The address Jack’s boss sent us to turned out to be a Target store. Jack parked at the back of the nearly-empty lot in front of the closed store.

“So, what can I do to help?” I asked, getting out as I scanned the little patch of trees at the edge of the lot. The rain had stopped and the clouds were starting to clear.

“You can wait in the car,” Jack said as he went around to the trunk and popped it open, hiding him from view.

“I want to help. I can help.” I walked to the rear of the car and stopped abruptly. Jack was shirtless, the curves of his muscles under his brown skin accented by the pale moonlight.

He unbuttoned his pants, then smirked at me as he unzipped them. “Could you give me a little privacy?”

I blushed, but didn’t move. “What’s with the floor show?”

Jack paused with his thumbs hooked over the waistband of his jeans. “It’s the fastest way to confirm if this fox is really a fox or shapeshifted human. Remember what we were talking about in the car, about scent?”

“I get it. In your jackal form, you can sniff out the fox faster than us beating around in the bushes.”

“I’ll also be able to tell as soon as I find the fox if it’s a shapeshifter or not.” At that he pulled his pants and underwear down in one motion. He stepped out of his jeans, already barefoot. Jack finished stripping off his pants and then lifted them up, sadly hiding his assets from view, to dig around in the front pocket. He pulled out his keys and tossed them to me.

It looked like the keys were moving in slow motion as they tumbled through the air; I had all the time in the world to lift my hand up and catch them. As soon as my fingers closed around the keys, time seemed to snap back to its usual speed.

Jack lifted one eyebrow at me. “Ha, between this and the way you outran me in the apartment, it looks like you’re getting the hang of ‘vampire speed’.” He tossed his jeans and underwear in the trunk over his shirt and shoes, and then slammed the lid closed.

“… thanks.” I could not tear my eyes from Jack’s naked form. I was sure my face was bright red now, even if I didn’t feel flushed. Jack was gorgeous, it was true, and it didn’t help that I hadn’t been on a date in years, but it felt a little rude to be staring like this. Still, I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

“I shouldn’t be too long. You’re welcome to turn the car on listen to music while you wait, but don’t answer the phone if it rings.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but before I could, Jack’s form started to shift, getting blurry on the edges as he sprouted fur and shrunk. A moment later, a jackal stood on all fours in Jack’s place. The jackal gave me one long look, as if to say “get back in the car already”, and then trotted off into the underbrush at the edge of the parking lot.

Feeling useless, I stuffed Jack’s keys in my pocket and got back in the passenger seat. During the ride over I’d been focused on talking with Jack. Now that I was just sitting here, idly tapping my fingers on my knees, my thirst seemed to grow worse by the second. I wished I had my phone, or a book, or one of my art magazines to distract myself.

Bored, I looked around Jack’s car. Scratches and tears covered the fabric of the back seats, yet the rest of the car was neat and clean. Traffic went by in the distance, more than I would’ve expected given the late hour. Everything seemed so normal, so calm. My whole world had been turned upside down and inside out… yet the world continued on as it had been.

A scratch at the door of the car brought me out of my reverie. I sat up and opened the door. Jack’s jackal form stood there, giving me the side-eye with one ear cocked back, and holding a struggling fox in his muzzle by the scruff of its neck. When the fox caught sight of me, it began shrieking. The high pitched scream that came from the fox sounded more like a human child in pain than an animal.

I winced and covered my ears. For some reason I always thought foxes barked, like dogs, not this horrible screaming. “I take it the fox is a shapeshifter?” I yelled over the noise.

Jack nodded and then jerked his head towards the back door. The jackal backed up enough to let me get out of the car. I opened the back door and the jackal hopped in, still holding the much-smaller fox in his mouth. I shut the door behind them and was moving to get into the passenger seat, when I paused and looked back at Jack. He couldn’t drive like that, not while restraining the fox in the back seat. I poked my head through the open passenger door, leaned into the car, and looked at the pair. Jack was trying to hold down the squirming fox, but was having a hard time of it.

“Do you need me to drive?” I yelled over the fox’s screams, pulling Jack’s keys out of my pocket and holding them up. “I don’t have a license, though. I mean, I know how, but my license was in my wallet, which was stolen.”

