front of the counter.  I went to find a table, and discovered one with a tray that still had food on it.

Someone had left us a snack!  Yummy!

I popped a half-eaten chicken nugget into my mouth and helped myself to a handful of fries.  There was an open sauce packet on the table, so I swished the fries around the edges of the little plastic container and chomped them down.

“Lisette,” Kegan said in horror, standing over me with a tray full of food, “please tell me you ordered that and are not eating somebody else’s garbage.”

“It’s not garbage,” I said.  “It was sitting on the table.”

“It’s garbage, Lisette!”

I heard a snort of laughter, and I looked over to see Georgie standing behind her, his shoulders silently shaking.

“Okay, fine,” I said sulkily.  Apparently I couldn’t trust my werevulture instincts when it came to food.

“She doesn’t usually do that,” Kegan told her date hastily.  “When she does, she can’t help it.  It’s close to the full moon, and she has vulture instincts.”

“Aren’t vultures carnivores?” Dominic asked.  “Why would she be eating french fries?”

“Vulture instincts, human taste buds,” Kegan explained.  “You should see her around chocolate.”

Mmmm, chocolate . . .

If I remembered correctly, they served chocolate milkshakes in places like this.  There might be a cup with some left over in that box over there.  I got up and headed towards it.

“Get away from the trash can!” Kegan shouted.  “If you’re hungry, order some food!”

Georgie burst out into laughing sputters.

The rest of the date went . . . mostly okay.  There was the part where I grabbed a pigeon sausage out of somebody’s hands as we passed a street vendor, and Kegan had to drag me back to apologize and pay for it.  She was mortified that I had momentarily forgotten money existed.  And then there was the part where I discovered used gum under my seat on the ferry, and I proceeded to pop that into my mouth.  When he saw that, Georgie started laughing so hard that he could barely speak.

“Where did you get gum?!” Kegan exclaimed as we got off the ferry and she finally noticed me chewing.  “Honestly, Lisette!  You really do need a baby-sitter during the full moon!”

“It’s fine,” Georgie said, gasping for breath.  “Both of my parents do that right before the full moon, too.”

“You mean she’s never going to get over it?” Kegan grumbled.  “Terrific.  That is so gross.”

“For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen a werevulture get sick from scavenging food,” Georgie said.  “It’s probably fine.”

“You’ve also never met a werevulture of her species,” Kegan returned.  “For all you know, not getting sick from eating garbage is a New World vulture magical ability.”

Georgie looked thoughtful.

“New World werevultures don’t have a magical ability,” I said.

“How do you know?” Kegan shot back.  “Maybe they do, and nobody’s figured out what it is yet.”

“That’s not likely,” Dominic said.  “The vultures would have figured out what they could do a long time ago if they had one.  Besides, two-thirds of all species don’t have a magical ability.”

“All the races are magical,” Kegan retorted.  “I’m betting all the species are, too.  We just don’t know what a lot of them can do.”

There were a total of eight races, and all species (except for humans) belonged to one of them.  All members of each race had a magical trait that was unique to that race, even if they didn’t have a species-centric magical ability.

All vampires fed off something, be it blood or life energy or light or time, and converted it into something else.

All specters went insubstantial.

All basajauns could get solider and tougher.

All giants could grow larger than they already were.

All abatwas could shrink smaller than they already were.

All loreleis could breathe underwater.

All kapres shifted into a plant.

All weres shifted into an animal.

And of course, during the full moon, everyone had no choice but to do those things.  Vampires had to feed, weres and kapres remained shifted, specters stayed insubstantial, loreleis could only breathe underwater, giants were huge, abatwas were tiny, and basajauns became tough and thick.

In fact . . . looking around, I noticed two enormous ogres sitting on a bench and chatting while the bench bowed under their weight.  A pixie smaller than my thumbnail zoomed past us, a kappa was breathing shallowly and staring longingly at the water, and a yeti was so busy reading while he walked that he slammed right into a streetlamp.

He shook himself, looked startled, flipped a page in his book, and went right back to walking, leaving a highly dented thick metal pole behind.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one affected by the nearness of the full moon.

“Banshees don’t have a magical power,” Dominic was arguing.

“Sure we do.”

“We do?”

“Yeah, we always know when someone we care about dies.”

“Oh, that.”

“And then you have an instinct to scream, right?” I asked.

“Yep,” Kegan said.  “You never want to go to a banshee funeral without earplugs.  At my grandpa’s funeral, my grandma just about deafened me.”  She had told me that story a thousand times.

You know, given that banshees did that, it was no wonder they had a reputation for being omens of death.  I mean, seriously.

“Anyway, that just sort of proves my point,” Kegan said.  “You have a magical ability, and you forgot about it because it’s something we do that you take for granted.  What if a lot of species do that — take something for granted that’s actually a magical ability that’s unique to them?”

“Two-thirds of all species?” Dominic asked skeptically.  “You’re talking about billions of people over thousands of years who have just so happened to not notice something they could do.”

“Maybe a lot of them are things that would never matter unless you had high enough technology,” Kegan retorted.  “Like . . . like being able to breathe up in space, for instance.”

“If breathing in a vacuum was possible for a species, then those people would have noticed that they didn’t have to worry about climbing up tall mountains, where the air is thinner.  They also would’ve noticed that they didn’t suffocate underwater.”

“Not if they were loreleis, they wouldn’t.”

“Would so.”

“They wouldn’t.  It’d overlap with their racial trait, so they wouldn’t realize it was something separate.  Or, like . . . swimming in lava.  Nobody would go around trying to test to see if they had that magical ability.”

“There’s such a thing as volcanoes that erupt without warning.”

“Yeah, but how many people have died that way?” I asked.

“Thank you!” Kegan said triumphantly.  “Exactly my point!  We’re talking about, like, tens of thousands in history instead of billions, right?  Some of them would’ve been humans.  And there are plenty of species who’ve never lived close to volcanoes.”

“I’ve got it,” I said, snapping my fingers.  “Being able to control computers with your mind!  That’s a magical ability nobody would notice until computers were invented!”

Dominic snorted.  “That’s called telekinesis, and poltergeists do have it.”

“That’s not telekinesis,” Kegan scowled.  “All poltergeists do is move stuff around while they’re insubstantial.”

“Not according to Poltergeist Hacker,” Georgie said.

“TV shows are not reality!” Kegan cried.

“That’s a great show, though,” I put in.

So we ended up talking about that show all the time we were waiting for the tour to start, and then also most of the time during the tour, because the tour guide was boring, and talking about a TV show we all liked was interesting.

After that, we had some time left over, so we went to a mall after all.  By that point, Kegan and her date were holding hands and flirting outrageously.

Georgie and I got into a fight instead.