Chapter 2
Chapter Two
I knew the drill. Any wolf did. Papers, registration if you had one, copies of any license, proof, proof, proof that I had as much a right to be here as anyone else.
“I have—” I stuttered to a stop. Because… well, no.
For a moment, my mind flashed to my neighbor, standing still and blank as a wall when faced with any sort of social obligation. If he could use it to be rude and… well, possibly bigoted, couldn’t I use it now?
New page, August. San Amaro was a fresh start.
Detective King put his badge back in his pocket and raised both eyebrows in question. “You have?”
“I have my homeroom right now. If you want to leave your card, I can call you back with a lawyer or my union rep?” I ended on a question, which wasn’t the confidence I was going for, but it was certainly better than turning over my paperwork just because a cop showed up.
“Oh, that’s… I don’t think that’s necessary. You’re not under arrest, nor are you a suspect for anything.” King smiled, and I’m sure that friendliness worked on a lot of people, but I was a wolf who’d been around the block a few times.
If I didn’t learn anything else from LA, I now knew that anytime a parent was mad about their precious little baby’s grade, the easiest target was to claim the wolf had it out for their kid. Or that I was a corruptive influence. Or that I was teaching profane content.
My idea of comparing the two Cisneros cousins was turning to ash in front of me. I remembered the cookies that my neighbor had left on his mat.
“Right, well, I have class.” I turned, unlocking my door, and meant that to be the end of the conversation. But then Detective King followed me in, helping take the chairs down from the desks as I put my satchel and coffee on my desk. I watched him, my stomach pitting with discomfort.
“You teach Ninth Grade English Honors, right?” King asked.
I searched the question for a trap, but that was public knowledge. I was pretty sure it was on the website. “Yes.”
“The parents of a few students in your class have been worried,” King said. And there it was. Mr. You’re Not A Suspect was just like every other cop I’d met.
“I have my registration,” I said, the dream of acting as cool and disinterested as my Billy Idol neighbor melting when faced with the other option of jail.
If I didn’t respond to him, Detective King wouldn’t leave cookies on my mat; he’d take me in, and there would go my job.
“And I attend the mandated training annually. I have a copy of my last certificate here…”
I dug through my satchel, so angry at myself that I could feel the heat of tears in the corners of my eyes.
“That’s not what this is about,” King said. He paused taking down chairs, approaching me with both hands open.
“I understand that parents get upset about their students’ grades, but I provide complete feedback and the rubric anytime I give back papers, so this doesn’t seem like something the Gang Squad should be taking on.
” I felt my voice get small, knowing that I was only making myself a bigger target.
What kind of a wolf showed his stomach at the first hint of threat?
“Oh, I’m not with the Criminal Gang and Pack Department.” King kept his hands wide open and tried to meet my eyes, but I dropped them. “I’m with Paranormal Crimes.”
I flinched because that was too often the same difference. Was I going to be arrested for giving out those C’s on the papers the kids had fallen asleep writing?
“Listen, the parents of some students in your class are concerned because their kids are disappearing at night.” King stopped, and I kept myself from flinching.
I was chill, I was cool, this was a new page.
Sure, apparently the San Amaro Police Department was accusing me of corrupting freshmen like a Lifetime movie from the ’90s, but I was starting a new page.
“I wondered if you knew anything about it since you probably spend more time with them than most people.”
“I know it’s illegal to spend any time with students outside of school hours without another non-wolf adult present,” I said. “So I don’t do it. I coached Academic Decathlon at my last school, but that was with another teacher.”
Detective King blinked, then frowned. “No, that’s not what I meant. You see high school students all day long, and I’m worried that there’s some new fad or rave or… I’m not sure. I’m not on TikTok, but my son tells me all the time that I’m not hip.”
He offered a smile that had dimples, and for a half second, I wondered if I was the one overreacting.
“You want to know if I’ve heard anything as a teacher about what they’re doing at night?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, obviously relieved. He lifted a hand, pulling out a notepad and a pen, a wedding ring glinting on his ring finger. “And I’d ask my son, but…”
When he shrugged, I nodded. I knew exactly what he meant. Teenagers were vicious.
