Out of Salem: Chapters 15–18

In the interim, all werewolves in custody of the state would be interrogated and all registered werewolves within traveling distance of the city of Salem would have their records examined.

“Shapeshifters can’t get their magic taken away like werewolves can. You guys are like way more fey than us. You’re made of magic. If he zaps you he’s just asking for like, a rift to open and for some kind of magical explosion to jump out from the fey world and neutralize the whole state of Oregon.”

Something unnerving and steely flashed in his eyes that Z had never seen there before. Aysel saw it too, and flinched.

Aysel looked abashed.

The plush olive-green carpeting covered the floor in a sort of mossy squalor.

Then Elaine suddenly turned and ran at the bookshelf headlong.

She muttered something that sounded like a series of expletives mixed with foreign words under her breath and a series of sparks shot along the length of the side of the bookshelf.

“Enough,” Elaine said, and pushed the door clear of the opening in the wall with a final volley of sparks.

There was a bit on top that looked like the silver dome at hairdressing salons that women put over their heads when they were getting their hair colored, though it had more jutting electrical-looking pieces and appeared as if it was meant to fit a lot tighter around the head.

It induces small seizures.

Elaine gave Tommy’s left shoulder a little tentative pat; he seemed not to notice.

Outside, Elaine was standing upright about a foot above the earth, holding herself aloft with an anti-gravity spell Aysel recognized as a variation of one she had learned in elementary school.

Outside the door, the dentist was pounding her fists against the wood. She seemed awfully brazen for someone who seemed to believe that burglars had invaded, Aysel thought.

She had to be careful, doing so many forceful, wordless spells at once. If she didn’t use caution, she would end up doing more harm than she meant to, unleashing all of her magic at once in a torrent she couldn’t control.

Tommy was disheveled, his pale hair mussed up at the back of his head.

“We probably should have put someone on watch duty to make sure we could have avoided that whole thing. But we’re alive. Live and learn,” Elaine said. She sounded so flippant that for an instant Aysel felt reassured, until she remembered that they didn’t know if the woman dentist had been trapped inside when the fire spread.

In the ensuing silence she heard the noise of more sirens in the distance.

“...five fire trucks and a perpetual rain spell eventually managed to subdue the blaze. The origin is magical, and it is widely supposed that the werewolf terrorist organization, now known as the Wolf Guts Group, is responsible..."

The streetlamp illuminated a thin strip of carpet and several cassette tapes and CDs that were strewn across her floor.

Z turned their head away, rolled awkwardly over, and propped themselves into a crouch. For some reason they still felt an aversion to having Elaine help them.

If anyone they knew in town could be prevailed upon to help them at all, it was him.

“I’m a werewolf,” Elaine said candidly.

“Actually,” he said, “not the bus. I’ll put you on the night train toward California. That’s safer. The train stops all of maybe two minutes and it would be very hard to get waylaid by the police. And then you can sleep.”

“They’re cheaper to make nowadays,” Mr. Weber said in a flat voice. “And the federal government authorized their use just after Bush got reelected in ’92. Only a matter of time before small municipalities have some.”

The light which had replaced his body expanded in a brief flash and dissipated, leaving a charred circle on the ground beneath the officer’s feet.

You have also been linked to attempted murder. Alondra Dunnigan has been declared missing and you are implicated in her disappearance.

“We have reason to suspect this boy has stolen materials long missing from the Willamette library and may be, through the work of dark magic, associated with the Wolf Guts Group and complicit in the murder of Archie Pagan.”

The woman officer pushed her hand against Z’s face, to push them backward into the car, and Z bit her. The officer yanked her hand back, and Z reeled in the other direction, their knees not strong enough to hold them.

Aysel felt a pulse of magic radiating out from her skin, involuntarily. It took her a second to put together that the pulse coincided with the tremors convulsing through Z.

Aysel spun around and threw a great flux of stippled hairy conflagration at her, and it caught her in the back.

Aysel spun around and threw a great flux of stippled hairy conflagration at her, and it caught her in the back.

Aysel spun around and threw a great flux of stippled hairy conflagration at her, and it caught her in the back.

There was a rending sound as glass and piping and wires flew into the air and then hung suspended, spinning in organic shapes like succulents radiating from a central cluster.

There was a rending sound as glass and piping and wires flew into the air and then hung suspended, spinning in organic shapes like succulents radiating from a central cluster.

Two of the officers who were still uninjured pulled themselves to their feet and stared at it in consternation.

He gestured, and Aysel saw that at the edges of the pool the cement was crumbling away and tendrils like those of plants were sprouting out of the cracks and spreading outward.

Branches and undergrowth were still sprouting from a glowing wetness that soaked the earth. In places, splintered cement had been thrown up in vertical projections among the proliferating roots.

Branches and undergrowth were still sprouting from a glowing wetness that soaked the earth. In places, splintered cement had been thrown up in vertical projections among the proliferating roots.

Aysel didn’t mention the bigger conundrum: Z was supposed to be dead and dry as bone, and shouldn’t be bleeding at all.

When they reached the bluff, they stood, for a while, looking at one another and the water.