CHAPTER THREE

NOT NORMAL

The next morning, Lena woke to a note on the fridge from Nick saying he went for a run. She went about making coffee when the phone rang. She picked it up from the receiver by the stove and answered it, "Hello?"

There was a woman crying on the other end. "I'm calling for Juliette… maybe I got the wrong number."

Sensing that this woman was in distress, Lena searched for something to say. "Yeah, no, I'm just a house guest—"

Just then, Nick jogged in from the back door and frowned when he saw her frowning on the phone. He mouthed, 'What's wrong?'

She shrugged helplessly, handing him the phone, "Some woman calling for Juliette. She sounds scared though."

Nick took the phone instantly, "This is Nick, who is—" Lena just watched as he spoke to the woman. "Alicia, hi. What's wrong?... Juliette's not here… Are you hurt?... Okay, do you want to report… Fine, then you need to get into the car and come here… Call me from the road, and whatever you do, do not call or speak to Joe or let him know where you're going… Okay, bye."

As he hung up, Lena finally asked, "What's going on? That sounded bad."

"Alicia, an old friend of Juliette's," Nick grimaced as he said his ex-girlfriend's name. "Her husband's always been an asshole, with problems with his temper too. She was a bit upset, wants to get away from him."

"So, you told her to come here, of course," Lena finished. "How's she going to react when she finds out that Juliette isn't here anymore?"

Nick shrugged, "I don't know. She just needed to get out of there. I'll deal with the rest when she does. I hope you don't mind. I know that means it's going to get crowded here."

"Nick, this is your place," Lena reminded him. "And besides that, if her husband is hurting her, then we need to help her get away from him. Can you…" she trailed off, "can you call Juliette? Maybe she can talk to Alicia?"

Nick solemnly shook his head, "I'm afraid not. When she left, she didn't want anything to do with me. She changed her number and moved away pretty quickly. I don't know how to get in touch with her."

"I'm sorry," Lena murmured. Her head tilted as a thought occurred to her, "Didn't you just go on a run?"

"Yep," he said, grabbing a bottle of water.

She peered at him, "You're not sweating."

"I know. Weird, isn't it?" he scoffed. "I told you I was changed."

"Apparently," Lena muttered.

Rosalee looked up when the bell rang above her door and smiled when she saw Lena walking in. "Lena! Hi. No appointments today?"

Lena shook her head, "Not today, no. I still have a relatively small patient base here, so it'll be a while until I'm up on my feet enough to afford my own place and get out of Nick's hair."

"I'm sure Nick doesn't mind you being there a bit," Rosalee assured her. "It's his job to help people."

"I know, but I doubt cops make a habit of taking hybrid wesen into their homes," Lena retorted. "I don't know. It feels like I came here for a fresh start, one of my own, but I've somehow fallen backwards into this whole new world of wesen and Grimms and magical teas that I never knew existed. And I still want to know why Freddy never told me the truth. What could have been so bad about what my mother was, or the dangers that posed for me, that he'd rather have let me live oblivious to who I am than to just tell me?"

Rosalee frowned, "I'm sure Freddy had his reasons, and I'm sure it was all in the effort to protect you. He must have been pretty desperate if he resorted into stopping your woge." She walked around the counter to take her hand, "And this place can still be a fresh start for you."

Lena scoffed, "My idea of a fresh start involved solitude, being a midwife, maybe some yoga classes. Not people that turn into animals or magical potions or some secret lives Freddy and my dad seemed to have had. I wanted normal and quiet!"

Her words picked up as her emotions built, and with them the wind picked up around the room. A gust of wind burst through the shop, knocking a row of glass jars off of the counter where Rosalee had been organizing them.

After the wind blew away, Rosalee and Lena jumped at the noise of shattering glass on the floor. Lena's eyes widened, "What the hell was that?"

Rosalee's eyes were wide with fright as well, "It was like… magic."

Lena looked between her and the broken pile of glass, "Do fuchsbaus have magic?"

Rosalee slowly shook her head.

"Then what wesen does?" Lena questioned her.

"Only hexenbiests," Rosalee said slowly.

Lena's eyes widened even more as she faced Rosalee, "You mean like that Adalind woman who nearly killed Nick's partner?"

