Page 10 of Rejected Hollow

"Wren."

"Wren? Like the bird?" Her face brightened. "I love that. Very dainty."

She looked me over, not rudely, but with open curiosity.

"You're a Latecomer too, aren't you? Please say yes. The packet makes it sound like half the intake grew up knowing exactly what they are, and I was starting to think I'd be the only one there who had no idea what she was doing."

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Apparently my face made that obvious, because Tamsin's eyebrows climbed until they nearly vanished beneath her hat.

"Oh," she said, staring at me. "Oh, babe. Nobody told you anything, did they?"

"I got a black letter yesterday morning," I said. "The envelope was blank until I touched the seal, and then my name appeared on it. That's everything I know."

Tamsin considered that for a second.

"Did you give blood recently?"

"In July. There was a mobile blood drive outside the supermarket."

"That could be how they found you." She nodded as though a few things had fallen into place. "The Council has people in blood banks. Hospitals too. Fertility clinics. Places like that. Sometimes somebody gives a pint of the wrong kind of blood and suddenly the Council knows exactly what they've found."

The Council, huh?

She reached into the bag for another chip.

"It isn't the only way, though. They found me two days after I shifted, and I hadn't donated anything except most of my dignity to my parents' bathtub. But they didn't send a liaison? No intake packet?"

What did she just say? Shifted?

"Just the letter and the car."

"That's different." Her grin slipped. "The Council woman who came after I shifted left me a packet thick enough to stop a door. Rules, maps, warnings, the lot. I've had three weeks to read it and panic."

Tamsin shifted closer on the crate. "Right. Then I'll tell you what they should have told you. And don't get too excited about Wi-Fi, because there barely is any. Half the buildings still use gas lamps, and people seal official documents with actual wax. The Council seems to think the nineteenth century got most things right and has never really moved on."

She paused, then looked at me more carefully. "But first, when did you shift for the first time?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you." She made a vague turning motion with both hands. "When did you first change into an animal?"

I stared at her while water knocked steadily against the side of the boat.

"I've never changed into an animal," I said. The sentence sounded ridiculous even as I said it. "I've never shifted."

Tamsin's expression changed. Some of the certainty left her face.

"That's strange."

My stomach tightened. "According to who?"

She reached inside her coat and pulled out a thick packet of papers softened by rain and repeated handling. The corners were bent, and several pages had notes scribbled in the margins.

"According to this. Although I should probably admit that three weeks ago I was working behind a bar and thought werewolves were mostly a metaphor for terrible men." She opened the packet. "So I am definitely not an expert. I've just read this enough times that parts of it are starting to stick."

"The basic idea is that some people have a second form," she added. "An animal form. According to the packet, they're called shifters."