Neophyte / Adept (41 page)

I shot ahead of her, but she seemed to have latched onto me.
All right. So be it. Play follow the leader!

My Mark was prickling. I felt on fire. I wished it would
stop. I had to get to the head of the pack. This couldn’t be good.

Three laps wasn’t very much time. I needed every second to
get where I was going. Maybe I was like a lightning rod, walking around; all
the spontaneous crafting... the smashing of lightbulbs, etc., blowing things
up. I looked back at Liesel.
I shouldn’t
,
I said to myself.
No
... I can’t...
don’t
blow her up...

Liesel rubbed my wheel again as we caught up to the next
group of riders––we shot into the piazza, one lap down! I thought I
recognized somebody in the stands, but it couldn’t be. The audience gasped. I
narrowly avoided wiping out. Liesel’s cheap shot nearly put me into the wall.
Ballard was nowhere to be found. He must’ve been further ahead! Winning! I
wondered if he was head of the pack? Then if I wanted him to be? Paolo was a
beta, after all. The Pack needed to be headed by someone powerful. In the
absence of Gaven, Ballard truly was the second-best candidate to head them up.
He was special. Different. Whatever.

Always with werewolves there were repercussions. There would
be certainly for whoever won or lost this race.

I refrained from any magic usage, even though my Mark was
paining me terribly. Such as putting Liesel into the wall. The Mistresses had
taught me patience––to not lash out in anger. I had learned to
control my desires. Maybe that was the point! To let slights against my
existence truly slide.

Leander, the kinda beautiful one, did something, then, that
was really nasty.
So much for looks.

It looked, momentarily, as though Berenice was out of it,
but she recovered quickly. As a group, we took a sharp turn, Liesel still on my
flank. I guess it was to be expected, the infighting. Romulus killed Remus,
after all. It was in the wolves’ natures to betray themselves, to destroy each
other. Gaven was so selfless. How had he managed?
You’ve got to fight, to win!
I was giving up being a twelfth. I had
chosen Rome instead of Ravenseal, a wolf instead of a witch, my gut for
prestige.

I decided to go! Just go! The Gambalunga hit the straightaway
and I left them all behind. Go! Go! It whizzed beautifully through the sharply
twisting alleyways. The Gambalunga’s thrumming engine echoing off the high
stone walls. It had gears I had never found before.

I turned a corner, in fifth place, and they were all there:
the crowd, and the last four riders; Ballard, Paolo, and two others. We raced
through the piazza, alone together. Ballard looked surprised to see me. When we
disappeared around the bend, Paolo flew into the two masked riders, Ballard with
him; they were grappling one another, single-handed, holding onto their
motorcycles. It seemed to be Paolo and Ballard versus the two of them. I didn’t
know what to do.

I tried to do the tire thing on the two riders, getting in
the middle of the fracas, but they just ignored me. When one of them put
Ballard’s face in the wall, however, I lost it. Sparks glinted off Ballard’s
helmet-top, catching in the slipstream off their racing bikes, and flew into my
face. It was like I was in a shower of stars. I watched as Ballard’s muscles
rippled. He fought against them.

Paolo wobbled.

There was a whooshing sound, followed by a hard thudding
SMACK!
, and he was off his motorbike!

I saw him flying through the air. He starfished. I narrowly
avoided running him over. I could see him looking up, shaking his fist at us,
as we disappeared down another alleyway.

Ballard’s helmet was all messed up. He took it off and
winged it at the remaining two riders. I heard it clatter a few times on the
cobblestones as we disappeared down the vicolo.

In my angst, I had paid little attention to these two, but I
saw who they were now. Blunt and Giorgio.

Two betas.

The only thing I knew about them was how much they seemed to
desire alphadom and the Headwolfship. Either their instincts were telling them
to murder each other, or these two were psychopaths. Maybe we all were. We were
about to break into the opening, when it happened again. Blunt was trying to
put Ballard’s head into the wall without Ballard having his helmet
on
, Giorgio helping.

“Halsey, don’t!” said Ballard.

It was two against one.

Something glinted in Blunt’s eyes. “Let’s give her a proper
welcoming,” he said to Giorgio.

The two of them dropped back.

Ballard raged. “Leave her alone!”

