CHAPTER FIFTEEN—PART FOUR

I remember being a teenager and coming into the budding beginnings of sexuality and wondering, what must it be like to be a boy? I would spend inordinate amounts of time standing naked in front of the mirror, examining my form, critiquing it, wishing for it to be different. Because I wasn’t like my sister, who bloomed full, early. She was fourteen by the time her breasts grew round and heavy, before her hips gave her torso the symmetry of a figure eight. Her bottom was full but firm, and her legs were shapely and long. Standing next to her, I was a reed, a cane, tall and lithe and lean, all angles. Pointed hip bones and elbows, sharp shoulders and a flat stomach. I would cup my breasts and press them together, small and pert like ripe peaches, and wonder what it might be like to be more substantial.

In the early days of my exploration, I was innocent and curious, wanting to know what I looked like to the boys in whom I was interested; wanting to know what they thought about in their private moments. I wanted to inhabit them, to see myself through their eyes, to grip their manhoods in my fist that was their first, to be a silent passenger in their consciousness. I recall going to the cafeteria at the St. James Academy and taking my tray to a table full of teenagers, laughing and joking, and tossing little bits of food at one another. I rarely sat with anyone but my sister, but she’d been out sick that day and I was feeling bold. I slid my tray onto the edge of the table and sat down, more interested in the conversation around me than I was in lunch. There was one boy, Charlie Evers, on whom I’d had a bit of a crush. Charlie was an athlete, and at seventeen he had the swagger and the figure of a full-grown man, with the stubble on his upper lip to prove it. His hair was yellow like fresh hewn corn, and his eyes were the color of aquamarines, and he had a mole on his cheek that made him look like a 40’s starlet and I thought maybe I loved him. And Charlie Evers shrugged out of the polyester sport coat of his school uniform, glanced my way and said, “Man, if I had tits? I’d basically stand naked in front of the mirror all day and play with them.”

I felt my face flush with embarrassment as the table erupted with laughter; I laughed, too. I laughed because that’s what I did. I stood naked in front of the mirror and squeezed my breasts together and thought of boys.

The first time I had ever touched a boy, it was Charlie Evers. The nuns had movie night for us every Friday, and I was 17 and Charlie Evers was 18, and he was going to be leaving the school soon, to go be an adult in the adult world. He seemed confident, like nothing in the world could be more natural than to be launched out of the safe confines of the academy and into the big world of grown-ups, and he was ready to play pretend at being a grown up, too. And during movie night, he sat down next to me and slung his arm across the back of my chair and said, “You know, Vi, I’ve always thought you were kind of pretty.”

I angled my eyes up at him and wanted desperately to know precisely what he was thinking in that moment. What did he think of my smile when I smiled up at him? What did he think when I tucked a few stray locks of hair behind my ear, when I pressed a hand to his chest and leaned in and said, “I could tell,” like someone who was ten times more confident than I actually was? What was he thinking when he barked a laugh in the middle of movie night at a part of the movie that wasn’t funny? And what was he thinking when he leaned in and pressed his lips to my neck, when he lifted his full man’s hand to cup my small, round breast?

And when he unzipped his trousers, the sound of the zipper was the loudest sound in the world, and when he undid the button on his boxers, I could feel the vibration of it radiate through my entire body. And I was reaching into the dark space he’d opened up before he’d even had the chance to ask me if I wanted to touch it, because I did. I wanted to curl my fingers around it, I wanted to know what it was like.

I wanted to know what he was thinking when I tugged him free of his pants, when he glanced nervously from side to side to make sure we were alone in the back row of the makeshift movie theatre in the St. James Auditorium. I wondered what was going through his mind as he sank down low in his seat so that his head could rest against the back of the folding chair. I wanted to know what it felt like for him when I began to rub the length of his erection, up and down, pacing myself based on the quickness of his breathing. It wasn’t even that I was turned on by this moment of intimacy—I just wanted to know everything about what happened when a man felt pleasure; more than anything, I wanted to inhabit the man.

