I shone my flashlight down over the file, seeing that it was about two inches thick and stuffed full of papers. There were about twenty-five tabs along the side, each with someone's first and last name on it. I spotted mine, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to yank it out of Shawn's hands.
But he flipped it open, all six of us crowded around the file in a small circle. The first few pages were explaining things that we already knew, so he skipped over those with a snort, flipping to his section. I watched his eyes travel down the pages, scanning them. Looking over his shoulder- which wasn't easy- I saw that he was right, that he was a Nahual. There was a simple explanation of all his abilities, and the likeliness of which animal he'll shapeshift into.
I read down the list, starting with most likely, and ending with least likely, listing every shapeshifter form possible. It went:
Jaguar- 56%
Cheetah- 24%
Wolf- 9%
Puma- 5%
Coyote- 4%
Leopard- 2%
Dog- 0%
Donkey- 0%
It looked like we were right, and he was a black jaguar. I thought about saying something about it to him, but the look on his face stopped me from making a single sound. He passed it to Autumn, of his left side, and she flipped to her page, pages crinkling.
She read her pages, and then told us what they said. She said it was kind of complicated, but tried to lay it out for us.
Necromancers can see and talk to ghosts. They can summon them, return them to their bodies, creating zombies, and send them away.
Ghosts(veiled matter) with a strong presence can touch and poke and prod Necromancers, but not other beings, and can choose whether or not to be seen, but strong Necromancers can push them through and make them visible, or even when they are trying to be invisible, can see flickers or shimmers of them peeking through into the physical plane.
Summoning works by concentrating on a certain ghost or spirit or veiled matter, and can be accomplished easily by all Necromancers, no matter how strong, as it's their main power. They can see all ghosts and spirits who are on the physical plane, but have to summon spirits who aren't, and are in the ghost realm.
By getting rid of a spirit is my mentally sending them back to their own realm. This is a little harder to do then summoning, and may take a more experienced Necromancer. And when Necromancers are sending ghosts away, objects on the physical plane can shake, rattle, or move, responding the Necromancers mental "shoving".
Rituals for bringing ghosts back to their corpses or sending them back requires a special chant in a dead language, Keritia, which only Necromancers understand, and sometimes only communicate in that language to keep conversations secret. All Necromancers can hear the language and understand it without ever studying it, and speak it just as well. They may also use symbols.
After that, things got more specific towards her and not general Necromancer facts. Power abilities range per necromancer. Her file says that she's such a strong Necromancer because of both of her parents' abilities. Her file said most of the same stuff the letter her wrote her said, but had a few more details about the Summoning and Freeing of spirits. There were also some pictures of symbols to be drawn to Summon a specific ghost or spirit.
Autumn passed the folder onto Sakura, going around in a circle. She found her tap and flipped to her page, eyes hungrily scanning the page. We knew nothing about her yet, so this was all new to Sakura. She read the pages, at least three pages per person, and then told us what she read. According to the file, she was a Kitsune. She can shapeshift into a fox, and can understand and speak the fox language.
Sakura told us what she discovered, and then passed the folder to me. I turned it over to my pages and discovered I was right, and was a Lechuza. But I wasn't just a shapeshifter: I was also a witch. They don't have extensive magical abilities, but it was cool to me. I can't wait to try them out.
I passed to Isabella, and she and Austin looked together, assuming they were the same Supernatural type, given they're twins. After they finished reading both of their files, they told us they were both Shamans. Isabella read to us:
Shamans are natural healers, and draw from the earth to use their powers, using herbs and incantations in Bulgarian to heal whoever they please, including themselves. They can also astral project their souls, so they leave their body and can go anywhere they choose, acting as a ghostly spirit, floating above the ground to make traveling easier. They can also heal people just by being around them. Like, if a Shaman had a brother who they were always hanging around and was having muscle pains, they would heal faster by being near the Shaman.
We had the file. Now what?
"What should we do with it?" I asked. I already knew what I wanted to do, but I wanted to hear what the others thought.
"They would notice if it was gone," Sakura pointed out.
"But we shouldn't leave it here!" Autumn exclaimed.
"So what do you suggest?" Shawn asked.
"We can make photocopies," I offered up.
They turned to look at me.
"I saw a big printer upstairs," I whispered. "We can do that, put the file back, and make it seem like we were never here."
The others nodded. "Two of us can go do the photocopying while everyone else cleans up."
Autumn and I went upstairs to start photocopying while everyone else cleaned up. Austin and Sakura stayed downstairs to clean while Isabella and Shawn headed upstairs after us to clean up the upstairs.
Autumn and I could hear the others cleaning up while we started photocopying each of our pages.We had a system. One person would be doing the actual photocopying while the other was getting the photocopied pages and arranging them in the right order and whoever the page was describing. I was the photocopier while Autumn did the organizing.
The only noises we were making was the steady thump-thump of the swooshing copier. Then I couldn't take the silence anymore.
"How are you doing with all of this?" I asked her.
She shrugged. "I already knew what I was. This was just another wave of it, and knowing who was involved and who wasn't."
"But we still don't know everything," I said, photocopying another page.
Autumn nodded. "But we'll figure out the rest."
I nodded.
We soon finished all of our pages. With time to kill, and everyone else still cleaning up, I said, "Why don't we also copy the pages in the front? We didn't really get a chance to read them?"
