Lone Werewolf Duology (bxb)

12. Breakfast with the Mad Geniuses

"Magic? What frigging magic?" Volya sputtered. "I thought it was a science experiment that went all wrong. Like in 'Professor's Dowell's Head'."

"Whose head?" Anabelle asked, tilting her head to one shoulder. She had just hit Volya between the eyes with a revelation of a century, but was ready to switch the topic on a drop of a pin.

He wasn't.

"Doesn't matter whose head, okay?" Volya said. 

Liam looked at him curiously, but Volya just scoffed. Nobody in America would know the story, and Volya didn't fancy enlightening them. Liam and him grew up reading different stuff, and that was that.

"Can we please rewind back to that magic exists bit?" Volya pleaded.

"What, you don't believe in magic, Volya?" Anabelle whispered, her eyes staring at him in absolute fascination. "From all people, you should."

Who was he, Harry-frigging-Potter? He wondered if there was any point to closing his mouth. His jaw dangled every second in this company. Million of the follow-up questions swarmed in his mind, but they'd run out of the secluded trail. The main house lumbered before them across the meadow and the parking lot.

They couldn't loiter either, because the chief mad scientist daSilva stood outside the wide-flung doors to the corner room, the same room where Volya had found Liam playing his heart out just an hour ago. DaSilva shaded his eyes against the sun with one hand. The other one waved for them to hurry up. They sped up their steps.

To Volya's chagrin, the inside now buzzed with lights and activity, rather than Liam's turbulent music. People moved around the huge table, loading breakfast plates from the steaming trays brought out by a white-aproned house-keeper.

In addition to daSilva, Volya picked out Lydia's willowy figure, then Damir. The man splayed in his chair, as far from Marina as possible.

Also present in the room were two other women, and one other man. Those three didn't come out to greet Liam and company the previous night, so Volya hadn't met them before.

Presided by Lydia, the gathering seemed to be engaged into a companionable conversation, with good-natured jabs, eye-rolls and shrugs between chewing pastries and sipping coffee. They totally looked like a team from some Marvel movie, about to pull a maybe-scientific, maybe-magic breakthrough out of a hat.

While Volya gawked at the scientists from the parking lot, Anabelle went up the ramp leading to the doors, leaving Liam and him alone for a second. Volya grabbed Liam's wrist. The last surge of hope swelled in his heart: please, let it be some prank that these eccentric rich people set up. Some elaborate cosplay. He wouldn't even care if he was their entertainment, though if the Americans had to import random Russian teens to prank them, the future didn't look too bright.

"Liam, please, is this some sort of a prank?" he inquired via the translating app.

"No," Liam said at the same time as Volya's inner voice stirred from its slumber to also say, This is real. They know who you are.

Well, that made... ah... Volya did a quick head count. That made nine of them. Ten, if he included the obnoxious incorporeal voice in his head. Because he still didn't have a clue what this centaur-and-academic mix had to do with him.

"Liam, what does this have to do with me?"

Everything, the voice gloated. Everything. Volya couldn't believe he'd actually missed the incorporeal pest.

Liam glanced quickly at Marina and tucked his phone away. He wasn't as fearless as Volya had imagined him, only practical. Not that Volya could blame him. Marina could teach classes on chewing men out and she had expressly forbidden using the translation app. She'd probably wanted them to talk in signs and grunts until he soaked up enough English.