“What did you do to him?” Mistress Red demanded again.

She was staring accusingly at Stray, one hand against Logan’s bare shoulder. Trying to comfort him, the marring, purple effects of the Stray’s Curse gradually fading from his face. Logan was hunching on himself, muttering to her to “Stay the Hell back-” Almost as if he were afraid of the apothecary’s touch as much as Stray’s though the girl couldn’t imagine why that would be. After all, she thought slightly dizzily, she was the one who had injured him like this, not Mistress Red. She was the one who was dangerous, the one who couldn’t keep people safe. The rest of the Company were standing around Logan’s door, ogling the scene though they were shivering in their nightclothes; Ororo had already pushed her way to the front of the crowd, her longbow in her hand and ready, her eyes frightened. From the way the huntress’ blue-eyed gaze was darting between herself and Logan however, Stray couldn’t be certain whether she was frightened for or of the naked man-

It was, she thought disjointedly, a most peculiar reaction to her friend’s injury.

She opened her mouth to say as much, but the words still wouldn’t come out.

“It’s obvious what happened here,” Mistress Gold drawled then. She was still dragging one elegant hand through her hair, gold streaks standing out against the red. For some reason the sight of it made Stray flinch. “Everyone saw the way the girl stared at him when she came here,” the woman continued silkily. “Everyone knows what her power does. Clearly she waited until Logan’s guard was down and then snuck in here with the sole purpose of using her Curse on him-”

Finally Stray found her voice.

“That’s not true-” she muttered, “I didn’t- I wouldn’t-”

There was nothing in the world that could make her hurt Logan.

“Then what were you doing here?” Gold’s eyes raked mockingly over her, and suddenly Stray wanted the ground to just open up and swallow her; The woman seemed to have a gift for making her feel like an awkward, ugly child. “Are you suggesting that Logan invited you-” her tone was disdainful, “-Into his quarters when the other women of this troupe have never been granted such an intimacy? Are you suggesting he asked an apparently innocent, awkward young girl to visit him in the dead of night?” Her smile turned mocking. “Hardly likely, now is it, little one? And after all, if he wanted you here why would he have locked his doors?”

And she gestured to the battered, open door beside her which looked like it had been in a fight with a hungry wolf and lost. The lock hanging forlornly away from the door’s panels, as if someone had forced it open- Though something about the sight tugged at Stray’s mind in a way she couldn’t explain. It was almost as if the lock had been forced from inside... The girl stared down at her tiny, pale-as-moonlight hands and wondered how they had ever had the strength to do that to anything though-

But before she could answer Logan struggled to his feet.

“Let’s get this straight once and fer all, Gold,” he was muttering, holding onto Ororo for support. He was wincing, doubling over in pain but he still managed to shoot the room at large a glare. “The girl heard me hollering, and she came in here to help me. Tried to wake me, since none of you idiots told her the danger in doing something harebrained as that. Thought to do me a kindness, and that’s an end to it-”

“But that’s not an end to it.” Gold gestured to the other men about her. “What’s to stop her from doing this again, doing it to one of our husbands? What’s to stop her from trying to murder one of us in our beds?” And she looked around at the assembled Company, her expression now self-righteous. Suddenly Mistress Red looked deeply uncomfortable with what her sister was saying and Stray didn’t blame her one little bit. “We take in our own, it is true,” Gold was saying, “But we do not need to keep this, this predator in our midst. We do not need to keep a Judas child and offer it a home. A man should be safe in his own bed at night-”

“And if we were to get rid of you he would be,” Logan snarled, leaning more heavily on Ororo. Stray saw Mistress Gold’s eyes narrow in annoyance at the sight.

