Chapter 16

Alessia did as he said. She popped out of bed to the sound of an alarm she didn’t need to set but did anyway. She had a lot of research she wanted to do before she and Erik met with whatever shady people he’d organized this meeting with later that day and wished that she had better tools than Google at her disposal but there was only so much she could do without arousing suspicion. She was fairly certain she was being watched. If she went into the library and started delving too deeply into the section of shifter history, they might take it as a sign of noncompliance on her part. And that was the last thing she needed.

She swallowed several cups of coffee while her eyes grew tired focusing in on the screen. She scrolled and scrolled, passing hits and articles but she wasn’t even sure what she was really looking for. Google keywords: “shifter”, “secret organization”, “kidnapping”, and “protests” didn’t really do much to help her out at all. She returned all sorts of news hits and book and movies with that same plot.

After about an hour of her aimless searching, she heard something shuffling behind her. She’d intended to leave half the pot of coffee for Erik when he eventually rolled out of bed but her jitters got the better of her and the next thing she knew she was an entire pot deep.

“Sorry,” she mumbled when she turned to face him.

She had to admit, there was something desirable about seeing him there with his hair in every direction, his t-shirt ruffled from sleep and his eyes still puffy. There was a domesticity to him that she never saw in class when he was constantly trying to outdo someone in the middle of a debate. This was Erik before he put on his ego. Somehow, she liked this version a lot better.

She walked over and worked and getting a new pot of coffee ready for him.

“I didn’t wake you did I?”

“With the incessant sounds of typing?” he asked with a smirk and she cringed. “Nah. I was in and out of sleep all night. That couch is…something else.”

“Sorry. It came with the apartment.”

“Hey, no harm no foul. At least it wasn’t the floor.”

“Yeah, but I made you stay. The least I could do was give you somewhere comfortable to sleep.”

“I’ve had worse. Trust me. You can make it up with a pot of coffee that you didn’t guzzle in some paranoid frenzy.”

“That I can do.”

She set to work pouring out water and measuring the pile of ground coffee beans while Erik dug through her cupboards looking for a bowl to pour his cereal into and then performed the same ritual looking for milk in the refrigerator. It could be just a regular morning for them both—apart from the fact that Erik had slept in his clothes and on the couch. But they could just be a couple waking up in the morning, performing that dance around each other in the kitchen to get substance and caffeine in their bodies before they parted for the day with a promise to see each other at dinner.

She didn’t know why she was thinking about that. She’d already refused Erik, flat out told him she wasn’t going to be pursuing anything more than friendship with him. Yet, here she was, thinking about waking up on Sunday mornings or busy workdays and having him there.

You’re lonely, she said to herself, and you’re a little bit emotionally amped up after what happened with Drake.

Self-diagnosing was never smart but it was the only way she could keep that nagging voice in the back of her mind at bay. She’d deal with her therapy issues later after they got some solid footing in this strange mess.

As Alessia watched the coffee maker drip and drip it’s way into a growing pot of ink black and steaming liquid, she thought. What they knew was this: Drake was part of some kind of shifter radical movement—how radical they were remained to be seen, Drake had been part of the protest and had secured her release when they took her, Drake was no kidnapped by a group of people who did not look like police. The question was: was this his own group of people hauling him in or was he now the victim of some kind of rival group?

She’d read that several shifter organizations existed: the Alliance, the Freedom Fighters, the Flames. And none of them were friends. Maybe that’s why the shifters never managed to get a cohesive movement actually going for longer than it took to set off a few fire crackers and get on the news, they were too busy fighting amongst each other over who had the best way to deal with their own lack of rights.

“So, these people we’re meeting today,” Alessia said. “Are these the helpful kind or the kind that I can’t look directly in the eye or they’ll get offended and take my kidney?”

“You’ve been watching too much Godfather,” Erik said, rolling his eyes and taking the pot out from its spout when it beeped that it was ready. “It’s just one guy. He’s got information on a group that might not even be relevant to what we’re doing, but some information is better than none.”

“Who is he?”

“A shifter. Wolf. He was part of a group, not sure which one. But he was thrown out just before those bombing attacks in July.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“In some unsavory internet chat rooms.”

“What the hell were you doing on those?”

That’s when Erik’s smile and apparent smugness of information ran out. His face got a little pale and he took a nervous sip of his coffee to occupy his mouth, burning his lips in the process. He winced but kept his mouth shut and his eyes focused ahead.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said.

