Chapter 4: Who are you really?
Elisa’s POV
The week passed in a thin, gauzy haze of normalcy. I moved through my days at the library like a ghost carefully haunting a familiar building. The scar on my side had faded to a silver thread, barely visible against my dark skin, but the memory of the knife’s entry was a fresh brand on my nerves. Every sudden noise from the stacks made my muscles coil. Every shout from the street outside the large windows had my claws itching to emerge from my fingertips. I was a spring wound too tight, with no safe release.
I didn’t check the encrypted phone. I left it buried in the velvet darkness of my magical space, a place that felt tainted now, humming with the residual echoes of Vittorio’s death rattle. My body, though healed, felt hollowed out. The vital energy I’d stolen had been spent on survival, leaving me with a persistent, bone-deep fatigue that even ten hours of sleep couldn’t touch. It was a different kind of tired, one that sleep couldn’t fix. It was soul-tired.
I wore my sundresses. I sorted returns. I helped freshmen locate dusty volumes of literary criticism, my voice a practiced, cheerful lilt. I masturbated in the rare books section, my hand under my skirt, fingers working my clit to a quick, silent orgasm against a shelf of leather-bound Emerson, the risk a pathetic substitute for the real thrill, the real drain. It left me emptier.
And through it all, I felt Jasmine’s eyes.
It wasn’t obvious. She was too smart for that. But it was a constant pressure, a subtle shift in the atmosphere of our home. If I was reading on the couch, she’d find a reason to be in the living room, folding laundry, her gaze lingering a beat too long. If I winced slightly when reaching for a mug in a high cabinet—a tiny, involuntary pull at the tender muscle—I’d turn to find her watching from the doorway, her expression unreadable. She’d ask, again, if my “migraine” was better. She’d offer me turmeric lattes and iron supplements, her concern a pointed weapon.
She came to the library on Wednesday. Said she was in the neighborhood after a client session at a nearby gym. She browsed the fitness section, all the way in the back. I could feel her stare between the shelves, a physical weight between my shoulder blades. I’d turned, given her a bright, librarian wave. She’d waved back, her smile not reaching her eyes.
She was hunting. And I was her quarry, playing docile, wounded deer. The irony was a bitter pill. The world’s deadliest assassin, unnerved by the protective scrutiny of her personal trainer roommate.
The physical need for contact, for a release that wasn’t solitary or violent, became a slow ache. The fear of Jasmine’s discovery was a cold knot in my stomach, but beneath it pulsed a warmer, simpler hunger. For touch that wasn’t transactional. For pleasure that wasn’t a prelude to death. I missed the sweat, the smell, the noise of another person. Leo had been a spark. Vittorio had been a conflagration. I needed something in between. A campfire to warm my cold hands.
Yara’s POV was a soft, steady flame.
It had started months ago, a natural confluence of proximity and kindness. After a late night of her meditating and me reading, we’d shared a bottle of wine. She’d talked about energy, chakras, the flow of life force. I’d listened, genuinely fascinated by a worldview so opposite to my own. One touch had led to another. It was never romantic, not in a starry-eyed way. It was physical, spiritual, and intensely private. A mutual understanding that we were both complex creatures with needs that didn’t fit neat boxes. We didn’t flaunt it. We didn’t discuss it. It simply was. A secret within a house of secrets.
On Friday night, a week to the day after Mulberry Street, the ache was too much. The apartment was quiet. Maya was out at a gallery opening. Marcus was editing video in his room. Jasmine had just left for a late dinner with a friend from her gym, shooting me a long, measuring look before she closed the door.
The silence after she left was profound. And it itched.
I found Yara in her room, which always smelled of sandalwood and sage. She was sitting in lotus position on a woven mat, her long braids cascading down her back. She was naked, her warm brown skin glowing in the soft light of her salt lamp. She was often naked; it was her state of being at home, a fact we were all so accustomed to it was unremarkable. Her body was a masterpiece of gentle curves and firm muscle, a testament to her practice.
She heard me in the doorway and opened her eyes. They held mine, seeing past the cheerful librarian, past the tense wound-spring of the last week. She saw the hollowed-out creature beneath.
