Percy dropped me off at the gas station near the Covenant, and I waited until I knew he’d left to cut through the woods to home. A long march, I came out the woods and went through the front door as I adjusted my shirt and pulled a few leaves from my hair. The main area thankfully empty except for Knives, I went to the fridge and fetched myself a soda even as the werewolf walked over to me.

  “How’d it go with the hunter?”

  “Could have been worse,” I admitted, sighing as I rubbed my forehead and leaned against the counter. “I called The Lady in the car, she’s gonna need to find an excuse for some fucking security footage. Someone caught one of our victims getting murdered by a ghost on camera. I already emailed Allie some stuff to see if she can find a computer person to look at what else I got.”

  “Someone caught a fucking ghost murder on camera?” Knives asked, genuinely looking a little confused by that information.

  Letting out a nervous laugh, I shook my head and told her, “not the first time this sort of thing happened, but…it’s happening a lot more lately sounds like. The Lady usually just pays some film students to claim credit for it, or helps some random asshole who does pranks online recreate a video of something similar. It’s a whole fucking thing. Way Misha made it sound though? Just, happens once a year lately that someone films something they’re not supposed to.”

  “Don’t want to be in your shoes,” Knives admitted with a sigh, “you want me to tell Basil you’ll train him another day?”

  “I’ll be fine, can you just give me a few hours to cool off?” I asked, sighing as I rested my head in my hand, sipping my soda, “tomorrow I…I have a date, I think? I’ll probably be spending all day trying to investigate this murder and being paranoid about that.”

  “Oh, look at you, Cannibal, you finally asked Andrew out?” Knives asked, suddenly seeming overly interested in the fact.

  I had to laugh at that, and with a shake of my head told her, “no, just…one of Sigyn’s friends, Barbie. She…she asked me out, still not sure what we’re doing but I’m…I don’t know.”

  Knives nodded, resting their hand on my own as they asked, “nervous?”

  “I’ve never been on a real date,” I laughed out as ridiculous as it felt to even me to need to say that, “and um, you know, not with a girl. I’m…you know, worried and not sure what to do, kinda wondering if I should have said no.”

  “Worried about the werewolf thing? I mean, it makes sense, I know you have trouble with stuff when you get nervous, angry, excited… you know, heart pumping at all.”

  “Yeah, and like…I’d have to tell her about the werewolf thing one day, at least explain the tattoos, tell her about Martin,” I listed off, letting out a low groan as I rested my forehead on the table. “I’m a fucking mom, how do you explain that to a girl? And she’s like, you know she’s younger than me, I feel a little weird about that. Not the like, age, Purist standards the gap is a weird middle ground, but human we’re both adults. I…what I mean is she’s younger than me, Sigyn’s age, is she gonna want to date a girl with a kid?”

  “Alright, Mary, tell me this,” Knives started, raising her hand to count off the questions, “this girl’s in Sigyn’s class, right? So if you’d gone to college there’s a chance you’d be in a class with her.”

  “I mean, maybe?” I said, not sure what she was getting at.

  “Alright, and this is just a first date, y’all haven’t been dating for a while you aren’t talking long term yet?”

  “No, I did my first modeling session, she asked me on a date…I think.”

  “Alright, and you’re not currently making plans to move Martin down? Haven’t made decisions there long-term yet?”

  “No.”

  “So, think about it like this,” Knives started with a sigh, “you’re closer in age to Sigyn and her friends than any of us, you’re essentially dating someone you’d have known naturally in a normal life. You’re going on a first date, you two don’t have any expectations yet, use this as a chance to figure this out. Tell her if you want to take things slow, and tell her you have a kid so she knows that might be a thing in the future. If you’re looking for a second parent, tell her. If you think it’ll be a more minor part of the relationship, let her know. If you’re not sure, that’s still something you can say. Besides, some people think the single mom looks hot, and honestly if it’s a friend of Sigyn you have a better than average shot of that even if you’re kinda young to work it.”