“I haven’t heard anything,” I said slowly. “But I have noticed a lot of students falling asleep in class.”
I thought again about the dozen essays that devolved into nonsense or trailing pencil marks. Some of my best students, the brightest ones in class, were drowsing off like they’d never gotten a night of sleep in their lives.
“Have they been saying anything to each other?” King asked. “Or have you seen anything unusual yourself? Anything that stands out?”
“What do you think it is?” I asked, suddenly nervous. I would have noticed if half the kids had been turned, and it wasn’t nearly as easy or common as Law and Order: Paranormal Crimes made it look.
“I suspect it’s just kids who are partying too late.
But unfortunately, this is San Amaro, and it’s often a lot weirder than whatever I think.
” King offered another smile that had dimples, and I wondered how often the Boy Scout routine worked for him.
If I wasn’t a wolf who knew better, it probably would have fooled me.
But then there’d been LA and Ventura and Santa Cruz.
“I have class,” I said finally, trying to get him to leave before I did something foolish like talking to a cop.
“You have the Ninth Grade Honors class now, right?” King said. “That’s the only locus we can find between all the students.”
“Well then you aren’t looking hard enough,” I said, but it turned into a mumble when King glanced at me.
The door opened, and kids started coming in little groups of twos and threes, the complicated dance of high school politics always too much for me to follow. They glanced over King when they saw him, and more than a few girls preened at the handsome man in the middle of their classroom.
“You have a sub today?” one of the boys asked.
“Hey,” King said, and he turned his brilliant smile on the kids. “My name is Nick. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
He wasn’t supposed to be asking kids questions, not without an appointed adult present, but I knew how cops worked, and he was going to say I was the appointed adult, so when he pinned one of these kids, one of my kids for something, his defense was going to be that I had been there the whole time.
Still, I hesitated. He was a cop. He was Paranormal Crimes.
If he was looking for some adult to prosecute for this newest TikTok Satanic Panic, I was at the top of his list. ‘Wolf Teacher Hosting Dangerous Biting Parties at Midnight’ was easy enough to sell, even if none of it was true.
Then I saw Bastian. Sebastian Rosetti had all sorts of tags on his file: Foster Care, a 504 with accommodations for trauma and PTSD, and protective orders preventing everyone from his parents to several very powerful alchemists from getting within four hundred yards of him.
Whatever his history was, it had been bad.
He was flinching back, trying to hide from Detective King’s attention, and that was it.
Question me, fine. Ruin my morning, fine. But try to hurt my kids?
“You can’t ask them any questions without a guardian present,” I said, taking three steps until I was in between Detective King and the students. He blinked, both eyebrows going up, his body tensing.
And oh, crap, now I was going to be led out of school in handcuffs, and…
“We have the right to an adult of our choosing present at the time of questioning,” Bastian said, his words becoming nearly indistinct at the end.
King blinked, his eyes softening in the corners. If he thought one of the kids talking meant he had an opening, I was going to teach him different.
“Trust me, none of these kids are choosing me—their high school English teacher—as their adult. They wouldn’t even choose me to teach them English if they had a choice in that.
Until you have parental or guardian consent, you need to leave.
” Firm. Be firm, August. Because I might turn over and let Detective King walk all over me, but these were kids, and none of them needed the same rap sheet I had at their age just for existing.
Detective King's eyes lit with something, and for a moment I was worried I'd pushed him too far. His smile was so sweet and shocking, and then he pressed his lips into a flat line as though hiding it.
He nodded at me. Then he reached into his jacket, pulling out a gold card case and removing one of his pristine white cards.
“If you think there's anything I should know.” When I didn't take the card, he took a few steps closer to me, dropping his voice.
“I know that your experience with cops has probably been pretty terrible, but Paranormal Crimes in the SAPD isn't the same as everywhere else. I really am here to keep everyone safe.”
His card hung in the air between us, and he wasn't going to leave until I took it. He wasn't like me, about to place it on the floor and hope it got picked up the next day.