“Then she has bewitched you!” the older woman snapped back. “That’s the only explanation for this sudden infatuation: She has used hex-craft on you, Logan, and managed to steal away your sense.” And the redhead stood up taller suddenly, her eyes shining. The air about her beginning to tremble with something Stray didn’t have a name for. Something old and whispering-familiar and mean. “Are we to sit here and let her work her way through the Company?” Gold was demanding. “Are we to be slaves to another magician, as we were slaves to Father Carlos before her?” She shook her golden-red head angrily, her eyes burning now. Stray wondered if she was the only one who could see it, see the way the woman’s shadow seemed to be growing, its shape stretching out to etch a pair of massive, feathery wings. The crowd seemed entranced. “No,” Gold was hissing. “Never! Never! We will not be slaves again! Not for the sake of this slip of a girl, not for the sake of Logan keeping his bed warm at night-”

And she began jabbing one finger angrily at Stray now, her mouth working tightly. Muttering something under her breath in a language the girl didn’t know, the words ugly and jarring and sinister, not an ounce of kindness in their sound. In the mirror above Logan’s wash stand Stray could see her making some sort of complicated gesture behind her back, her nail tearing into her skin and opening it. A drop of her crimson blood tumbling towards the floor and staining it, another hitting the rug beside Logan’s bed and spreading. The size of the spill far greater than a drop of blood that small should produce. The girl only had time to think that this was very odd- why weren’t the others scared? Did they even see this?-

And then suddenly she was lifted aloft, her limbs spread-eagled.

A grip like a vice wrapping around her even as the wagon was lit with a light both unearthly and feather-down-cold. Stray looked down to see tendrils of gold sliding across her body, just like the golden threads which had hurt her in her dreams and she began struggling. The memory of the hair’s grip- and the memory of other hurts and humiliations it had triggered- burning their way through her limbs. An unwillingness to be that victim again making her tremble and shake. No, she found herself thinking. No, no, NO, NO, NO! She began to struggle, pain wracking through her, arms flailing. An awareness that this was strange- Why didn’t anyone help her? Why didn’t they even seem to notice?- making her feel dizzy. Sick. The Company of Miracles stared into space, apparently blind to what was going on around them; Stray felt the air thicken, felt it became mercury-heavy and stifling in their ignorance. In their unwillingness to see what was going on. The light in the room seeming to shudder, the heat within it somehow leaking away. She let out a long, harsh scream, pleading with someone to help her but it did her not a bit of good. Again and again she screamed, the sound changing now, coming out like nothing so much as a wolf-howl-

And that, naturally, was when all Hell broke lose.

Because suddenly Logan fell to his knees and let out a keening, piercing howl in answer. His hands stretching out before him, fingernails forming into claws. Maw opening up to reveal lengthening, tearing, wicked-as-silver-sharp teeth. The pupils of those beautiful hazel eyes that had haunted Stray for as long as she’d known him lengthening and changing. Becoming those of a massive, ferocious, lovely-as-hungry-flesh wolf. Stray watched as Logan’s skin seemed to part itself from his bones. As hair- no, fur- erupted, dark as a promise, from somewhere beneath his skin. For a split second nobody moved, not even Mistress Gold; Nobody it seemed wanted to breath near the beast, even Ororo seemed like she was trying to move away. Mistress Red scrambled backwards, her husband placing himself between his wife and the man- No, not man, Stray thought dizzily, bzou, loup garou, were-wolf-

But Logan didn’t seemed to notice. He didn’t seem to really see anything except Stray in her helpless, caged-by-magic state. Moonlight was beaming in through the window of the caravan now, bathing him in its silvery glow. Painting his new form large on the walls of the cabin, painting it dark as shadows there on Stray’s shivering skin. She heard a hiss, a plume of breath, a fall of skin and out of it a wolf stalking-

And then-

“Get out of here,” Ororo hissed to Gold, “It is as I told you.” She gestured to Logan. “Your jealousy will be the death of us yet.” And she picked up her bow, hooking a single, deadly, silver arrow through her fingers. If they trembled slightly in the moonlight she gave no indication that she saw. “She is the moonlight key,” the huntress was hissing, “She is the one he’s been searching for-”

And with that she drew her bowstring back and let her arrow fly.

Stray’s knees hit the ground with a sickening thump.