Page 89 of The Turning of the Tables

Most people think that if your joints hurt, you need to rest them. Unfortunately, when you have early-onset Lyme-induced arthritis damage, that just means you get locked up and stiff, so even more things hurt than usual. And turning myself inside out multiple times hadn’t helped.

Going to the bathroom was a sad, pathetic, limping affair. I had started forcing myself to get up at least every two hours to walk around the room just to make sure my hips didn’t seize and drop me on my face—especially because I was pretty sure that would trigger a shift. Or it would try to, anyway.

I hadn’t mentioned the pain to any of the nurses or doctors. I had no intention of actually shifting ever again if I could help it. For the last almost-three days I’d kept myself fully human-form, and I didn’t intend to break that streak. Ever.

Was this a good choice? Honestly, probably not. I knew that. If it had been Noah who was in pain, I’d have told him to tell a doctor. If it had been Quincy or Elliot or anyoneelse, I’d have given the same advice that Elliot had given me. But I wasn’t going to follow it because Iwasme.

If it had been Noah or someone else, they wouldn’t have a history of chronic pain. I was used to being in pain—everything else was painful, so it made sense to me that shifting would also be painful. Since I didn’t intend to shift ever again, it wasn’t relevant.

The fundamental problem with this plan, of course, was that, realistically, I barely had control over my shifting. I’d made it two-and-a-half days, but I’donlymade it two-and-a-half days. I didn’t want to shift ever again, but I had no way of knowing if I was actually going to be able to meet that goal.

I was going to try anyway.

Climbingthe stairs to get into Noah’s apartment was one of the hardest things it felt like I had ever done. I was sweaty, exhausted, and aching by the time I staggered through the front door and half-collapsed on the couch because it was closer than my bed.

Noah, making small noises of distress, went and fetched me some blankets and a pillow rather than suggesting I move. I wondered if that was because he could read the exhaustion on my features or because he remembered how godawful this was.

“Can I get you something?” he asked me, worry clear in his voice.

I grunted. I wasn’t nauseous, but I didn’t know if I would become nauseous if I ate anything. My body felt like it wasn’t mine anymore—it moved differently, felt differently, did prettymuch everything differently, so I couldn’t trust it not to rebel on me for no reason. It was like getting alpha-gal all over again, except with alpha-gal, they’d been able to tell me exactly what I could and couldn’t eat if I wanted to keep breathing.

This was a constant game of roulette.

“7Up?” Noah asked.

I changed the timbre of my grunt so that he would understand it as a yes. 7Up seemed a safe enough choice. And if I kept that down, then we could explore something more exciting. Like peanut butter and jelly toast. Or maybe peanut butter and banana. If Noah had bananas.

My stomach growled a little, but Noah was already in the kitchen. Hopefully he hadn’t heard. Even if my body was hungry, I wanted to see how it handled 7Up before I tried anything more substantial.

Noah must not have noticed—or was politely ignoring it if he had—because he reappeared with a big travel mug of the clear soda, a metal straw stuffed through the hole.

“You need to sit up, Sethy,” he said gently.

I made a grumbling noise, but let him help me sit up. I held the cup as he arranged pillows so that I could lean back against them. Then he went and fetched a fleece blanket, which he put over my legs.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, the first few sips of 7Up having helped to clear my throat.

“Anything else?”

I shook my head.

“Movies?” There was an almost-hopeful note to his voice.

“Sure,” I answered. I didn’t actually care, but if Noah wanted to watch something, then that was fine. Or maybehe just wanted something to seem normal—although whether that was for my sake or his, I didn’t know.

The whole thing was absurd to me. Three weeks ago, I’d been normal. Well, normal for me, anyway. A six-three, 220-odd pound human guy who went to work, liked hiking, and had a propensity for getting bit by ticks.

I’d dropped almost thirty pounds in those three weeks, and it wasn’t a good look. I knew, biologically speaking, that my new body required more calories than my old one had. I knew I needed more protein, more carbs, more food in general. The grocery bill was going to skyrocket.

And I was going to be harder to deal with as a shifter than Noah, for instance, because I was limited in terms of what I could eat. I was already getting sick of chicken, turkey was only marginally different—or maybe it would be more different to my new palette, I didn’t know—and fish was expensive if you weren’t eating tuna from a can. I didn’t mind canned tuna, but I was going to get sick of that quickly, too.

Becoming a shifter might not have been so bad if it had gotten rid of the alpha-gal, but they’d taken blood to check, since nobody at the hospital knew how Arcana would interact with alpha-gal. Not at all, apparently, which was good in the sense that I at least wasn’t now allergic to myself, but bad in that I now had both. Well, okay. Ihavealpha-gal and Iaman Arcanid.

Shit.

It was the first time I’d actually thought it to myself.I am an Arcanid.