Chapter Twelve
When Counselor Cooper told me I should get a part-time job after the hospital, I don’t think she anticipated I would have to explain shapeshifting to the management at the local vegan supermarket.
Beryl takes one look at my new form when I come into the kitchen to make tea the next morning and makes a call.
“This is what happens when shifters don’t learn to control themselves,” Beryl says darkly, eyeing my waist and hips and longer hair. “Chaos.”
“From your parents, is my guess,” Beryl says.
She’s right. When I open it, a familiar heavy necklace falls into my hands.
I instantly recoil from it, the silver chain as thick as a rope and the huge black opal stone the size of a quail’s egg.
I remember the weight of it from my childhood, the magic oppressive, making it difficult to breathe.
Counselor Cooper must have called them and asked them to send it. I glare at it with dislike.
“Fuck them,” I mutter, weighing it in my hand.
“What is it?” Beryl asks, nosing over my shoulder. “Ah. A shifter shroud spell. Just what you need.”
I turn the package upside down, shaking it, but nothing falls out.
There’s no note. They must have paid a fortune to have someone personally courier the shroud to Chorlton.
They always told me I had to be ridiculously careful with enchanted objects like this, yet they were willing to send it with no note.
Then I wonder why I’m surprised. Why would they need to write a note, really?
All their words still rattle around my mind as I look at the shroud, their voices roaring back: You will wear this until you can transform properly! I do not care if it hurts you!
“No,” I say, feeling sick as I push the shroud into Beryl’s hand. I hate the way the metal feels against my skin, sticky and weighted.
“It’s up to you,” Beryl sighs, holding the shroud between her fingers where it hangs ominously. “But it’s this or you find a new job. Or you pull a sickie until you can change back.”
I give her a deadly look. We both know I can’t change back and neither can I casually explain shapeshifters to my very human manager.
I sigh heavily. I could quit, I suppose, but I like having my own money.
I like saving and thinking that one day I’ll not need theirs and never again have to live under their roof or be forced to wear painful shrouds against my will.
“Fine,” I say, bracing myself as Beryl drops the shroud over my head.
The black opal is heavy with its own ancient enchantment and all it needs is a bit of magic, provided by Beryl’s twisting fingers, before I feel the magic of the shroud settle uncomfortably over my skin like a heavy sun cream.
When I look in the mirror, my reflection is the same as yesterday afternoon; same fey, slightly gingery hair, same pinched face with dull green eyes, same male form again.
“Remember, shrouds can only be worn for six hours maximum or you can have medical problems, overheating, trouble breathing,” Beryl says, dusting off her hands, cinnamon- and orange peel–scented magic sprinkling off her fingers.
Mr. Pebbles stands up on his wrinkly hind legs, batting at the blue sparks.
“Yeah, I fucking remember,” I snap, slamming my way into my bedroom. I hate that even though they’re miles away, my parents are managing to impose the same solutions they always did. No matter where I go, their message is still nastily the same: my body is not my own.
Work is uncomfortable; I feel lethargic and slow wearing the shroud of my old form, and sweaty, too, like wearing a duffle coat on a hot day.
I hate the idea of going back to Beryl’s and facing all of her questions about how my day was under the shroud, and it’s just when I’m considering taking myself for a long, lonely walk around the lake to avoid it that a message arrives from BBB.
Some college people are getting together for a drink in the Northern Quarter tonight. See you there?
I stare at the message. I want to tell him of course he won’t see me there, that these are the types of things I haven’t been invited to since my first year, when I was still basking in the questionable radiance of Carl Lord.
I could lie to him and tell him I have to work, but the grocery closes by early evening and he could easily look it up online and catch me in a lie.
While I’m hesitating, another message arrives.
Would be good to see a familiar face. I’ll buy you a drink.
No one has ever offered that to me. Not even Elizabeth, because we never really went out of her house.
Yet here Bastian is, wanting my company after saving me from a boggart, still barely knowing me.
It’s nice to be invited, I think, and Counselor Cooper did say I needed to make an effort to socialize with my peers.
Besides, isn’t anything better than Beryl’s hovering concern right now?