Because when I was 17, and Charlie Evers was 18, I had never seen a pornographic image. I’d read a few racy chapters in books, but I’d never seen a man’s equipment up close. And I was surprised by how completely he shuddered when he climaxed, how he tensed, and relaxed, and how warm and sticky the release was as it dripped over my fingers. I wanted to know his mind when he leaned toward me and trailed his fingertips along my thigh, up my skirt, and whispered, “Let me return the favor.”

But I pushed his hand away and said, “No, thanks.” Because I knew what it felt like to touch myself there, I didn’t need any more information. No, I wanted to know what it was like for him.

And now, standing in the dwelling with Graham McCallum, all these many years later, I finally know.

~ * ~

Graham was staring as though he had seen a ghost, all of the color draining out of his face. For her part, Viola was frozen in place, aware only that she had shifted, but hardly daring to move or speak, afraid to know what, exactly, she had shifted in to.

“Extraordinary,” Graham whispered, moving closer to her, approaching her as though she were a wild beast. And perhaps she was. When Graham touched her—which he did, most tentatively, on the shoulder—his touch felt different, lighter, as though her skin were literally thicker, and it took more pressure to send the jolt of electricity through her body. “I knew you could do it,” he said. “I knew it.” He ran his hand gently along her arm as she began to settle into her new form. She realized that she was eye to eye with Graham—taller, then.

“What am I?” She asked, unable to keep the question inside of her for a moment longer. But her voice was not her own, though it was not altogether unfamiliar either. It was a man’s voice, a sweet and resonant tenor. The sound of it sent a wave of comfort washing over her.

“You…” Graham looked at her, canting his head to the side, before he held up a finger and said, “Just…stay right there a moment. Don’t move.” He darted around her and disappeared into the bathroom. But Viola couldn’t help but move. She lifted her hands and peered down to examine them: broad and masculine, a fine dusting of hair that began on the middle of the back of each hand and thickened as it traveled up to the elbow. Her chest was flat and angled, and she could see the slope of a flaccid penis emerging from a tuft of black pubic hair. A man, then. She had shifted into a man.

Graham returned with a hand mirror, and he stood several feet in front of her and held it up. Viola squinted: when she peered into her reflection, it was Rowan Weaver’s face staring back at her. “Oh my God,” she murmured, taking a few steps back. But she was unused to the size of her feet, and she stumbled, landing hard on the floor before she scrambled to get up again. “I’m…”

“Yes.”

Viola ran her fingers over her face and felt the stubble along the line of her jaw, felt the long, aquiline nose. She ran her fingers through cropped short black hair and found herself dizzy with it. She began to tremble violently in this new body, a body that felt strong and capable, that was a solid support for her frenzied mind.

The trembling intensified and she found herself having to sit down on the edge of the bed, with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. His head in his hands, his body, her mind.

“I can’t hold onto it,” she said in his voice, “I can’t make it stay.”

“It’s all right,” Graham said, “give in, let yourself shift back. Keep an image of yourself at the forefront of your mind.”

She let out a cry, and she heard Rowan’s voice. But something adjusted the sound in midair, like she was an out of tune instrument, until the wail was in her own voice again. She settled into her own body; she breathed a sigh of relief at the familiarity; she hugged herself around her own shoulders and curled her knees up to her chest, wanting to hang onto herself. In an instant, Graham was at her side wrapping her up in his arms. She was still trembling, but he rocked her gently and the tremor began to subside.

“How can you stand it?” She asked, clinging fiercely to him, as though his steady form might better anchor her to the earth.

“What?”

“Being in someone else’s body. How can you stand it at all?”

“I’ve never been in someone else’s body,” Graham quietly intoned, turning to press a kiss to the top of her head. He ran his fingers up and down the length of her arm until her breathing had steadied and her heart rate had slowed.

“When you’re a bear, I mean,” she clarified, but he just shook his head.

“That isn’t someone else’s body,” he said. “That’s me, in another form.”

