Epilogue

Raven surfaced into consciousness on the first soft mattress she’d felt in — how long? — and itching like hell. She rubbed her arms, blinked, and looked at her hands. Human hands. Her first thought was it was such a sickly, pale color. Her fingers had come away from itching her arms with clumps of black fur. She shook her hands to get rid of the stuff, disgusted, and peeled the sheet off of her.

There was cat fur everywhere, all over her and under and around and clinging to the sheets. Some of it was loose, having fallen out without anywhere to go, but some clumps remained attached to her. She poked at these, simultaneously grossed out and completely fascinated. It came out easily. She brushed off as much as she could and threw it all on the floor. It didn’t make much of a dent in the mess.

As the itching subsided, Raven was surprised how good she felt otherwise. Shouldn’t she be incredibly sore, after? She felt a little embarrassed. She was crossing “gangbang” off her bucket list much sooner than she expected. It had been everything she’d hoped it could be, even if the memory was so close to ... She looked at her hands, remembering the claws that had been there and what they had done. She didn’t want to think about that quite yet.

She looked over herself, checking to see if she was all back. Her face felt fine, what she could see looked fine, and she didn’t have a tail anymore. Then again, she didn’t used to be able to twist completely around to look at her own ass. She was now quite the contortionist.

Raven heard feet bounding down a staircase and Cameron burst into view.

“Raven, you’re up!” he said with heart-melting relief and excitement.

“Uh, yeah,” she mumbled, her voice sounding like herself again.

“You slept a full day,” he said.

“Where am I?”

“This is the house I’ve been crashing in for a while. We’ve been trying to clean up a bit.”

“We?”

“Sara and Wayne ... and Lana too.” Cameron saw her reaction. “Don’t worry she’s cool now. Are you ... OK? How much do you remember?”

Raven sighed. “I’m OK I guess? I don’t want to think about it all, not just yet.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, cool. Do you want some clothes or something?”

She looked down at herself. “Who cares, nothing you haven’t seen — and I see you’re still a hunk,” she said.

“Uh, thanks. I’m also still a werewolf, too. And will be. Ben is-- was wrong about stuff.”

“Are you like, stuck? Like that? Wasn’t it getting worse?”

“I’ll be all right as long as I don’t feed. So yeah, just stuck.”

Something he said clicked. “What do you mean ‘was?’” she asked.

Cameron’s face fell. “The store burned, the whole building. And Ben...” he stopped, and there was no need for him to finish.

Raven felt shitty at her failure to keep the conversation out the recent past.

Cameron seemed to remember something. “I do have something he gave me though, a little book. He said something like how we could keep progressing.”

“What’s in it?”

“I dunno, I didn’t even look at it yet.”

Cameron reached in his jeans and pulled out the small notebook. The cover was bent but it looked intact. He opened to the middle and squinted.

“I think it’s an address book. There’s some names and phone numbers, and then there’s some names and weird symbols.”

Raven’s mind raced. “Ben’s personal address book? Are those other wizards?”

“Looks like it. There’s like a hundred names in here at least.”

“So there’s more out there.” Raven stared into space, imagining a world of secretive wizards and spells and possibilities.

“We knew there had to be, right?”

“Well maybe one of them can help you, dummy!”

“Right, sure!” nodded Cameron.

“If you want,” she added.

“Of course. Who’d want to be stuck this way,” he chuckled nervously.

“ ... getting hungry all the time,” Raven continued.

“ ... right, so hungry.”

“You just have to fuck someone every once in a while.”

“What a pain!”

Raven tilted her head to the side. “Had you forgotten about trying to find a cure?”

He shrugged. “Well I was thinking, why bother? It’s been all upside.”

Raven punched him weakly in the arm. “All upside your face! Who will you go after, more joggers?”

“Nah...” he said, trying to be casual. “Like I said, Lana is cool now.”

This revelation brought Raven up short. She suddenly realized she was jealous.

“Just her?” she asked. “Like, I hope she never has a headache and you have to eat a hobo.”

Cameron looked dumbly thoughtful. “OK, maybe then I might go back to the park.”

“But it could be easier...” Raven said, but couldn’t say the words.