What time? I ask.
Seven.
See you then.
Despite my mind running a hundred miles an hour through all the ways I could potentially embarrass myself in front of my classmates, I’m grateful to be on the tram up into town, the shroud tucked away in my bag, the cool air on my real skin.
I’m still getting used to a female form again, the way men’s eyes slide toward me as I travel, and I’m grateful that I’ve worn my big flannel shirt over a vest top.
I know people from college will be full of comments when they see my familiar clothes are encasing a different body, so I make sure I’ve got my headphones on when I approach the outside seating in Stevenson Square near college.
The pedestrian area is full of Saturday-night revelers crowded into the clusters of metal seating outside different bars and restaurants on either side of the ginkgo trees: gaggles of girls in heels and short skirts out on the town; groups of lads shoved shoulder to shoulder on long Oktoberfest-style tables, necking pints; couples having a night at the craft brew bar with friends, a pug or a French bulldog sitting happily at their feet.
All these bodies and people, set to this shabby industrial Mancunian backdrop of red brick and bold political street art, it has a festive, anticipatory feeling, as if the buzz of the city center is electric and infectious.
I find myself lengthening my stride, standing straighter, actually getting excited.
But then I spot them, witches from college who have pushed together a bunch of small metal tables into a cluster.
There’s more of them than I expected, about fifteen, chatting in small groups.
And then they spot me. They look at me like I’m a street performer or a climate-change activist who’s tied themselves to the front door of Boots.
No one looks at me like I’m still myself.
More than one set of eyes is drawn instantly to my chest, and I cross my arms, thinking I’m going to have to pull out my old binders from under my bed, when Bastian stands up from a table on the end of the group, smiling at me.
“Lando! Here!” He’s raising his hand in that weirdly formal gesture of greeting that is somehow absurdly endearing.
I’m grateful to squeeze my way through the watching witches and settle down in a metal chair beside him, the drops of rain still lingering on it from the day seeping into the back of my jeans.
“Hey, I got you an IPA, I hope that’s okay,” he says, sliding one of the two glasses toward me.
“Yeah, it’s great.”
I’m not really much of a beer drinker, or any kind of drinker, since I’ve never had any friends to do it with. I take a sip. It’s sour and foamy and honestly reminds me a little of the taste of cardboard, but he bought it for me and that’s nice.
“Did you come from work?” He frowns, eyeing my apron poking out of my tote bag. “How did you manage that?”
He gestures to my different face.
“Oh, nothing, a shifter shroud spell,” I say, sipping my drink. Bastian’s eyes light up.
“Really?” He looks so eager. “Do you have it with you? Can I see?”
I hesitate. I imagine my parents bellowing at me, screaming at me not to share secrets with witches, but Bastian did save me from being eaten by a boggart yesterday.
Carefully, I reach down and withdraw the shroud from my bag, holding it in my hands under the table, trying not to wince.
The pull of the spell, still connected to me, is hot and prickly against my skin. Bastian’s eyes widen.
“Bloody hell, I’ve seen drawings in books but I never thought I’d see one in real life. It’s so heavy,” he says, feeling the weight of it in his hand. I’m kind of relieved not to be holding it. “Is it enchanted right now?”
“Yes, Beryl started it for me.”
“Who’s Beryl?”
I grimace, thinking the only way to say this is to say it in a big rush, to just get it out.
If he decides he thinks it’s weird it won’t change the fact we need to do the spell together.
Besides, there’s a good chance Carl Lord has been making nasty jokes about my living situation behind my back and he already knows.
“She’s in charge of the shared house I live in. It’s kind of like a halfway house.”
“Halfway from what to what?” Bastian frowns.
“Halfway from the hospital to … normality, I guess,” I say, keeping my eyes on the shroud in his hands, then taking it back and carefully putting it into my bag. I wait for him to ask more, but he doesn’t.
“Hey, I got you this.” He drops something into my lap. I jump and stare at it, rolling the small blue glass tub between my fingers. “It’s a muscle salve. You said you were sore last night.”
I undo the lid and take a hesitant sniff. It smells like arnica and eucalyptus.
“Did you make this yourself?”