The pack fell into a rhythm. In the morning, Remus would go to work at the bookstore, Eddie at a Muggle construction firm, and Athena to a potions master who would skirt the law to allow her to work, but often sent her home with careless bruises or burns. Selena would stay to watch Vinnie until Chris woke up, which required notes on the outside doors reminding her not to leave. She would then go busking, and Chris would care for and tutor Vinnie until everyone returned home. Chris would leave late at night, and return in the wee hours of the morning, usually waking Remus both coming and going.
Whatever Remus had expected from pack life, this was not it. After a month, it almost felt like home. Even the random magical effects of Eddie's Lithobolia and the regular yelling matches between Eddie and Chris became familiar. Still, Remus couldn't shake the feeling that there were secrets he wasn't part of. Some were obvious: mentions of the goblin mafia and names like "Narshank the Nasty". But what bothered him more were the little things. The toys and clothes for Vinnie that Eddie brought home, that he surely couldn't afford. The elaborate card flourishes that Athena showed Vinnie to assure him that he would get dexterity back in his injured hand, like she had. Even the card games the pack played in the evenings were a little suspicious. Remus grew up playing Gobstones and Exploding Snap. The pack played poker and tarot, and sometimes a combination of the two, as they were that Saturday when the boys pulled Remus into a game on the living room floor when Selena took her turn making dinner.
They had just finished a hand when Athena dragged herself in and plunked down on the couch behind Eddie with a half-hearted 'hello'.
"'Thene, we gotta do something about that kelpie," Chris said as Remus shuffled. "It almost got Vinnie today."
"No it didn't!" Vinnie said, his voice raspy from the silver scars. "It just got my ball!"
"Only thanks to Eddie's gremlin. You were like that far from getting grabbed." Chris held up his hands a foot apart.
"I'll be more careful, I promise! I don't want to leave."
Athena sighed and moved to the floor beside him. "Unless Fenrir knows a pack I don't, you're not going to," she said, giving him a hug from the side.
"No luck finding somewhere?" Eddie asked.
Athena shook her head. "Everyone's stretched thin as a starving lethifold." She turned back to Vinnie and tickled him. "Which means we'll have to make the kelpie leave instead. Somehow."
"If we can get a bridle on it, I know someone who'll take it off our hands," Remus said. Hagrid would be overjoyed to get hold of a kelpie, and it wouldn't be the most dangerous thing in the Forbidden Forest.
"Any idea how much he'd pay?"
"I'll have to ask him."
Chris laughed and jostled Remus. "I didn't realize we had a Dark Creature trafficker in the pack. Not bad, Officer."
"I wouldn't call it trafficking."
"Would the Ministry call it trafficking?"
Blood rushed to Remus's face. The red caps, hinkypunks, and grindylows he caught and sold 'for educational purposes' were legal, but a kelpie was an entirely different level.
"Don't answer that," Eddie said. "We don't need to know."
Athena asked, "How much is a bridle going to set us back? Can we conjure one?"
"Not for this," Remus said. "It needs to be durable, with a bit made of mined metal. There's a farm supply shop not far from Haven Books. I can check the price in Muggle money."
"Take a look. We'll see if we can pull it together. Oh, speaking of pulling things together." She took her pouch out of her pocket and pulled a long, slender bottle out of it. "This is for you."
"What is it?" he asked, taking it.
"Your Wolfsbane Potion." The boys scrambled away from it, making her laugh. "Most of the wolfsbane is neutralized, guys. I wouldn't drink it myself, but it's not going to hurt you just being in the same room with it."
"You didn't have to do that," Remus said.
She shrugged. "If you need it, you need it."
"How much did that cost?" Chris asked, wrinkling his nose.
"This time, nothing." She winked at Remus. "Gremby's easy to play. He doesn't usually make it, so I told him I didn't think he could handle it. Of course he had to make a cauldron to prove me wrong. Then I told him I didn't think it was right, so he gave me a dose to show me it was."
"Just wait until he realizes how much money he handed you," Chris said. "He's gonna fly right off his broomstick."
"That's why I did it on a Saturday. He'll realize it tomorrow when I'm not around, and forget by Monday."
"Is it safe to have that around Eddie's gremlin?" Selena asked from the kitchen.
"For us? Yes. For the potion, probably not. You might want to put that up in your room, Remus."
As Remus stood up, Chris asked, "You wanna sit in a hand, 'Thene?"
She agreed and took Remus's place. As he went up the stairs, he heard her ask, "Did you guys know this deck is marked, or has Chris been cheating you?"