Autumn nodded. We returned to it, and then we had a stack of papers tucked under Autumn's arm.
We descended the stairs and found all four of the others down there now, still cleaning up. We put the folder back, then walked to the end of the hall to help when we heard footsteps on the marble steps outside, echoing loud enough for all of us to hear. Without a word, we ran down the hall and ducked into a back closet, one we never checked.
The footsteps got louder, and then they stopped outside the door. The lock clicked. The door knob turned, and someone stepped inside. I held my index finger up to my lips in a shushing motion, telling them all to stay quiet. We all held our breaths, Autumn and Isabella closing their eyes.
The person rummaged through the front desk for a few minutes before they stopped. I heard a zipper be unzipped, and a few moments later, be zipped up again. I could tell by our friends faces that only Shawn and I could hear this part. Softer footsteps retreated to the door, opened the door with a loud creak, closed it, locked it again, and left. Their footsteps echoed off the marble stairs outside again, and then it was safe for us to leave.
I opened the closet door slowly, and creeped out of the door, the others following close behind me. We looped around the back and found ourselves back by the back door. We left the office, sneaking out and quitely shutting the door behind us. People will notice the lock broken, but since nothing will be missing from inside, they'll probably think it fell off or rusted from old age.
We snuck away and got far enough away from the building before going back to the park pavilion. Stopping there, we all caught our breaths and Autumn and I distributed each person's files to them. I kept the front pages, as Autumn and I agreed, and I would read them and share what I read with everyone else. I folded my pages and stuck them in my waistband along with my flashlight.
It was pitch-black outside, the only light was the moon in the sky and the few street lamps along the sidewalks. I thought we looked kind of shady, huddled close together whispering, but the others didn't seem to think so.
But we left then, heading back to our houses. Sakura and Shawn went off one way, their houses the same direction, and the rest of us, Autumn, Isabella, Austin, and I went the opposite way. But after a few minutes, I parted ways from them. They all lived in the same neighborhood, while I didn't really live in one, but it was close to theirs.
The path I took was busy with cars, so I decided to duck into the trees so I wouldn't be seen. Maybe I was being a bit paranoid, but I didn't want my father to know where I was tonight. He thought I was at Isabella's, and I wanted to keep it that way.
Cutting through the woods was faster, so I soon found myself back at my house, feeling as if I was seeing it for the first time. The moonlight glowed from above, shining down on the grass, everything seen in black and blue hues. I came through my back door, and my dad was sitting in the den, watching T.V. I waved to him and said I was going up for the night.
He called goodnight back to me and resumed watching T.V. as if I hadn't come through at all. I thought about the file. Supernatural genes appeared to be hereditary, which means my father must've known what I was my whole life. I suppose my mother could've carried the genes, but wouldn't father have at least known what she was? I didn't know, and at this rate, I never would. Unless it was in the file somewhere.
I quickly jogged up the rest of the stairs and into my room, firmly shutting the door behind me. I turned my lamp on and turned off my overhead light. Sitting down at my desk, I shoved my flashlight in one of desk drawers and pulled out my photocopied pages.
Unfolding them, I flattened them on my desk. I started with the front pages. I started reading them, but couldn't really understand them. They were meant to be read by someone who already knew what the folder was for. As someone who doesn't, it required a lot of inferences. I thought the pages were explaining the "situation' as they call it. Yeah, screwing over teenagers is a situation, alright. They put us shapeshifters through hell, and we had no idea why. I thought I was dying during my first shift. No warning. No preparation. And reading these papers weren't giving any justification for that.
It went on about "protecting us from the Āganiniti", and I had no idea what that was. I had a feeling no one outside our families did either. Chasing a fantasy, I tried googling it. I got nothing, except that it was in the Amharic language. My computer wouldn't tell me what the word meant, though. The pages kept getting blocked. Irritation flaring in my mind, I put my computer and returned to the file pages.
I finished reading the main pages, still confused on what they were about, and skipped over to mine. I read them more carefully this time, and it gave some examples of myths and legends with Lechuza's in them. I read them, and almost laughed. Lechuza often brought mass hysteria, since they mythologically had a women's face on an owls body, and had a terrifying shriek sounding like a mountain lion's yowl, as one myth said.
I couldn't imagine that being me. Although I never made any noise when I'm in my owl form. Maybe next time I'll try screaming, and see what it sounds like. The pages went past myths, and described the types of spells most Lechuza's can do. Apparently, most Lechuza's develop a different power, either based on traumatic experiences or on their personality. They have both offensive and defensive spells, which sounded cool to me. I wondered what special spell would be. I couldn't wait to try them out, but I didn't know when or where I'd do that.
Soon, the words blurred as I yawned, water blurring my vision. Since I was nearly falling asleep at my desk, I allowed myself to retire to bed. I changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and pulled my hair up in a ponytail. Before sliding into bed, I checked our group chat.
The others had read their pages again and wanted to meet up again tomorrow after school. I told them I would meet, and asked where. Sakura offered to go out of her family's boat, to ensure no one would hear. We all agreed.
With that settled, I turned off my lamp and snuggled up in my bed. My eyes felt tired and droopy, so sleep came easy that night. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. It seemed that finding the file put my inner self at ease, enough to earn me a good night's rest.