Risky Business

After getting as far as she could go without getting eaten, swatted, or hit by a car, Carahya hid in a well-lit, yet secluded alleyway and shifted back to her human form. She was exhausted and ached from head to toe. She said under her breath, “If I’d have taken any longer to transform back, I may have lost myself…”

Human shifters were not supposed to be able to take the forms of insects, arachnids, or any other types of animals and bugs with little-to-no mental capacity. Not only would it be difficult for her to sustain a form that would not allow her to keep her mind going, but the longer that she stayed in the form, the less likely it would be that she would be capable of maintaining her mind long enough to be able to change herself back. It was a risk that she was completely unwilling to take again. Not only was she exhausted and unable to keep hold of even her hair and eye color shifting, but she was also more frightened of losing herself to a new form than she was of losing her life back at the office that she had been in earlier. Oh, and to top it all off, she felt grimier than she ever had in her life. From now on, she was sticking with mammals and birds, preferably animals with four appendages so she would not have to completely grow or lose any in the shifting process ever again.

She found that the gun was still in her pocket, and had two shots fired from it. She knew nothing about guns themselves, but knew that to carry one concealed in Massachusetts required a permit. She mentally put it on her to-do list, and put her hand to her back, only to find that her backpack was gone. With it were the demon-summoning books, McBride’s defense book, Carahya’s house keys, and her wallet, containing her driver’s license and only photo ID, her debit/ATM card, and about $40 in cash.

“God fucking damnit…what a week.”

She contemplated going back to retrieve them on foot, but knew that it was a terrible idea when she considered how narrowly she had escaped the first time. She would wait until Sunday, when the man with the cane said that they had office hours, to try to get her belongings back. Until then, she’d have to find her way back to her apartment, and find a way in through the window right off the fire escape. After she was home, she’d grab the spare set of keys (thank goodness she left the bike and its keys at home) and make a visit to McBride. He was the only one she could so much as talk to about any of this, and she hoped that maybe he could try to make some sense of it all. She walked out of the alleyway and onto the street, with a single thought:

“Now…where in the city am I?”