Cordelia had the Jeep idling in the driveway by the time June finished dressing. June wore a t-shirt and the only pair of jeans she owned. She had fought long and hard for them for several weeks, and then ultimately had to use her own money to buy them. She noticed Cordelia had put on a loose purple dress. June raised an eyebrow. Cordelia didn’t usually wear dresses like this, despite forcing them on June with the delicacy of a mugger.

“You never know what you’ll encounter,” Cordelia said when she saw June’s face. “Best to have something you can remove quickly without destroying it if you need to Shift in a hurry.”

June’s eyes widened. She looked down at her jeans and t-shirt. Was that why Cordelia made her wear dresses all the time? Cordelia must have read her mind, because she added, “That’s not why I like you to wear dresses. I just think they’re cute.”

June groaned. “What did you mean when you said Mr. Moseley was taken?” she asked. “Maybe he just left for—”

“The officer who called said there was a note addressed to me, and it was written on the wall in blood.”

June’s throat tightened. She didn’t want to know the answer, but the question slipped out anyway. “Who’s blood?”

“What do you think based on what I’ve told you?”

June strangled her seatbelt. “If anyone hurt Mr. Moseley I’ll kill them.”

“No. You leave them to me.” Cordelia’s eyes had all the warmth of sheet-metal, which meant her plans probably involved death too.

June sank back into her seat. A day ago, Cordelia hinting that she would actually murder someone would have made June uneasy. Now, it made perfect sense. June wondered how many people—well, not people, not really, but people-like demon things—Cordelia had killed before she ran away from that life.

“Based on what you told me of your hearing, I’m assuming you can hear heartbeats if you concentrate?” Cordelia asked.

June nodded.

“You know how to read heart rates right?”

“What do you mean?” June asked.

“When people lie their pulse quickens, which means their heart beats faster.”

“Yeah, but heart rates speed up for a lot of reasons,” June said. She'd heard girls in her class talk about their “hearts fluttering” when they saw a guy. Gag me, June thought, and ironically, realized she had an odd taste in her mouth. She moved her tongue around, then it hit her: in the scramble to get dressed, she’d forgotten to brush her teeth, and there was still a hint of deer in the back of her mouth. Good to know that what she ate while Shifted lingered in her human mouth. She reached for gum in Cordelia’s purse and caught her breath when she saw what was sitting inside—the gift card from Richard.

“Why do you have my gift card?” June asked, puzzled.

“I grabbed it last night thinking we’d go shopping today. Some mother-daughter time to celebrate. That will have to be postponed now, obviously.”

June tried not to let her relief show. The thought of shopping with Cordelia was vastly more disconcerting than the thought of Cordelia killing people. Shopping with Cordelia meant Cordelia picking out ugly dresses for June and forcing her to try them on and spin around outside the dressing room like a little girl.

As the seconds passed silently, curiosity began to build inside June. She kept dismissing it, only to have it crawl right back. All she knew about Richard was that he’d left when she was born. Cordelia usually refused to talk about him, but last night when June had asked about him, the tone in Cordelia’s voice had been different.

June wrestled with what to say. When she started to feel like she couldn’t hold it any longer she blurted out, “Did he know about us, about Shifting?”

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Yes,” Cordelia said.

"And…” June prodded.

Much to June’s excitement, Cordelia continued. “I told him—I even showed him what I could do. I never intended to marry, you know, but he loved me, even knowing that I could Shift.”

“If Richard knows about Shifting, wouldn’t he wonder about me?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

That answer sliced deep. June slumped against the passenger door and faced Cordelia. “Is that why he never reaches out to me? Because of Shifting?”

“We’ve been through this before. He just doesn’t.”

“But you knew him,” June said gruffly. “You loved him, right? He never contacts you either. I mean, he doesn’t act very lovable, so why’d you love him?”

At length, Cordelia finally replied. “I’d prefer not to talk about your father right now, okay?”

June sat quietly—for a whole ten seconds. “How could you have loved such a heartless man? He acts like—”

“He isn’t heartless, June.”

“Sure seems like it to me. I mean, how could you have been so gullible?”

“Excuse me?” Cordelia’s voice was tight.

