Yet both of them were incredibly dysfunctional, perfectly evidenced by their fraught friendship. Something had definitely happened between them—that much I knew. I had a feeling I was about to find out what, exactly, and I was on the edge of my seat.
No way I’m finishing my cannelloni.
“You two need to bring me up to speed here if I’m to mediate anything,” I interjected. “You promised.”
Garrett gave me a brief sideways glance, then smiled. It irritated Wade. It was such a shame that I couldn’t feel Garrett’s emotions, too. I was willing to bet they spoke volumes.
“As you probably know, Wade and I go way back,” Garrett said. “We were best friends at one point. Our parents are still close. Our dads are on the Texas Mage Council, after all. We were tight.”
“Yeah, I’m aware of that,” I replied. “So, who screwed things up?”
Wade and Garrett stared at each other, until Garrett laughed lightly, shaking his head. “That would be me.” He chuckled and nodded at Wade. “Go on. We had an agreement not to talk about it, but I’m dying to tell her what got you all riled up. But you should do it. I want to hear your version of events.”
I groaned with frustration as another minute passed. Wade’s anger and shame were bubbling beneath the surface, poking me right in the head.
“Oh, come on,” I grumbled.
“Seven years ago,” Wade said, not taking his eyes off a slightly amused Garrett. “You should’ve told me…”
“I kind of did,” Garrett replied, stifling his laughter.
“Garrett is a Shapeshifter,” Wade said in a low tone, his jaw locked. I found myself staring at Garrett in pure disbelief. “I suppose you didn’t know that,” he added, and I shook my head, unable to look away. “Yeah. Shapeshifters tend to be secretive about it. I told you about that.”
I nodded. “Who else knows?”
“Just Wade, our closest family members, my previous coven director, and Alton,” Garrett replied. “Well, Astrid and Tatyana recently found out. I told them. Oh, and the other Shapeshifters in our coven. Alton introduced me to them, though I kind of knew about most of them. We can sense one another sometimes. It’s a bit hard to explain. Not that many people know, let’s leave it at that.”
“We were best friends, and Garrett didn’t think I deserved to know the proper way,” Wade continued. “You know the proper way, right? Where you sit your best friend down, and you tell them you’re a Shapeshifter. No. Garrett decided to shift into Melanie Williams…”
Garrett covered his mouth, struggling not to laugh out loud. He looked like a boy who’d just put a whoopee cushion on the teacher’s chair and was waiting for the poor guy to sit down.
“Melanie was his crush,” he said, grinning at Wade. “He was thirteen, and Melanie was sixteen. She was tutoring him in Alchemy and Magical Chemistry. Once a week, every Sunday evening.”
Wade exhaled sharply, doing a remarkable job of keeping his cool. He was boiling inside. I was going to hear a teakettle whistle, soon enough.
“One Sunday evening, Melanie came over as usual,” Wade took over. “I’d been working up the courage to ask her out for ice cream. She showed up in a beautiful summer dress. I’ll never forget it. It had an orchid pattern on one side. Her strawberry-blonde hair was loose and perfectly straight. And she kept smiling at me. It took me an hour to finally pop the question. To my shock, she said yes, then gave me a peck on the lips,” he added, then frowned at me. “Just so you know, this information is strictly between the three of us. Tell no one, or I will skin you alive.”
I held my breath, my eyes nearly jumping out.
“Okay,” I managed.
“It was my first kiss,” Wade said. That was such an endearing thing for him to say, but I braced myself for the reveal. Deep down, I kind of already suspected what was coming, so I focused on keeping a straight face instead. “It meant the world to me. Remember, I was thirteen, and girls weren’t really my field of expertise at the time.”
“When were they ever?” Garrett croaked, before pressing his lips into a thin line. He was terrible at concealing his amusement.
“Shut up,” Wade snapped, then shifted his focus back to me. “Thing is, that wasn’t Melanie who kissed me. I found out the hard way when, one minute later, she shifted into Garrett. He was laughing like an idiot, and I felt—”
A chortle escaped my throat. I instantly covered my mouth with both hands. I felt terrible for him. It must’ve been a horrendously jarring experience. But, at the same time, being on the outside and looking in, I had to admit—it was hilarious.
Wade’s icy glare made me swallow my laughter altogether.
“Come on, buddy. Tell her everything,” Garrett prompted.