  I nodded, letting out a small groan as I asked them, “am I still that young?”

  Knives chuckled, resting a hand on my shoulder as they explained, “just because you didn’t have much of a childhood doesn’t mean you skipped those years. Trust me, I was worried my life was already over when I was your age, and I had less reason to be worried about that.”

  “Thank you,” I said, a small smile crossing my lips followed by a final nervous laugh, “I…it’s going to be weird dating a half-one. I would have thought that was disgusting a year ago, and now…well, it still feels like I need to fucking say I don’t have a fetish for them, but not like I should hate myself for wanting to.”

  “Makes you feel better, I wouldn’t even think that was a thing,” Knives said, their face twisting in disgust and then pure confusion, “do Purists think that’s a thing? Human fetish?”

  I shrugged, not sure how to react to something so blatantly right to me as I admitted, “I mean, yeah? Why would you want a half-one if not, it’s like…okay that’s not a normal thought process is it?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Not at all,” Knives said, obviously holding in a laugh, “sorry I shouldn’t be laughing, this is serious. I’m just not sure what else to say to that.”

  “It’s fine, I need to go talk to Sigyn anyway,” I said, pushing past her as I started towards my room, only stopping as the werewolf grabbed my arm.

  The wolf let out a small growl, almost punching in response, and Knives quickly held up their hands as they said, “I noticed you lost your coat, figured you might get cold. Found one of Annabelle’s leather jackets, tossed it on your bed. Thought it might be good until you got yours back.”

  “I thought I threw that out last year? I couldn’t get the blood stains out,” I admitted with a small snort.

  “She had like five, I think she just got whatever The Lady was getting rid of,” Knives snorted with a small laugh, “every few weeks she’d come back with some designer bag or expensive jewelry or dress, I don’t think any of her jackets or boots were worse quality than top grain. We used to joke about the fact she’d be checking thrift shops for jeans while wearing a couple thousand dollars in clothes.”

  “Thanks for telling me, I should have my jacket back tomorrow though,” I said, knowing Barbie would hopefully give it back. That said, I finally left the kitchen and made my way to my room.

  Sigyn was waiting for me, still wearing the clothes she had for two days now as she laid back on the couch reading one of Misha’s journals with the other two laid out around her. Idly flipping through, she looked exhausted, and had an empty coffee mug laid beside her. Not even looking up as I came downstairs, the woman seemed to not notice I was there until I was right next to her

  “Found anything useful?” I asked, yawning as I laid back on the bed, tossing the movies id retrieved beside me. Lord laid asleep on the bed, across a red leather jacket, only looking up as he asked, how’s the investigation? And I replied, “bad, mind giving us a minute?”

  Lord complied, surprisingly gentlemanly, and hopped down and ran up the stairs to the main Covenant, scratching at the door a moment until someone opened it for him. Left alone, I watched Sigyn slowly set the journal aside as she told me, “he cut out a few pages from one, but other than that nothing else stands out. Did you learn anything?”

  “We’ll see,” I muttered, sighing as I rubbed my eyes, trying to work up the courage to tell her what I wanted to. She deserved to know, she needed to know, or else she was going to put it together later on. Percy had called me a Purist, she apparently didn’t know what that was, but all it took was one person explaining, Andy calling me a cannibal in front of her, something.

  She needed to know, and I looked up as I said, “you don’t know what a Purist is, right?”

  “No?” Sigyn asked, sitting up and leaning on the back of the couch as she watched me confused, “does it matter?”

  “You’re gonna find out one day, and it’s better you hear it from me,” I said, sighing as I stood and walked to the couch, sitting down with a shake of my head. “I…I lived in the woods for a while, that much is true, but it’s not like it sounds. I was…I was part of a group, they found me after I transformed, they…The Purists are a cult of werewolves.”

  “A cult?” Sigyn asked, furrowing her brow at the point, “like, cult as in how Greeks used it, or cult as in Manson?”

