Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (21 page)

“Who else that I know
is a hidden?”

“Well, just about every
third student at Salem High is a hidden.” Disdainfully he went on,
“Dax and the Coppertone boys are vampires. Tristan’s a
fae.”

“Fae?”

“That’s what they call
themselves. They think it sounds cooler than fairy.”

Aradia snorted,
thinking how ironic it was that a jerk like Tristan could be a
fairy. Ironic, she thought to herself, and yet strangely
satisfying.

“Most hiddens you meet
will be fae, werewolves, vampires, or shapeshifters.”

“You said there were a
bunch more?”

He shrugged. “It’s kind
of a regional thing. Like humans. Most humans from a certain place
look a certain way. They talk about having different races
themselves.”

Aradia nodded, finding
the analogy helpful. “But all sorts of people came to
America.”

“And even in America,
anybody who isn’t white is called a minority. Depending on where
you live you’ll mostly have some combination of people who are
white, black, Latino, or Asian.”

She nodded
again.

“Hey, why did you stand me up?” Aradia
asked unexpectedly.

“Huh?”

“I’ve been wondering. It seemed kind of
funky, and now that I know about the whole hidden thing, maybe I
can get a straight answer.”

His brow furrowed while he tried to
connect the dots. Then he saw it. “Oh, the day I met you.”

“First day of freshman year, lunch. You
said you’d meet me, then you never showed. Where were you?
Something hidden?”

“Yeah. My brothers were chewing me
out.”

“Why?”

“For racing you.”

Aradia thought that over. “You’re not
allowed to take part in sports?” she asked, although she had a good
idea of what he really meant.

“Nah, we can, we just can’t go all out.
It’s not a hard and fast law. Honestly we don’t have many of those.
But staying hidden is the key. Running like that draws too much
attention.” Ashamedly he said, “I let myself be a showboat.”

“Hmm,” was all Aradia replied. She knew
exactly what he meant. Ever since that day, De Sylva had been
pestering her to join the Track and Field team. Of her own accord,
to protect her own secret, she’d actually made sure not to run at
her full capacity in front of the coach again. “Maybe that’s a good
policy. Okay, tell me more about hiddens.”

He continued dispensing
information. Aradia found plenty of it distasteful, but she
absorbed it all. One thing she found truly interesting was that,
according to Roy, he was not allowed to associate with other types
of hidden.

“Why?” she
asked.

“Because I’m a
werewolf,” he replied, as if that was a full and complete
answer.

“Before you said
hiddens in Salem are more progressive.”

“We are. We don’t wage
wars with each other,” he replied, quite seriously.

“You said you
integrate.”

“We do. We go to school
together, some of us work together. We make an effort to generally
get along, when we have to. But we don’t hang out or go to
barbecues on weekends.”

“But why
not?”

“Aradia, I have my
people to worry about. I can’t jeopardize my pack by associating
with those who are not. I would risk exposing us all to danger!"
Roy answered.

Aradia drew away from
him. She said, "So basically, you are not allowed to hang with
other hiddens because they are different."

"Exactly," said Roy.
Aradia was silent. Upon reflecting on what he’d just said, he
added. "No... no... wait, it’s not like that."

"Then what’s it like,
Roy?"

"Well, um," Roy
hesitated before explaining. "With other werewolves, you share a
kindred spirit. You are of the same people. Even with different
packs, we’ve all got the wolf in us. You understand one another.
With people who aren’t werewolves, they don’t know anything about
you. They live differently than we do; they obey different laws and
sometimes disrespect our way of life. They call us 'animals' or
'mutts.' It’s just how it is."

"Seems to me, Roy, that
while we of the human race have gotten rid of segregation, your
people still practice it."

Roy snorted
disdainfully. "There’s a big difference."

“Yeah?” she replied
sarcastically.

“Yeah,” he said, anger
rising. “My people are segregated for good reasons. For safety, our
own and everybody else’s. Yours were simply ignorant
bigots.”

Aradia had had enough.
She was tired of arguing. Instead she made a mental note that this
was an issue she would need to confront again, when she knew more
and was better prepared.

She then got up and
said, "Okay, Roy. Whatever you say."

"Hey!" Roy snapped. She
shot a warning glare at him. He clamped his jaw shut and seemed to
suddenly realize he was yelling. “Hey, Rai, I’m sorry. I, uh… so
soon after a change, we can get a little heated.”

“Werewolves?” she
asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.
“It’s… well, it’s something you’ll have to learn about us, if you
want to still be my friend.”

She sat back down and
took his hand. “Roy, of course I still want to be your friend. But
lose the whole ‘kind’ thing.”

“It’s not that simple,
Aradia.”

“Maybe not. But make an
effort, okay? For me?”

He thought about it.
“Okay,” he agreed.

“I have another
question for you,” she said. “At the party, we were talking about
Dereck, you remember that?”

“Yeah. Sure I
do.”

“I felt like you were
keeping something back. You seemed dead certain about why nobody
was talking to the authorities, but I didn’t buy your explanation
for why. Was it a hidden thing?”

He nodded. “It’s… well
it’s our highest law not to let detailed knowledge of our kind out
into the human population.”

“That just doesn’t make
any sense to me, though,” she replied. “Humans know all sorts of
supernatural stuff.”

“Mistakes get made over
time,” he replied. “More recently, the hidden community’s engaged
in an active campaign of spreading disinformation. That way if
somebody finds something real out…”

“Plausible
deniability,” Aradia said.

Roy nodded.

“So you think that’s
why nobody who knows anything is talking.”

“And no hidden who
knows anything will talk, not if that information might lead the
police to knowledge of the hidden race.”