Remus put the potion on his dresser and closed the bedroom door behind him. He had just started down the staircase when the front door opened and a sharp whistle cut the air. "Anyone home?" called a rough, gravelly voice. Remus's blood ran cold. The man who had just walked in looked up and locked eyes with him, and his mouth spread into a grin, or snarl, of sharply pointed teeth. "Besides you?"
He was tall and lean, and had probably been handsome in his youth. Now his gray hair tumbled out of a careless ponytail, and several days of beard growth fought with the remains of an overgrown goatee. It felt like they were staring at each other forever, but it couldn't have been more than a second or two before Vinnie shouted "Fenrir!" and raced out of the living room.
Greyback broke eye contact with Remus to crouch down and catch Vinnie in a hug. "There's my brave one." He let go and cupped his hand around the boy's unscarred cheek. "Does it still hurt much?"
"Not too much," Vinnie said, shaking his head. "It just makes me talk funny."
"Well, that makes two of us, doesn't it?" He stood as the others came out of the living room.
"Wow, Fenrir, you look like hell," Chris said. Eddie reached over and slapped him upside the head. "Ow!"
"Edward, I'm not telling you how to run your pack, but please don't hit your brother in front of me," Greyback said. Eddie made a perfunctory apology. "He has a point, anyway. I know I'm not at my best today."
"Something going on?" Athena asked.
"Just pups running me ragged. I had to bring a new one home this month, and you know the first few weeks are always rough."
"Another one? Why are there so many all of a sudden?"
"It's this war on. Parents who think their children's lycanthropy is a 'challenge' when things are good decide it's a burden when things get hard, and humans can't stand burdens." Greyback looked at Remus as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "Looks like you picked up one of your own, although he's a little old to be called a pup. More like a lap dog."
"Fenrir, this is the infamous Remus Lupin," Athena said. "Remus, Fenrir Greyback."
"Pleased to meet you," Remus said, extending his hand.
Greyback laughed. "He's a joker, I see." He smiled that same sharp-pointed smile and shook Remus's hand with a bone-crushing grip.
"It doesn't help when you glower at him like you want to eat him alive," Eddie said. "Ignore that smile he's doing. He's got this weird complication. His teeth don't transform back with the rest of him."
"I can't stay long," Greyback said. "I just wanted to drop off some things and pick up those potions Athena was brewing for me."
"What'd you bring?" Chris asked.
"Just things you can sell, jewelry and baubles the goblins didn't want. I know money's tight for you right now." He pulled out a Thief's Pouch and reached into it. When he brought his hand back out, the smell practically grabbed Remus and threw him out the door. He was running before he knew he was moving, and so was the rest of the pack. They didn't stop until they were well clear of the house.
"Fenrir, what the hell?!" Eddie shouted as Greyback came out of the house. Vinnie started crying, and Selena pulled him into a hug to help him calm down.
"I can explain," Greyback said.
"You better! That was blood!"
"That was my blood. I cracked a tooth last full moon." Greyback held out his hand to show an ivory-yellow molar. "It took 3 weeks to get me and Doc in the same place, and by then it was half rotten. Bled everywhere when Doc pulled it. I thought I had it cleaned up, but I must have missed a bit."
"How do you miss that?" Selena asked.
"I haven't been able to smell much of anything since it cracked. You know I wouldn't have brought it if I'd known." He walked to her and Vinnie, and crouched down to Vinnie's level, showing him the tooth. "See, Vincent, that's all it was. No one's hurt."
"Why'd you bring it?" Vinnie asked.
"They're used in potions sometimes. I thought Athena could sell it."
"Let me see it." Athena took the tooth from him and held it up in the waning afternoon light. "It's not in too bad of a condition. I think I can get 30 for it. Maybe 50 if they think it's wolf form. How much of a cut can I take?"
"All of it."
Athena's eyes grew wide. "For real?"
"I told you, I brought things for your pack to sell. Come on. Let's go back inside."
The pack made their way back inside, and after handing off some jewelry and knickknacks to Chris, Greyback went upstairs to Athena's lab with her and Eddie. They didn't come back down for half an hour, and neither Eddie nor Athena looked particularly happy when they did.
As the others got ready for bed that night, Chris went outside to the back porch. After Vinnie had finally fallen asleep, Remus joined him. Chris was sitting with his feet up on the railing and drawing, angled so no one coming out of the house would see what he was working on. Down in the swimming hole, the kelpie was splashing around, and Remus heard the sharp twang of a rubber ball hitting a solid object. He leaned against the railing and peered through the night, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light from the gibbous moon. The kelpie was charcoal gray and about the size and shape of a Shetland pony, although its hooves were backwards and its mane and tail looked more like bulrushes than hair. "Is the kelpie playing with Vinnie's ball?"
