The Diner was the sort of business you saw during the day and thought, “that’s been abandoned decades and out of business longer”, only to pass it during the night and see the lights on. A place without name, without identity, and probably without address if we were being at all honest. Something that looked straight out of the fifties, like it’d been lifted from the pages of an Archie comic and placed in the real world.

  With its silver and glass exterior, which looked onto the eternally glowing lights of the inside, the black and white checkered floor, the red padded furniture, it all felt like stepping into a different time. Even the waitress, a half-one I’d known for years now named Amanda, felt like she was from a different time with her blue diner uniform and blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. The woman smiled as I entered with Sigyn and she chirped, “hey, Bee, it's been a bit since you came around.”

  “Been a bit busy with the job, and been a bit afraid of running into Hunter,” I admitted, leaning on the counter as I nodded at her, drumming my fingers on the counter, “actually meeting up with Marianne tonight, she wanted to catch up with me.”

  “Hey, always good to hear,” Amanda said, smiling past me at the goth woman at my side, “and who’s this girl?”

  “Oh, this is Sigyn,” I said, gesturing over to the woman beside me, “she’s a friend, been helping me to get my GED. She was just with me, I didn’t feel like having to drop her off and drive all the way back this way.”

  “Well that ain’t a problem,” Amanda giggled, pulling out her notepad and pencil, “so what can I get you two cuties, Marianne and her daughter’s already here they ordered a few minutes ago.”

  “Rare hamburger, some fries, get me a chocolate milkshake,” I said my usual order, smiling at the thought, “haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “Alright, and you sweetie?” Amanda asked, looking up to Sigyn.

  “I’m really not hungry,” Sigyn said, looking away sadly for a moment.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I asked, a little concerned she’d give something away to the half-one.

  Sigyn thought on it for a moment, and after some consideration admitted, “what she’s having. You guys do strawberry instead?”

  Amanda giggled at the order as she wrote Lovebirds Special on the tag, the same order Hunter and I had made every time. She went to the window, hanging the slip and announcing, “Lovebirds special!” getting the attention of a chef who looked up with a smile only to have all excitement leave at seeing Sigyn. The man still offering me a half-hearted wave I returned, even barely remembering his face.

  I scanned the diner with our order placed, and my eyes immediately caught onto the woman I was looking for. Sat in one corner, their backs to the door, was a mess of blonde and gray hair. Next to her, someone I hadn’t expected and didn’t recognize at first, with curly auburn hair that seemed eternally untamed.

  My heart jumped a little seeing it and Sigyn barely had time to speak a syllable before I was rushing over. Brushing out my dress, I gathered up my courage and walked over to sit across from the two.

  Chaser looked as she always did, a werewolf in her seventies who had only aged to her late thirties. Her body, more scars than not, was a patchwork of old battles and long ago committed acts. Her left hand, right eye, a chunk of her right ear, and a good portion of her nose were all missing, taken by fire and silver. Currently she wore a pair of ancient looking cargo pants, and a tank top that showed off the hint of even more scars there, with the smell of blood and sweat on her.

  She didn’t concern me though, and it was the woman next to her whom I couldn’t take my eyes off of. Only appearing a few years younger than her mother, the half-one had a perpetually tired look around her. With curly auburn hair that went well past her shoulders and a thick pair of circular glasses and a heavily freckled face, she looked nothing like the werewolf. She smelled sweet, a scent I couldn’t properly identify, and wore a plain red dress that was relatively conservative.

  “Is Martin here?” I asked the woman, my heart racing as I looked her over.

  Gevaudan frowned, pulling her purse up as she shook her head and softly admitted, “no, I’m only down here for a few days, The Lady was helping me. I did bring some pictures though, I was going to call you tomorrow and ask to run them by.”

  The woman pulled out a small folder from her purse that she passed over to me, and I hesitantly opened it as everyone watched me. Inside, neatly stacked with each other, a series of photographs of Martin. Him dressed up, him playing in the park, in the snow, just various pictures all ready for the frame. I felt my eyes grow damp, and a napkin slowly put in my hand as I looked over to see Sigyn handing it off with a bit of confusion on her face.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my face as I shifted in my seat, “I just…”

  “You don’t need to explain,” Sigyn said, even as she looked at the pictures curiously. After a moment, some determination crossed her face and she looked up as she asked, “do you know what killed my girlfriend?”

