“Well,” she said, after thinking about that for a few moments. “I can’t say I’d disagree, given the circumstances.”
I’d thought it was a bit of a stretch, personally, when Hart had told me. Hate groups were things like the Klan or the Antiquus Ordo Arcanum, the Virginia cult who had hunted down and killed Nids just for being Nids and had nearly killed Ward and Mason a few years back. Personally, I alsothought that the Magic-Free Movement should have been in that category but—Hart had explained to me with considerable bitterness—because they didn’t actually publicly advocate forharmingArc-humans and Arcanids, they technically didn’t meet the federal definition.
I’d asked him how the Community was any different, and he’d asked me if I was, and I quote,seriously fucking taking their side. I’d responded by asking him who it was the Community was advocating to harm.
And he’d just stared at me.
“I don’t count,” I’d told him.
“I’m not counting you,” he’d retorted. “I’m fucking counting all the people who turned into something that wasn’t a wolf and wasn’t an Arc.”
I hadn’t asked any other questions after that, mostly because I didn’t want to know the answers. But those questions were still there.
What did happen to the people who transformed into something that wasn’t a wolf shifter or an Arc-human? Was Rachael one of those people?
Because I was a little afraid of the answer. What did it say about me that I couldn’t answer those questions? Was it because they’d deliberately kept that sort of thing from us, or was it because Noah and I had deliberately hidden our heads in the proverbial sand because life was already shitty enough without knowing the worst?
I hoped that the Community had just exiled those people. That there were only a few, and that they went to live in Staunton or Charlottesville or some other city far away from the Community and Scroope.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered.
And dreaded.
“Helen?” I asked.
“Yeah, darlin’?”
“Do you know anyone in the Community who became an elf or a faun or an orc or something?”
She looked at me. “No, darlin’, I don’t.” Her voice was quiet. “But they never did share much about their business with me.”
But at the same time, I knew that Ray had kept away from them. That people in the Community looked at him with both disgust and fear. What would they have done if one of their own had become a ghoul? Ghouls were pretty rare, even among Arcanids, but what were the odds that it had never happened in the Community?
I honestly didn’t know. Genetics played a big role in what people transformed into, as well as whether or not theywouldtransform. And many of the families in the Community were closely interconnected. Not direct cousins, exactly, but second or third cousins. Maybe that was close enough genetics that it made sense for most of the Nids in the Community to be shifters, and there were only so many European predators for us to shift into.
But it was also entirely possible that something more sinister was at play.
Who was I kidding? Of course there was.
Elliot had draggedone of the kitchen chairs out to the barn so that I could sit out there while he and Noah went through everything in the filthy structure, much to the amusement of the goats, who kept trying to reach out to chew on anything that came even remotely near their stall. It was a sunny day, and while the chickens were happily out scratching in the dirt under the sun, the goats thought we were much more interesting.
Or they were hopeful that we were going to feed them.
Lulu had begged Elliot to go fetch them a chair, as well, and had sat next to me, ostensibly to keep me company, although I knew Lulu really hated getting dirty, so I had the feeling that had a lot more to do with it. They were pretty funny, though, so I was enjoying the running disparaging commentary.
Elliot had clambered up into the loft and had just poked an arm over the edge, holding out some sort of rusty implement.
“I don’t even know what this is,” he called down.
“It looks like a medieval torture device,” Lulu remarked.
“It looks,” Noah said, looking up at Elliot. “Like a tetanus shot in the making.”
Elliot looked at me. “I don’t want it,” I told him.
“We should start a scrap metal pile,” Lulu said. “You can get decent money for scrap.”
Everybody turned to look at them. They shrugged. “What? You can.”