“If I don’t get a chance to learn about your mistakes, then how can I learn from your mistakes, Mom?”

“He wasn’t a mistake,” Cordelia said in a tone that screamed this conversation is finished.

June plowed ahead anyway. “Oh? Then what do you call it when a woman foolishly marries a cruel, selfish, cowardly—”

Cordelia slapped the steering wheel and turned on June, a vein showing on her neck now. “He wasn’t a mistake! He’d do far more if he could—” The sentence died on her lips and she whirled back to the road.

“What do you mean ‘he’d do far more if he could’? If he could what?” June pressed. Her stomach did a somersault.

Cordelia’s face looked to be made of stone now, her eyes focused straight ahead.

“Don’t ignore me. What’d you mean?” June asked.

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me. I’m fifteen now, you know.”

“Yes, that fact hasn’t escaped me.”

June’s brain was spinning. There was no innocent explanation for ‘he’d do far more if he could.’ He wasn’t dead. He wasn’t grievously injured, as far as June knew. What else could prevent him from reaching out? Cordelia remained silent, and the tension in the car grew. It felt like a guilty tension. Did…did she prevent Richard from contacting me? June wondered. Had he tried? Would he want to visit her, to see her, if not for Cordelia?

A pain began to grip at June’s chest. It quickly melted into a liquid anger. She broke the silence again. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re the reason he doesn’t contact me.”

Cordelia’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly they were turning red and white. “I did what was necessary to keep you safe.”

“Why's he unsafe? What’d he do?”

“We should really discuss this another time.”

June sat up straight. “Another time? No way—you can’t just drop this bomb and push it off until later.”

“Must you always be so stubborn?”

“You want me to be a scientist, right? Well, a scientist needs to be persistent, or so I’ve been told.”

Cordelia sighed in frustration. “Fine. He and I— ” she paused, weighing her words. “We disagreed on a lot of things. He was a scientist too, and our disagreements about our work together, well—”

“What kind of disagreements?” June interrupted. Her head felt like it might explode. Richard was a scientist too? And he and Cordelia had worked together?

“That’s a long and complicated story. He wasn’t safe and you’ll just have to trust me.”

“Trust you? You just got caught in a lie, Ms. Richard-never-reaches-out-to-you.”

Cordelia's eyes narrowed. “It was for your own protection.”

“That makes it okay?” June crossed her arms.

“That makes it necessary.”

“You let me grow up thinking that he didn’t want to know me!” June snapped. “You’d better explain yourself.”

“Watch your tone!” Cordelia snarled back. “I am your mother. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“I have a right to know! He's my...dad!” The word ‘dad’ felt strange coming out of her mouth. “You don’t get to go all ‘watch your tone’ on me. Was he a terrorist or something?”

“Oh come on, June, he wasn’t a terrorist.”

The desire to Shift came as a small whisper in the back of June’s mind. She ignored it. “Then how was he unsafe?”

“Do you really think I would do anything to harm you?” Cordelia asked.

“I have no idea what you’re capable of now.”

Cordelia pinched the bridge of her nose like it was threatening to fall off her face. Whatever part of June that wanted to Shift was no longer whispering, it was shouting inside her head. June made a fist and realized the skin on her hand had rippled. No, not here, not now, she thought. Calm down, take control. She forced herself to inhale deeply, tried to count to ten, then count to ten backwards. It wasn’t working. Now both hands were shaking and rippling. Cordelia stared straight ahead, oblivious to the danger. Her mouth moved but June couldn’t hear the words.

June unbuckled her seatbelt, while she still had human hands. That was when she noticed her t-shirt. It had a speech bubble on it that said, ‘But what about Second Breakfast?’ Another gift from Brendan. She hadn’t even been paying attention when she put it on. She shook her head—Brendan and his tireless efforts to turn her. She smiled in spite of herself, and suddenly, just like that, she had control. She held up a hand and it looked a bit thicker than she’d like—normal, in other words.

“We’ll talk about this later, June. We’re here.”

The car pulled up to the lab, and the flurry of activity in the parking lot forced the questions on June’s mind to take a back seat. For now.