Rosalee slowly nodded, "Maybe your mother…"

"…was a hexenbeist…" Lena finished. "From what you told me about them, they're nasty wesen, dangerous."

"That doesn't mean you are," Rosalee tried to reassure her, taking hold of her shaking hands. "You're a good person. The fact that you may be being half hexenbeist doesn't change any of that."

"What if it does?" Lena asked. "What if my hexenbeist half effects my character once it comes out? You said that sometimes wesen let their animal side take over."

"Because they allow it," Rosalee interjected.

"You said that you and Monroe work to stay human and not let your wesen urges overcome you," Lena pointed out. "I mean, for God's sake, Monroe is a vegetarian and does Pilates in order to ignore the Big Bad Wolf part of him. At least only half of me is hexenbeist, I could be a lethal maniac like Adalind otherwise."

"We don't know for sure that you are," Rosalee tried to stay positive. "Whatever just happened could have nothing to do with wesen. We're not the only things out there. Nick's cousin is a vampire."

Lena's eyes bugged, "His cousin is a what?"

Rosalee grimaced, "Long story short, he discovered a semi-distant cousin he'd never known of a few months ago. The other side of her family descended down from vampires. She lives in California and is friends with other creatures that have nothing to do with wesen. Werewolves, mostly. The point is, hexenbeist isn't our only option."

"Then until we know, we can't tell Nick – or Monroe," Lena said resolutely. "Not after all the trouble Adalind caused. Not until we're sure."

Rosalee didn't like the idea of hiding anything from Nick, much less Monroe, but she could understand Lena's reservations. Truthfully, there was no harm in keeping it under their hats until they knew anything for sure. No sense in causing distress if it turned out that nothing inside of her was hexenbeist.

So, she agreed, "Okay, I promise."

Lena sighed, "Thank you, Rosalee."

"Isn't she here yet?" Lena asked Nick once she got back to the house and realized that this Alicia woman hadn't arrived yet. It was already dark out.

Nick didn't seem so worried, "No, but she lives kind of far away and there could have been traffic."

"Did you call her?" she asked as she took off her coat and hung it up by the door.

"Yeah, but it went straight to voicemail," he said. "I think her cell died."

Just then, headlights washed over the front windows and Nick walked out to open the door for her and help her get her suitcase inside. Lena watched as the openly weeping woman walked into the house and became confused when she saw Lena. "Sorry, who are you?"

"A friend," Lena put out her hand. "Lena. You're Alicia, I'm sorry about what you've been going through."

"We're gonna help you get through this," Nick added as he closed the door.

"Where's Juliette?" Alicia asked, seeming distressed.

Lena flushed at what it could look like, her being there and Juliette not being there. "How about I make something to snack on? Alicia, the guest room is all yours. I'll be right back."

When she got to the kitchen, she realized she didn't really know where anything was. It felt wrong to peruse through Nick's fridge and pantry, but it was too awkward for her to be in the room while Nick explained to Alicia that Juliette left him and took off and was in effect unreachable. So, she made a quickie pasta dish and started setting it out on the table. From the dining room, she could hear Nick talking.

"This isn't your fault, you know."

She could hear Alicia sobbing, "I'm sorry."

She turned her head into the living room in time to see Alicia's face changing. It was just as startling to see this stranger woge as it was to see Rosalee and Monroe woge for the first time. And she wondered if she could ever get used to it. Smartly, she kept her reaction to herself, and could see from Nick's shocked face that he hadn't known Alicia was a fuchsbau.

"Alicia," Lena announced her presence, ready to guide her to the food. "I know you probably don't think you can stomach any food, but you have to eat. I made something small. Come eat."

Alicia just numbly nodded and walked over to the dining room table.

For show, Nick said, "I'll take your bag up."

While Alicia was pushing food around on a plate, Nick urgently whispered to Lena, "You saw that, right?"

"Yeah, she looked like Rosalee," Lena whispered. "Did you and Juliette know she was a—"

"No," he answered before she could finish. "Listen, I'm sorry about this. Let me take the couch, and you can have my room."

"No," she protested. "I've put you out enough."