Jack growled and shook his head. He managed to get the fox underneath of him, pinned under his much bigger bulk so he could let go of the fox’s scruff. “No. There’s a CD case under your seat. Get out Music for Meditation, turn the car on, and put it in the player.” Like earlier that night, it was very disconcerting to hear a human’s voice coming from a jackal’s muzzle.

“Why isn’t it talking, like you?” I yelled back, covering my ears.

“Takes practice to talk in animal form. Now, CD, please? She can’t turn back until she calms down.”

The case was right were he said it would be. I put in the CD and moments later, soothing piano music filled the car, although it could hardly be heard over the fox’s continued screams. In the back, the fox clawed and snapped at Jack, but the angle was wrong and mostly it tore more holes in the seat. Jack leaned over it, mouth next to its ear, whispering something too low for me to catch.

“So I guess it’s a myth that weres only change on the full moon?” I asked as I watched them. The music didn’t seem to be helping the fox calm down at all. At least it finally stopped screaming.

Jack didn’t answer, so I sighed and sat back to look up through the windshield at the sky overhead. A few dark clouds obscured some of the stars—the last of what remained of the rainclouds from earlier—but they were quickly being blown away. We were far enough outside Portland that I could see a few twinkling dots over the light pollution. Half a crescent moon hung high in the sky, shining brightly. That was answer enough to my question, I supposed. Movies had gotten that wrong about werewolves—or in this case, werejackals and werefoxes—and that made me wonder what they’d gotten wrong about vampires. I guess that was why Jack had warned me to stop thinking in those terms.

The CD played through twice before the fox calmed down. A few times I tried to ask questions, but Jack didn’t answer any of them, focused on whispering to the fox, so I eventually fell silent, nervously looking at the sky in the east, watching for the telltale glow of coming sunrise. Without my phone, I couldn’t research what time sunrise would happen at.

Jack must have seen the direction of my glances, because he said, “Don’t worry, we have time.”

A few cars drove past us in the parking lot, coming from behind the Target. They glanced curiously at the car and me, but no one stopped to bother us.

I licked my dry lips, trying to ignore my growing thirst. I began humming along with the piano music, making up lyrics in my head to distract myself.

Finally the fox shuddered, its form twisting. Jack sat up, moving off the fox to crouch next to it as it changed back. Its fur pulled back in and its limbs grew until a naked, young, blonde woman sat crouched on all fours in the seat. She flushed and curled back into a fetal position, pulling her legs to her chest to huddle up against the back driver’s-side door, as far from Jack and me as she could get. Her eyes welled and tears began falling silently down her cheeks before she buried her face in her knees.

A warmth hit my face from her direction, and I wanted to close my eyes and bask in it. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. It was like feeling the bright sun for the first time after a gray Portland winter. I sat up and knelt in the seat, leaning into the back. She seemed to pulse with life, and everything else in the car fell away. I traced the red lines under her skin with my eyes.

Someone was talking. I registered the sound, but it had no meaning. Something cracked across my face, snapping my head to the side. My eye contact with the girl was broken as my face was mashed against the driver’s side headrest. I was halfway into the back seat, kneeling on the center console, but I didn’t remember moving.

“Everett, stop!” Jack yelled in my ear.

I screwed my eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm myself. That was a mistake. Jack’s musky sweat filled my nose—almost, but not quite, overwhelming my sense of self again. I could feel something in my mouth growing and pressing down on my lips. Two tiny pin-pricks of sensation. I took another shuddering breath, breathing through my mouth this time, before trying to speak.

“I’m okay now. Please, let me go.” I slurred a little around the new fangs. I ran my tongue along them, wondering why I hadn’t noticed them earlier. Although I had been a little—no, a lot out of it at the time. I barely even remembered biting Jack, only the warmth and taste of the blood. Thinking of that was a mistake; my thirst increased, my mouth so dry I felt dizzy.

“Are you sure?” Jack’s voice was hard, but I detected a hint of worry underneath the gruff tone.

I nodded, or tried to, but Jack’s hand on my face stopped me. “Yes. I’m good now. I’ve got it under control.”