“Your energy is shattered,” she said softly, her voice a low hum. “It’s in sharp, painful pieces around you.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“I can help you remember how to put it back together,” she said. She uncoiled from the mat, rising with a fluid grace. She took my hand. Her palm was warm, dry. “Shower?”
I nodded. It was our place. The steam, the white noise, the clean scent. A ritual washing away of the outside world.
Jasmine’s POV
I didn’t go to dinner. I told Elisa I was meeting Kylie from spin class. I told Kylie I had stomach cramps. I walked around the block three times, my mind a whirlwind of bloodstains and news reports and the careful, pained way Elisa moved. The animalistic killing. My best friend’s too-pale face.
I needed to see. I needed proof that would either dismantle my insane theory or confirm it. The injury. If she was hiding a wound, a real, physical wound, it would be visible. She was careful, but she couldn’t hide a body in a shared apartment forever. The shower was the only place she was guaranteed to be naked, unguarded.
I used my key and slipped back into the apartment silently. It was quiet. Marcus’s door was closed, his keyboard clicking faintly. Maya was out. Yara’s door was open, her room empty. The bathroom door at the end of the hall was closed, the fan humming, light glowing at the bottom.
My heart was a drum against my ribs. This was a violation. I knew it. Every decent bone in my body screamed it. But the fear for her—the terrifying, consuming fear that she was in some deep, dangerous shit—overrode the decency. I moved down the hall, each footfall careful on the creaky floorboards. I pressed my ear to the bathroom door.
Not just the fan. The shower was running. And… voices. Murmuring. Laughter. Elisa’s laugh, real and unforced, a sound I hadn’t heard in a week. And Yara’s, lower, a soothing counterpoint.
Confusion spiked through my urgency. They were in there together? Maybe just talking. Yara was always trying to get Elisa to do steam rituals for her “aura.”
I reached for the doorknob. It was unlocked. My plan, such as it was, vaporized. I pushed the door open, just a crack, the steam billowing out in a warm, damp cloud.
The shower was a glass enclosure, fogged but not opaque. Two figures were visible inside, blurred by the condensation on the glass.
They weren’t talking anymore.
Elisa’s POV
The water was blissfully hot, cascading over my head, my shoulders, sluicing down the tense length of my spine. Yara stood behind me, her hands on my hips, her naked body pressed against my back. Her skin was slick and warm.
“Just breathe,” she murmured into my ear, her voice blending with the roar of the water. “Let the water take the sharp edges.”
I leaned back into her, letting my head rest against her shoulder. Her breasts, full and soft, cushioned me. Her hands slid up from my hips, over the flat plane of my stomach, coming to rest just below my small breasts. Her thumbs stroked the sensitive undersides. I let out a sigh that was half relief, half surrender.
She turned me slowly under the spray, facing her. Water beaded on her dark skin, caught in the tight curls of her pubic hair, glistened on her full lips. Her eyes were deep pools of calm. She cradled my face, her thumbs tracing my cheekbones. “There you are,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you.”
She kissed me. It wasn’t like Leo’s eager hunger or the violent takeover of Vittorio. It was slow, deep, and tasting of mint and sage. Her tongue explored my mouth with a languid certainty that unraveled the last of my clenched control. My hands came up to her shoulders, then slid down the smooth, powerful muscles of her back to grip the generous swell of her ass. She moaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating through me.
She broke the kiss, her lips trailing down my neck, over my collarbone. She took one of my small breasts into her mouth, her tongue laving the large, dark areola before closing around the nipple. The sensation was electric, a direct line to my core. My back arched, pushing my breast deeper into her mouth. “Yara,” I breathed, my fingers tangling in her braids.
Her mouth was magic, wringing pleasure from my body with a knowing patience I never allowed myself. She worshiped my breasts, moving from one to the other, sucking and nibbling until my knees felt weak. The steam, the heat, her mouth—it was a cocoon, separate from death, from suspicion, from everything.
She sank to her knees on the shower floor, the water coursing over her head and shoulders. Her hands gripped the backs of my thighs, urging me to widen my stance. I braced my hands against the wet tile wall, looking down at her. Her gaze was locked on my pussy, her expression one of serene, focused appreciation.
“So beautiful,” she said, her voice husky. Her fingers parted me, exposing my inner lips, already swollen and glistening with more than just shower water. “So open.”
