It was not the best night that Melissa had ever had. Her boss had collected the toads at some point, so at least she didn’t need to worry about them (assuming they didn’t succumb to smoke inhalation in the night, but she wasn’t going to think about that), but the fact remained that she was stuck in the hospital all night and well into the morning, all so the doctor could tell her she would be fine, though her throat and her chest would probably hurt for a while.
Gee, it was almost like she could have figured that out on her own. It seemed like a pretty intuitive leap from ‘smoke inhalation.’
And she didn’t even have her truck or enough money on her to call a taxi, so she was stuck just sitting around in the hospital parking lot until one of her coworkers had the time to pick her up. Harry was the lucky volunteer, early in the afternoon.
“You almost got toasted,” Harry informed her after a few moments of driving in silence, other than the slightly ominous clunking noise that his aged and battered pick-up truck made periodically.
Harry was a tall, gangling young man, made almost entirely of limbs too long for him to know what to do with, and hardly any meat on any of him. Not because he didn’t eat—if he wasn’t doing something that took both hands, he was generally eating constantly—but because he had a metabolism that would put a hummingbird’s to shame. He had red hair, pale skin, and enough freckles that it hardly seemed possibly, along with narrow blue eyes and long, spidery fingers.
He was an odd-looking duck.
“Yup,” Melissa confirmed, sinking lower in her seat. “Pretty sure I’m aware of that. I mean, I was there.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but otherwise kept his gaze focused out of the truck’s windshield. “But you weren’t toasted,” he carried on, as if she hadn’t even said anything. “So why are you pouting like a whiny little bitch?”
Melissa swung a hand sideways, swatting Harry square in the gut with a not-inconsiderable amount of force, with a tiny, satisfied smile to herself when he grunted.
“Oh, I dunno,” she sighed, folding an arm across her chest to cup her other elbow, so she could prop her chin up in one hand as her eyes drifted up and to the side in a parody of thoughtfulness. “I mean, it’s not like I inhaled a ridiculous amount of smoke and spent the night in a hospital room. It’s not like I came reasonably close to dying and had to wear an oxygen mask for most of the evening.
And it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with me feeling like unprocessed shit—you know, like the yellow diarrhea you find in baby diapers—because it feels like I’m breathing sandpaper.” She turned her head just enough to look at him, her eyes large and innocent as she blinked at him slowly. “No, no, you’re right, I definitely don’t have any reason to be in a bad mood.”
Harry was conspicuously silent after that, which wasn’t really any sort of surprise. Melissa had known him since high school; she knew him well enough to know that he just spat things out without putting much thought into them, and then he would just deal with the embarrassing fallout afterwards. So, she couldn’t say she was really mad at him. He was just a bit tactless now and then.
Quiet reigned for a brief while, until Melissa asked, “So, how are my toads?”
Harry snorted. “They were sluggish for most of the night, but they perked up by morning. Their carriers managed to keep them safe from the worst of the smoke.”
She nodded slowly in response, a knot of tension in her chest that she hadn’t even noticed relaxing as relief hit her. She had worked hard for those toads, after all. They deserved to recover just as much as she did.
She didn’t have much else to say after that, though, considering she still felt like she had gargled with broken marbles and been kicked in the chest by a Clydesdale. Talking was not her favorite activity at that point.
They sat in silence until they pulled into the parking lot of the campground. Deserted, obviously, save for one truck sitting in the lot and coated in enough ash and soot to build a new mountain out of it. It was so covered that it was nearly impossible to even tell what color it was supposed to be.
Melissa was ready to groan like she was being tortured, until Harry held up a finger in a “wait one moment” gesture and hopped out of his truck. He pulled a broom -- a full-sized broom -- out of the bed of the truck and, after giving it a twirling flourish, he set out sweeping the hefty layer of ash off of Melissa’s truck.
Afterwards, as Melissa hopped out of the passenger seat and crept closer to investigate her truck, Harry remarked, “Still needs one hell of a carwash, but you should be able to drive home without getting a ticket,” as he planted the end of the broom handle on the ground and leaned against it.
