The panic in her expression dimmed. “You’re a shifter?”
“We both are,” I put in.
Helen looked over at me. “You got sick when your twin did?” Of course she’d remember that.
I shook my head. “No. Last year.”
“And how is Noah?” she asked. I should have remembered the fact that Helen had immediately started calling Noah by his chosen name, no questions asked. Of course she’d be okay with me coming back with a boyfriend.
I sighed. “Currently in jail for killing our mother,” I replied heavily. “Although he didn’t.”
“Lord, no,” she breathed. “That little thing wouldn’t harm a flea.”
Noah absolutely would harm a flea, and he’d talked more than once about hunting squirrels and rabbits in wolf form, which I still wasn’t totally comfortable with, and not just because if I ate either one I’d end up in anaphylaxis. But Noah wasn’t going to kill anything with self-awareness, especially not Momma.
I nodded. “I know.” A pause. “Do you know what happened to my sister? Momma’s lawyer mentioned her, and I just… wanted to know about her.”
Helen’s expression clouded. “Not specifically, no, poor thing. She caught the virus, got real sick.” She pressed her lips together. “Your momma said she was doin’ better, though. But a week or two later, she was dead.”
I stared at her, trying to figure out if she was implying that my father might have killed my sister. Or that someone else from the Community might have, rather than the virus.
Helen turned and began moving biscuits from the cooling rack to a serving plate. “I can’t rightly say what happened,” she said softly. “The virus takes people sudden-like, sometimes.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Now,” she said, smiling at me as she handed me the plate. “You boys take a seat, and I’ll call Ray in to join us.”
Ray washilarious,but in the best-worst sort of way—dad-jokes and waggly eyebrows and wildly inappropriate comments. I couldn’t decide if I was sad I’d never gotten to know him when I was a kid, or if it just would have made me even more resentful and depressed about the state of my own family life and my apparently-homicidal father.
Ray was, of course, a ghoul, and the saggy right side of his face gave him an asymmetric smile that was far more crooked than Elliot’s, but it was clear from the wrinkles at the corner of his other eye that he did it a lot. And just as clear from the crows’ feet around Helen’s eyes that he made her laugh a lot, too.
It was also obvious that Ray was delighted to have company who didn’t seem to care that he was a ghoul. Ghouls are one of the rarer Arcanid types, and, unfortunately, one of the most loathed. Like vampires, their physiologies require extreme amounts of protein. Protein is good for shifters, too, but a shifter could get by as a vegetarian, while a vampire or a ghoulneededanimal-based protein. At least ghouls could consume meat—they tend to prefer it raw, like the bloody steak Ray had with his eggs. Vampires literally neededblood. They could also eat food, but theyneededblood. Something about the hemoglobin that I didn’t fully understand.
But ghouls looked a bit like old horror-movie zombies, and since people are people, a lot of them seemed to think ghouls were similarly dangerous and stupid.
I didn’t know many, but none of the ghouls I’d met were any less intelligent than the humans I interacted with on aregular basis—not that that was honestly saying that much, given how stupid most people are. Ray was definitely witty and clever, and had somehow managed to avoid talking to anyone in the Communityever, since I knew they condemned vampires, ghouls, orcs, and other Arcanids as sinners justly punished for their sins.
I wondered if the Community knew what my father was.
“So you boys gonna take the critters?” Ray asked, drawling the words. He didn’t have to. In fact, it was clear Ray had a lot of practice speaking around the more lax side of his mouth, and he didn’t have to drawl or lisp if he didn’t want to.
“The goats and chickens?” I asked. “I don’t think we’ve figured that out. Do you want them?”
“The goats, no. Those bastards’ll chew up my barn.” Goats did chew. A lot. On everything. “They’d fight with the ’pacas, too. We don’t need that many chickens, but if you wanted to offload some of ’em, I’d take a handful.”
There were about ten chickens.
“They’re yours,” I told him. “As many as you like.”
Ray grinned, and I couldn’t help but be impressed by his sharp teeth. Vampires and shifters might have fangs, and orcs have tusks, but ghouls have a whole mouthful of sharp teeth. Like sharks. It probably didn’t help their case that they were misunderstood and not dangerous, since they really did look like they could bite your face off.
“I promise I won’t eat ’em,” he said, still grinning. He must have noticed me looking at his teeth.
“Hey, they’re your chickens,” I told him. “Eat them if you want.”
That got me a laugh. “I’ll wait until they stop laying,” he replied cheerfully. Then he grinned again, a mischievous gleam in his yellowish eyes. “Or until they kick the bucket. I don’t mind carrion.”
“Ray, that’s disgusting,” Helen admonished, although I could tell she was also pretending a little.