She didn’t tease. She leaned in and licked a long, slow stripe from my perineum up through my soaking wet folds to my clit. My hips jerked. Her tongue was flat and firm, a perfect pressure. She ate me with a devotional intensity, her mouth sealing over my clit, sucking rhythmically while her tongue flicked and pressed. One hand stayed on my thigh, the other came up, two fingers sliding into my cunt with ease. She fucked me with them, a slow, deep penetration that curled upwards, finding a spot that made stars burst behind my eyelids.
“Fuck, Yara… right there,” I choked out, my head falling back. The pleasure was a pure, white-hot coil, tightening with every stroke of her tongue, every thrust of her fingers. This was it. This was the feeling I craved. Not taking, but being given. Not draining, but being filled. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on me, it was a lifeline.
“Come for me, Elisa,” she murmured against my flesh, her breath hot. “Let it go. Let all the broken pieces go.”
Her command, soft as it was, shattered me. The orgasm ripped through me, a silent, convulsive wave that locked my muscles and stole my breath. My cunt clenched around her fingers, pulsing again and again as she gently fucked me through it, her tongue now soft and lapping, drinking every drop I gave her.
I slumped against the wall, boneless, panting. She rose, her body slick and streaming, and kissed me again. I could taste myself on her lips, salty and musky. The intimacy of it was profound.
“My turn,” I whispered, my voice ragged. I pushed her gently until her back was against the tiles. I dropped to my own knees, the water spraying my face. Her pussy was before me, a gorgeous, full brown flower, her labia dark and inviting. I pressed my face into her, inhaling her rich, unique scent—clean sweat, sage, and deep, feminine musk. I licked her with the same reverence she’d shown me, my tongue delving into her opening, savoring her tangy flavor. She gasped, her hands coming to my head, fingers threading through my wet, crimson curls.
I found her clit, a hard, eager pearl, and sucked. She cried out, a sharp, beautiful sound that echoed in the small, steamy space. I slid two fingers inside her, feeling her hot, tight channel clench around me. I fucked her with my hand, my mouth never leaving her clit, my tongue circling and pressing. Her hips bucked against my face, her thighs trembling around my ears.
“Yes… oh god, yes, just like that,” she chanted, her voice rising. I curled my fingers, hitting that sweet, spongy spot inside her. Her climax built quickly, a gathering storm. Her moans became sharper, more insistent. I redoubled my efforts, sucking her clit hard, fucking her fast and deep.
She came with a guttural cry, her body bowing off the wall. Her cunt convulsed around my fingers, gushing a hot rush of her release that I caught in my mouth, swallowing her essence as her hips jerked through the aftershocks. I gentled my mouth, licking her softly as she shuddered, until she gently pushed my head away, oversensitive.
We were both breathing hard, kneeling in the water swirling at the drain. She pulled me up, wrapping me in a tight, slippery hug. We stood there, holding each other under the spray, the water beginning to run cool.
Jasmine’s POV
I stood frozen in the crack of the door, the steam coating my skin, my hand gripping the doorknob so hard my knuckles were white.
I saw it all. The kissing. The way Yara’s mouth moved on Elisa’s small, dark-nippled breasts. The way Elisa braced herself against the wall, her face a mask of ecstasy as Yara went down on her. The raw, unfiltered sounds of pleasure. I saw Elisa on her knees, her face buried between Yara’s thighs, drinking her in like she was starving.
And I saw her back. Her side. As she turned, reaching for the shampoo bottle, the water sluiced down her smooth, unmarred skin. The line of her ribcage, the curve of her waist… there was nothing. No scar. No wound. Not even a discoloration. Just flawless, dark skin under the fluorescent bathroom light.
The shock was a physical blow, rooting me to the spot. The blood. The news report. Her stiffness, her pallor. It had all been so real, so terrifyingly plausible. And now this. A secret, yes. But a secret of an entirely different kind. My best friend and my other roommate. Lovers. In the shower, lost in each other, with no evidence of violence on Elisa’s body at all.
A profound, gut-twisting shame washed over me, hotter than the steam. I was a voyeur. A spy. I had constructed a narrative of deadly intrigue out of scraps and my own fear, while the truth was simply that Elisa was healing from a different kind of intimacy, one she’d kept private. The animalistic killing on the news was just a coincidence. A horrible, gruesome coincidence.
