Hacker’s cheeks reddened. “Seems sorta stupid now, but at the time it didn’t. I wanted to know if his treatment centers were just for Mexicans, or if a white guy could get in, too.
I thought he’d ask for details, but he didn’t. He nodded once, still rubbing his jaw.
“That’s right. And that’s all. At least that’s suppose to be all. But when I was still an addict, I needed money all the time. And I met a guy.” He continued to pace, scratching the back of his head so hard he reminded me of a dog with fleas. I winced at the thought, realizing this might not be so far from the truth.
“He was a myste, like you,” Hacker went on. “I saw that right away. He said he could help me, and that far from havin’ to pay him he’d go ahead and pay me on top of what he could do for me. How could I say no?
Something stirred in the back of my mind, grasses rustling in a light wind. A memory, though I couldn’t place it.
He laughed, short and bitter. “It worked just the way they wanted it to. I don’t need to wait for the moons to become coyote. And I can change into him anytime I want. Changin’ back is . . . well that’s more complicated. Sometimes it’s quick, sometimes it takes a day or more. But all of that is beside the point. Always was, as it happens.
He lifted his t-shirt and pointed at a crater-like scar on his side, beneath his left arm.
So much had clicked into place for me while Hacker talked. That memory — it was from the seeing spell I’d cast in Sweetwater Park. This is what Dimples and Bear had been doing with the blood from the homeless man. Dimples’s spell made it possible for Bear, who must have been a were, to change anytime Dimples wanted him to. The roar of pain I had heard before their victim lost consciousness was Bear turning. For all I knew, he really was part bear.
Weres like Hacker and Bear had been made into servants of the dark sorcerers who changed them; wereslaves, in a manner of speaking. Being a were still carried a stigma, in some ways even more so than being a weremyste. At least we kept our human form. Our phasings were misunderstood, as was the more permanent psychological damage they caused. But some people valued the spells we could cast, and few ever questioned our humanity.
Weres, however, had been portrayed in movies and on television as monsters, and from all that I had heard — I’d never seen it for myself — their transformation to and from animal form could be terrifying for the uninitiated. Others in Hacker’s position had no recourse. Hacker could talk to Amaya, though clearly Jacinto had not been able to do much for him. But others like him would be reluctant to admit to anyone what they were, much less that they had been stripped of their freedom in this way. And having no magic of their own, they couldn’t fight back, not against a sorcerer.
But their plight also begged a question that chilled me to my core: If this could be done to weres, could it also be done to weremystes? Could a myste who was powerful enough cast a similar spell on me, so that he or she could induce in me at will the insanity and enhanced power of the phasings? Sure, I had access to spells, too. I could defend myself. To a point. But what if the myste in question was more skilled than I was, more powerful? Could I be used as a magical slave as well? Could my Dad? Could a myste, or a cabal of them, create an entire army of ensorcelled magical warriors, beyond reason, wielding spells too powerful for those not in the midst of a magically induced phasing to withstand?