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Blue Sargent is different from the start— in a different way than all of her relations are different. There are no instances of premonition, no telekinetic incidents, she doesn’t pull an Orla and put her first ex-boyfriend into a coma for two months ‘on accident.’ It’s just— she makes everything sharper. She comes into the reading room during a session and all of a sudden Calla can narrow down her psychometry to near-millionth degrees of accuracy. She brushes by Persephone in the hall and for the rest of the day her visions of premonition are clearer, crystalline, easy to understand.She grows up their little mirror, their good luck charm, their pointy-elbowed Blue who brings levity and light and clarity. Blue. And then, of course, she wakes up the morning of her thirteenth birthday and promptly transforms into a fuzzy-furred little werewolf. *** She thought she was dying, the first time.Well, no. Her first thought had been of menstruation— she’d heard horror stories from Orla and the other older cousins for years about it, and when she woke up in a cold sweat with pain twisting in her gut she thought of blood and womanhood. Her second thought had been too much pain too much pain too much pain; a terror had come over her, and she’d been full of dread, thinking of years spent going through this each month like clockwork. The price of growing up, bought in rivers of blood and a pain like death.There hadn’t been much thought after that— only screaming, as her spindly newly-adolescent limbs twisted and cracked, reforming themselves into something else. Something that was not Blue Sargent, girl and was more like Blue Sargent, monster. She’d been a wolf at the end of it, with eyes the color of blood and deep scores in the hardwood floors of her bedroom from her claws. *** She thinks, at the beginning, when she’s young and green and hardly more than a pup, that it won’t hurt as badly when she gets used to it, when she gets older and her body becomes more accustomed to the shift between one form and the next.She gets older and learns better, though.It hurts every time. *** The first vampire she meets is named Ilya Prokopenko.She is fourteen, and working the late shift at Nino’s on a Wednesday night in August. Ilya Prokopenko is one of the newest flock of Raven Boys, an asshole in a brand-new uniform sweater and sharply-pressed khaki pants, just another in the sea of rich boys come to heckle and eat pizza to celebrate the beginning of a new year in Hellietta.It’s approaching close, and she’s not expecting it.Not expecting him. One moment she’s writing down an order for drinks and the next she’s frozen, teeth already dropping behind her lips and all the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up.It’s the scent— like death. Like death, like rotted rose petals, like decay, like bones snapping and nails on a chalkboard and blood, and Blue is stumbling into the back with nothing more than a spat-out excuse, shaking. She wants to—The wolf wants to—
Bite. Kill. Hurt.
She has to invent a sudden illness, one hand clapped over her mouth, stammering— she must look really, truly terrible, too, because her manager dismisses her with alarm and haste.She makes it to the alley outside before she’s got to stuff her head between her knees and dig her claws into her own palms, clammy with sweat and trying to keep a hold of herself.Of course, that’s when she realizes he’s followed her.“A little wolf,” he says idly, and stands right in front of her. His irises are pale as snow, his pupils like pinpricks, his teeth sharper than hers. He frightens her. She’s frightened, and it makes her angry.She bares her teeth at him, and feels the change coming over her, shuddering, even though the moon is only a tiny sliver in the sky. He puts his hands up, palm-out, and grins, smarmy and infuriating. “Hey, I come in peace.” He says around the sharp fangs crowding his mouth. “No reason we can’t coexist, huh?” She gasps for breath, but she’s still willing to try her luck tearing out his throat with her claws. The fury is something not quite new, but the vehemence behind it makes her feel almost invincible.“This is my town.” She says, or the wolf says- someone says, in a gravelly voice, low and serious and with words that aren’t hers but feel imperative, ancient. “You’re a guest here.”Prokopenko smiles at that, a more genuine expression. He looks very, very young with his teeth put away, ears too-big and eyelashes too-pale. If it weren’t for the irises, he could be just another asshole in an Aglionby sweater.“I’ll keep that in mind,” he tells her, and then disappears with a rush of air like a sudden breeze.That’s the first time.Not the last. *** Gansey and Adam are not like Prokopenko.Neither is Noah, for that matter.(Ronan is something else entirely, and the least said about his fucked-up family and childhood, the better, in Blue’s semi-professional opinion on crazy families and alternative upbringings.)She pores over Calla’s books on the subject, Orla watching in arch amusement (and sharp, hidden worry) from the doorway with a mug of psychedelic herbal tea cradled in her hands and a silky wrapper the only thing shielding her modesty from view. Half Vampires, she reads, result from an incomplete transformation. Not much is known about the process of vampiric transformations, only that they require many steps and are not often undertaken. Half Vampires are more plentiful than Vampires, and due to their lack of self-control and guidance, have a high mortality rate. The longest recording of a Half Vampire’s survival come from reports of a man in Thailand who subsisted for three and a half years in said state before ultimately succumbing to his predatory urges and engaging in a twenty-victim killing spree. He was quickly neutralized by hunters from the Zhu family. Seven years, Gansey had told her. He’d been this way for seven years. She isn’t sure what is more terrifying; the thought of him losing control, or the thought of him being neutralized. From the doorway, Orla sighs. “I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” she murmurs. “It’s going to end badly.” Not a prophecy but a supposition, and Blue knows that Orla is only worried for her, but she still bares her teeth and knocks into Orla a bit as she storms from the room.She can’t think about it. She’s in too deep now to get