Page 21 of Crashing Tides

This is fucking blasphemy.

“Because,” I hiss. “I can’t just⁠—”

“But you can,” says Jane, stuffing her hands into her pockets, frustrated. “You wouldn’t have to worry. You’d just know.”

“Know what? If I’m going to turn into a tentacle monster or something?” I cross my arms, shake my head.

Jane lets out an irate groan. “Listen, what if you are a shifter?”

That stops in my tracks. The kraken thing was a joke (mostly). Those don’t actually exist, right? “Um,” I say, because my brain has frozen. I’m alone except for the sound of the rain, the whistling wind, the splashing of puddles beneath my feet, Jane’s voice. “I don’t follow.”

“What if you’re a shifter?” Jane repeats, voice firm and low.

“I… Have no idea how that works.”

Her shoulders sag. “Neither do I.”

“I—Do people just… turn into things? Is there, like, a process, or does it just happen?” Fuck, I’m so naive. I should probably know more about this. Shouldn’t have fallen into the human trap of keeping my head down and ignoring the world around me.

I mean, OK, so I never expected much contact with the magical world. As far as I knew, shifters mostly lived in rural areas on the western coast, and the fae were so uncommon that I figured I’d never even work with one.

And if I’m honest, my childhood was one stressor after another. Mom was neurotic, Mom was broke, Mom was inconsistent. I spent most of my youth trying to keep things as stable as I could. I was a good student. I kept the house clean. I got my first job at fourteen, working under the table cleaning old peoples’ houses for an organization desperate enough to overlook my age.

Then I was in college, finally able to live my own life. I graduated, got a job, a live-in boyfriend. And then Mom got sick.

I’d been in survival mode for so long that I sometimes feel like I didn’t know who I was, what I was meant to do, where I was meant to go. I drifted into relationships with guys who made me feel good, who gave me money and power, and then I ran from them whenever they got too serious, because at the end of the day, I was only comfortable as arm candy.

I want to cut myself some slack, but I’m ashamed of my exhaustion. Ashamed of my ignorance. Ashamed that I know absolutely nothing about my heritage, that I hadn’t even realized my grandfather was fae, let alone my own mother.

“I think that’s the case, sometimes,” says Jane, pulling me from my thoughts. I feel like a fish caught on a hook, reeling through the water, propelled by some unnatural force. “I don’t know any shifters.”

“And shifters are banned,” I add, sullen. It would be so much easier if I could just find one and ask, even if it makes me feel like an idiot and an asshole.

“Good thing there’s a library,” says Jane, her lips quirking up.

“Can’t keep you out of there,” I complain good-naturedly. But I’m tired. My bones feel water-logged and heavy. A pulse builds at my temples, steady and insistent. “I need to lay down.”

“Lie down,” she says automatically.

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, that.”

“And what else? Drink tequila?”

That’s not a bad plan, but I don’t want to disappoint her. “I think I need to poke through Mom’s notebooks again.”

Chapter

Eight

Imake an idiot of myself in History. Again.

It doesn’t matter how much extra reading I’ve done. I’m hopelessly lost. An outsider amongst a group of people with encyclopedic knowledge of a world I barely knew existed until last month. I answer three questions about the War of the Witches so completely wrong that heads swivel to stare at me in horror and sympathy.

After that, I keep my head down, my shoulders hunched, praying nobody looks at me. Dr Ward leaves me alone, but my eyes are stinging. I scribble notes in an attempt to look productive, but I can barely read what I’ve written—my hand won’t stop shaking. Jane scoots close and glowers at anyone who looks our way, but this only makes me feel worse.

I shouldn’t be here.

I’m numb the rest of the day. My eyes burn. My hand keeps darting to my phone, then retracting. Who could I text? Nobody in my contacts would understand what I’m going through.