The relief was so immense it felt like nausea. My theory, my terrifying suspicion, was wrong. Elisa was just Elisa. She’d had a migraine. She was secretly hooking up with Yara. She was fine.
I backed away silently, pulling the bathroom door closed without a sound. I retreated down the hall, my heart hammering for a new reason now. I had violated them. I had seen something profoundly private. I felt like filth.
I slipped out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the cool night air. I leaned against the brick wall of our building, breathing deeply, trying to steady my racing heart.
I was wrong. Thank god, I was wrong.
But as I stood there, the image of Elisa’s face as she came, that utter, absolute abandon, superimposed itself over the memory of her at the deli, watching the social club. That had not been the face of a woman thinking about a secret girlfriend. That had been the face of a hunter. Cold. Calculating. Focused.
And the blood on the door. I had seen it. I hadn’t imagined it.
The relief curdled, twisting into a new, more profound confusion. The evidence was contradictory. The scar wasn’t there. But the blood had been. The focus had been real. The timing was too perfect.
Maybe… maybe the wound had been minor. A cut from a kitchen knife. She’d cleaned it, it healed. She was just private. And the club hit was just a coincidence.
It had to be.
I wanted it to be.
I pushed off the wall and started walking, with no destination. I needed to clear my head. The image of them together, so raw and intimate, was burned into my mind. It changed nothing, and yet it changed everything. I knew a secret about my best friend, one she hadn’t chosen to share. And I had discovered it in the worst possible way.
I also knew, with a sinking certainty, that my fear hadn’t been entirely erased. It had just been buried under a layer of shame and confusion. The question remained, humming just below the surface: who was Elisa Marchetti, really?
And as I walked, a new, unsettling thought emerged. If she could hide a sexual relationship with Yara from all of us, in our own home, for months… what else could she be hiding?
Elisa’s POV
Yara and I toweled each other off in the steamy bathroom, a quiet, tender ritual. The world outside the fogged-up mirror didn’t exist. The hollow feeling was still there, but it was lined with warmth now, a temporary respite.
“Feel more whole?” Yara asked, wrapping her towel around her curvy hips.
“More centered,” I said, and it was mostly true. The broken-glass feeling in my energy was gone, smoothed into something softer, if not yet whole. “Thank you.”
She kissed my forehead. “Anytime.” She left first, padding naked and unselfconscious back to her room.
I took my time, brushing my teeth, moisturizing my skin. I looked at my reflection. My eyes were clearer. The tension around my mouth was gone. I looked like Elisa again. I pulled on a simple cotton nightshirt, the fabric soft against my sensitive skin. The secret of my time with Yara was a comforting weight, a normal secret in a life of abnormal ones.
I opened the bathroom door, the cooler air of the hallway a shock. The apartment was still quiet. I walked to my room, my bare feet silent on the floorboards. As I passed Jasmine’s door, I saw it was slightly ajar. Her room was dark. She wasn’t back from dinner.
Good.
I slipped into my own dark room and closed the door. I leaned against it, finally alone. The encounter with Yara had been a balm, but it hadn’t filled the true void. The void that craved not just pleasure, but power. The void that was starting to ache with a familiar, hungry pull.
I walked to my window, looking out at the Brooklyn night. Somewhere out there, my phone was silent. No new targets. No new orders. I was benched, or being disciplined, or worse—being watched.
The silver thread on my side itched.
Jasmine was watching too, in her own way. I could feel it. Her suspicion was a faint, sour note in the air of our home. I’d have to be more careful. I’d have to be more normal.
I climbed into bed, the sheets cool. I replayed Yara’s mouth on me, the release it brought. It was a good memory. A human one.
The encrypted phone buzzed two days later, a flat, insistent vibration from the velvet nothingness of my magical space. The sound was both a condemnation and a relief. My benched period was over. The void inside me, momentarily soothed by Yara, yawned open again, hungry and specific. It didn’t want comfort. It wanted fuel.
The target was a security consultant in Midtown, a man who specialized in making high-profile problems disappear. I made him disappear first.