  There was a pause, and Gevaudan forced through a smile as she looked at Chaser and Chaser defensively said, “I’m sorry if it was me…it’s not me though, right?”

  “Not a werewolf,” I admitted before Sigyn could get the wrong implication from the conversation, before explaining, “we…don’t actually know what it is. People are dying, they’re being forgotten, and we can’t find out anything more than that so far. Know it’s a long shot, but The Lady hasn’t told me anyone in the city can help me, so I figured check to see if you knew anything.”

  Chaser nodded, stroking her chin for a long time before finally freezing for just the quickest of moments. Not a long pause, nothing too strange, but just the briefest of flickers to her movements before asking, “do things seem to rot around it? Or, at least get kinda dead and moldy.”

  “How did you know?” I asked, frowning as I leaned forward in my seat.

  “I…I’ve heard about this sort of thing,” the woman admitted with a slight nod, and even Gevaudan suddenly looked to her lap with her lips pursed tight. The question of what was going on ringing in my head, until eventually Chaser told me, “I need to talk to you outside.”

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  I nodded, and we rose to our feet as we slowly stepped out telling Amanda we were going to be back in a moment. Chaser leading me a little ways away from the door, before she just rubbed her mouth nervously and stood there.

  Shifting in place and unsure what to do, I asked, “what happened?”

  “I…need to ask someone about this, before I go telling you the rest,” Chaser said, giving a small sigh, “give me a couple days, it's going to be hard to get into contact.”

  “We might not have a couple days,” I hissed, trying not to scream or say it loud enough a half-one might have heard. While I didn’t fucking know what she was one, she wasn’t exactly helping by keeping it ambiguous like that.

  “You’re going to wait a couple days, because it’s not something I want to say without permission, and it’s unlikely to kill anyone else soon,” Chaser said, the glare she shot me the same sort of one she reserved for Hunter acting immature in her presence, “you’re dealing with a ghost, probably died a violent death years before anything else happened, killed by someone who loved them. That’s all I can say.”

  “That’s most fucking ghosts,” I muttered, shaking my head in disbelief at her idea of advice. She might as well have fucking said I was looking for a vampire who drank blood, and I had to curse it as I asked, “why the fuck are you being so vague?”

  “Respect,” Chaser said flatly, all the explanation given as she rubbed her eyes in annoyance, “you’ll understand one day. I’ve burned too many bridges to not try and hold to that much at least though. If more people die, you tell me and I’ll tell you everything then and there, but I can’t do this wrong.”

  I nodded and, glancing back into the front window of the diner to make sure we weren’t being listened on, asked, “what’s Gevaudan doing out here anyway? Did something happen?”

  Chaser nodded and, looking away from me, the werewolf hesitantly admitted, “Gevaudan’s…she’s adopting my recent daughter, Jeanne, much as I hate to admit it. I have some old accounts from before I was a Purist, and my family was old by werewolf standards, so it’d go a long way to helping financially. It was a bit of an emergency, I’ve raised kids in the purists before, but now…we’re changing, and fast, Mary. I needed to get her out, and Gevaudan was willing to help if I could get her something to help with the bills.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, furrowing my brow as I watched the woman closely. Her eyes suddenly low, head bowed, looking like a dog that was yelled at more than the fierce wolf she was.

  “People are talking a lot more about what our purpose is, a lot of them want to go back to the tenants we were formed under,” the woman explained, pursing her lips tight as she could while she paced the a small spot of the parking lot. “If the Purists go to war I’ll follow, but you know well as I do a human wouldn’t be in a good place if that happened. It’s…I doubt things get that bad, there’s been uproars like this before that went nowhere, but I don’t want to chance Jeanne’s safety.”

  “I understand,” I comforted, hesitantly stepping forward as I hugged the woman tight to me, “I did the same for Martin.”

  Chaser nodded, and she held me tight enough I felt like my ribs would crack as she croaked out, “why couldn’t Hunter have been smart enough to leave with you?”

