Shi and I were forced to leave Gael behind at the bar, and walk awkwardly home with Kip. It was convenient, I guess, to have him in case we got lost, but the strange way he kept sideways glancing at us made me beyond uncomfortable. Something tells me he knows more than he's letting on; I don't want to believe it, but I can't shake the feeling in the depths of gut.

Now, I stand in the Echeart's kitchen yet again, impatiently tapping my foot as—you guessed it—Shi digs through more foodstuffs. I've told him about five hundred times that we should probably go and look for that basement Gael mentioned, just to get ahead of the game, but I get the feeling he can't hear me over his rather aggressive rummaging.

Thankful the rest of the family is nowhere near us and therefore can't hear or see the situation, I step forward to grab Shi's elbow. "Shi. Have you heard a word I said?"

He steps back from the refrigerator, and to both my surprise and disgust, has a handful of raw ground beef in his hands. "Hmm?" he says, as if the fact that raw meat is sticking to his lips is not unusual at all.

"What the heck!" I exclaim, swatting his hand. The meat falls to the floor with a sickening flop, making me cringe as it makes contact. Exhaling through gritted teeth, I bend to clean the mess up, muttering to the hunger-ridden werewolf in front of me: "Raw meat isn't good for you—"

"No, no, it's not good for you," Shi corrects, as I walk around him to throw the stuff in the sink. I hear him pushing aside bottles in the fridge and approach him again, shutting it in his face. His eyes narrow. "Come on, Gemma, please don't be the health guru mom."

"I am not being a health guru mom," I counter. "I am simply helping a friend from gorging himself for the stupid excuse of a full moon."

"It's not a stupid excuse. It's quite a valid reason."

"Yadda, yadda—that's all I hear. Now wash your hands and come with me; we should have a look at that basement, shouldn't we?"

Shi groans, but nevertheless ambles over to the sink to wash the assortment of substances off of his hands—from my vantage point, I can see the remnants of the raw beef, potato chips, some more of the same crackers from earlier, and some other unidentifiable crumbs. All of it makes me shudder. At the moment, I don't think I have ever been more glad to be born into my species and not any other. "Ah, the basement," Shi replies, wiping his hands off on a cloth. "Usually the scariest place in all houses. Gotta love 'em."

"Uh huh," I say, then waltz out of the kitchen, going in search of the basement. Before me is the living room, with the couch I spent a few hours rotting my brain on, the staircase beside it. Ignoring the back deck to my left, I tour around the living room, where three doors are installed.

Not hesitating, I go for the first one, nearest the living room television. "Nope. Closet."

Shi checks the one in the middle. "Garage."

"Wait—they have a car?" I ask, thinking about all the time I've spent walking from this house to the main street.

Shi still has his head poked through the door's opening. "An old sedan, yeah, and a motorcycle," he replies, shutting it again. Gesturing towards the last door, he says, "This must be the winner, then."

I allow Shi the honors; his hand grapples around the handle as he cranks it and pushes the door in. We squeeze into the doorway, looking down towards a set of unfinished stairs. They curve around a corner, leading down towards the unknown. "Ominous," remarks Shi, switching an overhead light on. "That's better. Well, ladies first, Gemma."

He gives me an encouraging nudge, so I narrow my eyes at him and take the first step. Our footsteps echo after each other's as we descend, and as we reach the bottom of the steps, the tight walls of the staircase broaden. We set foot on concrete floors, taking in our surroundings. The place is windowless, which makes it all the more eerie. Before us is a pool table and a graying futon, and beyond that appears to be a small hallway. To my right is a powder room.

"If no one comes down here, why is there a pool table?" I ask, not expecting an answer.

Shi does, however, with a shrug. "Not the billiards type of family, I guess. So, I see no use for an entertainment space. Should we try the hallway over there?"

"Sounds like a plan."

The hallway at first seems as if it, too, is merely a dead end, until we open a door that doesn't lead to a storage closet or old, unused bedroom. The walls are a soft, pallid pink, and one of them is covered in mirrors. A barre is installed across these mirrors, and in the corner there seems to be something white and fluffy: a tutu. "A ballet room?"

"Looks like it—"

"Yup, you're right," says a familiar voice, and I turn to see Gael sauntering into the room, a smile on his face and a slight wondering nostalgia in the leaf green of his eyes. Running a hand back through the tousled curls atop his head, he adds, "It was Rhea's, when she was little. She's not really into dance anymore, though."