Weeks unspooled after that, a montage of shadow-steps and stolen moments. The work was clean.Efficient. No throat-ripping dramatics. A corrupt city comptroller found dead in his luxury high-rise from an apparent heart attack after a session with a high-end escort who never existed. A human trafficker whose private jet experienced catastrophic instrument failure over the Atlantic. Each target was a lesson in control. I used my illusions to craft perfect enticements, my body to deliver a silent, pleasurable death. I was Kitsune again, a ghost in the system, draining the rotten life from the city’s underbelly one orgasm at a time.
But the hunger changed. It grew teeth.
The act itself became a battleground. Luring them in, feeling their hands on my bare skin, their cocks pushing into my wet cunt—it was a means to an end. Yet, as they bucked and grunted above me or beneath me, as I felt their life force begin to flow into me at the critical moment, a new impulse would surge. A red, snarling urge to skip the subtle drain. To simply take. To feel my real teeth, not the imagined ones of the mask, sink into their flesh. To tear and rend until the life spilled out in a hot, violent gush, not a steady transfer. The memory of Vittorio’s blood flooding my mouth was no longer just a shameful mistake; it was a craving.
After each kill, I’d shadow-step to a random rooftop, my body thrumming with stolen power, and I’d shake. Not from exhaustion, but from the effort of containment. My claws would be out, scoring deep grooves into the tarpaper. My fox tail would lash the air, a frantic, angry metronome. The human part of me, the Elisa part, felt smaller, a faint voice shouting from the bottom of a deep, red well.
I leaned on Yara.Heavily. Desperately.
Our encounters shifted. They were no longer just about mutual pleasure or gentle realignment. They were exorcisms. I’d come to her room reeking of strange cologne and a deeper, metaphysical grime. She’d wordlessly light her sage, the smoke curling around my tense form. Then, she’d use her hands, her mouth, her own strong body to pull me back from the edge.
One night, after a particularly difficult mark—a woman who fought the drain, whose death had been a thrashing, resistant struggle—I practically fell through Yara’s doorway. I was still in the mental echo of the hunt, my eyes doubtless glowing with a feral light in the dark.
“I can smell it on you,” Yara said, not unkindly. She was naked, as usual, a statue of calm earth against my storm. “The violence. It’s clinging to your aura like tar.”
“I need it gone,” I said, my voice a rasp.
She pushed me onto her bed, the woven blanket rough against my back. She didn’t kiss me. She climbed on top, straddling my hips, her full breasts swaying. She reached between her own legs, fingers sliding through her folds to find her wetness, and then she guided my head. “Drink,” she commanded, lowering herself onto my mouth. “Drink this. Remember what this tastes like.”
I obeyed. I buried my face in her, licking and sucking with a frantic, needy intensity. Her taste, clean and musky and alive, flooded my senses, overwhelming the phantom copper of blood. I fucked her with my tongue until she came with a sharp cry, her juices spilling into my mouth, and I swallowed every drop, using her life, her vibrant, given energy, to scrub my palate clean.
After, she’d hold me, her fingers tracing the silver thread on my side—the only remaining scar. “This is your anchor,” she’d whisper. “The pain that kept you human. Remember it.”
But the anchor felt slippery. The hunt was a siren song, and my inner fox was learning the words.
Jasmine’s watchfulness became a constant, grating note. Her suspicion hadn’t died after the shower incident; it had mutated. She no longer looked for physical proof of injury. Now, she watched my energy. She’d note when I seemed too tired after a “quiet night in.” She’d comment on my sudden, ravenous appetite after a “long day at the library.” She was piecing together a puzzle with the wrong picture on the box, but her instincts were sharp. Too sharp.
She started showing up at the library more often. Not inside, but outside. I’d see her tall, athletic frame across the street, leaning against a building, pretending to text. Or she’d be at a cafe with a view of the main entrance, nursing a single coffee for two hours. She was tailing me. The irony was so thick I could taste it, bitter on the back of my tongue. My roommate, the personal trainer, was conducting amateur surveillance on a professional assassin.
The friction built like static. Every casual question from her—“You seem jumpy today, everything okay?” “You’re out late a lot lately.”—was a needle prying at the seams of my disguise. My replies, once effortlessly cheerful, grew clipped, strained. The human part of me, the part that loved her, feared her. The fox part wanted to silence the threat.