out, anyway. *** She looks across the room at Gansey and feels like she does when the moon is full and high overhead, overcome. Overcome by him, like he has some power over her, some hold that no one else ever has. Worse than going lunar, actually- it’s a new feeling, and it makes her so nervous sometimes that she’s sure everyone can smell it on her, the adrenaline she’s sweating out. Her fingers feel numb, her mouth clumsy and twitchy, her cheeks too-hot.She doesn’t know if it’s normal, the feeling. She’s got no real frame of reference. With Adam it had been a lot more polite, a lot less difficult to control herself. Breaking up with Adam had been anticlimactic, because they’d been kidding themselves anyway. Adam had ambitions beyond this town, and Blue had ambitions beyond lackluster hand-holding and tiptoeing around his laundry list of issues. Insulting to them both, to be sure, but somehow it cancelled out and left them friends, still.Gansey is different, because just looking at Gansey makes her want to light herself on fire. Thinking about Gansey late at night makes her practically foam at the mouth, a wild dog needing to be put down.She spends a lot of time not sleeping, after she gets into the habit of thinking about Gansey late at night. She shifts and runs the woods, the invisible line separating Henrietta from Everywhere Else, a line that somehow she knows, feels in her bones.(It’s her town. That’s never changed.She’ll die before it does.) *** None of them say the word familiar around her, but Blue knows what she is. Knows that she’s a glorified toad or black cat, a source of power, a battery pack. Not a mirror but a well, full of her own magic.She’s drawn to Gansey and Adam and Noah and Ronan because they’re something for her. They’re full of magic and don’t need any of hers. They’re a purpose, something she’s been sorely lacking.She’s drawn to them because it feels right, to be part of a whole. To move in a group, to be as aware of their limbs and moods as she is of her own.She never says the word pack, but that’s what it feels like. Like she’s found her space, her people, her pack. Even though they’re none of them wolves. Even though her instincts tell her they’re dangerous. Dead things, all of them, except Ronan, who is dead in other ways. They’re gonna break your heart, Orla whispers like a prophecy, and Blue knows it’s true but plugs her ears anyway, always circles Monmouth and St. Agnes at least three times when she’s on her nightly patrols. Leaves her scent on the surrounding trees, buildings, cars. Marking her territory.She’ll protect them, like she protects the town.Because, like Henrietta, they’re hers. *** Gansey doesn’t feel dead beneath her hands, when they finally give in.Well— he isn’t dead. Only halfway, and full of warm blood besides, skin hot with it under her touch. She feels almost lunar with her wanting— she is maybe sweating, and that isn’t sexy, but oh god Gansey’s hands are on her waist and keep spasming, clenching tighter and releasing like he can’t help it; his hips hitching restlessly under the spread of her thighs and everything in Blue shudders even as her instincts scream stop stop vampire vampire bite rend kill. She knows Gansey feels it too; his teeth are long-since out, and his irises are pale as milk, a stark contrast to the blown-wide black of his pupils and the sun-baked golden tone of his skin.It’s perverse— that she can find him so lovely even with the evidence of what he is all laid out there for her to see.It’s perverse, but maybe it’s okay, too, because Blue can see the supernatural glow of her own eyes casting a reddish tint over him; she can feel how crowded her own mouth is, human jaw suddenly overfull with the wolf’s sharp teeth. Teeth that want to bite. “Oh god, Jane,” Gansey whispers reverently, and the air inside the Pig is hot and close. They are so close. Pretending like this is normal. Pretending like they don’t want to kill each other at least as much as they want to touch. “Blue. Oh, Blue.” Her head is full and dizzy; she feels like her brain has been overtaken by a beehive, buzzing, buzzing.She is a wolf; she is a girl.She is wet, and Gansey’s hand is slipping up under her skirt, touching her with the very tips of his fingers through her tights and underwear. He hisses when her claws bite into his shoulders, tearing eight little holes into his Aglionby sweater. The scent of his borrowed blood fills her nose.She’s going to bite him— she gasps, shivers, and tumbles out of the car.“Guys,” Noah says, all wide eyes and translucent ectoplasm masquerading as flushed skin. “We’ve got a problem.”The grass is cool, and dewy. It does a lot to bring Blue back to herself. She manages to scramble up to her feet, smoothing down her skirt.Gansey, spread out like a buffet and a prince, both, in the driver’s seat of his Camaro, swallows thickly. “Tell us.” He says, even though his eyes never leave Blue’s. They were hazel again, though his words still lisped a bit from having to maneuver around his fangs.Blue can practically taste him in her mouth; she doesn’t know for one wild, fleeting moment, whether she’d most like to kiss him or kill him. Both, the wolf sings, and the girl agrees.“Tell us.” She echoes, and feels both out of control and under it, too. ***
Neeve and Piper Greenmantle are a mismatched pair, that’s for sure, even before Blue gets a whiff of their scents on the downwind.
Neeve looks… stretched thin. Worn-out. Nothing like she had before she’d been lost in the mirror, when she’d been all generous proportions and smooth, luminous skin. Her skin hangs looser on her bones, her complexion dull, her eyes flatter. Her mouth flattened into a line. She looks like a woman who has made a mistake, and not one she knows how to remedy. She smells like fear, and regret, and exhaustion.
(And
darkness.
And
rot.
And
wrong.)
Piper just looks… well,
fucking insane
would probably be the best descriptor, and Blue thinks the phrase in Ronan’s voice, sneering. Golden-haired and leather-jacketed and flanked on either side by a supernatural creature.
Neeve, a witch.
And someone who looks
alarmingly
like Joseph Kavinsky, but smells so old and rotten and
vampiric
that Blue knows without asking that it’s
really, really not
Kavinsky.
They all smell
wrong.
Off, decayed,
corrupted.
“Well, well, well,” Piper Greenmantle says, pouting just a little, looking put-out. “Who called the Scooby gang?”