Early afternoon. Manhattan, New York.


Their plane touches down in LaGuardia between nine-thirty and ten. The window shows a sea of tarmac, smooth and black. Above, the sky is a swatch of endless, infinite blue.

In the terminal, Shona blinks into the cold morning light. Everything is bright and neat and clean, albeit in a sterile sort of way, with a thrum of white noise humming in the background. Behind her Rick sways on his feet, rumpled from sleep, still green from the descent.

“Sh’na?”

She releases a breath, like she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it.  “Yeah, sorry. Taxi, taxi–”

She takes his hand. The car is small, almost stifling, for someone used to floo and flight, but before they turn on Grand Central Parkway Rick rests against the window, out like a light.

Their apartment is kind of small, since it’s in Bowery. The front door immediately leads into a hallway, but it’s a narrow strip, one that doesn’t last long. The kitchen has its own space, though there’s barely enough room for one person to navigate, much less two. The dining table seats three, but only if someone pulls up a chair, since it was pushed up against the half-wall that separates the kitchen from the living space – which consists of a loveseat, another one shaped like a mattress, a coffee table and a bulky, dark grey box sitting in a bookcase.

Only the windows keep it from being stifling, because there are four of them, side by side, and at least three of them actually open. The bedrooms barely fit a twin-sized mattress, a dresser and a desk, but they do; Rick picks the one at the end of the hall. There are four closets total. All the lights work. There’s even a bowl by the door for their keys.

It’s fine. It’s not great, but it’s – fine.

But because Shona declared herself when she filed their passports, they don’t have long to settle in; before either of them can make so much as a sandwich, there’s a knock on the door. Peering into the peephole reveals a harried expression in government grey, clutching a briefcase.

When Rick doesn’t answer the door immediately, the man pushes back his sleeve to look at his watch. He looks back at the door – the peephole, Rick realizes, recoiling – and frowns, pushing up to his toes.

“Shona Donovan? My name is Michael Snoxall-”

Rick shoots his sister an exasperated look. Shona lifts her brows in warning.

“–with the Congressional Werewolf – oh!”

The official is a thin, reedy man with a weak chin, mouse brown hair and a sallow complexion. Rick leans against the doorframe, arms folded and bored expression in place. He is only seventeen – not yet eighteen and won’t be for weeks yet – but he hasn’t shaven in days and he knows how that looks. He shifts slightly, pushing his arms more securely under his chest and heaves a sigh. The thin fabric of his tank top stretches.

Behind thick frame glasses, watery blue eyes track its movement. Twin spots of color appear, turning cheeks a sharp pink. Rick knows this because he watches this all very, very keenly. He is careful not to scent the man, though he very much wants to.

“…the Congressional… Congressional, um, Werewolf Commission-”

Rick smirks. A second later he is sharply jabbed in the side, too low and too fast for Mr. Snoxall to see.

“Hello, hi,” says Shona breathlessly, nearly hanging between door and doorframe before she straightens. She grabs the man’s hand and pumps it vigorously.  “I’m Shona, sorry to make you wait, we only just arrived, would you like to come in?”

She is still shaking his hand. Mr. Snoxall looks down at their joined hands like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.  “Erm. Yes?”

Out of sight – where he’s rubbing his side – Rick snorts. He scuttles away before she can strike again.

“Great!” she says, yanking the official inside.  “I was just about to make lunch.”

And because there isn’t anything for them to eat, much less serve a guest (however unwanted), Rick is promptly kicked out of the apartment, armed with little more than cash, the clothes on his back and an imperative to find something ‘not shitty.’

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’s the one who dips her crab rangoons in tabasco sauce and vinegar. He whips around, just in time to see the door slam, and glares. He knows it has more to do with her not wanting him to be around for whatever the official has to say than him making a hostile nuisance of himself (which he would have, he isn’t ashamed to admit it), but it doesn’t make him feel better. Still, almost an hour later he does return, laden with enough takeout to last them for a week.

He enters the apartment quietly. He sets the bags on the counter just as quietly. He watches them sit on the couch, backs to him, talking about safehouses and check-ins, and lets the keys clatter in the bowl.

Snoxall jumps; Shona, on the other hand, only looks up, a resigned smile turning her mouth down at the corners. He knows she heard him come in.