  I froze at the thought, feeling a little sick as the words echoed in my head and I answered, “I wouldn’t have left if I wasn’t forced out of them, and Hunter’s known even less of a human life than me.”

  “My fault like normal,” the older woman said, whether an acceptance or complaint I was sure as she stepped back and I remembered just why I had needed to see her in person. My eyes scanning her face, body, looking for any identifying marks, anything that bore a family resemblance. The idea seeming unlikely, disgusting to be honest, but a newfound doubt in the back of my head. She seemed to not even notice as she shook her head and continued, “Hunter’s decided to go through training again. My pack mates Tracker and Killer are taking him out into the woods, they’ll be putting him through his two weeks soon.”

  My stomach sank at the revelation, the memories of my own weeks hitting me even as I could only ask, “why?”

  “Because…” Chaser stopped herself, letting out an absurd laugh, “he couldn’t figure out why he was still fucking here, and he wanted to relearn. I caught him three times packing a backpack he’d pretend he was just organizing before he finally asked us for help. Couldn’t just fucking leave us in the middle of the night, couldn’t do one sensible thing in his damned life.”

  I nodded, a tinge of vomit trying to form in the back of my throat as I knew full well what he was going through. What he was going through because of me.

  It was the worse thing anyone could do to him, and the woman gave me no time to think about it as she herself finally asked, “Mary…what are you doing with your father?”

  “He found me while I was doing some side work,” I answered, looking away from her with a sigh. Trying to start connecting the dots, I started, “What I want to know is how he connected me to the Purists and followed that back to you. I never mentioned you, the only identification anyone saw was my tattoos and me saying I knew myself.”

  “No that can’t be it,” Chaser said, rubbing her face down with a grunting roar of frustration, “your tattoos I understand making your allegiance — former allegiance, whatever — obvious, but that shouldn’t have tied back to me.”

  “Why would a random hunter even know Purist tattoos?”

  “They’re old royal symbols, Mary, they date back to the eighth century,” Chaser answered with a roll of her eyes as she delved into her little history lesson, “during the middle ages werewolves branded or cut them to mark rank, Purists who still wear them tend to mix them all together. They’re not something an average hunter is going to recognize, but anyone who knows is going to know what you were.”

  “That still leaves why he thought to go to you,” I said, sighing as I braced myself to ask the final question, “are you my mother? My aunt? What the fuck are you?”

  Chaser looked at me in confusion, tilting her head for a long time before almost half-shouting, “am I your what?”

  “What the fuck are you to me?” I said again, feeling like I was going to throw up as I avoided looking at her, “I…The Lady told me my mother was a Purist, and I brought it up in a way trying to get to my dad. They thought I was claiming to be my old self’s mate, said Purists didn’t mate with humans, I said to ask my dad. Why did that lead to you?”

  There was a look of recognition in Chaser’s eyes, followed by horror as she covered her mouth and shook her head. We stood like that for a long moment, and I thought she might have been about to confirm my worst fears before she answered, “No…I’m not. I just…I’m not your mother, Mary. I wouldn’t have made you Hunter’s mate if that were the case, not when we learned who you were.”

  “Then who is my mom?” I asked, hoping Chaser would finally have the answer for me.

  Chaser stood still for a long moment, and refused to look up to me as she said in the least convincing tone possible, “I don’t know, Mary.”

  What the fuck did my mom do that no one ever seemed to want to even think about her?

  “Then why did my dad think to go to you?” I asked, hoping she would say something at least that would obviously slip her up.

  “We used to try killing each other rather regularly,” the woman admitted, “and a few times we worked together; he used to rather like recruiting help against the greater evil. It…would perhaps make sense if I'd know where to find his kids if one of them happened to end up in the Purists.”

  I nodded, and glaring the woman down I told her, “you’re lying to me about something.”

  “Just accept what I’ve told you,” she said slowly, turning back to me with a final sigh, “can we just go inside and eat?”

  I wanted to argue, wanted to fight, and instead I nodded silently. Today had been a long day, and I could have done with something to eat. For a Monday before a busy week, I had no fucking idea what I was going to have to do coming up. Maybe dinner could have done me some good, eat well now and think things over, try giving Sigyn some normalcy.

  I just had to hope it would work out, and no one else was dying.

  I fucking hated Mondays.