Gwen never shifted again. She gave up her college plans and dropped out of high school. My parents objected. They pleaded. They even tried a threat or two. Gwen wouldn’t budge—stubbornness is a family trait. She found her own tiny studio in Medford and took a job at a pizza place near Tufts. And her mission in life became finding the right guy to get her pregnant. When a Cerddorion female gives birth, she becomes inactive, losing the ability to shift. Once being “normal” became Gwen’s driving force, she set out to catch a norm, with the intensity of a hunter stalking big game. Within three years, she’d married Nick Santini and gotten pregnant—not in that order. Nick was exactly the catch she was looking for. A Tufts grad who worked in finance, on campus for his five-year class reunion, he fell in love at first sight with the pretty waitress at the his old student hangout. Gwen was twenty-two years old the spring Maria was born. And with the birth of her child, she dedicated herself to out humaning all the human moms in her picket-fence suburban neighborhood.
Dad and I saw Gwen’s embracing of normhood as a rejection of everything that we were. Mom had a different view—after all, she’d made the same decision once. “Don’t judge your sister too harshly, Vicky,” she’d told me. “Maybe she’s not pushing her heritage away so much as she’s reaching toward something else.” I had no clue what Mom was talking about. All I could see was that Gwen wanted to be a norm.
Now, as if to prove that she was indeed the epitome of norm homemaking, she appeared in the doorway carrying a tray loaded with coffee and various pastries. All home-baked, I was sure. Gwen would rather die than have a store-bought cookie in her house. She smiled as brightly as any TV mom, kind of like Carol Brady, Clair Huxtable, and June Cleaver all rolled into one.
She put the tray on the coffee table and poured me a mug. We both like our coffee the same way, strong and black, but Gwen had set out a creamer and a little bowl of sugar cubes, complete with tongs. In the Santini household, appearances counted big-time. I warmed my hands around the steaming mug, breathing in that wonderful fresh-coffee scent.
“Gwen, about Maria’s costume—”
“Don’t worry about it. I overreacted. It’s just that I put a lot of time into the bride’s costume.” That wasn’t it at all, and we both knew it. She sighed. “I’m glad that Maria looks up to you. It’s just . . .”
“It’s just that you don’t want her to be me.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it crept in anyway.
“I’m so scared that she’ll turn out to be Cerddorion.”
“What’s so awful about that, Gwen? I’m not the only Cerddorion around, you know. You’re Cerddorion, Mom’s Cerddorion. If Maria’s one of us, so what?”
“Each year, she grows up a little more. She’s ten already. In a couple more years—”
“In a couple more years you’ll know whether or not she needs some specialized guidance. If she’s Cerddorion, I can help her.”
“You know, I married Nick partly because he’s pure Italian. I was hoping that that would . . . I don’t know . . . dilute my DNA or something.”
“Maria will be fine, Gwen. She’s a great kid. That’s what counts.”
Gwen looked at me dubiously. She was about to say something else when the doorbell rang, and the expression on her face changed to a strange combination of guilt and hope. Uh-oh. I’d seen that look before.
“Are you expecting someone?” I asked.
“I wasn’t sure. A friend of Nick’s said he might drop by.” She checked her watch. “He must have gotten off work early.”
“Gwen, you didn’t.” Even as I said it, I knew she had. No matter how many times I asked her not to, my sister was always—always—trying to set me up with a human boyfriend. She didn’t approve of my dating a werewolf. Can’t imagine why.
She got up and started toward the front hall, smiling sheepishly—but not quite sheepishly enough to hide her delight. “This guy’s great. His name’s Andy. He just joined Nick’s investment firm. He’s really cute—and he went to Harvard. As soon as you said you were coming, I called Nick and told him to invite Andy for dinner.”
“I’m not—” But she was gone. Damn. I did notwant to sit there and play nice on some blind date I didn’t even know I was having. So I did what any self-respecting, happily single woman would do. I ran and hid in the bathroom.
I closed the door, locked it, and leaned my forehead against the cool tile wall. How was I going to convince Gwen to stop doing this? The last time she’d fixed me up with one of Nick’s friends, I’d agreed, reluctantly, to meet the guy for dinner. When I got to the restaurant, he was waiting for me in the bar, sipping a Scotch on the rocks. I don’t think it was his first one, either—he weaved a little as we followed the maître d’ to our table. The way he stared made me feel like some kind of zoo animal. Before our appetizers arrived, he got down to business: “So you’re a shapeshifter, huh?” I nodded, and with shining eyes he took a rolled-up magazine from his jacket pocket. “Can you change into this?” The centerfold dropped open, and there was Miss July in all her silicone glory.
My last image of that date was Scotch dripping off his nose and chin.
Through the bathroom window, I could see Gwen’s kids running around in the backyard. They were playing tag, from the look of things. Maria ran very, very slowly, arms and legs pumping exaggeratedly, so little Justin could catch up and tag her. Gwen didn’t have a thing to worry about with that girl.
Muffled voices penetrated the door. Even by pressing my ear against the wood, though, I couldn’t make out what they were saying or who was speaking. I gazed longingly toward the window. Maybe I could climb out and join the kids in their game of tag. I’d even volunteer to be It.
I actually had my hand on the window latch before I could admit how silly I was being. I regularly confronted the nastiest demons in Boston, but I was afraid to be introduced to a norm in my sister’s living room? Okay, okay. I could do this. I unlocked the door, sighing. At least I got to be fully armed when I went to meet the demons. I didn’t have so much as a slingshot to keep Andy at bay.
As I opened the door, Gwen was talking, for some reason, about the heights and weights of her kids at their births. Andy must have been riveted. I almost felt a stab of pity for him. I walked down the short hallway and peered around the corner into the living room. Gwen sat on the sofa, her back to me. Facing her in one of the wing chairs was an elegant, for tyish woman in a taupe business suit. She wore her blonde hair up in a twist. Half-glasses perched on her nose as she wrote in a notebook, nodding.
No Andy. I was safe. I strode into the living room. When the woman saw me, her face lit up like a kid who’d just watched Santa Claus emerge from the fireplace. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Vicky, Gwen’s sister.”
The woman stood and extended her hand. “Yes, I know,” she said. “I’m so pleased to meet you.” Her hand was cold and a little damp. She shook hands vigorously and seemed reluctant to let go. I tugged my hand away, and we both sat down.
“Vicky, this is Sheila Gravett. She’s a doctor. She’s offering free health screenings to selected children from Maria’s school.”
Gravett—I knew that name. The woman watched me with intense interest, and a chill swept over me as I realized who she was. Gravett Biotech. The werewolf cloner. And she was here to ask Gwen about her kids? I narrowed my eyes at her.
“Why don’t you tell my sister the truth, Dr. Gravett?”