Melissa nodded slowly before she sighed. “Right. Great. Thanks, Harry.”
He tapped her with the broom handle. “Not a problem. See you at work in a couple days.”
Melissa groaned and nodded again, dropping her face down into her hands as she did. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her job. It was quite the opposite, in fact; she loved her job. But considering her boss already knew exactly what had happened, she had decided that Melissa was taking two days off just to make sure she was alright. And Melissa knew it was coming from a good place --she loved her boss -- but she was very bad at being inactive. Inactivity led to dumb projects and dumb ideas.
She stewed over it as she drove back to her house, occasionally grumbling to herself as she did. Already, just the knowledge that she wasn’t supposed to be doing anything was making her antsier, as if knowing that she was supposed to be taking it easy was boosting her energy to
unknown heights. She was pretty sure it was entirely psychosomatic, but that knowledge wasn’t helping her just then.
Maybe she could clean the house and attempt to convince herself that it counted as being active. Or at least active enough, at any rate.
She was halfway home and stopped at a red light when an idea occurred to her. It was probably
a supremely dumb idea, but that was more or less par for the course in her current mindset.
But she remembered the bear that had led her out of the smoke yesterday turning into a
firefighter. Or at least, she remembered it wandering away behind a truck, and then seeing a
very naked man getting dressed in firefighting gear behind that same truck, even if she hadn’t
witnessed the actual changing of shape. She had seen enough to intuit that it had happened.
Granted, there was still the possibility that she had hallucinated. She had been a little stressed out and loopy at the time, and an attractive, shirtless man was not the weirdest thing she had ever heard of someone hallucinating.
But she had to know.
Not that she planned on just coming out and asking. If she had hallucinated it, she was going to look insane. She needed to handle it a bit more tactfully than that. She wasn’t sure how, but she had already turned her truck towards the fire department, so she could just figure it out as she went.
*
It took only a moment of awkwardly loitering around the fire department before a woman built like a brick house asked if she needed any help.
“Ah, not exactly,” Melissa replied. “Well, sort of.” She could already see the woman getting exasperated. “See, I was stuck in the woods yesterday, during the fire, and I wanted to thank the firefighter who helped me out,” she explained in a rush. “About…ye tall?” she guessed, holding one hand up a considerable distance over her head. “Kind of tan? With reddish, brownish hair?”
Something like recognition dawned in the woman’s expression, and she turned to holler over her shoulder, “HEY, MITCH!”
Melissa nearly leapt out of her skin. The woman certainly had an impressive set of lungs. Far more impressive than Melissa’s were at that point.
The woman was already wandering off again, just as a man -- Mitch, presumably -- was making his bemused way over. Melissa hadn’t seen his face the day before, but she was pretty sure he was the right guy. He had the right skin tone and the right hair color, and he looked like he had the right build.
Mitch already looked confused by the time he was standing in front of Melissa, and he asked slowly, “Did you need something?”
Melissa linked her hands together behind her back and looked up (and up and up) at him. “I just wanted to thank you for yesterday,” she replied, and for a moment, there was something like well-hidden dread in the man’s expression. Instantly, Melissa was intrigued. “You helped me out of the fire. Considering you’ve got a, um…very unique skill set, I’m not sure I would have been able to get out without you.” Which wasn’t strictly true; she knew for a fact she wouldn’t have been able to get out without him. She had been wandering in senseless circles, too stubborn to simply admit it.
Slowly, Mitch sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “You saw something,” he guessed.
Melissa nodded quickly.
Mitch groaned and let his head tip forward, until his chin nearly met his chest. He folded his arms and let his weight shift to one side, lifting his head to instead let it fall back as he looked at the sky, as if he was praying to some unknown entity for patience. When he looked at her again, it was to ask sharply, “What do you want?”
Melissa blinked at him slowly, until he demanded, more impatiently, “Well?”
“You…might need to clarify?” Melissa tried.
“What do you want?” Mitch enunciated clearly. “You know, to keep quiet about what you saw.”
