Read Online Call of the Wild by Lucy Kelly - Free Book Online

worked out when they were teens chasing girls.
    Steven got up and grabbed a small plate, filling it with snacks from the tray Lola had brought in earlier. When he sat back down, he had moved, leaving the space next to Marsha open. Aaron was quick to take advantage. He sat down next to Marsha, putting his arm over the back of the couch.
    Before she could object or move away, he spoke up. “So, Laura, you wanted us to remind you that Evan saw someone the rest of us didn’t?”
    Laura nodded and smiled. She knew exactly what her brother was doing. She wanted to help him and Marsha get together, so she jumped right in.
    “Yes, that’s right. Evan has met Lola, my housekeeper, and her sister, Lila. The rest of you thought I had some kind of remote controlled food cart that Maggie House was running. It took me awhile to figure out why only some of us could see Lola. Lola is an inter-dimensional being. She can travel between two realms, ours and another. If you don’t have the right DNA, you can’t see her.”
    “Then how come Evan, who has the same DNA as us, can see her?” asked Josh.
    “When I came here, I had a small abrasion on my back. One of the shifters here was helping me and he cut his finger. It only took one drop of his blood to come in contact with mine for my changeling DNA to…I’ll say activate. My abilities began to manifest the next day. The first thing was that I could see Lola,” explained Laura.
    “Still hasn’t explained why Evan could see her yesterday,” Josh grumbled.
    Laura shrugged. “It’s just a theory. But once when we were kids, Evan and I did a blood exchange. I wanted to be “blood brothers” with him so we each pricked our fingers with a needle and pressed the wounds together. Maybe when I activated, Evan also activated? Unless one of you has done a blood ritual with another shifter?” she asked them, jokingly.
    Evan tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling. He was thinking hard about what his sister said. Actually, he could remember seeing things going back further than the last couple of days.
    “How long has it been, four months or so? No, it has to be something else and I think I know what it was. Ordinarily, shifter blood and human blood are the same?” he asked.
    “Yes, it’s only because Mom was a changeling that we all have the ability to have our perception changed,” Laura said. Now wasn’t the time to tell her brothers that they would eventually be able to shift.
    “Okay, if it’s transmitted by blood then…hmmm. People are so careful these days because of AIDS. Still, I’ve participated in enough sports to know that skinned knees and elbows happen. There could easily have been some transfer at some point. Of course, the person I was playing with would have to have been a shifter…pretty long odds.”
    “Does it really matter when it happened and how?” Benji asked. “I mean, it’s obvious that you got a drop of blood from someone.”
    “Well, there’s no way to test the retroactive theory unless one of you knows for a fact that you got some of my blood in you and I just don’t remember it,” said Laura.
    All of her brothers and her father thought about that for a minute and couldn’t come up with anything.
    “All of you need to get a little drop of my blood now. At the very least, it will allow you to converse with Lola and her sisters and brother, Lars. There are also others.”
    There weren’t any objections, so Laura pulled out a package of needles and Band-Aids she’d brought along after her shower.
    “Not you, Dad, you don’t have the DNA,” she said.
    “How do you know?” he asked.
    “If you had been a shifter, then you would have activated Mom’s changeling abilities,” Laura told him. “We’ll talk to Frieda—there may be something we can do so you can see everything as well.”
    It only took a few minutes to complete the exchanges. Hopefully, her brothers wouldn’t be too angry with her when they discovered they were