Page 48 of The Rut in the Road

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It’s not an insult,” she said quickly.

“I didn’t take it as one,” I told her. “I just don’t know what it means.” Although I was comfortable around Violette, I didn’t always understand her. That wasn’t anything new forme, since I was used to not always understanding people, but every time I asked her to clarify or explain something, she seemed to worry that I was upset or angry with her.

“Oh,” came her response, her cheeks turning slightly pink. “I, uh.” She thought about it for a little bit. “I guess like, old-school?”

I raised my eyebrows, showing her with my expression that her explanation hadn’t clarified anything.

“You know, like black cats and mushrooms and plants and shit.”

I’d been to Mason’s house, and while he and Wardhada cat, Peveril was brown and tan. They had some house plants and very impressive gardens, but I didn’t think they had mushrooms. “I—don’t follow,” I admitted.

Vi looked frustrated. “Like, cottage-y. Old lady in the woods-y. Lots of bracelets and crystals and shit.” She pulled out her phone and tapped at it, then leaned forward and held it out for me to see. The image on the screen was of a woman wearing a black broomstick-style skirt, a tied rope belt, crocheted sweaterover a shapeless dark tunic, several pendants, bangles, dangling beaded earrings, and sporting wild, frizzy brown hair and a cat on one shoulder, her dark eyes wide in a pale face.

“Ah,” I said. “No, I don’t think any of us is particularlywitchyin that sense.”

“Exactly,” she replied, nodding. “Like,I’mmore witchy than you guys.”

I smiled. “Yes,” I agreed, “although not completely.”

She grinned at me. “I’m too punk to bethatwitchy.”

I had no idea what it meant to be punk, but I also assumed that I probably didn’t actuallycare, since I got the impression it had something to do with style and fashion, so I didn’t bother asking. Instead, I smiled back at her in a way that I meant to indicate agreement or approval.

Maybe I’d done it wrong, but Violette frowned a bit. “Whydoesit matter?” she demanded. “Why does anyone give any shits whether you’re a witch or I’m a warlock or you’re a psychic or anyone else is whatever they are?”

I felt my eyebrows going up. “What do you mean?” I asked.

She grabbed one of the decorative pillows, squeezing it, her expression angry. “I mean all this… stupidbullshitabout the Magic Free Movement. People talking about how Arcanids don’t deserve rights. Howyou and Idon’t deserve rights because we have magic. Because we’reunnatural.”

I sighed. “I don’t have an answer for that question,” I told her, which was true. I didn’t understand why people cared so much whether or not other people had magic. Or why some people cared what kind of magic, whether innate or the result of an Arcanavirus infection.

I wondered if those people thought differently about people like Taavi or Zane, who had been born as what they were, rather than people like me and Hart and Mason—who had become what we were as a result of disease. I knew the more radicalMFMers certainly wouldn’t care, at least not much, but there were still differences of opinion, even within the ranks of hate-groups like the MFM.

“It’s stupid,” Vi said, her tone angry. “It’s selfish and stupid and bigoted.”

I didn’t disagree, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.

She glared at me. “Why doesn’t it make youangry?” she demanded.

I smothered a sigh, knowing that people didn’t really like it if you sighed at something they said. I tried to answer her honestly, although I also didn’t want to make her angrier. “I—I don’tlikeit,” I said, slowly and carefully. Watching her to see how she was taking what I was saying. “I wish people didn’t think the way they do most of the time, honestly,” I continued. “But people holding signs and protesting just doesn’t feel asimportantto me as… what happened at Tranquil Brook. What the Ordo did.”

She was still frowning, but she asked, “What’s the Ordo? And what did they do?”

This time, I did let out a long sigh. “They were behind Tranquil Brook,” I said softly. “But they were also killing Arcanids. Sacrificing them.” I let out a helpless shrug. “I just can’t get as upset about words and protests when there are people out there like that.”

Vi leaned forward, still holding the pillow. “But it’s because of people protesting and carrying signs and lobbying for bigoted laws that people likethatfeel justified in what they’re doing,” she said, her voice intense. “Because we let people publicly fuckingdebatewhether or not the rest of us are worthy of being considered people.”

Now I frowned, because what she said made a certain amount of sense. But it also made me immediately feel guiltyabout not realizing the same thing, and guilty again for not being able to be as angry about it as she clearly was.

And as much as I knew Ward and Hart also were.

What did it say about me, that I didn’t care as much about how protests and anti-Arcanid legislation impacted some of the people I cared about? Like Mason and Hart… and Raj, although as a shifter, he could pass—if he wanted to—as human most of the time.

And that made my frown deepen, because while I knew he was a shifter, it made me re-evaluate how he acted in public, thinking about whether or not he seemed to hide his shifter senses, whether he kept his surprisingly gold eyes downcast, whether he kept his movements more human-speed because he was matching mine or because he didn’t want people to know what he was.

And then I had to think about what I thought about that.