“If she thinks she can be in charge,” said Giorgio, “let her
prove it.”

They dropped back and came at me. I hadn’t planned on this.
Ballard let out a cry of rage. But it was too late.

We came into the piazza and a giant BOOM! sounded. Blunt’s
and Giorgio’s motorcycles went flying out from underneath them. They
face-planted, sliding across the finish line, their motorcycles on fire.
Ballard and I finished one-two. I had to look back to see them. Flames licked
at the charred motorcycles. What was wrong with me? It was pandemonium. In that
moment, I had seemed to think the words. I looked at the husks of the
motorcycles, paint curling in the flames, and felt sickness well within me.
Nausea instead of butterflies. I had nearly killed them. Worse, I had used dark
magic.

Stormr hamrinum.
Ballard was the new Head Wolf. Which was good––because I didn’t
deserve it.

Ballard’s fist was in the air; it was over. Blunt and
Giorgio were getting up, no worse for having escaped death–– But
their rides were wrecked!

They came to congratulate Ballard, along with the rest of
the pack, Paolo and the other racers belatedly crossing the finish line. It
seemed to drag on forever. Then why was my heart still racing? Like I was a
danger magnet. Or worse, mistress of danger!

Someone said, “No hard feelings, Halsey, huh? I thought you
did really well. Runner-up!” Liesel was shaking my hand for some reason. I said
something or other. Apparently the races were always this way, she said.
“Pretty weird, huh?”

Then why had I lost myself so completely? The rest of them
were over it––
no big deal
––but
not me. My blood was still up. Liesel was amused. “For a newbie chick you’re
OK,” she said.

“Thanks, Liesel,” I said.

I could feel it coursing through my body, the blood. Others
were coming to congratulate me. Giorgio and Blunt echoed Liesel’s
water-under-the-bridge line––when someone behind me
coughed
, unexpectedly.

I turned, mechanically.

My landlady was standing right there,
smiling
at me, with an electric energy in her eyes.

“You
very
fast,”
she said. “Yes, indeed.”

I think I waited for my mind to catch up with the rest of
me. What was going on?

“You’re a werewolf?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You need practice
sed
esse in silentium
. Shh with talk of werewolves. Very fast, very fast.”

The knowledge that my landlady was one of us––

“But you never told me.... Vittoria....” It seemed to clunk
in my brain.

“She’s my niece,” said my landlady. “You be nice to her.”

“Why?” I said, dumbfounded.

But Ballard came over to me then, and she melted away.

“Ballard, my landlady is a werewolf,” I said, in a daze.

“She must be one of the
old
Defenders,” he laughed, exaggerating the words. It was his coronation
celebration.

“Ballard, you’re Head Wolf!” I said.

* * *

Lia’s wedding to Gaven on the Lupercalia was approaching
like gangbusters; I had little time for anything else. The worst part was
Ballard was so busy. He and Gaven were initiating THE CHANGE, as they called
it. Gaven was passing the keys to the kingdom over to Ballard, his protégé.
Which meant I was never going to see the youngest Il Gatto in their history
ever again (“It’s official. I am,” he said). Instead, I was stuck with Lia, and
her wedding planning. Her train of baggage included me; I was to stand there,
and do that, and act according to her preadolescent daydreams of the big day.
No, thank you.
Wedding, this, wedding,
that. Lia, Lia, Lia. Which would have been okay normally, but I had things to
do. Sigh. Blank face. Sigh.

They walked over coals during Lupercalia, but I was getting
dragged through them. I felt like I needed to be in twelve places at once.
Maybe if there were more of me.... But Lia’s babble-talk was infectious. Any
high and mighty she may have had about sticking around for any noble reasons
was secondary to the fact she was going to be spending so much alone time with Gaven.
I started wondering about Wiccan couples. “Is there a marriage system in the
culture?” I asked. “Can people in one house marry people in another? Is
same-house marriage forbidden? What about marriage with non-wizards and
witches, Lia? Or eclectic witches and wizards, hey? Shape shifters, and the
like. Can
they
marry into Houses? Or
can they only marry each other, and non-magicals? If marriage, as we define it,
takes place, what is the ceremony
comprised
of
, who
performs it
? Who approves
Wiccan marriages? Is there a document of marriage issued or are the partners
marked, body and soul?”