I took his card, my fingers keeping steady because I could at least do that.
I tried to look fierce. At least fierce enough that Tyra would have cooed at me as I walked down the runway. Get it! I wanted to be fierce enough that the rest of the other Top Model contestants would have shaken in their Manolo Blahnik stilettos.
He nodded again.
Then he was gone, and the freshman all burst into a hooting, jeering sound as soon as the door was closed. Even they were smart enough not to do it to his actual face.
“That's enough, settle down,” I said with a sigh, gesturing for them to take their seats.
“No, no, Mr. Bright! What was that?” Monica asked. She put a hand on her mouth and made a hooting noise as though I was Steph Curry and had scored some impossible three-pointer. “'They wouldn't even choose me to teach them English'?”
The whole class erupted again, one of the kids putting his hands on either side of his face and running in a circle in reference to a meme I was pretty sure they didn't realize I understood perfectly.
“Settle down,” I repeated, but now I was grinning.
“You went to bat for us!” Monica pointed at me, and behind her, Bastian slunk to his seat, causing the rest of the students to begin to find their own. Monica pointed at me one last time. “I'll remember this, Mr. Bright. You did good.”
I would love to say I had enough self-confidence that a fourteen-year-old telling me I 'did good' didn't warm something deep inside me, but I was a teacher. Student praise was the only bonus we ever got in what was an arguably punishing job.
Still, I hadn't taught high school this long without realizing I could never let her know exactly how much I appreciated it.
“And will you show your appreciation by actually studying for your next test?” I asked pointedly.
Monica winced and took her seat. “Is that your way of saying I got a bad grade?”
“It's my way of saying maybe don't fall asleep in the middle of it next time.” I walked toward the board, searching for the white erase marker that somehow always went missing.
“What was he here for?” Bastian's voice was so quiet that the entire class stilled, the way it usually did when he spoke. Something about him always made everyone turn to him, as though he was a gravitational force none of us could ignore.
I glanced over my shoulder, then turned around, walking back to my desk and leaning against it. “He was here because some of your parents are worried.”
The class went quiet, and I immediately picked out about half of them who seemed to know exactly what I was talking about. The other half looked puzzled, glancing at their peers and mouthing questions that were ignored.
“He wanted to know if I had heard anything,” I said.
“Heard anything about what?” Jason asked. He was broad-shouldered, on the football team even if he wasn't a starter.
“Anything about anything.” I looked around the room, wondering why it hadn't been obvious to me before that something was going on.
Half of the students seemed to glow, seemed to shimmer, and I wasn't sure if that was just my wolf eyes kicking in and showing me which kids in the room looked guilty, or if they were literally beginning to look different than their peers.
“But you didn't, right?” Monica pressed.
“None of you have told me anything.” And I hoped at least one of them would hear that for the invitation it was. “And even if you did, I'm not in the habit of talking to the cops.”
I didn't need to tap the dog tag I wore, even though in most places, wearing it publicly could get you fired.
Still, I waited, knowing none of them were going to admit anything in front of their peers.
When the silence stretched, I searched on my desk, found the missing marker, and returned to the board.
“Because 'nothing' is going on, half of you are going to be able to retake your exam today during lunch.
You're going to make that choice right now, not having seen your grade. In the meantime, we have two full weeks of class until Winter Break, so if everyone could take out their books and open to Chapter Three?”
After class, twelve students came up to me, signing up for the exam retest. When I compared the list to the students I’d had to fail, it was identical. Something was going on, and I wasn't sure I liked it.
Bastian lingered in the doorway, watching the twelve students, biting his lip, but when I glanced up at him, trying to make my expression inviting, he fled.
I shook my head. It was probably just some new internet game the kids were doing. The ice bucket challenge, only instead of dumping themselves with ice, they were staying up all night and seeing which adult noticed, or drinking an entire twenty-four pack of soda, or…
Only I was a werewolf, and I knew all of the dangerous things someone could get up to in the middle of the night, and I didn't like any of them.