Disclosure (2 page)

A sidhe.

“Avés.” The cat alpha of the Council broke
the silence, and everyone relaxed.

The
n
ewcomer nodded, as if he had been there
since the beginning of the meeting. “The only thing the agencies
and companies have on us is the secret. If we show ourselves they
will lose their only option for blackmail.”

“Yes, but the repercussions can be worse than
the threats.” The witch’s eyes were distant, as if she was seeing
something different. A Seer.

“It’s up to us to keep the repercussions
under control, then.”

Two months later.

It was
strange to see everyone going
on with
their lives, as if it were just another day. But it wasn’t. That
was the day when our world would be turned upside down, and
humanity would get to know that what they called fantasy wasn’t
that far from reality…

And my head
was throbbing with pain.

The worst was
that I had to work even knowing what was about to happen, but I had
to take care. Unlike the fairy people, I wasn’t optimistic about
people’s reaction. Many would love to know that we were real,
right. But others… I feared even thinking about the
possibilities.

Almost
everyone from my team was already sitting at their stations when I
arrived, something rare, as I usually was the first to get there.
Sighing, I sat down and opened the system, typing my passwords and
preparing psychologically for the daily dose of curses. That was
the routine for anyone who worked at a call center.

“
Did anything
happen?”
Marina, on the station beside
mine, asked. “You’re never late.”

“
Not really.”
I answering, putting on my headset. “I just had to give my cousin a
ride.”

She nodded, and I changed my status to
available before she could start talking. The first call of my turn
came on almost in the same second, and I tried to focus on the work
and forget my worries.

It was around two in the afternoon when I
realized there were no calls on queue. Looking around, I saw that
everyone was idling. No calls? In the middle of the afternoon? One
glance to my cell phone showed me the reason: Luiz had sent me a
lot of texts, all of them starting with “you won’t believe”. That
could only mean that the plan had worked, and right now the
existence of the Otherworld was becoming public.

Quickly,
hoping my supervisor didn’t look my way, I texted an answer.
“Working, talk at home”. This way he would at least until I arrived
to start talking. I couldn’t stop wondering what would be his
reaction when he realized that his two roommates were part of the
“you won’t believe”.

“Camila?”

I turned, surprised, and saw one of the guys
from the beginning of our line calling me. A girl I always saw
around there was beside him, looking worried. I had never talked to
her before, but my nose told me she wasn’t human.

Shrugging, I
typed the pause code and got up. The girl met my eyes when I got
near, and then turned around and went to the doors, where we could
see if anyone was around us. That meant we could talk without being
heard.

“
Do you know
what’s going on?”
She asked in an urgent
whisper. “ I can feel something different, something big. My family
is in alert. But I have no idea of what it is.”

“
Do I know
you?” I raised an eyebrow.
I wasn’t going
to say anything without being sure that she was really from the
Otherworld. She didn’t smell like human, but that was all I
knew.

“
Elf.” She
sighed. “I should have imagined you wouldn’t recognize my smell,
wolf.”

I nodded lightly. Few among the shapeshifters
had any kind of contact with the fairy people, so it wasn’t a
surprise that I didn’t realize she was an elf. But it was a
surprise that she didn’t know what was going on.

“
They
disclosed the Otherworld’s existence.” I told her.

“Today? Already?”

“You didn’t know?”

“
We were only
told that it would happen.” She shook her head. “No one talked
about when. But this explains what I’m feeling from my family...
Thank you.”

She turned
and ran to her supervisor before I could say anything else.
Shaking my head, I went back to my station, and
saw when the elf left, almost running, and now carrying her purse.
Going home. My headache seemed worse, somehow, the first sign of my
worry. I didn’t want to imagine what that girl had felt from her
family if it made her run like that.

I changed my
status to available again, but we still had no calls.
Thoughtful, I started wondering what might be
happening. I only knew the plans for Belo Horizonte, but there
would be something going on in all the cities with an expressive
number of people from the Otherworld. The witches’ Seers had
reunited and made a list of anything that we could use, and here it
would be a robbery with hostages. The plan was that the
shapeshifters and the witches would openly interfere, playing the
roles of heroes. The local vampires and fairy people weren’t happy
to be left out, but they would show up later.

How far would
that go? What would I find when I left work? I had no idea. I
didn’t even know if Felipe would be at home – he had been called to
help with the hostages’ rescue, and there was always some risk. A
bullet wouldn’t kill him, but I still worried. We did have a
regeneration capacity beyond anything a human body was capable of,
but we weren’t immortals.

By the end of my turn I was already pale. Too
much worry, too much headache. And too many people around
whispering and wondering if what had happened was really true.

I needed to see what had happened and what
the reactions were.

And I needed to talk to Luiz, I remembered,
seeing the cell phone screen light up with a new text. “Coming?”,
he asked. “On the road”, I answered.

I didn’t even
move when I hea
rd the jingle of keys
outside the door. I was almost sure it was Camila, as Felipe had
disappeared after all the madness this afternoon. And I didn’t want
to stop watching the news. Every moment another creature I thought
was only part of stories or myth showed up.

“What’s on the TV?” She asked, and I heard
the door being locked.

“I’m waiting to see if any demons will show
up.” I said, only half joking.

“
Don’t wait,
they won’t. They are too satisfied in the limbo.” Camila answered,
going to her bedroom.

Surprised, I stared at her back while she
kicked out her shoes. Was that answer another of her crazy jokes?
Sarcasm, maybe? But it had told me something I had already guessed:
Camila was one of them.

”What are you?”