Viola’s heart dropped down into the pit of her stomach and she untangled her limbs from Graham’s and rose to her feet, padding quietly across the hardwood floor, over the faux bearskin rug, and to the bathroom. She snatched a robe from a hook on the back of the door, and donned it quickly, tying it tight around her waist, no longer wanting to expose her naked self to any other living creature. “So I’m the only one, then,” she said at length, leaning against the wall and allowing her eyes to come to a close. “I’m the only person in the entire world who can…do what I just did. Who can shift into someone else, inhabit someone else’s body like some sort of…body snatcher?”

“You aren’t a body snatcher, Viola,” Graham said, suddenly made self-conscious by the fact that he was the only one between the two of them who wasn’t wearing any clothes. Although his lust had been recently satiated, he could feel himself rising to attention at the mere sight of her. He moved around the bed and disappeared into the walk-in closet, donning a pair of green silk pajama pants, just to keep things slightly more civilized.

“Perhaps I’m not a body snatcher, but I am alone,” she said. “I’m the only one like this, aren’t I? I mean, that’s what you said. Not even Verity can do what I can do. Right?”

Graham sighed, propping his hands up on his hips so that his elbows winged out to the side. He regarded her with a fierce sort of affection: she looked so young and vulnerable, her eyes wide and blue and full of fear and loneliness. He could see that this was another way in which she was an outsider, and outcast. He didn’t want to push her further away from him, or their clan, or any shifter for that matter. So he chose his words carefully.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it’s possible that you are the only one, but that seems altogether unlikely. That’s like assuming there is only life on this planet.”

“I do assume that, Graham,” she countered, the hint of a smile curling her lips upward. “Of course I do.”

“Why, because you haven’t encountered an alien, they can’t exist?”

“This is absurd—”

“Maybe,” he said, walking up to her and gripping her by the shoulders. “Maybe it is absurd. But there is magic in this world, and last week, you would have sworn otherwise. Hm? There is magic in this world, Viola. Who’s to say that other, more fantastic things couldn’t also be true?” He pulled her into his arms again; he needed to feel her, needed to hold her still and make her stay. “My point, Viola, is that there is simply too much in this world to know for sure one way or another. Are you unique? Possibly. But unlikely.”

After a moment, Viola gave a sharp nod of her head, and the tension went out of her body. She leaned into his chest and wrapped her arms about the trunk of his torso. She was clinging to him again, wanting to feel the warmth of him over every inch of her body, filling her up, and bringing her home to herself. “Why did I shift into Rowan?” She asked at length, her voice muffled from how she pressed her face to his chest.

“He was at the forefront of your mind,” Graham said quietly. He was stroking her hair with a calming rhythmicality, but he couldn’t stop the next question from spilling out: “Are you in love with him?”

She was very still and silent for a moment before she answered: “I don’t know; I might have been.” She lifted her head to peer up into his eyes. “But even if I were, it’s gone now. He sold me out.”

“But then he set you free.”

“But he sold me out.” She shook her head. “No, after everything we’d been through, for him to turn on me like that…” Viola leaned back slightly, trying to read his expression. “You think I love him because I shifted into him?”

“No, I think you shifted into him because you love him, at least on some level.” To his credit, his voice was calm, level. “I think that’s why you were able to shift into him at all. That’s why I can shift into the Kodiak—sure, it’s in my blood, but it’s also home, it’s who and what I am, what my people are, and it comes from millennia of love and protection and caretaking. Shifting is a profound act of love, and I think that’s what I saw here today.”

“You’re angry with me?”

“No,” he said, smiling. “Jealous, maybe. But not angry.”

“Don’t be jealous,” Viola said, pulling away and moving to stand on the rug. She stretched her arms high over her head, feeling a dull ache in her bones. “You were honest with me almost from the first moment I met you. Rowan Weaver has lied to me for years.” She craned her neck from one side to the other and shook out her arms. “Am I supposed to hurt like this after shifting?”

“At first,” Graham said, his eyes never leaving her body. “It’ll subside the more you get used to it.” As she stretched, she caught a glimpse of his expression, and it was a bleak and open sort of sadness. She had the irresistible urge to make it go away.