"Yup. She's been going about 15 minutes now," Chris said as it bumped the ball into the air with its head. As the ball came back down, the kelpie kicked it against one of the uprights of the pier, then neighed excitedly and chased it down where it had bounced.
"I have never seen that before. I've never even heard of it," Remus said. "I wish I had a camera. Or at least a notebook. This would be worth a journal article at least."
"Can't help with the camera, but here." Chris pulled a book out of his pouch and tossed it to Remus.
Remus caught it, but immediately noticed a tingling at the base of his spine. "I think you gave me one of your sketchbooks by mistake," he said, handing it back.
"OK, I'll bite. How could you tell?"
"Your Lizard Tail Jinx is a bit on the strong side."
"The lizard tail. Huh." Chris took out a different book and tossed it to him, then pulled out a Muggle ballpoint pen and held it out. "For real this time. Muggle ink's not great on parchment, but it gets the job done if you push hard on it."
"Thank you." Remus opened the book and started taking notes on the kelpie's game. It took a little practice to push down on the pen after a lifetime of quills that needed a light hand, but it did work. The more he wrote, the more certain Remus was that the book had been a published one, probably one of Gilderoy Lockhart's.
Chris waited until he had finished a page of writing and turned to the next. "You know I stole that, right, Officer?"
"No you didn't. This is overstock," Remus said. "I've done my share of skip diving."
Chris chuckled. "Busted. I used to work at Flourish and Blotts. I loved it when they turned over the inventory. I'd let everyone else grab what they wanted, and then take all the rest of the blanked books. I've got about a million of them. My boss loved it, too. I saved him a ton on bin fees."
"Why did you leave?"
"The Ministry made it illegal for werewolves to work with customers. I don't exactly pass, so they had to sack me."
The kelpie was slowing down in her game. She kicked the ball into the pier one last time, then when she reached it again, tucked it under her neck and dove into the water.
"That was really amazing," Remus said after a few minutes when she didn't come back up.
"Yeah, she's pretty cool to watch sometimes. I'm going to miss her if we get rid of her." Chris used his wand to cut out the page he'd been drawing and held it out to Remus. "Here. For science."
A pencil-drawn kelpie played on the page, moving just like the real one had. "That is really good," Remus said.
"Thanks." Chris paused, then held his sketchbook out to Remus. "You wanna look? The jinxes won't go off if I hand it to you."
"I'd love to." Remus took the book from him. There was no tingle this time, so he opened it and flipped through. There were drawings of his packmates, and other werewolves that Remus hadn't met. A few were of Greyback looking much more put together than he had that afternoon, with a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck and a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard. On another page was a pair of hands doing a fancy cut with a deck of cards. The bottom half was a large drawing labeled "Muggle Sybil Cut" and going through the full move, and above it were smaller, looser sketches showing each step without going further.
"I'm really proud of that one," Chris said. "Hands are hard."
The right hand had a scar around the wrist, and as it turned into the move, another stretched up the inside of the forearm. "Is this Athena?"
"Yeah, she's really good at that stuff. She's trying to get out of it, though. She wants to be a potioner instead of a cardsharp." Chris shrugged. "I don't really get why. It's just as illegal for us and way harder, but I guess she likes it better."
"How did she get that scar on her wrist?"
"Her folks. They wanted to cure her lycanthropy, but the Healer they hired was actually a poacher. He nearly skinned her alive with silver to get her pelt."
Remus drew a sharp breath and cringed. "Merlin's beard."
Chris dropped his feet off the railing and leaned forward to let his hands dangle between his knees. "If I went back to that lady healer's house, would she really give me another jar of that salve for cursed wounds? Like, no charge?"
"She's back at the school now for the term, but if you caught her between patients, yes."
"It's just… Athena stopped using it for herself because she's worried about running out for Vinnie. But the way she was handling the cards this afternoon, I think she's hurting real bad."
"I can get some for her," Remus said.
"She's not going to be happy about you going behind her back."
"I'll tell her if she needs it, she needs it."
The look on Chris's face suggested that might not be a good idea after all. He glanced at the door, and lowered his voice. "Hey, what did you think of that stuff Fenrir brought by?"
Remus bit his lip. After several seconds to consider, he answered, "I think it's not my place to remark."
"You and I are casting the same spell," he said, taking back the sketchbook. "I don't want to make Athena's life any harder than I already do, so I'm not going to say anything, but whatever Fenrir had that set everyone off, it wasn't his tooth."
Remus knew what is was. But did the pack, raised so far away from normal wizards? "What do you mean?"
Chris looked at the door again to make sure no one else was nearby. "I've been in enough fights to know what blood smells like, and not just my own. Werewolf blood smells terrible, but it won't send you running for the door like that. That was human blood."