Realization dawned, and for a moment, Melissa was almost offended. “What—you’re asking if I want hush money?” she asked, and she laughed before she could help it. It was an unpleasant, mirthless sound, joyless and bitter. “Oh, hon,” she cooed, and she reached up to pat his shoulder delicately. “If you want to hide, that’s your business. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating, and to thank whoever led me out of the fire. I could give less than a single brick of shit if anyone else knows, and it’s not like anyone would believe me if I ever felt inclined to go public.”
Mitch still didn’t quite look like he believed her, and Melissa rolled her eyes emphatically. She lifted both hands to hide her face for a moment, shoulders lifting and falling as she sighed slowly. Her hands fell away so she could cross her arms over her chest, offering him the most unimpressed look she could manage. “I was in the woods yesterday to pick up a pair of toads, for the zoo’s breeding program. They’re endangered. After yesterday, they’re probably even more endangered than they already were,” she explained slowly. “I don’t even want to know what other issues are going to spring up, considering how weird everything has been lately. I have more important things to worry about than trying to get strangers to believe me. Honestly, if I suddenly wake up and decide ‘I think I’ll extort someone!’ then I’m going for someone I can actually extort. A politician or someone with money. Not a suburban --verging on rural -- firefighter.”
She smiled up at him, beamingly brightly and almost sickeningly pleasantly. She offered a sprightly wave with one hand before she shoved both hands into her pockets, turned on her heel, and started towards her truck again. As soon as her back was to him, she rolled her eyes emphatically and the saccharine smile fell off of her face.
She made it about halfway back to her truck when Mitch suddenly called, “Hold on.”
Slowly, Melissa turned to look over her shoulder at him. “What?” she asked warily, the word coming out cautiously.
“I…could use your help with something,” he replied, and he already looked like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be saying it.
Melissa’s eyebrows rose towards her hairline. “My help,” she repeated dubiously. “You don’t know me,” she reminded him. “What could you possibly need my help with?”
Slowly, Mitch sighed, reaching up to drag one hand down his face. “It’s not exactly something I can get into right here,” he replied, glancing over his shoulder to where a few of his coworkers were gathered around a small television, a newscaster’s talking head taking up the vast majority of the screen. “So, please, just meet me later.”
Melissa’s eyes narrowed slightly before her expression took a turn for the unimpressed. “You turned into a bear and back again,” she stated slowly, not even doing anything to keep her voice low, “in pretty plain view, and you’re saying your coworkers don’t know?”
“It’s not that,” he groused in return. “Seriously, I’ll explain it later, if you’ll just agree to go along with it. You can call me crazy and storm out later after I’ve said what I want to say.”
Melissa groaned and dropped her face down into one hand, massaging her forehead with two
fingertips as she did. “Fine,” she groused, looking back up. To say her response sounded a bit unenthusiastic was being polite. “If only because now I’m curious,” she tacked on, rolling her eyes. “Where are we meeting? Because you’re not coming near my house, and I’d rather not go to yours.”
Mitch held his hands up in front of himself, as if in surrender. “There’s a restaurant in town -- Henry’s. It’s on the intersection of Maple and Brady. Rinky-dink little place. I’ll even pay.”
Melissa continued to eye him warily for a moment, but she supposed it was harmless enough. Even if the restaurant was small, there would still be other people there, and if he was paying, it wasn’t like she needed to worry about being out any money.
Besides, she couldn’t deny that she was curious about whatever it was that he seemed so eager to discuss with her. He didn’t know her. If she hadn’t sought him out, she doubted he would even remember her six days down the line. So, what could possibly be so important? She wasn’t just going to shrug and decide she didn’t need to know.
“Fine,” she finally replied, nodding her head once, decisively. “When?”
“Around seven?” Mitch suggested, making a flippant gesture with one hand, as if the actual time of the meeting was of little concern to him.
“Seven it is, then,” Melissa agreed. “So, can I, like, go, or are you going to spring something else on me out of the blue?”
With a sigh, Mitch ushered her along with one hand, and she began striding purposefully back towards her truck. Halfway there, though, she paused, glancing back at him over her shoulder just long enough to say, “I did mean it when I said thanks, though. Just so you know.”