“
Shapeshifter, from clan wolf.” She answered, coming back to
the living room and sitting on the other couch. “Third in the
female hierarchy.”

I was sure that meant something, but I
understood only the first part of her answer.

“Werewolf?”

“
Yes.” She
stared at me, obvio
usly waiting for a
reaction.

“
I live with
two werewolfs.
Nice!”

She shook her
head, a faint smile on her lips. “
What
happened in the afternoon? I know what they planned,
but…”

“
Some crazy
guys decided to rob
one of those big and
shiny stores downtown.” That was what we called the stores in a
rich neighborhood. “They took hostages, and the police was trying
to negotiate when those people showed up and made identical
gestures. The weapons the guys were holding fell almost out of the
store, and then four wolfs come out of the blue and jumped them. It
happened so fast I don’t think anyone understood what was going on
until it was over. Two brown wolfs were sitting on the guys, and
this huge white wolf was writhing on the floor, apparently tied up
in some clothes.”

“
That’s why
they asked for Felipe.
Few of us can
shapeshift while getting dressed.” She said, nodding as if that was
exactly what she expected. Well, maybe it was.

“
He didn’t
even need to get dressed.”
I didn’t
resist saying that, and she laughed.

“
Behave!”
Camila was still
laughing when she said that, but her smile died when she looked at
the TV. “Have you been watching the news since you arrived at home?
What happened around the world?”

“The demons are the only ones missing, it
seems. Every supernatural, fantastic of mythological creature I
ever heard about already showed up, and some that I had never heard
of.

Sighing, she turned away from the TV to stare
at me, looking serious. “That’s all? You won’t have the ‘this is
all a huge joke’ or the ‘you’re all monsters’ moment?”

“
No.” I
shrugged. How could I doubt, after watching Felipe shapeshift? And
how could I call them monsters after more than two years living
together? She should know me better. But knowing that shapeshifters
existed did give me some really good ideas. “And maybe you could
introduce me to someone who...”

“
I get it!”
She put her hands up, laughing again. “Were you still at college
when it all started? Did you hear what people what saying about
this?” I nodded, wondering why she wanted to know that. “Great. I
have to pick Felipe up at the farm, and I could bet that Ivan will
want to know what the human reaction was.”

“Ivan?”

“My alpha.”

“
Ok, werewolf
hierarchy. Do I need to dress nice?”

“
He’s
married.” She
narrowed her eyes. “And his
wife is a half demon.”

A few minutes later we were already in the
car, going in the direction of one of the city exits. The streets
seemed empty, and people walked too fast, as if they were afraid of
what could happen. Like there was a huge catastrophe waiting for
the perfect moment to blow up. The same thing had happened in
college, and I really didn’t get the reason. If people from the
Otherworld had lived among us all the time without giving any
trouble they wouldn’t start now.

Camila also noticed what was going on, and I
saw when she tightened her hands on the steering wheel, her
knuckles white and her fingers leaving deep marks. How did she hide
that strength all the time?

And that scared me – realizing that maybe I
didn’t know her and Felipe as well as I thought I did. What else
could they have been hiding all that time?

But that didn’t matter now. I had caught a
ride with Camila a couple of times when she was furious, and she
got reckless. I needed to distract her. “So… Did you dye your hair
white because you turn into a white wolf?”

“
What?” She
glanced my way, smiling, and I saw some of that tension leave her
hands. “No, I’m a red wolf. This is me showing how much I envy
Felipe.”

I laughed. I could understand that.

We didn’t say
anything else along the way, and I saw Camil
a massaging her temples. She probably had the mother of all
headaches, if she were as worried as she seemed to be.

When we were outside the city, she found a
small dirt road, the kind that I would never even notice. Few
minutes later we saw a barbed wire fence with a wooden gate. There
was a big sign saying “Private Property, Do Not Enter”. Camila
stopped the car and got out to open the gate. I jumped to the
driver seat and drove through, while she locked the gate behind
us.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier if you had
asked me to open the gate?” I asked when she got back, jumping to
the passenger seat.

“
Not
really.
We have traps and wards here.
This is a shapeshifters’ property, and I’m allowed to come here.
You aren’t.”

Ten minutes later, she parked before the
biggest house I had ever seen. We got out of the car, and Camila
didn’t even bother turning the alarm on.

“Let’s go through the back. They’re probably
in the kitchen.”

I didn’t need
to ask how she knew it, even I could smell the food. We went around
the house, and I saw a big wood burning stove and a long table
covered with dishes filled with food, even though only three people
were there.

“
You’re
early, Camila.” Felipe said, turning in our direction. “Luz, I
didn’t expect to see you here.”

I smiled.
“What?
After you dare to dress while
shapeshifting on air? Couldn’t you wait?”

Felipe
pretended he didn’t hear me,
while the
woman sitting at the table smiled.

“
Ivan, Dara,
this is Luiz, our roommate.” Camila made the introductions, sitting
down and taking a piece of cake.
“Luiz,
these are our alphas.”

“
Welcome.”
The man said, looking at Camila with a question in his
eyes.

“
He was at
college when everything hit the news. Information about humanity’s
reactions.” She answered, shrugging before concentrating on her
food.

I sat down, understanding her words as an
invitation to speak. And even though almost everything I usually
said was some kind of joke, I knew that it wasn’t the time for
anything like that.

“Between what I saw at college and on the
streets on the way here…” I hesitated. “I don’t understand why you
decided to do this, and I don’t think you’ll have any good results.
People are too afraid, and I heard many comments college about
people who thought all of you were animals they should study.”