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“I call it the ‘monster.’”
***
We stayed at the kitchen table, and I told her everything. I told her about the dragon, Mallory’s binding magic. The sensation thatsomething foreign, something other, was living inside me. That it was violent and angry and powerful and strong. That it wanted out.
And that it was getting harder and harder to hold it back.
“Why don’t you want anyone to see it?”
“Because then everyone would know what I am—that there’s a risk I’ll go crazy and hurt someone every time I fight. And everyone would know that my parents’ big plan had a very big flaw, and that flaw hurt me.”
“Why do you say it hurt you?”
“It makes me crazy. It makes me fight like a berserker.”
“It makes you fight like a predator.”
“It makes me a monster.”
“It makes you a vampire.”
This was beginning to feel uncomfortably like a trip to a therapist’s office, not a casual chat with my boyfriend’s aunt. I didn’t feel good about mixing those streams. I walked to the windows, folded my arms, looked out.
“Even if your parents’ plan was a failure,” she said quietly, “do you think they want you to suffer? To bear the guilt over something none of you could control?”
“I think there’s no reason for me to add to their guilt when I can bear it.”
“Then I guess those are the questions you have to ask yourself: Are you bearing it? Or are you just getting by?”
She paused, seemed to organize her thoughts. “I think Supernaturals, because we focus on our unusual strengths, don’t spend nearly enough time discussing our weaknesses. I think we should all talk more. Be forthright and honest about who we are and what we’re feeling. If the clan had, if we hadn’t forced the younger shifters to suppress their anger, to hide their feelings and push them down, maybe we wouldn’t have lost people.
“I like you, Elisa. And I don’t want you to end up like that—pushing down your feelings, living for your anger, until you’re consumed by it.”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to avoid that. There’s no one I can ask. No book I can read. No screen page with information. I’ve found a few things that help—yoga, office work—that keep it quiet.”
“I think you have to ask yourself why you have to keep it quiet.”
I just shook my head.
“Have you asked it?”
“Asked it what?”
“Who it is? What it wants? What it can do for you?”
“I know what it can do for me. Violence.”
“You can do violence well enough on your own. You don’t need the monster for that.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” she said, sitting back and crossing her arms. “But even if it was foreign before, it’s not foreign any longer. It’s part of you, and you’re part of it. You’re stuck together. So figure out how to live together.”
“That’s what Connor said.”
“He occasionally has a good idea.” Her face softened with kindness, with sympathy. “I know you feel like you took a risk telling me this. I can feel it. But consider the possibility that I’m not the only one who wouldn’t judge you. Based on what I know, your parents love you, and they’d want you to let them help. They wouldn’t want you to bear something so heavy on your own.”
I thought about the talk I’d had with my father, how he’d been the first one I’d talked to about biting Carlie.