Mitch offered her something like a crooked smile, and Melissa continued on her way to her car.
*
The rest of Mitch’s day after that was reasonably normal. To a certain degree, at any rate. He couldn’t deny, though, that his thoughts kept returning to…he hadn’t even gotten her name. He was meeting her for dinner—assuming she showed up and hadn’t just agreed to get him to leave her alone—and he didn’t even know her name.
He groaned and dragged a hand down his face. What a great way to get things started.
Regardless, his thoughts returned to her every so often, like a moth fluttering around a lamp. He couldn’t say that no one had ever figured out what he was before. On the whole, he wasn’t actually that secretive about it. He didn’t flaunt it, but he didn’t really go out of his way to hide it either. While she wasn’t the first one to simply trip over the realization, she had been the most casual about it. Most people who found out, be it on accident or because Mitch told them, tended to at least care.
And she had only cared because she wanted to make sure she hadn’t been imagining things.
Beyond that, she couldn’t give a shit.
There was something weirdly fascinating about her lack of fascination, and his thoughts kept drifting back to her until one of his coworkers bonked him lightly over the head with a helmet and asked him how the weather was around Pluto. With some effort, he dragged his thoughts back on track and pushed everything else to the background. He could worry about dinner at…well, dinner.
*
He felt peculiarly anxious as dinner drew closer, as he pulled his station wagon to a halt in the restaurant’s tiny parking lot. Whether it was a nervous sort of anxiousness or an excited sort of anxiousness, he wasn’t even sure.
He leaned against the hood of his car as he waited, watching the parking lot entrance, though he couldn’t actually remember what sort of car she drove, so he supposed it wasn’t the most productive of activities. The parking lot was almost empty, though, so it wasn’t as if he needed to worry about checking how long the wait would be.
It was ten minutes past seven, and he was beginning to think she wasn’t going to show when a slightly ancient, beat-up pick-up truck pulled into the lot and parked. It had been a reddish, orange-ish color once upon a time, though its color had faded over the years until it was a strange, muted not-quite-pink color.
The woman of the hour threw open the driver’s side door and hopped out, shoving it closed again with a bang almost as soon as her feet hit the pavement.
Her gaze panned around the parking lot for only a moment before she looked right at him and made her way over. She fell into step beside him as Mitch shoved himself away from his car and began heading towards the restaurant’s front door.
They didn’t speak as they walked. They didn’t speak as they made their way inside. They didn’t speak as they sat down at the bar. Though they glanced at each other every so often, they didn’t actually speak to each other until after they had each ordered something to eat and drink.
“So,” she finally began, turning to sit sideways on the bar stool that left her feet dangling an
almost hysterical degree above the floor, “what was so important to talk to me about?” she wondered, leaning one elbow on the bar top and propping her chin up in one hand.
“Whatever’s been causing the fires probably isn’t natural,” Mitch replied, wasting no time in beating around the bush. He got the impression that if he tried to draw things out—if he tried to make nice or delve into pleasantries—then she wasn’t going to put up with it, and just getting her to agree to show up had been enough of a hassle.
“Arson?” she guessed, twisting back and forth on the stool slightly, though not enough that she had to pick her elbow up. “I kind of figured as much. The weather’s not exactly right for endless wildfires.”
“Sort of arson,” Mitch corrected, though he wasn’t actually sure if it did count as arson or not if something inhuman set the fire. It probably did. But that wasn’t the point just then. “I think the fires have been set by someone who isn’t actually human.”
Her eyebrows rose towards her hairline, and just like that, he knew she would agree to help him. In just a few words, he had guaranteed that she was all but ensnared in whatever was going on. “Someone inhuman,” she repeated slowly. “Like you?”
“Sort of like me,” he replied, and he made a bit of a face when he realized it sounded like he was repeating himself to be cute. “Not someone who turns into a bear,” he clarified. “Or any other normal animal.”
“There are people that turn into abnormal animals?” she asked, sitting up straighter, her curiosity piqued. “Like what?”