“If you two were standing side by side, at this very moment,” she said, “I would go to you.” She was staring at him as she let her arms drop to her sides. He looked smaller than she’d ever seen him before, sitting on the edge of the bed with his palms flat on the mattress beside him so that his shoulders were raised upwards.

“You don’t have to say that, Viola,” he murmured, casting his gaze to the floor. “I don’t need you to say that.”

“I know I don’t have to,” she said. “Nevertheless, it’s true.” Or, at least, the hypothetical felt true enough. Viola raked her fingers through her hair, fingers catching on the web of tangles the day’s activities had created, and moved to sit beside him on the mattress. “Graham,” she said, voice hovering just above a whisper, “you’ve really only just met me, you know.”

“I know.” He looked abashed, his cheeks coloring ever so slightly. It was charming.

“And we’ve been thrust into a very…unique set of circumstances.”

He grinned, not meeting her gaze. “To say the least.”

“The very least,” she agreed. “So whatever it is that you might be feeling, for me or otherwise, is probably just heightened by all of that.”

He was silent for a long moment, and as still as a Rodin. He ventured a sidelong glance at her, and found her as still as he, riveted with anticipation as to how he would respond. Why is it that part of her wanted him to accept what she said as truth, and the rest of her wanted him to protest, to tell her that she was the most extraordinary creature in the world and that no one had ever come close to making him feel what he felt for her. His eyes were a storm, and she couldn’t discern even part of what he was thinking. His lips were a stern line, and his jaw was set forward, as though he were determined to make something true, even if it was not.

“Yeah,” he said after a while, “you’re probably right. That’s probably all it is.”

And if her heart sank into her stomach when he said that, she didn’t show it. She just smiled a sort of thin little smile and put her hand on his shoulder. He mirrored her smile, took in a deep breath, exhaled, and got to his feet. “So, let’s just…figure out what our next move should be, then.”

“Good idea.”

Without the question of what he did or did not feel for her to fill the air with electricity, they moved more easily, more fluidly, as they spoke. They were relaxing, and if they were disappointed, they kept it quietly to themselves. “So,” he said, regaining a bit of his animation, “I think it’s pretty obvious what we should do.”

“Is it…?” She cocked her head to the side, blinking up at him from her seat on the mattress.

“You can shift into the son of the Alpha of Clan Felidae,” Graham said, his eyes twinkling with excitement. “Do you understand what this could mean?”

Viola found herself shaking her head.

“It means that we actually can accomplish our goals with minimal bloodshed. It means we can walk right through the front doors of their headquarters, we can walk right into Alec Weaver’s office, and kill him before anyone knows anything is amiss.”

“I don’t know that it’ll be as simple as that,” Viola said, leaning forward so that her elbows were on her knees. “Rowan will be there. What if he’s with Alec and then—boom—second son comes waltzing on in?”

Graham nodded, lifting a hand to scratch absently at the back of his neck as he paced the length of the bedroom, back and forth, back and forth. “We need to get you in there somehow, just to see him.”

“What will that do?” She asked, sounding rather more dejected than she’d intended.

“He cares for you. If you can get close enough, you can incapacitate him.”

Viola shook her head. “No, that’ll never work. He told me when he released me that we can never see each other again. He told me that he wouldn’t choose me over his clan.” The memory ached in her gut, and she wouldn’t look at Graham, wouldn’t let him see the hurt in her expression.

“Maybe if you…tell him that you want to try to win your way back into the good graces of the clan. Maybe if you tell him that you can get close to me, that you’ve earned my trust, that you’ll kill me the next time you see me.”

She locked her gaze on him then and slid off the bed, a hand resting on one of the four mahogany posts holding up the canopy overhead. “You would make a brutal liar out of me.”

