12)

The thing about teenage girls is you have to gather up the pieces of the conversation and put them in some sort of order in your own head to get the story straight, and even then. you just know you are going to miss something that they consider unforgivable for you to have missed.

From what I was able to put together, was that my daughter in law’s family came here from japan where they had used their ability to use magic to work as mercenaries, which sounded like they were “Ninjas?” She shook her head. “We don’t use the N word anymore, mom said it has too much cultural baggage.”

But they sometimes would also have a true magician pop up in the family once every few generations, up until the last one, Sara’s great, great, grandmother died.

After her death they started getting pushed around by their rivals until the head of the family decided to move on before things got worse and took the whole family to America as Sara put it, “Like a hundred years ago or something.”

As the older members of the family died off, the rest of the family settled down into the great American melting pot and westernized, all except great grandpa Ichiban, the last member of the family who remembered living in japan in their glory days and still spoke of going back to reclaim their rightful place.

As he was still the head of the family, everyone humored the old man and made at least some attempt at being traditional.

Which included teaching even the girls how to fight, even if officially only the boys got taught all the family’s special techniques.

“My uncle Dave, he’s the next head of the family, learned all of them so he can pass them on to make sure they don’t get forgotten, and he taught my mom even if he wasn’t supposed to because she was one of the few people in the family who was willing to make the effort to learn them.” Her eyes lit up. “He promised to teach me all of them when I get older.’

So Yuki, the mom, spent her time training and being home schooled in the family compound, and then got sent off to fight in special competitions with the family’s permission to show off to others how strong they were as a warning not to mess with them, and to advertise the family's main business as bodyguards.

And some lanky white kid who had only trained in strip mall dojos kept beating her with moves he admitted he stole from martial art films.

Worse, he wasn't even trying to show off, he just liked to fight other “Internal mages” to become better at it.

“Internal mages?”

She nodded. “Dad says all the terms for people who got powers comes down to either having internal magic that let’s you do things to yourself, or external magic that let’s you do things to the world around you like Ami can, everything else is just how you were trained to do things.”

Hmm. Which would be why great grandpa wants Ami under his control so bad.

“So your mom’s people came from japan, and pretty much kept to themselves as far as other magic people went?”

She nodded at me hesitantly.

“Well everything I ever read or heard about werewolves is out of Europe, so it may be your whole mom’s family just never ran into them. So if your mom said werewolves don’t exist, it may be that for her, they don’t, because that’s what she was taught.”

She glared at me “But she said it in front of Dad, and his family are all witches, they're from Europe too so why wouldn't he know about them.”

I shrugged. “Let me tell you I wish someone had told me when I was your age, when the person you care about is wrong about something, try not to correct them in front of other people, it makes them feel like you’re not on their side.”

She looked at me for moment, “So, if you’re real, witches and magic warriors are real, what else is?”

I decided to lay it out for her, as best I knew.

“Are you sure you want to know, once I tell you the world may be a much scarier place?”

She took a deep breath. “I need to be ready.’

I nodded, brave little thing. “This is the scary part, I don’t know. I doubt anyone knows what all is out there, hiding, keeping themselves secret, if they’re dangerous, or just people that are difference and not mentioning it.”

“I got bit and didn’t even get to talk to the werewolf who did, so I don’t even know what might be common knowledge for them, but I think I should try to find out, to save you from a least a few surprises.”

That got me a dubious look, but I did need some answers.

You make a curse that turns someone into a wolf at night, people who live in the same home panic and try to kill it, the victim, lacking hands, bite others trying to save their own lives, the curse spreads.

But the thing with the hand, the claws made to fight with, this is more than a curse to turn people into wolves.

It turns them into weapons.