  “The singer?”

  “N-no, Mary, the…I’ll explain later, keep going,” Sigyn told me.

  I nodded, sighing as I gathered myself up and tried to explain, “they took me in, put me through their training, made…everything felt like it made sense when I was with them. I didn’t believe in it at first, but…by the time you’re done with the training you do, you know? It just starts making sense, feeling right, even when I wasn’t as bad as they wanted me to be it felt like it was a failure.”

  The half-one nodded, leaning forward with her arms outstretched like she was trying to hug me, and I pulled back. Rising to my feet I started to pace a hole in the floor, heart racing, fur wanting to grow, claws wanting to sharpen, and I tried to continue.

  “The Purists think half-ones, humans, can’t be trusted, that you’ll kill us all if you get the chance,” I started, the words suddenly coming back to me without thought, “in the way of their Great War the humans showed they had grown strong, that they could kill anything. Machine guns that could tear us to shred, gas that would burn our lungs, bombs to massacre us, jets of fire to burn. The Purists returned, and once we saw what they did to their own kind not three decades later we-”

  “Mary,” Sigyn said, fear dripping from the word.

  I shook my head, my chest feeling like a knot as I’d realized what I’d done, and clearing my throat I focused on my words. Trying to ignore the ones that felt natural, trying to be careful, “I was with them for five years. We…I got married, or you’d call it that at least, I had a kid, I was happy and I hate I was. We also…The Purists think humans should be afraid of werewolves, that we — that the Purists — are already at war with them. We hunted humans, we killed them, ate them, did whatever we wanted to do to them, and I was with them until Misha pulled me out. My…I know you’ve at least caught a glimpse of my tattoos. They’re Purist symbols, and Percy saw them and he knew what I was.”

  I waited a long moment, the silence deafening as neither of us spoke, neither of us needing to speak. Sigyn’s breathing grew uneven, nervous, and I smelled the tinge of fear in her sweat as she shifted in her seat.

  “Mary, this…this isn’t funny.”

  “I’m not joking,” I said, gulping as I tried to think of something to say, “I…I wish I fucking didn’t. I was a fucking monster, I-”

  “You ate people,” she said more than asked, her voice shaking as she rose slowly to her feet.

  “We didn’t butcher them or anything, we just…we acted like wolves,” I tried to defend myself, before realizing how that sounded, “Sigyn, you know me, you-”

  “You ate people,” Sigyn repeated.

  I tried to step towards her and she stumbled back, nearly falling flat back with tears in her eyes as she forced herself back up. My hands held up in fear, my heart racing, fur wanting to grow, I tried to tell her, “I’m not like that anymore, I…Sigyn please you need to listen to me, you need to-”

  “Stay away,” the woman snapped, the words like a knife to the heart as she backed further away.

  Her eyes darted for the stairs up to the covenant, wide with terror, the scent on her body, and she looked at me a final time. I tried to speak once more and she ran, up the stairs, slamming my door open, bolting across the floor. My feet moved before thought, and I was half up the stairs before I realized chasing her was the wrong move.

  She’d only think I was a monster.

  I was a monster.

  My shoulders slacked, my feet like heavy weights went back down the stairs where I sat on the couch. The slow thump of Lord came down the stairs, and the cat walked over and jumped onto the couch as he asked, something happened with Sigyn?

  “I told her what I’d been,” I admitted, feeling like I was going to throw up.

  She take it that bad?

  “She took it well as she should have.”

  The cat laid down, his head on my thigh, a soft purr of comfort as he said, she’ll come around.

  I nodded, scratching his head for a moment as I tried to have the same faith in the words, trying not to think it was a false hope. That there was some world where this was a rare reaction, where any human in her position wouldn’t react the same. Where there wasn’t a world where I didn’t deserve to have my head cut off and my heart ate.

  Instead I rose to my feet and told Lord, “I need to get punched.”