“For a greater good, Viola,” he insisted, moving to stand beside her. He took her hand, but she withdrew it just as quickly, and turned away. “I want to help him, as much as everyone else in his clan. I don’t want to hurt him, Vi. I just want to—”

“Kill his father,” she shot back, turning around. “You said I could be more than just an assassin. You said that. But you would send me back there, armed with lies and false pretenses. And then what? I, what, I drug him? Kill him? So that I can waltz into Felidae Headquarters, armed with his skin, and take out the Alpha?” She shook her head. “You want me to be exactly what they want me to be, but you pretend that you have all these noble goals, all these good intentions. You want more for me, for Verity, than this life, but you would use the skills I’ve acquired to your own benefit.”

“Viola—”

“No, just admit it. Stop trying to make me think that you’re so…above Rowan and Alec and all of Felidae. Stop pretending you’re any better than us.”

“Us?”

“At least Rowan never made a secret of his duplicitousness. He never pretended to be noble—he killed people, and that’s what he always said he’d do.”

Graham’s eyes twinkled as he took a step away from Viola. “Make up your mind, Viola. Either he’s the liar who betrayed you, the sly little cat that turned on you when you needed his voice of support, or he’s the honest, on-the-level assassin that you can admire for his directness.”

“I just—”

“No, Viola. I need to know who’s side you’re on. Are you Felidae or Ursus?”

Viola gave a slow shake of her head, her fingers clasped in front of her. “Neither,” she said at length. “And I guess that’s the problem.”

Graham was rooted in place for a long stretch of silence before he heaved a sigh and moved to sit down on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “It’s this Us-Versus-Them mentality that I’m trying to abolish, I didn’t mean—” Another sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said, “least of all Rowan.”

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone either,” he replied, “but I know that this cannot end with Alec still in power. And I know that you will never have peace—nor will I—until this ends.”

Viola rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, feeling all at once very tired indeed, a weariness that seeped into her bones and made her want to curl up into a ball on the plush mattress at Graham’s side. “Fine,” she breathed. “Fine, I’ll do what you ask.”

“Thank you, Viola.”

“Don’t thank me. I have conditions.”

“I’m listening.”

“One: Rowan remains unharmed, no matter what. I don’t care if he storms in guns blazing as we’re taking out his father, if he’s there, he lives. Period.” She stared intently at him: so much for choosing Graham.

“But he won’t be there. You’ll keep him away. You’ll drug him so he’ll sleep right through it.”

“Two: I will not drug him.” Graham audibly groaned, putting some distance in between he and Viola. He moved to a sideboard and poured himself a sizable glass of whiskey; he drank it down in two powerful gulps.

“I will tell him what I intend to do, I will try to persuade him—”

“That didn’t work the first time, Viola.”

“No more lies, Graham. No more secrets. I won’t do it anymore.” She stood at the foot of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floorboards, and propped her hands up on her hips. She tried to make herself large and brave, she tried to make herself strong and intimidating. She stood firm.

“Fine. Then how will it work?”

“I have bargaining chips I can play,” she said. “I know how to make him do things.”

Graham gave a slow shake of his head, scratch scratch scratching at the back of his neck, a nervous tick, Viola was coming to learn. She wanted to comfort him, but she was angry with him; she wanted to hold him, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near him. She was her own war: she was winning, she was losing. “Fine,” he said. “I trust you. I’ll do whatever you need to support you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Your role will be simple.” His job, she explained, would be to drive her, to wait for her, out of sight, while she spoke to Rowan. His job would be to provide her with a sidearm, and a piece of paper and pen on which she could compose a letter to her sister. In the event that something went wrong, his job would be to deliver that letter to Verity, and to make good on his promise to take care of her. Later, his job would be to accompany her to Felidae headquarters as her supposed prisoner. His job would be to walk with his hands in the air and a gun to his head through the building, until they got to Alec Weaver’s office. Then, his job would be to sit idly by while she put a bullet in Alec Weaver’s skull.

“I meant what I said when I told you I wanted more for you than to be an assassin,” he protested, “and this is my war. I’ll kill him.”

“All due respect, Mr. McCallum,” she said, smirking, “but you are a businessman. I’m an assassin. Why don’t we both stay in our ascribed roles, hm?”

He grumbled begrudgingly, but ultimately acquiesced. “Fine. When do we begin?”