Dragon Witch ✔️

23 - Newt

August 15, Saturday

The Full Moon's still over half a month away, but I can't stop thinking about what Piper said. I'm turning into something else, something I couldn't have guessed at in a million years if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. At least my scales have faded. They come back every time I get so much as a paper cut, but they're manageable.

But next month? Or the month after that? I have no idea what I'll do when the rest of me starts changing. Will I even be me anymore, or will I just be a monster?

***

The moment I closed my bedroom door, Piper started pulling strange devices out of her duffel bag and waving them at me. They beeped, hissed, or warbled--and she scribbled in her notebook, letting out soft oohs and aahs. When she'd asked to come and get some readings on me, I'd figured she would at least give me a little more info on changelings or something.

I pushed a wand-like device out of my face. "Hi, Piper."

She muttered something that could've been "hello" and grabbed my hand. Before I could ask what she was doing, she pricked my finger with a little red box.

"Hey!" I yelped and took my finger back as a wave of tiny scales spread over it.

Why hurt? Eva asked from her hidden perch on top of my bed's canopy. She edged forward out of the shadow, hissing.

It's no big deal. Calm down.

"Whoah." Piper grabbed my hand again and ran her fingers over my scales. "I've heard of scales appearing due to physical stress, but I've never seen it, not even in videos. Actually, I've never seen any changelings in videos. They don't release them to the public. The changeling books I read were from the back of MMU's library, and I'm pretty sure they've been there so long that everyone forgot they existed."

"Wait a second, I thought you'd taken a class on changelings or even watched a documentary. You're telling me that all you know is from a random library book that's been sitting in the corner for who knows how long? What if it's like those books on lead or radiation, back when nomahus thought those things would cure any disease?"

I threw my hands up, much to Piper's apparent displeasure. "What if the books are wrong, and next month, I turn into a-" I swallowed, barely able to stomach the idea. "-a dragon?"

We were both quiet for a minute, Piper looking anywhere but at me. I could see the wheels turning in her head. She wanted to come and watch me transform, but if I was dangerous, maybe it wasn't worth it. Then again, watching me would probably let her make the scientific discovery of the century. Apparently, her curiosity won out.

"The books aren't that old. I mean, they're old, but you shouldn't turn into a dragon this full moon, unless there's something... strange about you." She talked like she was choosing her words carefully. "I mean, scientists haven't studied that many changelings, but none of them turned into a dragon the same month after they started showing their true nature." She giggled nervously. "But we don't know how changelings turn into dragons. Or when."

Great. For all I knew, a week after the Full Moon, I would just randomly wake up being gigantic and monstrous. Well, more monstrous than a stage three changeling. As much as I hated to trust an outdated science book with my future, it seemed like it was the only information on changelings that was out there--besides urban legends, of course.

Eva chirped. Me know, lizzies eat flitters, no eat flappers. Sparky sparky, make shiny.

Thanks, Eva. That would've been useful, if I had any idea what she was talking about. I turned to Piper.

"Well, what do you know about stage three changelings? Like, are they normal people before they change? Or are they always evil?" Maybe turning into a changeling wasn't what made them into monsters. Maybe it just made their evilness more obvious.

She shrugged. "Most of them act totally normal until they transform." She must've noticed my horrified expression, because she scrambled to add, "but they don't act normal when they're alone. At least, we don't think so. Some changeling kids have been blamed for a lot of disappearing pets and stolen property. You've never eaten a house cat, right?"

I shook my head.

"Then you'll probably be fine. Totally fine."

I would've believed her, only there was a tremor in her voice, and she wasn't quite meeting my eyes. Hopefully, she was right, even if she didn't really know whether she was or not. Either way, it didn't sound like there was much I could do about it. I just wanted to forget I'd ever drunk Kyton's blood and pretend like I was normal again.

"Right. By the way, why are you using all these gadgets? Don't you have a wand to cast investigative spells?"

She paused halfway through putting up the red pricking box and taking out what looked like a blood pressure cuff.

"Technically, yes. But I don't have a familiar anymore, so I just use these." She straightened and attached the cuff to my arm. "Besides, these do use magic--at least, a lot of them do--and they're enchanted by professionals, so they'd be more accurate than my spells anyway."

As I waited for the cuff to inflate, I couldn't help but think there was more going on than she'd mentioned. Witches didn't just lose their familiar. As Eva had shown, familiars were pretty stubborn once they chose a witch to bond with. And I couldn't imagine any witch giving up their familiar, even if it wasn't dangerous to do so.

That meant her familiar had probably died. Even after only having Eva for a few days, I couldn't imagine losing her. She was always at the back of my mind, eager to help out--even when she didn't know how--and so loyal that it could be frustrating sometimes.

"I'm sorry." I winced as the cuff finished squeezing my arm. "Can I ask what happened?"

"Sure." She took off the cuff and scribbled in her notebook for so long that I almost thought she'd forgotten the question. Finally, she sat on the floor next to her duffel bag.

I sat across from her. She took out her glamour glass from her pocket and held it out on her palm. A crack ran through the glass. Its broken chain dangled off the sides of her hand.

"I got this for my eighteenth birthday. It was a family heirloom, and I loved it." Her face fell. "My familiar--Newt--loved playing with shiny things. He was such a silly little salamander, and I should've known to keep it away from him. He'd broken a lot of things before." With a sigh, she put the glass away. "He accidentally pushed it off a shelf, and it broke."

She was quiet for a moment as tears glistened in her eyes. "I yelled at him, and he was so afraid that he ran out of the house. We didn't find him until-" She rubbed her eyes. "-a week later, when the neighbor's cat brought him home. I hated that cat so much, but it was my fault, really. I shouldn't have-"

"It's not your fault." I didn't know what else to say.

"It is, and I'm never subjugating another familiar to bonding with me, so there." She crossed her arms like she expected me to argue. "I'm going to learn all about changelings and other monsters, and I'm going to save people. I'm not going to hurt anyone ever again."

I tried to gloss over the fact that she'd basically called me a monster. It didn't work well. "Hey, maybe I can give you some business with that whole saving-people thing, once I turn into a dragon and go on a rampage."

Her eyes went big. "Sorry, that's not what I meant at all. I'm sure you won't hurt anyone."

I shrugged, glad that she wasn't crying, at least. "It's not like I'll have a life, even if I don't hurt anyone. I'll have to keep it secret, from everyone. And like, what guy would ever want to date a big lizard?"

"You'd be surprised. Love can do strange things to logic. I've got a crush on a guy who doesn't even look twice at me because he likes someone else, but that doesn't stop me from liking him." She rambled on about love and logic, but all I could think about was the upcoming Full Moon.