“What’s your take on
the murders, Roy?” she asked. “From a hidden
perspective.”

“I’m not really following too closely,
but look, it’s one of two things. Either a human’s committing the
murders, or a hidden is. If it’s a human, I’m not much help to you.
But let’s say it’s a hidden. Then you’d need to stop thinking of
this as a human crime, with human motives. The killer isn’t trying
to evade human authorities. He’s trying to evade hidden ones.”

Without thinking about
it, she held her hand up to protect her eyes from the ever rising
sun. Realizing what she was doing, she said, "Yikes. It's been
quite some time." She looked at her watch. “Double yikes. I need to
get going. Hey, do you have plans for tonight?”

Roy beamed. “You mean,
like a date?”

“What? No,” Aradia said
matter-of-factly. Realizing how callous she’d come across, she went
on, “Oh! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean plans like those sort of plans. I
meant, plans for when you turn. Transform. Change. Whatever you
call it.”

“Oh, uh, transform is
good,” he said awkwardly and dejectedly. “Or change. Either way.
And, well, I do. Have those plans.” He said the last bit
hesitantly.

Aradia did not miss the
intonation. “You do, but…”

“Well, I had
arrangements last night, too.”

She rubbed her arm
mindlessly and winced. “Yeah, we saw how that went. Maybe a new
plan is in order? I mean really, Roy, you could hurt
somebody.”

“No, you don’t
understand.”

“I don’t think I do,”
she said coldly.

“Aradia! You aren’t
hearing me. We have… preparations we take.”

“What kind of
preparations?”

“It’ll be better if I
show you.”

She shook her head.
“No, I have to be going. My parents are probably freaking right
now.” She had intentionally turned her cell phone on silent hours
ago.
Plausible deniability, right
Rai?

“Another time then,” he
said. “Like a date, maybe?”

More like a PETA
inspection of the zoo’s wild animal section
, Aradia thought. She wasn’t going to let another night go by
without being personally assured, one way or another, that he’d be
locked up. Out loud she just said, “I’ll call you
later.”

“It doesn’t work that
way,” said Roy.

It was later in the
day, and Roy was letting Aradia into his family’s home. Amazingly,
they were the only two there. Aradia assumed that meant the
SilverMoon Diner was packed.

"Oh?" asked Aradia as
she crossed the threshold. "How does it work then?"

The question had been
whether Roy only shifts on a full moon. "I can change into the wolf
whenever I want. It’s not a clear division between the me you know
and the me you saw last night. There’s some of each of us in the
other. After I change, I’m more wolf-like for a while. That’s why I
was quick to anger this morning. It has a mind of its own, but I’m
generally in control."

“So,” she dragged out
the word, not exactly sure how the phrase the next part, “you
wanted to bite me?” Her tone was somewhere between playful and
accusatory. For effect, she held out her forearm. She’d applied the
last of her healing salve at home and finally had the chance to
properly dress the wound. It looked neat and tidy, but Roy still
grimaced, knowing what lay beneath the bandages.

"No!" said Roy shaking
his head furiously. He led her deeper into the house and opened a
door to the basement. Aradia noted that there was evidence of
recent damage to the walls and floor. "When the moon is full the
wolf takes over almost completely. We lose every ounce of control.
It’s the only time we’re really dangerous. Any responsible werewolf
has a plan for the full moon."

“And your
family?”

“Very responsible,” he
replied, guiding her downstairs.

"So what about last
night?" asked Aradia.

Roy had never looked so
serious. “At first I figured I must have just gotten loose,” he
said. “So after you left this morning, I checked out the
place.”

He flipped a
lightswitch.

“Holy guacamole,”
Aradia muttered.

The lights flickered on
in a very seventies B-grade scifi creature feature kind of way. The
fluorescent bulbs lit what looked a lot like the prison she’d been
in only that morning. Cells lined both walls of the basement. There
were actually more cells here than there had been at the jail. The
big difference, though, was that here there were no
windows.

“Yeah, it’s a standard
feature in werewolf homes,” Roy replied.

“Major selling point?”
she asked in a low tone, checking out the area. “Or celling point,
I suppose.”

He raised an eyebrow,
not catching the play on words.

“One for each of us,”
he said. “Outside, in the wild, on a full moon, we might hunt in
packs, but confined we’d turn on each other.”

“Hey, what was with the
torn clothes?” she asked.

“They tore when I
changed,” he replied simply.

“Duh. I mean why were
you still even wearing them? You knew you were about to
change.”

“Oh,” he replied.
“Well, we don’t change until after sunset.”

“Right, you told me
that this morning. So why not take them off at sunset? Lay them
outside the cell, put them back on in the morning. Boom, safe,
done.”

“We don’t change until
after sunset,” he repeated, “but not always right away. There’s no
real way of knowing. Sometimes we change as soon as the sun’s down,
but other times we can go past midnight still in our human form.
Usually it’s around nine or ten, but we can’t know in advance. It
just sort of happens. And when it happens, it’s fast.”

“I’m not getting it,”
Aradia said. “Why not just strip at sunset, save yourself the
clothes.”

She saw he was blushing
like a tomato, but didn’t see why.

“Oh!” she said,
understanding flooding her. “It’s your whole family in here, and
you’re all wearing those weird, skimpy elastic
underwear.”

His blush deepened,
passing red of tomato, hitting that of beet. Talking to his feet,
he said, “It wouldn’t be so weird, but my aunt’s down here for the
change too.”

She returned to her
inspection of the room and its facilities. After a bit more
studying, she abruptly turned and looked at him from across the
room.