Wade’s glare remained on me for another handful of seconds, before he swallowed hard and continued, “I had a bad reaction when I understood that Garrett was a Shapeshifter. I admit that I said things I wasn’t proud of, though he certainly could have found a better way of breaking the news to me.” His eyes snapped back to Garrett. “Regardless, it drove a wedge between us, and we’ve picked on each other repeatedly ever since.”
“Basically, he never missed an opportunity to fry me like Southern chicken, and I kept shifting into his girlfriends,” Garrett said. “We were both kids at the time, but we managed to carry the flame well into adulthood, as you can see. Crowley’s ego is the size of the damn Bestiary, and I’m not one to say sorry more than once. So, there you have it, Merlin. The scoop.”
A minute went by in awkward silence. I tried to measure Wade and Garrett against each other. Garrett had screwed up with the Melanie Shapeshifting thing. Wade had said some hurtful things. Then they just kept going after each other, until it became their second nature to sort of hate each other. I guessed I could see that happening.
I sighed. Boys.
“Well, I… I’m sorry that happened to you, Wade,” I murmured. His eyes still felt like they were drilling holes into my skull. “But you are both responsible for this mess you two are in, friendship-wise,” I added, looking at Garrett.
“I said I was sorry! But he never apologized for the bigoted things he said to me,” Garrett replied.
“I was angry and humiliated!” Wade spat. “I needed time to cool off, but you didn’t give it to me. Instead, you just kept shifting into even more people I liked! I felt I could never trust you again.”
I guessed I understood where he was coming from, and all of a sudden, this wasn’t as funny as I’d initially perceived it. I had to put myself in the shoes of a thirteen-year-old boy to get that. Then, a different thought wandered into my consciousness and got stuck in the middle of my mental corkboard of facts and musings about the Ryders.
“Plus, I was hurt that I had told you everything about myself, even things I didn’t tell my parents,” Wade added. “And there you were, keeping a massive secret like that. We’d promised each other to never keep secrets. You knew for more than two years at the time that you were a Shapeshifter, yet you chose to keep it from me. Not only that, but you decided to reveal it through a, might I add, very cruel prank. And saying sorry meant nothing when you kept impersonating the girls I was dating.”
Garrett chuckled softly. I felt the urge to smack him—that was mostly Wade, but I had an itch of my own, too.
“And you two seriously never talked about this?” I asked.
“I guess we were too busy being angry at one another,” Garrett muttered, crossing his arms.
“What the hell did you expect?” Wade asked. “You messed with my head in ways that would send normal kids straight into therapy!”
“But you were never a normal kid. I thought you could take it. Besides, how many times did I have to draw my eyebrows on with a damn pencil because you burnt them off, you vengeful jackass?”
“I was your friend, Garrett. Your friend. I deserved better,” Wade said.
I lost my focus for a moment, as the thought I’d just had was coming back with a vengeance, sending a wave of alarm through my body.
“Hold on,” I cut in. “Pause the bromance for a second. Garrett, you’re a Shapeshifter.”
“Stating the obvious,” he replied.
I looked at Wade. “I can’t feel him. Just like I couldn’t feel Finch. Who’s also a Shapeshifter,” I said. “Riddle me this. Is O’Halloran a Shapeshifter, too?”
Wade straightened his back. He could clearly see where I was going with this. He nodded, and I broke into a cold sweat. “Very few people in the coven know, but yes. He’s a Shapeshifter.”
“I can’t feel him, either,” I breathed, the realization smacking me over the back of my head. “Preceptor Bellmore?”
“Yup,” Garrett said. Wade seemed equally shocked by this revelation. Garrett smirked. “You didn’t know, huh, Crowley? Well, it doesn’t surprise me. We tend to keep a tight ship. We even have a support group,” he added, then looked at me. “I told you. There’s a stigma. This general consensus that we can’t be trusted. The likes of Emily and Emmett Ryder aren’t helping. Ever since it became public knowledge the other day, it’s gotten even tougher for us. Bad rep’s a doozy.”
“Imogene Whitehall… I can’t feel her, either,” I said.
“That, I don’t know, but I’d be inclined to say yes, since there’s clearly a pattern here,” Garrett replied.
“You can’t feel Shapeshifters as an Empath,” Wade concluded. “That’s… interesting, to say the least.”
“You can detect us, when others can’t,” Garrett added, his eyes widening as it sank in. “Oh, damn.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, taking it all in.
For some reason, my instincts tugged my mind back to Jacob in that moment. Given his abilities, the Ryders would’ve stopped at nothing to get to him. I figured I could check up on him a bit more often, just to make sure he was okay. After all, those Shapeshifters could literally be anyone.