Mitch held up a hand to dissuade any further questions. “I still don’t even know if you’re going to help me,” he pointed out. “I’m not telling you anything until I actually know.”
She groaned and dragged a hand down her face. “Then why aren’t you just asking someone you work with? I mean, you seemed pretty content to turn into a bear and back again in basically plain view during the fire. I’m willing to assume they know something about the inhuman world.”
“My coworkers—most of them, at any rate—do know about me,” he agreed. “But most of them aren’t the…subtle type,” he replied, picking his words carefully, as if one of his coworkers was suddenly going to lunge out from behind the bar to take issue with what he was saying. “They’re more the ‘take an axe to the door’ type, rather than the ‘gathering information’ type, but if this isn’t handled carefully, then whoever has been trying to burn half the state down is going to hear about it and book it, and we’ll never catch them. I need someone with some sense of care to help with this.”
“You don’t know me,” she reminded him pointedly, once again swiveling slightly on her stool, arms folded across her chest and one elbow on the bar. “You don’t know anything about my
levels of care or my ability to be subtle.”
“I know you didn’t give a shit about me being a were-bear, and you didn’t blurt it out for the
entire county to hear,” he returned, “which is already a right side better than most of them.”
Finally, she rolled her eyes. “Fine. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, I will help you figure out who’s starting the wildfires and I will use all of my abilities towards not
being a blathering moron. So now, will you tell me what we might be dealing with?”
“First--” he paused as she groaned explosively, before he cleared his throat. “First, you need to tell me your name.”
She seemed to come up short after that, blinking up at him. “Melissa,” she offered after a
moment, and she gave off the impression that she was searching her memory, trying to figure out if she really had failed to introduce herself before that point. “Melissa Mun.”
“Nice to meet you, Melissa Mun,” Mitch offered wryly in return. “I’m Mitch McConnell.” She didn’t hold out a hand to shake, so he didn’t bother to either. “And I’m pretty sure we’re either dealing with a coterie of vampires or a were-dragon.”
Her expression brightened; it looked as if she was going to have a heart attack, and she clapped a hand over her mouth before she could blurt out, “A were-dragon?” at full volume, so it instead came out as a muffled, half-formed mumble.
“Or vampires,” he answered. “I figure the dragon suspicions are pretty obvious, what with the problem at hand being fire, and vampires are…weird. There are really only two ways to permanently kill them, and one of them involves fire. Despite that, I’ve never met a vampire that wasn’t weirdly pyro-manic.”
“That’s creepy,” Melissa informed him, as if he wasn’t already fully aware of that detail. Mitch shrugged loosely, unconcerned. He had encountered numerous vampires, and made friends with none of them. What they decided to do to get their rocks off or whatever it was they were up to, he wasn’t actually that concerned about it.
She cleared her throat, evidently dragging herself back on topic. “So, vampires or a were-dragon.” She cocked her head to one side, eying him thoughtfully over her glasses. “What other sorts of creatures are there?”
“All sorts,” Mitch replied, shrugging one shoulder, though he paused before he said anything else until their food and their drinks were placed in front of them and they were once again on their own, with as much privacy as the restaurant was capable of providing them.
“I mean, you know there are vampires, were-bears, and were-dragons. There are basically were-animal versions of every animal you can think of. I guess we’re the most…standard inhuman creatures, though we do come with some bonuses to strength and endurance even when we still look like a human. Nothing compared to a vampire, but nothing to sneeze at, I guess. And I can’t just list off every type of inhuman creature that’s ever existed, but if there’s something that seems to have turned up in a very similar way in multiple cultures, then it probably actually exists.”
“What’s the weirdest experience you’ve had?” she asked, ignoring her food for the most part, though she did pick up her glass and sip it slowly. “I mean, I’m assuming you’ve actually met other inhuman creatures. Are you sure it’s not rude to call them that? I mean, it sounds pretty rude if you ask me.”
Mitch rolled his eyes, shoveled a few bites of his meal into his mouth, and took a few sips of his drink. “I’m sure,” he answered blandly. “Or at least, I’ve never thought it was particularly rude. It’s just the base facts; we aren’t really human, even if we look like it most of the time.”
