So Wes let me have my first cigarette. He admitted later on he wanted me to get sick smoking it so I’d never pick another one up again, which is why he kept telling me to take another long puff. It worked. Fifteen minutes later, I ran outside and threw up by a newspaper stand. Then I started to cry. I was only fourteen at the time, but I felt humiliated in front of his friends.
I crouched down on the curb, hugging the yellow stand and crying relentless tears. I was too embarrassed to go back inside and I had no other way home. All I could think about was hearing them laugh as I bolted from the table, and it burned me because for a split second, I thought they had accepted me. Stuff like that’s a big deal when you’re a teenager—it’s your whole world.
There was one person who didn’t laugh.
I’d made it two blocks when Austin pulled up in his Camaro. He helped me inside the car without saying a word and drove me home. I’d always assumed Wes had sent him after me, but now I wasn’t so sure. In retrospect, there were a number of memories I had of Austin looking out for me, I just never thought of it that way at the time.
“Well?” Austin asked, setting the spatula on the counter and wiping up a splatter of pancake mix. “Unless you’d rather go somewhere else.”
“I need to find out if Naya can watch Maizy for a few hours.”
“Bring her,” he suggested. “If they still have crayons at the table, she’ll have something to do.”
“No, I’d rather her stay with Naya. I won’t be able to talk to you about certain things with her there. She’s been asking where her mommy is and I don’t have an answer. I just don’t know what to say.”
Maizy suddenly ran into the kitchen half-dressed with her blond hair in wavy tangles. Her pea-green summer dress was open in the back due to a stubborn zipper.
“Lexi, can you fix me?”
“Sure, sweetie. Turn around.”
“Can we go to the pool?” she asked hopefully.
“No, not today. You don’t have a bathing suit.”
I knelt down and straightened out the fabric. “What time did you want to go out?”
“Where are we going?” Maizy asked.
“Not you. You’re going to stay with Auntie Naya tonight while me and um…” I started thinking about all these aunts and uncles and how confusing that was going to be for her. “Mr. Cole and I are going to go out and talk about grown-up things.”
The zipper got stuck and I tugged it a few times, but a stubborn thread was wrapped around it.
“Here, let me try,” Austin said. He knelt down and as he grabbed the zipper, he froze.
“I like Auntie Naya,” Maizy went on. “She’s pretty, and so is Misha even though she hides from me.”
“What’s wrong, Austin?”
He was staring at her back. “What’s this?” he asked in a whisper, pointing to a mark on her shoulder blade.
“It’s a birthmark, silly.”
He leaned in and looked closer, rubbing the pad of his thumb over it. “I’ve seen that pattern before. That’s no birthmark.” Austin yanked up the zipper and Maizy took off.
“What was that about?”
Austin stood up and covered his mouth. His eyes were sharp and wide.
I shoved his chest, coaxing him to talk.
“I met an old woman when I was up in Wyoming. She was one of the ancients—a Chitah.”
“What the hell is a Chitah?”
“It’s not just Shifters out there, Lexi. Chitahs live much longer than we do and while they don’t shift, they have an animal spirit within them. The woman had the same exact mark on her wrist.”
“So?”
“Some are born into the Breed, but not everyone. Humans can be transformed into a Mage or a Vampire if chosen, but the rules are pretty cut and dry. Breed can’t have babies with humans. She told me she was once a human, which is impossible because a Chitah is born into their race. She said there are a rare group of humans called Potentials, and there’s something special about their DNA. She didn’t seem to know much more than that, other than they all carry the same exact mark.”
“I don’t get it; so she shares the same mark.”
“This changes everything,” he murmured.
Now he was really freaking me out. I stepped closer until we were just an inch apart. “Changes what? Don’t scare me with some old wives’ tale.”
“Maizy has the ability to absorb Breed DNA and fuse it to her own.” He looked down at me and I still wasn’t getting it. “When she’s a woman of age and beds a man, the first Breed male she takes in, she’ll become that Breed. No take-backs. If she stays with human men her whole life, she’ll be nothing more than a human herself. What that means, Lexi, is if Maizy sleeps with a Mage, she’s going to become a Mage. If she sleeps with a Shifter, she’ll become a Shifter.”
Now we were both pacing in small circles and cursing under our breath. “Why isn’t this common knowledge?” I asked.
“I’d never heard of it until I met the old woman, but some of the ancient ones know about it. There’s always rumors floating around and half of them are bullshit. Or so I thought. The old woman said Potentials come from human parents, and she thought somewhere way up in the line, there must have been a crossover of some extinct species. She was a little batty, so she had a lot of theories I had to listen to.”