Chapter 87: Human Skin
Nina
After Enzo revealed his true nature to the hockey team with Jason’s help, and once the hockey team had calmed down a bit, we started to pack up to head home.
Enzo and I headed upstairs to wake up Lisa, but as we opened his bedroom door, we were both shocked and terrified to find that the spot where Lisa had been sleeping…
Was empty
We checked everywhere: the closets, underneath all the beds, even the kitchen cabinets, but she was gone.
“She probably took off,” Enzo said as the bus driver impatiently honked the horn outside “Hopefully she won’t cause any more trouble”
Thankfully, as we drove home, she
didn’t. There was no sign of Lisa, although I kept looking out the window afraid to see her running next to the bus in her wolf form, but she never appeared.
Enzo made his team swear that they wouldn’t tell a soul about werewolves. They all promised that they wouldn’t say a word, but there was one — Bryce – – who seemed a bit more pensive about the situation than the rest.
I chalked it up to his naturally introverted demeanor and didn’t think much of it. If Enzo trusted his team with this information, then I did, too. And Jason was right: if Enzo wanted to win the Half-Moon Tournament, he couldn’t keep his team in the dark about the true reasons for the tournament.
When we arrived back at the campus, our next move was to figure out whoever was giving people the Mad Wolf serum. We both had our suspicions that Edward had something to do with it, but we couldn’t prove it just yet — and, to make matters worse, neither of us exactly had the time at the moment to be stalking Edward.
So, we went to the one person who had all of the time in the world.
Luke.
Enzo called Luke to his apartment using their mindlink. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door and he let Luke in, glancing warily down the hallway in either direction before quickly closing and locking the door behind us.
“What’s all this about?” Luke asked through his sunglasses and surgical mask. “I’ve barely seen you guys in, like, two and a half weeks and now you’re suddenly calling me here and acting really suspicious.”
Enzo stammered to formulate his words, so I stepped in and explained everything to Luke for him.
“Remember how Justin was turned into a rogue?” I asked. It all still felt a bit strange to be talking so comfortably about rogues and werewolves, especially to a talking skeleton, but it was quickly becoming less foreign to me by the day.
Luke nodded.
“Well,” I continued, pacing a bit, Lisa showed up while we were on that hockey trip just now… And she’s been turned, too. They both mentioned something called a ‘Mad Wolf serum’ that was given to them by a stranger
Luke scoffed, and if he had any eyes, he likely would’ve rolled them. “You know, kids during my time didn’t just take drugs willy-nilly–”
“It doesn’t matter,” I interrupted,
feeling a bit annoyed. “Someone is intentionally giving students a serum that’s turning them into shifters. We have to figure out who exactly it is, and we’re both pretty sure that we know who: Edward. But we’re not entirely sure and we need proof before we do anything, because if he’s the one doing it, then he might very well be working for someone else…”
“Which means that he could alert them about our knowledge of it and they could cover it up before we have a chance to prove it, or worse,” Enzo chimed in. “They could really hurt someone as revenge, for all we know.”
Luke paused for a few moments, folding his bony arms across his ribcage.
“So I take it you want me to do the investigating?” he asked.
I nodded. “Please, Luke,” I said. “We really need your help. Enzo has to focus on this Half-Moon Tournament, and I need to focus on school.”
Luke sighed. “Just when I was really getting into origami,” he muttered, causing both Enzo and I to raise our eyebrows. “I’ll help you, I guess.”
Enzo and I both let out sighs of relief, but were quickly cut off by Luke before we could say anything else.
“But… My disguise isn’t gonna work for much longer People are starting to notice the weird, skinny guy walking around campus in baggy clothes with his face and hands covered at all times.”
I cursed inwardly. I hadn’t thought of that…
“I can help you,” Enzo suddenly blurted out. “I did promise to get you a better disguise. I’ll admit that I got distracted by more than a few things along the way, but I’ll really help you now. Can both of you meet me at the cabins in the woods tonight, at midnight?”
I didn’t have much of a chance to ask Enzo what his plan was before he ran off to “get everything ready”, in his words, but I trusted him to do whatever was necessary to make this all run smoothly
So, at midnight, Luke and I walked to the cabins in the woods together.
When we arrived, Enzo was standing in the center of the circle of cabins. There was a fire in the fire pit, and there was a strange, yet beautiful, woman standing beside him.
“This is Ginna,” Enzo said as we approached warily “She’s a witch… And she’s going to give you your human skin. Luke ”
I raised an eyebrow. Human skin?
Luke, however, seemed to know already. He walked up to Ginna and dropped to his knees. “Thank you,” he said quietly, looking up at the beautiful witch. She wore clothes that appeared to be entirely handmade: a dark green dress with long, vine-like decorations hanging down around the skirt, a belt with various bottles and a knife attached to it, and a leather shoulder piece on each side. Her hair was long and thick, and jet black. In the firelight, there was something both terrifying and beautiful about her.
Enzo stepped away from Ginna and Luke and came to stand next to me.
“She’s gonna perform a ceremony to give Luke a human disguise,” he whispered while Ginna pulled a bottle of what looked like salt off of her belt and walked around Luke, sprinkling it in a circle “He’ll still be undead, a , and the disguise won’t be permanent, but he’ll appear human for a while.”
We watched as Ginna then started placing various small crystals around the circle. Then, she kneeled in front of Luke and took his hands, whispering incantations in a language that I didn’t understand.
Suddenly, Luke became enveloped in a blanket of what looked like fire. I jumped, clapping my hand over my mouth as Enzo reached out and pulled me to safety in his arms. We could feel the heat emanating from Luke even from where we stood, but he didn’t even seem to react.
Ginna continued to say her incantations, this time louder, as she threw various powders into the fire that was Luke.
I thought for sure that he was going to burn to dust… But then, as quickly as it began, the fire stopped. Luke was no longer a skeleton in baggy clothing, but he was now a young man with blonde hair and pale skin, curled up in a fetal position in the middle of the circle.
And he was naked.
Ginna gestured for Enzo to come. She handed him a small pouch and said something quietly, to which he nodded; then, she disappeared into the woods without a trace.
I watched in shock as Enzo grabbed a blanket from a nearby chair and wrapped it around Luke, then helped him to stand. Luke looked down at his hands, turning them this way and that as he admired his flesh, then turned his face up toward the moon and closed his eyes, smiling
The magic was broken, however, when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket I pulled it out to see my mother’s name on the screen, why was she calling me so late?
“Hello?” I answered quietly, walking a bit away from Luke and Enzo.
“Nina,” my mother said, her voice shaking. “It’s Taylor. He’s in the hospital.”