"You haven't even been here a week," Nick pointed out. "You haven't put me out. You sit down with Alicia, calm her down. I'll take her stuff up to the guest room and put your things in my room. That's that."

Before she could protest more, he started dragging the suitcase in hand up the stairs. Lena wordlessly made her way to the table and sat down across from Alicia, starting to eat, hoping it would encourage the other woman to eat as well.

"So… I hope I haven't kicked you out of your room," Alicia mumbled. "Who are you, again?"

"I'm Lena, a friend," she said. "And don't worry about anything like that."

"If you don't mind me asking, why are you crashing here?" Alicia asked.

Lena didn't really know what to say. She couldn't very well tell this woman the truth. Maybe she could, if she was wesen as well. But they still didn't know each other. So, she thought on her feet, "Things got difficult for me after my husband passed away. Nick is just helping me out while I get on my feet again."

Alicia frowned, and looked like she was going to cry again, "I'm sorry to hear about your husband. How…"

"Brain aneurysm," Lena cut her off before she heard the word 'die' again. "It was very quick and sudden."

"I'm sorry," Alicia whispered as Nick finally wandered down into the dining room to join them. Conversation was kept easy from then on for the rest of the night.

When Alicia was finally ready for bed, as was Lena, Nick showed her to the guest room and showed Lena to his room, to show her where he'd put down her things.

"You really should just let me take the couch," Lena complained.

"What kind of host would that make me?" Nick joked as he went to his drawers to grab sleep clothes for the night. "Besides, the couch isn't that bad. I'll be fine."

"I'd be fine on the not-so-bad couch too," she grumbled as he started walking out of the room.

He just laughed. "Goodnight!"

"Goodnight!"

Nick had gone off to the station pretty early the next morning. Apparently, his captain had gone off to Vienna for a bit but was now back. He barely had time for a cup of coffee before he was out the door. Alicia was sort of hovering in the kitchen while Lena poured cereal.

"Sorry, I don't know Nick's kitchen well," Lena said as she handed Alicia a bowl for her own cereal breakfast.

Alicia just chuckled, "That's okay. So… you're a friend of Nicks, right? Do you know Juliette too?"

Lena floundered, but shook her head, "Never met her. Haven't known Nick super long. It was more of he's a friend of a friend and had room. I'm building up my patient base before I can afford my own place."

"I'll get out of your hair soon," Alicia promised.

"Nick's hair," Lena corrected. "And don't even worry about it." She then dumped the leftover milk into the sink and started washing it, "I have a couple appointments with potential patients today, so I'll be out the afternoon. But you should just keep your phone off the hook so to speak and relax for the day. I don't know when Nick'll be back or anything, but I should be back with enough time to make something for dinner rather than get takeout again."

"You don't have to put yourself out for me, you're a guest here too," Alicia tried to argue.

Lena just shrugged her off, "Either way. I'll see you later, okay? You can call either me or Nick if anything comes up, okay?"

Alicia just numbly nodded as she left. Lena felt bad for the woman. The large bruise on the side of her face told Lena exactly what kind of situation she was running from. And still, she ran to Portland for her best friend, not her best friend's ex-boyfriend and a stranger. She needed a familiar confidant. She needed someone she trusted. But she was stuck with Nick and Lena. Lena just hoped that she knew any situation other than her previous one was better, and she wouldn't go running back to 'Joe.'

Hank and Nick had had a long day already, come to find out that yet another case of theirs involved wesen. This time, a Russian healing wesen who couldn't keep it in his pants. But could also give someone radiation poisoning, if the man they'd found laid up in a motel room bathtub on the brink of death was anything to go by. This brought the officers to drag Monroe away from his clocks and to Nick's Aunt Marie's trailer to see if they could find anything more about this particular wesen.

"Looks like this stuff barely survive the fire," Monroe commented as he flipped through papers with singed edges. "A lot of loose pages here, all in Russian. This stuff is totally burnt. Also, all in Russian."

"Maybe we should've brought the Captain," Hank suggested.

Nick gave him a look, "Here?"

Hank shrugged, "Yeah."

"I don't think so," Nicks said definitively. He didn't trust the Captain to the degree of letting him into the trailer of the Aunt that he attempted to have killed. "Okay, try to find anything in English."