She wrinkled her nose slightly, seeming a bit dissatisfied with the answer, though she didn’t question it further. Instead, she leaned over just enough to prod his shin with the toe of one shoe. “You didn’t answer the actual question,” she pointed out.
“What? Oh, right.” He lapsed into silence for a moment as he pondered that question. He hadn’t met a ton of other inhuman creatures. He had met some, sure, because they generally knew how to find each other, but he hadn’t met as many as someone who actually looked for them would. He had never felt particularly drawn to that sort of calling. Because that was what it was; anyone determined to meet as many inhuman creatures as they could was basically dooming themselves to a life as a drifter, without a steady job or a home, because they tended to be reasonably spread out. For instance, while he knew others passed through on occasion, he was reasonably sure he was the only were-animal who lived in the area permanently. Not the only inhuman creature, but the only were-animal.
“I met one of the fae folk when I was younger,” he answered after a moment. “Very minor fae, though, or else something bad probably would have happened. She was trying to get into a beehive, and even as a middle schooler, I was tall, so I gave her a boost, which meant she was content to leave without putting a curse on me or trying to bind me into servitude or something like that.”
“So, wait, fairies are actually real, then?” Melissa asked, ignoring both her meal and her drink at that point. When the bartender moseyed past, Mitch gestured to it and mouthed ‘a box.’
“They are,” he confirmed. “Not the friendliest and not very common, though. You’re more likely to run into were-animals or vampires or the occasional psychic.”
“Can you turn people into were-animals? And what about full moons?” she asked, curling her fingers around the edge of her stool between her legs and leaning closer to him. “Or is that a bunch of movie garbage?”
“Movie garbage,” Mitch confirmed flatly. “We can change or not change whenever we feel like it, and it’s a genetic thing, but it’s more complicated than that. Were-animals can pass on their…were-animalness, but all they pass on is the ability to transform and the strength boost. They don’t actually pass on the form. So, a were-wolf and a were-tiger could, theoretically, have a child that is a were-hog.”
“A were-hog,” Melissa repeated carefully. “An average warthog is already big. How big would a were-hog be?”
“Probably about my size,” Mitch replied easily, shrugging one shoulder. “All were-animals are bigger than their standard versions. I don’t actually know why, though. I don’t understand a lot of the biology behind it.”
Melissa looked at him as if that admittance was a sheer impossibility.
“What?” he demanded in turn. “That’s not that weird. Go ask an average accountant if he understands exactly how his intestines work. He probably doesn’t, even though he’s grown up with those intestines his whole life.”
“What if you need to see a doctor?” she asked pointedly. “Wouldn’t he figure out that something is off?”
Mitch waved it off. “Until I actually transform, I’m basically indistinguishable from a human. I can see a doctor just fine, and he’ll just make a note that I require an unusually high amount of anesthetic.”
“Coming from personal experience?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.
Mitch rolled his eyes. “I got my wisdom teeth yanked when I was younger,” he answered dryly. “It’s not that fascinating. I assure you, bear-ness aside, my life hasn’t actually been that exciting.”
“What were your parents?” she asked, leaning towards him again. “If a were-animal can lead to any other sort of were-animal.”
“Dad was a lynx. Mom was a swan,” he answered. “Are you this nosey about everything?”
“I am when something is interesting,” she answered primly. “Sure, I have no interest in reporting you to the news or whatever, especially when they would never believe me, but if you think that I just don’t care about you shaking the entire foundation of my understanding of the natural world, then you are a lot dumber than you look.”
“Hey, I don’t--” He closed his mouth with a click when she simply grinned at him slyly, and he dragged a hand down his face. “I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into with you, do I?” he asked flatly, already suspecting the answer.
“Nope,” she answered cheerfully, and she pulled a pen from her pocket and scrawled a number on a drink coaster. “Thanks for dinner,” she offered, as she hopped down from her stool. “Text me your number later tonight.”
With that, she picked up her leftovers and swanned her way towards the door and out into the parking lot.