"Is it just me, or are you home early?" I ask him, brushing my hand over the wooden barre, smiling despite myself. When I was little, I was never into dolls, or ballet, or anything like the typical little girl interests. I wanted to be a hunter; I watched hunters like my father, and was obsessed with the thought of being one myself. It's kind of funny, actually, to think of a five-year-old yearning to master the correct grips on knives, to want to know how to load a pistol.

"I am," Gael replies. "After Shi's episode, it was mayhem, the whole grill freaking out. Boss man told me to take the rest of the day off, so...voila, I'm home. I see you found the basement, though."

I look up from the barre, nodding. "Yes, yes, we did. And..." I pivot, turning in a circle to get a good look at the room. Yes, it's pink. Yes, it was for a little girl. Yes, it is going to house a raging beast for a night. "I think this is it, boys. I can see the vision...Shi, you have rope in your backpack, don't you?"

His answer is brief: "Yup."

"Well, good," I say, then turn towards the ballet barre, tapping at it with my knuckles. "We'll tie you up to this with the rope, then, and...padlock the door. If tranquilizing you is what I'm honestly doing, then you'll only be dangerous for a little bit, right?"

"Well, yeah..." Shi begins, looking skeptical, "...assuming I don't bite you in half before you get anywhere near me."

Both Gael and I visibly blanch, but Shi turns red. "Kidding! Kidding!"

"Let's lay off the violent hypotheticals, okay? In the past, I haven't had pleasant experiences with you guys, meaning I nearly have been bitten in half," I tell Shi. "So, what do you think? Is my plan good enough?"

Shi shrugs. "I don't see why not. Except, we need a padlock, and to go by that apothecary place."

"Easy," Gael says. "I have a padlock in my garage; we can head to the apothecary after dinner."

"Great," Shi says, beaming at the place that will, in a day or so, will be his captivity space. "Well, Gael and Gemma, consider this room werewolf-proofed."

The main street's much quieter at night, the people roaming it mere silhouettes underneath the moon—which yes, is a waxing gibbous. I'm suddenly angry with myself for not noticing this earlier, but decide I have to put this frustration away and focus on more important things, like wolfsbane shopping.

Gael and Shi walk on either side of me, Gael with his hands in his pockets as he whistles, Shi grumbling every now and then about stopping to eat something, despite the fact we just ate back at the house. He's disturbing me; I hate to see him this way, but there's no fixing it.

Something about the odd silence of Revlin unnerves me. In Maris, especially in the inner city, it's always loud and alive, but here...it's more subdued, and it makes goosebumps rise on my skin. Maybe if I had lived here my entire life, like Gael, it wouldn't make me feel so much like I want to throw up, but I haven't lived here. Therefore, I have an excuse.

"Hey, is this the place?" Gael asks as he stops walking, craning his neck back to examine a squat, red-bricked building. A wooden sign hangs above the green door, reading APOTHECARY. To my dismay, no lights are on, and the whole place seems shrouded in darkness.

"It looks likes it's closed," I observe. "Oh well, I guess...we still have time before, you know, it's a dire need."

"Uh uh uh," Gael says, holding up a finger. He approaches the door, pressing his face to the glass. "Nope, there's a light on. The windows are tinted, that's all." Looking proud of himself, Gael smiles at us over his shoulder and cranks the doorknob, beckoning us to enter before him.

I go ahead of Shi, and sure enough, Gael's right: There's a lamp sitting on the front desk, shining down on a sleeping old woman, who I can only assume is the owner of the shop. Shi blinks at her, and when he reaches out a finger to poke her, I hit his hand away. "Leave her be for now," I scold, then go on to wandering the shelves, filled to the brim with recipe books, elixirs, powders, and—what I'm looking for—assorted jarred herbs.

It takes a few moments of examining various labels with Gael watching over my shoulder until I find what must be it—a crushed powder-like substance with a purple tint to it, labeled Crushed Aconite. "Hey, Shi," I call, and he looks up from squinting at a bottle of some sort of vibrant blue liquid to approach Gael and me. I toss the bottle to him, and he catches it. "Is this the stuff?"

His eyes narrow as he examines it, then looks up at me. "You're not expecting me to—"

"I do believe that's exactly what we're asking you to do," Gael states, and when Shi hesitates, he makes a gesture to tell him to hurry up. "Come on, now, Shi; we can't stay here all night."

"God," Shi mutters, but nevertheless pops the cork off and lets some of the powder fall into a pile on his palm. When it sizzles, causing his skin to become burned and irritated, he curses and shakes the stuff off his hand, narrowly avoiding dropping the rest of the stash. "Yes," he murmurs, cradling his now trembling hand, "that's wolfsbane, alright. Hurts like a mother."

"Well, good, then," I say, reaching forward to snatch the bottle from him.

"In that case, the mission's on."