Chapter 8 #3
Raj had the right to live his life how he chose.
To share—or not—the fact that he was a shifter with whom he chose to.
But it also felt weird to think about the fact that he might not feel comfortable being himself around other people.
And the fact that I hadn’t noticed made me wonder whether or not he felt comfortable fully being himself around me.
“Earth to Rayn,” my sister said, pulling me out of my thoughts with a start. She sounded slightly annoyed.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I was just thinking about what it must be like for Raj to have to decide whether or not to hide his shifter identity from people.”
Her expression smoothed out a little. “And he shouldn’t have to,” she said, her voice still intense, but less than it had been. “There shouldn’t need to be a reason to worry—whether he’s a shifter or not shouldn’t matter. Not really.”
I grimaced, because while I did agree with her in principle, I also knew that wasn’t how things worked—and not just because of bigotry. “Shifters are different,” I said softly. “Not worse, but different. You can’t just pretend they’re human any more than you can pretend any of us is human.”
Violette’s expression darkened. “The fuck does that mean?” she demanded.
“We need things to be different,” I told her, trying to explain.
“In the same way that it’s harder for me to interact with things that other people touch…
I don’t want to have to constantly block out thoughts.
I’d rather be able to know that I can get clothes or dishes or something that won’t have other people’s memories attached to them.
If you pretend that I’m just a normie human, then I have to constantly deal with that. ”
Vi’s face was screwed up in concentration as she considered what I was saying, her hands twisting the corners of the pillow.
Something I would never do to someone else’s pillow because I’d worry about what thoughts had been left behind on it.
My hands didn’t fidget. They stayed on my thighs because I knew they’d be safe there.
“Shifters are the same,” I continued. “Raj needs more food, more protein than humans do. He has much stronger senses, so things like strong perfume or aftershave are irritating.” He’d once told me he liked the fact that I didn’t use aftershave because it meant I didn’t smell like a chemical scent factory.
It was the first time I’d thought about that, and I was glad that I was too cheap to buy any—and that as long as I was dating him, I wouldn’t need to ever think about it.
There were other things I wasn’t going to mention—the fact that strong emotions might make his eyes turn even more gold and his teeth lengthen, for instance.
Things that he might not want other people to know, and which could put him at risk if the wrong person saw them.
Arcanids like Hart or Mason had less choice—people knew exactly what they were just by looking at them.
And people assumed things based on that.
Stereotyped them. Judged them. None of which was fair, but they were different.
All Arcanids needed more food than humans did—their magic gave them higher metabolisms. But Hart had to eat vegetarian because he was an elf.
“I know that,” Vi replied. “But that doesn’t mean they have to be treated differently.”
“Except it does,” I replied, trying to get her to understand. “It doesn’t mean they should have laws made against them, but their bodies work differently, and their needs aren’t the same as a normie human’s, so they do need to be treated differently. Not badly, just differently.”
She wrinkled her nose. “But different is always better or worse,” she said, clearly unhappy about it. “It’s never just different.”
I couldn’t really argue with her. What little I knew of history said she was right.
The place Violette demanded we go to for dinner was a pizza place that clearly thought of itself as gourmet and hip, but was also just as clearly a chain.
It smelled good, though. The place was decently crowded, and we were taken out to a patio in the back with wrought-iron chairs and tables under a pergola hung with vines.
Vi ordered a sweet tea and mozzarella sticks to start, and I got myself a lemonade, despite the fact that the server was clearly trying to get me to buy a beer.
“Do you not drink?” she asked. “Or is it cuz you’re driving back?”
“I—don’t usually,” I replied. “Drink.”
“Oh,” she said, her cheeks flushing a little. “Why?” Then, a beat later, before I had a chance to answer. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
I shrugged because I didn’t mind. “Anything that might make it harder for me to control my psychic abilities isn’t something I’m interested in,” I replied.
“Oh.” She thought about that for a few seconds. “Will you tell me what it’s like?” she asked. “Being psychic? I—I didn’t ask before because I thought it might be rude, but—” She shrugged. “I’m curious, if you don’t mind telling me.”