There’s paperwork on the coffee table. Their guest scoops them up, shuffling them hurriedly and nearly cutting himself on them in his haste.  “Ah,” he says. He pushes his glasses up his nose with a finger.  “Rick, is it? I was just telling your sister-”

“–about the usual, boring stuff,” she cuts in. Snoxall frowns, but she’s already looking at Rick, smiling brightly and pushing up from the couch. “Is that Chinese?”

Rick turns to the bags and begins pulling out containers.  “Egg rolls, potstickers, orange chicken, lo mein…”  He sets them to the side.  “Stir fry, moo shu pork, more egg rolls…”

“Erm…”

Rick stops. He blinks at Snoxall, then Shona, lizard slow. In Spanish, he asks, “Is he staying?”

Snoxall reddens.

The answer, as it turns out, is no. Shona makes noise about him sticking around for lunch, but before either sibling can advance on him with chopsticks and paper plates, the official makes his escape, bidding them a hasty good-bye, clutching his suitcase to his chest like a lifeline.

As soon as the door closes, Shona slumps against it, dropping her head back with a sound thunk.  “I thought he would never leave.”

Rick snorts as he opens up one of the rice cartons.  “And whose fault is that?”

She pushes away from the door and folds her arms, brows lifted in a pointed look.  “You were being a menace.”

Rick rolls his eyes, but his ears heat up guiltily.  “He was cute,” he grumbles.

“Well, he’s our case worker,” she informs him, dropping into the chair across. It creaks under her weight because it’s a piece of shit, but it holds up.  “You can’t sleep with him.”

Chopsticks stab into rice. Rick glares around a mouthful of chicken.  “Just him, or anyone else, too?”

Shona points her chopsticks at him.  “Don’t put words in my mouth. But unless he’s your one and only-”  She shoves them back in the lo mein and twirls them.  “It would help both of us if you stayed away from anyone sent by the Werewolf Commission.”

It’s a fair point. But the reminder that they’re both in this, despite her one-on-one with Snox-ass, why they are, makes Rick’s stomach twist. He drops his eyes down to his carton, appetite gone.

Shona kicks him.

“Ow!”

“Whatever you’re thinking – stop it.”  When Rick still looks unhappy, she glares at him in warning.  “Don’t.”  Her expression softens.  “We’re starting over, remember?”

He does. There hadn’t been a speech so much as an announcement and an empty backpack thrown at his face. Rick had thought she was joking, and when he realized she wasn’t, had tried to put up a fight. Stupidly. The bruises had lingered for days.

“I didn’t exactly have a choice, did I?”

Shona sighs and sets down her carton. “No,” she agrees.  “You didn’t. Because I know you, Rick. You would have stayed and wasted away like some, some mushroom because of misplaced guilt–”

“It was my fault!”

“–and if you owed me anything at all,” her voice rises, “it would be to at least try. For me.”

Rick shuts his mouth. Shona stares –glares?– at him a moment more, worked up and fierce, and then just… deflates, suddenly exhausted. For a while, neither say anything; silence stretches between them, heavy and ringing.

Shona breaks it with a scrape of her chair, rising.

“I’m going to take a nap,” she says. She doesn’t look at him. But as she passes, she ruffles his hair.  “If I’m not up by two… Wake me.”

Rick nods. That, at least, he can do.

Then, her footsteps stop in the middle of the hall.

“One more thing.”

The words make his stomach twist. One more thing. Rarely anything good follows that. But he turns around in his seat to look at her, because he can do that, too.

The feeling worsens when she doesn’t turn around, but takes a breath, hands curling into fists before disappearing to her front. He hears her knuckles crack – also not a good sign.

“We’re going to have to find a place for you, too,” she says, and his stomach drops like a pile of lead. It isn’t that he hasn’t forgotten, he can’t forget, but – any reminder still hits him like a punch. They wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for him.  “Michael said there are cheap apothecaries in Chinatown that supply wolfsbane. If they’re selling it…”

Rick wishes she would turn around. He wishes he hadn’t.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”  She exhales sharply, then turns to her room.  “Don’t eat all the egg rolls.”


The door shuts behind her, ever so quietly.