Dr. Reynolds knew Lauren was standing outside the door. He'd known for the past ten minutes, but he was busy. He had files to rewrite, digitalize, and back up. He always kept an extra copy.
He sighed, pushing his papers to the side. "Do come in Lauren. I may not be a mind reader, but I can tell you've something to say."
Lauren shuffled in, gripping a manilla folder in a deathly hold. "It's about one of your clients."
Reynolds groaned inwardly. "Tell Mr. And Mrs. Shwartzky that if their son refuses to take his medication, there is only so much I can do."
Lauren bit her lip. "It's about the other job." She layed the folder open on the desk. Reynolds flinched instinctively. It had been years since he'd seen… "I don't know what it means, but it was on the list you gave me." Lauren wrapped her hands nervously in the hemline of her shirt.
"Dr. Reynolds, I was wondering if, well. Since I held out my end of the deal, you could-"
"Who was it." Dr. Reynolds growled.
Lauren took step back. "Dr. Reynolds, your- your eyes."
"Tell me who it was." His voice had gone down an octave, snarling, raspy, and clearly not human. "Tell me who brought this in."
Lauren was terrified, that much he could tell. He was the stuff out of nightmares and he hadn't even shifted yet. "P-pepperjack. Elijah Pepperjack."
Of course. He'd thought the boy had simply seen too much. The goblins and gnomes he had described were commonplace in the human realm. It was nothing a simple memory potion couldn't fix, and all the better for it. But now it seemed as though he had been tiptoeing around the topic of anything bigger. Of Trolls, and Gum-gums, and Changelings.
How much did he know? The Changelings had gone into hiding after Gunmar was killed. It was a well known fact that Changelings did anything to protect their own skin. Most had sided with Gunmar, despite the slaughter at the Janus order headquarters. Two odd Changelings had decided to help the Trollhunter.
The Changeling world was brutal. Anything, any minor infraction, and you were killed. It didn't matter to the Gum-gums that they could be valuable assets. Changelings were less than human, barely above a goblin. Impure. Worthless. Dr. Reynolds was one of the select few Changelings that never got involved. They had found a way to fake their death. (That was easily done, just placing another tally on the papers. After all, what was one more Impure?) Then they disappeared. Changed their human names, moved to another country, lived their lives in human form. He was only ten when he left his station in Scotland, and all these years he had not been found. Until now.
If Lauren was terrified, words could not even begin to explain how Dr. Reynolds felt.
He forced his eyes to return to normal, but his voice still scratched against his throat. "Tell me, or I'll send out the photo." He threatened. "With the speed of the internet, it shouldn't take long for long for your parents to stumble across it. How do you think they'll react when they learn that their precious daughter is nothing but a-"
Crash.
Reynolds flinched, fingers curling around the edges of his death as he shakily stood up. "Look outside." He commanded, hoping Lauren didn't notice the cracks in his resolve.
"But-" Who else knew? How much did they know? The boy, Lauren, now this intruder, he had to resolve this quickly, or he would never be a free man again. Changelings were not created to be kind. They did immoral things for their own self preservation. It was simply a fact of their existence. But Dr. Reynolds had not been a changeling for over thirty years. Could he do it?
"Go."
He screwed his eyes shut. He knew Lauren wouldn't fail him. They were too alike. The scale's tipped against them, a perilous secret, a skewed sense of wrong and right, and a community that placed them less than human. She would have made an excellent Changeling.
Lauren soon returned, dragging two boys in by their hair. One was easily recognizable, Elijah Pepperjack, the other had a mop of blonde hair and smeared black face paint. They were nothing more than teens, and hardly that.
He followed their gaze, swallowing in confusion, then disbelief, and finally relief. They were staring at Elijah's hands, more specifically, at the Gaggletack in Eli's hands, which he had pressed flush to Lauren's skin. Elijah frowned, then touched it to her arm as though expecting a different reaction.
Reynolds let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. So they didn't know. Not yet.
He quickly regained his composure. Unsure what to do, he filled the time with a stern lecture about trespassing, made a show of 'discreetly' copying down the incident down into Pepperjack's file, and threatened to call their parents. He'd considered calling the police. He didn't want to get them involved, but it might look suspicious if he didn't. Or perhaps he was paranoid. Luckily, Pepperjack's father arrived just as Reynolds ran out of things to say, and drove the pair home. He copied down the fact of the divorce into his file, he was a psychiatrist after all.
The incident finally handled, he collapsed into his chair. "Thank you." he breathed, face wet with pent up tears. "Thank you." He'd been so scared. Terrified.
Lauren managed a reluctant smile. She didn't ask what he meant.
He'd like to say it was because of his humanity, or because he holding up his end of the deal, but that wasn't true. Lauren didn't know what he was yet, but in Reynolds frantic efforts to keep his secret, he had exposed himself to be something not quite human. He couldn't afford to be discovered, not now. Better to have a reluctant friend than an unwilling ally. So he decided to do as Lauren had asked. He tore the photo into seven different pieces and lit them ablaze with the end of his cigarette. He had nothing to lose by doing so.
He always kept an extra copy.