I pushed a brief smile onto my lips as a way to reassure her that I wasn’t upset or annoyed with her for asking.
“It’s almost like hearing someone’s voice in your head—except not in their voice—narrating whatever it was they were thinking about when they were last touching whatever it is I’m touching. ”
“Whoa. Weird.” She flushed a little. “I mean. I assumed it would be like, visions, or something.”
I nodded. “Some people do see visions,” I replied. “But not me.”
“Huh.”
We both fell silent as the server delivered our drinks, then scooted off when we assured her we didn’t need anything else.
“Why do you think that is?” Vi asked. “That some people see visions, but you hear voices. Sort of.” She flushed again. “You know what I mean.”
I smiled. “I don’t actually know for sure—nobody does, at least according to the research I did for my history of psychic abilities paper last year.
I’d guess it’s just like anything else, that people’s brains work differently.
If someone’s a visual learner, they see visions.
” I shrugged. “I’m more an audio sort of person, so I hear them. ”
Vi nodded over the rim of her sweet tea, then set it down. “That makes sense. Hasn’t anybody studied it or something?”
“Not much, actually. I mean, sure, there are studies, but sometimes people still get told they’re the wrong thing after they change.
Ward had a case a while ago where somebody thought they were a medium, but they were actually a past seer—but because they only saw murders, they assumed it was the dead communicating with them. ”
Violette’s eyes were wide. “Whoa,” she murmured. “I—don’t think I’d like that much.”
“No,” I agreed. I didn’t continue the thought—that experiencing someone else’s murder was pretty awful, although I imagined it was more awful if it was actually your own murder. Since I hadn’t actually died, I couldn’t say for certain, but my own almost-murder had been bad enough.
The server came by again, dropping off our fried cheese sticks. Vi immediately grabbed one, blowing on it a little before taking a tentative bite off the end.
“Oooo,” she mumbled around the bite. “Hot.”
I could see the steam rising off the plate, but I thought it might have been a little paternalistic to point it out, so I didn’t, nodding instead.
She chewed quickly, swallowing a gulp of tea to soothe her probably already-burnt tongue or roof of her mouth. “I always do that,” she said, looking a little sheepish. “Every time. Even though I know better.” She let out a little laugh. “Humans are so stupid.”
I smiled back. As usual, she wasn’t wrong. “Raj says that we’re creatures of appetite,” I told her. “And that we’re driven by food.”
Both of her brows went up. “I’m not sure he was talking about that kind of appetite,” she said, her tone of voice almost like sarcasm, but not quite.
I frowned at her. “What kind, then?” I asked.
She grinned at me. “The bom-chicka-wow-wow kind.” She half-sang the words.
Her answer hadn’t clarified anything at all. “The what?”
“You know,” she said, waving one hand. “Bom-chicka-wow-wow. Like—” Her cheeks were bright red and she didn’t meet my eyes. “Sexy-times.”
Oh. I felt my cheeks heat up as a blush flared across them.
I wondered whether or not Raj had actually meant that, or if he’d been talking about food, as I’d assumed.
Or both, possibly, since I knew that was a thing people did—talk about two things simultaneously—although I generally missed at least one of those levels.
Was that why Raj had taken our physical relationship so slowly? Because I’d missed the innuendo and he thought I wasn’t interested?
“Maybe,” was what I said out loud to Vi.
“And we are now totally changing the topic of conversation,” she said, picking up her mozzarella stick again and taking a bigger bite now that it had cooled down. “Because you’re my brother, and ew.”
I left late enough that the traffic was mostly clear, a straight shot once I got on the highway all the way back to Richmond. It gave me time to think about a lot of things, although I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not, given the things I kept coming back to.
Vi had come back to talking about the MFM over dinner, which made sense, since she was going to be working gigs just like the rest of us to provide if not extra ‘security,’ exactly, then at least one more person who could call for help if things started to go wrong.
Since she’d not actually officially started working at Beyond the Veil yet—her first day would be Monday—she had a million questions about Ward, Mason, Beck, what we did, what a séance was like, and so on.
I’d tried to answer all of them, but there had been more than a few things I’d had to tell her to ask Ward or Mason.