Okay––she knew I was crazy. That look proved it.

“I would think a third-degree Head of House
could
marry two people, Halsey,” she
said. “But I can only tell you how it’s done for werewolves. The girl,
me
, is given a moonvase; that’s the
female symbol for werewolf. The boy, Gaven, is given a moonflask; the male.
Would you like to see Gaven’s moon
flask
I bought him?” She opened a drawer and slid out a small oblong box, fetching it
from tissue paper. It was crystal, the moonflask, with a gold stopper shaped
like a heart. “This is what I’m giving to him,” she said. Her face shined,
giving me the magnetic Lia smile, beaming at me like headlights.

“Lia, are there other werewolves in the world?” I asked.
“Besides
I Gatti.”

She looked confused by the question, putting the moonflask
away. It was very beautiful, I told her.

“Some,” she said. “But I’ve never met them... I don’t think.
Why?”

I was thinking of my landlady––and Vittoria...
If they were related, if my landlady was a werewolf... Then what the H was
Vittoria?

“I’ve heard of one group. The Benandanti...” she said. “And
there’s another... The Grigori. My brother would know more.
He’s Head Wolf!
One of the things which
happens is Gaven tells Ballard everything. Like presidents about Area 51 and
Roswell––he gets brought in on all the secrets.” She shrugged.

“That’s pretty!” I said.

“Do you like it? I’m thinking of vajazzling myself with
Swarovski crystals,” she said. She was off in Dreamland again.

So Gaven was telling Ballard the pack secrets––I
almost wrote
pact
secrets––like it was an ancient magical
passing on
or something; we had broached this subject before,
Ballard and I, and Gaven and I. There was more apparently to the werewolves
than I knew...

Lia’s TMI hit me then. I wondered who had told Gaven the
pack secrets, when
he
had become Head
Wolf? Maybe Ballard would tell me some of them, if I asked. I could probably
trick it out of him. But, no, I wouldn’t do that. Ballard would tell me when he
was good and ready, or not at all.

“Your eyes are so pretty. Like amethysts. Gaven’s a lucky
dawg, Lia.”

* * *

More bangs issued from Vittoria’s room. They weren’t so much
an annoying nuisance as a reminder to work harder. Pretty soon my Fledged
status would be in jeopardy. Everything seemed to have been pushed back until
after the wedding, including House Rookmaaker. I suddenly had a terrible
thought. Sometimes Wiccans getting together were called Houses, even if it was
just in their minds, and there wasn’t an actual location.

What if my parents’ House existed like one of these Houses?
In the mind only? It could be imaginary, couldn’t it? Non-corporeal? Was House
Rookmaaker fake?

The vending machine sounded. I peeked through the peephole.
Vittoria was out there, sweating profusely, guzzling an aperitif. It was like
she had aped my entire existence down to the Red Bull.

I was supposed to be the only Wiccan in Rome.

And, well, Lia too.
But
that’s it.

Vittoria went back in her room and the banging started up
again.

Ugh.
I didn’t like
all of these secrets. A part of me wanted to go ask Vittoria what she was up
to, but I knew what she’d say. “Mind your own business,” or, “Don’t be such a
Coriol
anus
, asshole.”

Was she my wolfsbane? I gave her the finger through the
wall. The next night was worse, like she was hammering nails into my head, or
something. “That’s
very
interesting!”
she said.

* * *

I booted up my MacBook Pro and typed in Benandanti, feeling
the headrush as the words came up, and the energy drink went down.

SEE BENANDANTUS | WEREWOLVES

For kicks I typed in my parents’ names into the search
engine, but KINSEY AND MAXIMILIAN ROOKMAAKER returned nothing. I wished I could
type in WHAT’S THE POINT? or HELP. WEREWOLF, RISKY returned nothing either.
LORENZO, I typed.

BOOTED FROM HIS HOME RANGE. | TOOK UP IN STROMOVKA.

Whatever that meant. Where was everything? There was no wiki
for any of this. A bang went off.
Vittoria...

I hissed the hated name, silently to myself. A lightbulb
exploded. It was my last good one. Why did she have to be here? Couldn’t she
just leave me alone, in peace?