“Maybe we should talk about it now if this guy is dangerous,” Alessia said, crossing her arms and cocking out a hip to glare at him.

“Listen, we can have safe or we can have answers,” he said. “Take your pick.”

He was right. She hadn’t admitting that, even in her own head where he couldn’t hear her. But she couldn’t play it safe anymore. If she did, she’d never see Drake again, she was sure of that. If she wanted to get him back and get answers they had to do things out of their comfort zone. It’s just that when Alessia imagined doing things out of her comfort zone, she pictured sky diving or finally pulling the trigger on getting a tattoo. She never thought she’d get an adrenaline kick and a life experience out of a possibly illegal meeting with a likely terrorist on school property.

But times were strange, she should probably just roll with it.

So they drank their coffee and avoided each other’s eyes and Alessia wondered what exactly it was that Erik was hiding beneath his worried eyes and pale face.

***

They were jittery as they walked together out of Alessia’s apartment towards whatever dark alley Erik had arranged their meeting in. It was the middle of the day, the sun was out, people were out and around playing games in the quad and undergraduates were studying under the shade of trees and on benches. Music played from various speakers and open dorm windows. It was the perfect day at a Southern California college campus and yet Alessia felt like she was about to invite the devil himself into her life.

She was going to be doing something she couldn’t go back from. It would be worse than if her supposed watchers saw her researching in the library. If they were watching her now they’d see her heading straight for the lion’s den. She was told to stay out of it, to remain the quiet doctoral candidate and obedient citizen who didn’t know a thing about any of this. And now she was stoking the fire. But like Erik said, she could have it safe or she could try to make a difference in all this.

The question that weighed on her mind was, of course, was it worth it? Drake was her friend, if nothing else. But he was also a terrorist and a liar. He cared for her, he tried to protect her, he got her to safety when it mattered. But was it worth throwing away her career and possibly changing the trajectory of her life by getting involved in a world she knew nothing about? She wasn’t a shifter. She studied them for years and worked with them but she’d never be one. Not to mention she might be making things worse for Drake if she continued.

“Let’s hustle,” Erik said when she’d lagged several feet behind him. “I gave this guy a strict meeting time and he’s jumpy as it is.”

“Have you ever met him before?”

“No. But I’ve watched him ghost out of online chats more times than I can count,” he said. “If we want to chase more leads, we need to not scare this guy away.”

So Alessia obeyed and trotted up along side him, trying to steal herself as they passed a group of young undergraduate freshman taking pictures of their ice cream cones to post on Instagram. It would be nice to have nothing but cares like those. And when Alessia was younger she did, maybe just a bit. She looked back and could see the spoiled college girl who was just interested in getting the best light for a picture and wondering who was throwing what party the next weekend.

Maybe that was the point of college, to kick your ass and harden you up. Maybe not harden you up into someone who was ready to delve into illegal political activities and maybe get kidnapped by a group of shifters, but at the very least it pointed you in the direction you needed to go. Alessia had become a doctoral candidate for shifter studies because she learned to truly believe in it and truly want. She wanted to help. She didn’t know if this was a start or something that was going to cause a whole world of more trouble. But she was going to see it through no matter what.

So she walked alongside Erik and held her head up high. She wouldn’t be scared. She wouldn’t show it, at least. Fear was the destroyer of thoughts and the logical mind.

They turned a corner and the world suddenly shifted. The fun of the campus was behind them. They could hear it in the distance but they seemed to have entered a bubble where they were separate from all that. It was a dingy alleyway between a couple of clubs that were quiet for the day before opening their doors after 9pm at night.

They weren’t alone in the alley. At the end of it was a figure that Alessia both hoped was and was not the man they were meeting, at the same time. He wasn’t horrifying, he was average height and seemed just as nervous as them. He wasn’t the kind of tattooed thug she imagined was waiting to pass them information. He was around their age, maybe a little older. He had dark hair and sad, dark eyes, and his skin was kissed by the sun. But in the alleyway, in the black clothes he wore and the hood he had pulled over his head, he looked like an unfriendly stranger.

“Diego?” Erik called out.

The face inside the hood turned towards them. Diego. He had a name. Naming something made it a little less dangerous in the mind, at least that’s what Alessia told herself. She could handle something that made its own mystique disappear by giving itself a name.

“You Erik?”

“Yes. We need information on a shifter.”

“Drake Tekkin?”

“Yeah.”

“I know him.”