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16
MIA
I’ve never been more relieved to see a crowd in my life. They’re gawking at the four beasts lying by the lake and whispering, and it’s a mind-twist, knowing who the beasts really are.
My four boys. Their animal form is shocking and terrifying, magnificent and sleek. Otherworldly. The evidence of their magical nature was never this obvious, this manifest. It makes my eyes burn and my throat close, because it’s beautiful, they are beautiful, but they didn’t reach this form on their own. They were forced into it, dragged into it against their will, and though I said I will help them, Ophelia is right: I’m not sure I know how.
I only know I have to try.
And I won’t let these people prod them and touch them and hit them, or whatever it is they want to do. Tie them up and carry them away, perhaps. Kill them.
I step in front of the crowd and they stop. I recognize many of them. I’ve summoned them during my training, talked to them. They assured me they wanted to help me rescue the boys.
“Mia,” one of them says and I turn to see Percy. “It’s them, isn’t it? There’s all these wild rumors flying about, but these animals… They correspond to their family crests, the emblems of their Houses. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“You’re right.” I hold his gaze and I see him pale.
“They actually shifted?” he hisses. Obviously he’d hoped to be proven wrong about this.
Same here.
“Ophelia was rushing through a ritual and pulled on their magic too hard,” I say. “She…” I turn back only to find that Ophelia is gone. Vanessa is frowning at the spot where Ophelia had stood moments ago, too. “Great.”
“We have to help them return to their human form,” Percy says.
“I don’t know how,” I admit.
“You must have an idea.”
“I read books and cryptic messages in Ophelia’s diary. I may have an idea but there’s no guarantee it will work.”
“No guarantee is better than nothing,” he says bleakly, and I guess he’s right.
“We could wait for them to regain their form on their own. Jason was right when he said they should have tried to shift, that the best way to learn is to practice with someone who has done it before, someone who can guide you back, and I…”
“You’re rambling. You’re terrified,” he says. “And you’re no shifter so you don’t really know what to do.”
“But we are,” Elijah says, breaking off from the group of werewolves and approaching us. “And once we bring Jason back, then he can help, too.”
“Okay. Good enough. Sounds like a plan.” And I’m desperate enough to grasp on any straw.
“What else do you know?” Percy asks me. “Are there spells to help them return to their human forms?”
“Folklore says you have to put them back in their clothes. Dress them. Kind of hard to do, isn’t it?” I think about it, rubbing my brow. “I guess it’s about returning them to humankind or returning their humanity to them, reminding them of it. Soothing them. Talking to them. As you’d do with a coma patient. Bringing them back through the veil, helping them cross back over to our kind.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Nothing about caring for someone is simple,” I say quietly.
“Yeah, clothes… are out of the question,” Elijah says. “Have you seen their size?”
“Then we do the rest. Call the head of each group. Too many people will overwhelm them. One of each race, the one they know best. The one who cares for them the most. Go.”
“Yes, Vasilissa.” Elijah sketches a small bow and I’m already turning away before his words sink in.
By the time I turn back to correct him, he’s already walking back to the crowd, calling for Anala and Az, while Percy calls for his vamps to push everyone else back, call them off, tell them to leave.
Good luck with that, I think, seeing the excited, curious faces, when all your races except the wolves rejected your elemental nature so thoroughly that shifting seems unthinkable and now everyone wants to gawk at the monsters.
