This time I can’t stop myself from fidgeting—not because I’m nervous but because I want to get out of here and get to Jaxon. He looked like he was on edge earlier, and I just want to make sure nothing bad happens—to him or anyone else.
But Uncle Finn obviously takes my fidgeting for something else entirely, because he rubs a hand over his hair with a heavy sigh. Then says, “So now that the cat is out of the bag…”
“Don’t you mean the werewolf?” I ask with a raised brow. “Or do you have cat shifters up here, too?”
He laughs. “Nope, just the wolves and dragons for now.”
“Just.” My tone is ripe with irony.
“You must have a lot of questions.”
A lot? Nah. Just two or three million. Starting with the question I asked earlier that he chose not to answer. “Why didn’t you tell me? You could have told me when you asked me to move to Alaska, when you came for the funerals.”
“I figured you were pretty overwhelmed then, and the last thing you needed was for me to try to convince you that vampires and witches are real.”
It’s a fair point. But still… “And after I got here?”
He blows out a long breath. “I figured I would ease you in slowly. That first night, I had planned to let you know that things were different here than you might expect, but you had the most miserable altitude sickness. Then everything else happened, and it just seemed easier to leave you in the dark for a while. Especially when Dr. Wainwright told me that after talking to Dr. Blake, she thought we should let you get used to Alaska, and the huge change in your life, before you had to face the fact that everything you’d ever heard about the supernatural world was actually real.”
“Everything?” It’s my turn to lift my brows.
“Maybe not everything. But a lot of it, certainly.”
What he says makes sense, I guess, but I’m still skeptical—especially since I haven’t even had a chance to meet Dr. Wainwright yet. But how could anyone actually think they could hide the fact that this school is filled with things that go bump in the night?
I mean, when I think of Flint jumping out of a tree to save me or Macy doing a glamour right in front of me or the shifters walking around in nothing but a pair of jeans or Jaxon…doing whatever Jaxon does, it seems impossible to imagine I wouldn’t catch on. Sure, I was thinking aliens instead of vampires, but I still knew something was very, very wrong.
My skepticism must show on my face, because my uncle kind of grimaces. “Yeah. In hindsight, it was a bad plan all around. It’s not exactly easy to hide the fact that vampires and dragons are real when we’re in the middle of a giant turf war.”
“Turf war?” I ask, because Macy has already alluded to the same thing. I thought she was talking about high school clique BS, but now that I know we’re talking about different supernatural species…her warning makes a lot more sense.
And seems a lot scarier.
He shakes his head. “That’s for another day. I’m pretty sure you’ve had as much as you can handle today—I know I have. Which leads me to the reason I’ve really called you in here.”
It’s pretty much the most awkward change of subject ever, and I almost call him on it because I know there is more to the story than he’s telling me. A lot more. I’m also sure there are a lot more stories that I don’t have a clue about, let alone the information that fleshes them out. But I don’t think arguing with him is the way to get him to talk.
So instead of demanding answers to all my many, many questions, I bite my tongue and wait to hear what Uncle Finn has to say.
“I was thinking, a lot of really horrible stuff has happened to you since you got here.”
“Not much has actually happened to me,” I remind him. “Jaxon has saved me a bunch of times.”
“I know he has, but we can’t count on Jaxon to always be around. Stuff happens here that doesn’t happen in other schools—as you’ve seen the last few days. What happened with the earthquake was a freak accident, and I’m sure the chandelier was as well. But it’s made me think. What will happen to you if someone loses control of their powers when Jaxon or Flint or Macy isn’t around to whisk you out of the way? What happens if you end up getting seriously hurt?” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”
“Do you think that’s what happened? Someone lost control of their powers?”