Monroe shuffled through the papers, peering at them and reading aloud, "Stalin... looks like he used Malin Fatal as bodyguards. That's nice." He stopped when he finally found what he was looking for, "Ah, English, at last." Hank and Nick stopped what they were doing to hear him read aloud the words of Nick's ancestor, "December 1, 1916. Lieutenant Oswald Carter, St. Petersburg, Russia. Ozzie, received your dispatch. Rasputin's influence over tzarina and his call to remove Russian troops from the front devastating to allied cause. Your plan approved. God save King George. Sir Ian Hastings, British secret intelligence bureau."

"Rasputin?" Hank questioned dubiously. "He's in here too?"

"The mad monk?" Monroe said like that nickname made it make sense. "Guess so. Okay, this looks like a journal entry. Rasputin was a Koschie. Figures, I knew he was wesen."

"Captain said Myshkin was a Koschie," Nick said. "You know anything about them?"

Monroe looked up, "Huh? No. Koschie are, you know, Russian, which means they're Greek to me." He looked back to the paper in his hands and kept reading, "Because of their healing powers, they are extremely difficult to kill, but one must be especially careful. A Koschie's touch can not only heal but also be fatal."

Hank frowned, "How do you know which one you're going to get?"

"There's more about Rasputin here," Monroe told them, continuing on, "When the poison proved ineffective, I instructed Yusopov to just shoot the bastard. Unfortunately, he fired only one shot. I quickly shot him three more times with my webley. Still, this wasn't enough to kill him. We had to beat him senseless and dump him in the icy waters of the neva river. Ironically, British intelligence had no idea they had sanctioned a Grimm to kill a wesen."

Nick's phone rang, and he was quick to answer it, "Burkhardt. Where? We're on it. Gentlemen, we have a body."

"Well, this is where I say do svidaniya, comrades," Monroe said with a poor accent while the police officers gathered themselves and left the trailer.

Lena was actually surprised she ended up having a nice dinner with Alicia when she got home that night. Alicia took it upon herself to make a ravioli dinner that was ready by the time she got there. They waited a bit but decided to go ahead and eat since they didn't know when Nick would be back.

It had become pretty late, so Lena wrapped up some food for Nick and washed her and Alicia's dishes when they heard the door open and close.

"Nick? That you?" she called out.

"Yeah," she heard as he appeared in the entryway of the kitchen. "How'd it go today?"

"Fine for me, I had to work," Lena shrugged, setting a plate out to dry.

"I stuck around here, relaxed," Alicia said with a weak smile. She started to shuffle her feet and flush, "Look, Nick, I know this is such an imposition, and I promise you that..."

"Come on, none of that," Nick cut her off kindly. "Has Joe tried calling again today?"

She smiled and said, "I turned off my phone," as the house phone started to ring.

"That's good," Nick said as he walked over to the desk to answer it. "Hello?"

"Where is she? Where's Alicia?" an angry voice shouted into the phone line.

Nick kept his voice even, "I don't know what you're talking about Joe."

When the girls heard the name 'Joe', they froze. Alicia immediately shrunk into herself and almost started crying, praying to herself in fear.

"I'm looking for my wife! This is none of your damn business, Detective."

"Well, I'm not talking to you as a cop... yet. You need to calm down," Nick warned him.

"The hell I do! Is she there? Just tell me if she's there. Damn it, I know she's there!"

"If Alicia left you, I'm sure she did it for a pretty good reason. Do you want to tell me about it?" Nick responded.

Lena and Alicia watched as Nick set the phone down with a sigh, "He hung up."

Alicia bit on her thumbnail, "Does he know that I'm here?"

"He's probably calling all of your friends," Nick tried to reassure her.

But she was close to panicking, "If he knows that I'm here, then he will come here."

"Then he can be handled then," Lena tried to pacify the terrified woman.

"She's right," Nick added.

But Alicia still looked so scared, "Look, Nick, you don't... you don't understand, okay? He's... he's... he's not normal."

"Well, let's hope he's normal enough not to do anything stupid," Nick said. But as he and Lena shared a look, they both wondered the same thing. When she said 'not normal,' did she mean wesen? And if so, what kind?