It snapped on a Tuesday afternoon.
I was at my desk in the periodicals section, processing a stack of new academic journals. The familiar, calm rhythm of the work usually soothed me. But today, the aftertaste of last night’s kill was persistent. The mark had been a young man, a prodigy in bioweapons, and his life force had been peculiarly acidic, leaving a burning sensation in my veins. I felt raw, exposed.
A flicker of movement in the large window facing the street caught my eye.There. By the bus stop.Jasmine. In workout gear, her braids in a high ponytail. She wasn’t even pretending anymore. She was just standing there, arms crossed, staring directly at the library, directly at my window.
A hot, red wire tightened behind my eyes. The fox ears under my glamour flattened. My nails dug into the soft wood of the desk, leaving half-moon impressions.I stood up. My movements were lethally smooth. I walked out of the periodicals section, through the main lobby, and pushed the heavy glass doors open. The city sounds rushed in. I crossed the street without looking at traffic, a horn blaring in my wake.
Jasmine saw me coming. Her posture straightened, a mix of defiance and wariness.
I stopped a foot from her, invading her space. The scent of her coconut hair oil and clean sweat was suddenly, violently offensive. “What the fuck are you doing, Jasmine?”
She blinked, taken aback by the venom in my tone. “I was in the neighborhood. I’m allowed to be in the neighborhood, Elisa.”
“Bullshit.” The word was a low snarl. “You’ve been ‘in the neighborhood’ twice a week for a month. You’re across from my gym. You’re outside the bodega.You’re here. You’re following me.”
Her eyes narrowed. The protective, stubborn mask I knew so well slid into place.“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m worried about my friend who’s been acting like a fucking ghost for weeks. Who comes home smelling like strange places. Who has secrets falling out of her pockets.”
“My secrets are mine.” My hands curled into fists at my sides. I could feel the sharp points of my claws threatening to break through the human guise. The urge to slash, to make her back off, was a pulsing beat in my wrists.
“Not when they put you in danger!” she shot back, her voice rising. “I saw the blood on your door, Elisa!I saw it! Then it was gone. Then you’re fine. Then people are getting their throats torn out a few blocks away! What the hell is going on with you?”
The mention of the blood, of Vittorio, was a spark in a gas-filled room. A low growl, entirely inhuman, vibrated in my chest. I saw her eyes widen slightly, a flicker of real fear.Good. She should be afraid.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, each word a chip of ice. “You’re constructing drama because your life is too boring. Back. Off.”
“Or what?” she challenged, stepping forward herself now. “You’ll what, Elisa? Give me the silent treatment? Hide in your room? I’m trying to help you!”
“I don’t need your help!” I shouted. A few people on the street turned to look.I didn’t care. The red haze was descending. “You want to know my secrets? You want to poke around in my private life? Is that it?”
“Yes!” she yelled back. “If it keeps you from getting hurt! If it keeps you from…”
“From what?” I hissed, leaning in so close I could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes, the faint spray of freckles across her nose. “From who I really am?”
The question hung between us, charged and dangerous.
Jasmine’s jaw worked. Her voice dropped, but it was no less intense. “I saw you. In the shower. With Yara.”
The world tilted. Of all the things I’d braced for—questions about the news, about my hours, about my health—this was the detonation. This was the violation that went beyond suspicion. This struck at the one pure, human thing I had left. The fragile, grounding connection with Yara, defiled by her prying eyes.
The reaction was instantaneous and terrifying. A wave of pure, predatory fury crashed over me. My vision tinged red at the edges. My canines throbbed, aching to elongate, to sink into the tender column of her throat just like Vittorio’s. I could almost feel the give of her skin, the hot rush of her blood. My hands flew up, not to strike, but to grip my own head, fingers tangling in my red curls as if to physically hold my skull together.
I took a stumbling step back, my breath coming in ragged, animal pants. The restraint was a physical agony, a scream of every muscle fiber.
“You…” I choked out, the voice not quite my own, guttural and strained. “You spied on us?”
The look on her face—part guilt, part defiant concern—was the only thing that saved her life. That flicker of the friend she used to be, buried under the investigator. It was a tiny anchor in the roaring red tide.