“Alright, then.”

Jack’s hand withdrew, and eyes still closed tight, I backed away and turned around to slide back down into the passenger seat. The back of my head and the left side of my face felt warmth still coming from Jack and the woman.

The back seat creaked, and the car rocked as Jack moved back. “Do up your seatbelt too, Everett.”

Jack didn’t trust me to not lose control again, and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t trust myself at the moment. I sighed, but did as I was told. Jack’s warmth shifted, accompanied by the sounds of movement from the backseat and the thump of something opening.

“Here, you can put these on,” Jack said to the girl. “And I’ve got tissues, too.”

I practiced my breathing, doing meditation exercises that I’d learned in PE class in high school. The pressure on my lips lessoned as I calmed down, and my fangs retracted.

“Thanks. My name is Emily,” the woman said, her voice quaking. There was a pause, and the sounds of a person getting dressed in a tight space. “What’s his problem? And what was wrong with his eyes? ”

Eyes? Nothing was wrong with my eyes, was there? I sat up, opening my eyes, and flipped down the visor above my seat to look in the mirror there. My eyes, so dark-brown people mistook them for black, looked back at myself, framed by a few wisps of my short, messy, black hair. That I could see myself shot down another myth that vampires didn’t have a reflection.

“And I don’t smell it now, but before, when I was smaller, he smelled wrong. It scared me.”

Shrugging, I closed the visor, catching a quick glimpse of Jack and the girl on the seat behind me as it closed. Jack had on jeans and was just pulling on a T-shirt, and the girl now wore a very baggy black sweatshirt and pants. A box of tissues sat in her lap. Her eyes were puffy and she was dabbing at her face with a soggy tissue. The center of the back seat was down, revealing a hole through to the trunk, which explained where they’d gotten the clothes from.

I was tempted to look back and glare at her, but just that one glimpse of her in the back seat in the mirror had caused my jaw to tighten and ache.

Jack said something under his breath in a language I didn’t know, but from the tone I guessed it was a swear.

“This night,” he muttered under his breath. Then louder, he said, “Yeah, sorry about that. It’ll be easier to calm down to change back next time, when he isn’t around. Normally it isn’t quite that difficult. But he’s here because, like you, he’s a supernatural who also just discovered what he is tonight.”

“At least I can’t smell it anymore.” Disgust dripped from her words.

I was tempted to respond with a jab about foxes and their ear-piercing screams, but my fangs were back, pressing down on my lower lip.

“Speaking of which, Everett, you good?” Jack asked.

I closed my eyes again, clamping my jaw shut. “No,” I whispered.

“Shit,” Jack hissed. The car creaked as he moved, and something cool and round tapped my shoulder. “Here, drink this. It will help tide you over until I can get you something at the office.” I took the bottle, recognizing the distinctive shape of a Gatorade bottle.

“Gatorade, really?” I laughed, even as I unscrewed the cap by feel and began chugging it. The cool liquid felt good on my parched tongue, but the taste made me gag. Like drinking rotten fruit. Still, I downed the whole thing. Jack and Emily were talking in the back, but I was so focused on the sweet, cool bite of the beverage easing my thirst that I barely heard them.

A door slammed, and a moment later the driver’s door opened and the car bounced as Jack got in. “Here,” he said when I lowered the empty bottle. “Lay this over your face while I drive. It will help.” The empty bottle was pulled from my hand and replaced with a dry cloth.

“Where are we going?” Emily asked from the back seat, her voice shaky.

Jack replied while I leaned my seat back. “My office. I work for PCA, the Paranormal Creature Alliance. We help people like you and Everett here who are new to the supernatural world.”

“Oh.” Emily fell silent and Jack started the car.

I kept my eyes closed and leaned back against the headrest, placing the fabric—I suspected from the smell and feel that it was one of Jack’s T-shirts—over my face. Immediately I was enveloped by Jack’s musky smell. Smiling, I put both my hands on it and pressed it into my nose, inhaling deeply.

I relaxed back, letting the warm piano music, the roar of the tires on the road, and the scent of Jack lull me into a doze.

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Continue on to Chapter 5

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