“I don’t mean to be a dick, by any means,” Broderick said as he stood behind his desk in the basement of Howell’s. “But we need to step up our game.”

He was leaning on his desk, arms spread and palms open against the surface. He had what I could only describe as the most pissed off look that I had ever seen on his face and I had no idea what was going on. The rest of us, minus Craven, were gathered around the desk waiting for whatever news he was about to drop on us.

Mike was asked to cover a shift by a knowing friend on their birthday. Because the scheduling boss made an incorrect assumption, he ended up being something he could only dream of.

“Welcome to your new home,” Rhea stepped into the house, backward, her arms dramatically outstretched. “It’s not as big as Angela’s house, but it’s home.”

“We…live here alone? Just us?” I looked around, noting that the place WAS much smaller. It was a single story house with aging wood floors, faded walls, and furniture that looked like it came from a thrift store.

“I live here too,” Mellie said, walking into the house and passing by me and tossing her purse on the couch.

“Everyone here has something to lose,” Broderick paced back and forth. We were sitting the basement office, just below Howell’s pub, as I’d come to learn. There were seven of us here. Broderick, Mellie, my sister, and a few other people I hadn’t met yet. I was sitting on the desk, Meghan beside me, her hand in mine. “Everyone here, in this room, save for the vampire, is a member of house Greystem-“

“Wait, what?” I interrupted. “Greystem?”

My vision swam and my emotions raged as I was flung from the mirror and my body slammed against an old wooden floor, glass and debris bouncing, dust scattering after years of dormancy. I gasped for air and reached my hand upward toward the massive full-length framed mirror from which I had just been ejected. I scampered to my feet, rushed back toward the mirror, barely managing to keep myself standing. My arm outstretched I ran to it, slamming my hand against the glass. It shattered. The shards fell from the frame and turned to dust as they collided with the floor.

“Pay attention,” Meredith tapped the old dusty book in front of me with her switch. She hadn’t used it on me lately but she really loved using it as an implement. “Without referring to the book, tell me the name of the Seelie court, in old Fae.”

“’Allo,” I responded, hoping I wasn’t messing it up.

“And the inner sanctum?”

“Alloquandirm,” I said a little uncertainty. The look on her face told me I was wrong.

“Alloquandirum,” She corrected me. “You’ve gotta get that ‘u’ in there.”

“Sorry,” I shrugged. “It’s a lot to learn and-“

That there was a total look of disbelief on Randy's face would be an understatement. "Mother of Mary, that thing really thinks better than we do?"

He stooped over to see if he could find any answers under or behind the desk. Picking up the keypad he felt along the top of the desk.

"Please Mr. Shells, if you must call me something, I would prefer you call me the same thing Karen does. My name is Henry. Although 'thing' may be appropriate in your mind when you refer to the unknown, it does not endear you with me. I understand the nature of humans to do name calling when they’re mad, frustrated, and scared. It serves no useful purpose to do so at an inanimate object."

“Again,” Meredith said coldly. As always, my body responded to her command; I ran back to beginning of the obstacle course, bow in hand and gripped the rope net, hurtling up and over the obstacle as I raced toward the next.

“Meredith please,” I sobbed as I ran, completely out of breath and barely able to keep upright. “Please just let me stop for a minute.”

“What are you thinking over there, Jasmine?” Angela asked me. I suddenly realized I was lost in thought, probably staring off into the distance.

“I…” I started to say, but trailed off, unsure of what I wanted to tell them. I gathered myself and sighed. “I’m just…I don’t want this to end. I like being…this. I like being your daughter, I like being…”

Chapter One

My life was boring before I met Kaen, though met is not an entirely accurate way to describe our first encounter. I was David a thirty-five-year-old single warehouse worker. I was just an average middle age man nothing really to look at, in fact, if you saw me you probably forgot me a short time later. At five feet ten inches and a frame that could hide behind a light pole, I didn't really have ladies knocking on my door either. I spent most of my time at work or home watching anime. That changer a summer night last June.

the same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

Karen knew she needed to have another talk with Henry. If he was playing like her agent now, he was in deep trouble. Taking care of her finances was one thing, but this was something entirely different. Maybe it wasn't Henry? Bob Kincaid would gain a lot if he could pull off this trick. Someone always seemed to be manipulating her life lately and she wasn't being consulted. It use to be so simple before the accident. All she had to do was go to work and do her job, nothing more, nothing less.

“And I am back with groceries!” Angela said cheerfully as she walked into the room. I had resumed my original position on the bed and Meredith was pretending to be busy with her phone, acting like she hadn’t just forced me to lick her feet for the last hour. I kind of wanted to say something to Angela, in fact I was pretty sure I could have, but I just didn’t want to. I was tired, I was hungry, my body felt like it had been hit by a truck. I just wanted to lay here on the bed and drift off to sleep. “Wake up over there or it’s going to feel worse later!”

Tom was sitting on his bed when he heard his mother leaving the driveway with the family car. He knew he was alone. His sister was at school. He was home sick with the flue and was curious to go through his sister's things, especially since she seemed so against him doing that. She had told him time and time again: If I catch you in there Tom you'll regret it.

the same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

There wasn't one single company capable of matching the quality of work Karen and Henry were doing. Most of them tried to duplicate her work by ordering a model and disassembling it to find out how she accomplished it. Piece by piece, their lab technicians would dissect her models. At the end they experienced the same results as the medical research laboratories. Except for being polymer instead of skin and bone, it was an exact duplicate of the entire human anatomy. The programming she was running to complete one model had to be horrendous and yet she never made two models alike. The bytes of data Karen was using was incomprehensible to most model makers. They weren't programmers though, most of them were chemical engineers designing the plastics used in their manufacturing. Karen was a computer engineer who worked on the design of the models from a graphics equation perspective. Henry helped research the plastics used to build the models. Same problem to all the companies competing in the model market. Different approach by the engineers.

the same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of his worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

David must have caught her happiness. He whispered in her ear, "Ten thousand dollars was too cheap a bet. I should have bet a hundred thousand we would get in tonight."

The same accident that caused the loss of his leg at age six also stimulated the latent genetics that ran in his family to trigger a mutation. Although becoming one of the ‘exo-humans’ the government monitored would prove to be the least of David’s worries once he stumbled upon his family’s secret.

Charles is happy in his own space until he is drawn out into the open

Charles was just about resisting the temptation to go on YouTube. He’d been pounding spreadsheets since early in the morning and needed a break. The upside was that he was working from home and avoiding the A38(M) and M6 traffic jam. He intended to take a break soon and get some housework done, as a single man he only had himself to look after but he liked an orderly house.