If I stayed one more second, I would kill her. I would rip her throat out on the sunny Brooklyn street.
I turned and ran.
Not a jog. A flat-out, desperate sprint. I dodged pedestrians, vaulted a fire hydrant, my sundress flowing behind me. I heard her shout my name once, the sound fading quickly. I didn’t stop. I ran until my lungs burned and the purely human exertion began to push back the feral panic. I ducked into an alley, slid into a deep shadow between two dumpsters, and let the darkness swallow me whole.
I didn’t go home that night. Or the next.
I had a network of safe spots—empty storage units paid for with untraceable cash, forgotten corners of parking garages. I holed up in one, shaking, the phantom sensation of Jasmine’s throat between my teeth slowly receding. The shame that followed was colder, more desolate than the rage. I’d almost killed my best friend. Over a secret. A normal, human secret.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the totality of the exposure. She was getting too close. She’d seen the blood. She’d connected it to the news, however imperfectly. She’d seen me with Yara. She was a thread, and if pulled, my whole world would unravel. The fox inside me said to sever the thread. Permanently.
Elisa, the human, wept silently in the dark, concrete room.
Yara’s POV
Elisa didn’t come home. Her room was empty, her bed neatly made. A cold dread settled in my stomach, different from the worry after her injury. This was sharper, born of the frantic, hunted look she’d had in her eyes the last time I saw her.
Jasmine was the key. She’d come back from wherever she’d been that afternoon looking like she’d seen a ghost. Pale, shaky, and utterly closed off. She’d brushed off Maya’s questions with a terse, “I’m fine,” and locked herself in her room.
By the second evening of Elisa’s absence, the apartment atmosphere was thick with unspoken tension. Maya, Marcus, and I were in the living room. Marcus was sketching on his tablet, Maya was painting her nails a violent shade of purple, and I was trying, unsuccessfully, to meditate.
“Has anyone actually talked to Jasmine?” Maya asked, blowing on her nails. “She’s been a zombie since Tuesday. And now Elisa’s just… gone. Texted anyone?”
We all shook our heads. I’d tried. My messages were delivered, but unanswered.
“They had a fight,” Marcus said quietly, not looking up from his screen. “A big one. I heard Jasmine come in, slam her door. She was crying.”
Maya and I exchanged a look. Jasmine didn’t cry. Not over simple roommate squabbles.
“We should ask her,” Maya said, standing up. “This is weird.”
We found Jasmine in the kitchen, mechanically making a protein shake. The blender’s roar was aggressively loud. When it stopped, the silence was heavy.
“Jas,” Maya began, leaning against the counter. “What’s going on? Where’s Elisa?”
Jasmine kept her eyes on the viscous green liquid as she poured it into a glass. “I don’t know.”
“You two fought,” I said, my voice calm. “What happened?”
She finally looked up. Her eyes were hollow, the usual fiery protectiveness replaced by a stunned, distant fatigue. “We fought. I said some things. She said some things. She ran off.” She took a long sip of her shake.
“And you’re not worried?” Maya pressed, her brow furrowed. “It’s been two days. This isn’t like her. Even when she’s pissed, she comes home.”
Jasmine’s gaze drifted past us, out the kitchen window into the darkening city. “Maybe we don’t know what’s like her.” Her tone was flat, final. “Maybe we never did.”
The response was so utterly unlike Jasmine—the person who’d track down a roommate with a common cold to force-feed them soup, who’d wait up if you were out late—that it was more alarming than panic would have been. It was a surrender. A giving-up.
“Did something happen?” I asked, probing gently. “Something specific?”
Her eyes flicked to me for a second, and a complex storm of emotions passed through them: guilt, anger, fear, and a deep, unsettling shame. She looked away quickly. “It’s between me and her. She’ll come back when she’s ready. Or she won’t.” She put her glass in the sink with a definitive clink and walked back to her room, closing the door softly.
We stood there in the quiet kitchen.
“That was fucked up,” Maya whispered.
Marcus nodded, his face serious. “She’s hiding something. And she’s scared of it.”
I said nothing. The cold dread in my stomach had solidified into a hard, cold knowing. Jasmine had seen something. Or suspected something so profound it had broken her usual protective instincts. She was retreating because confronting the truth was more terrifying than Elisa’s disappearance.