After buying the hair chews, the werehyena pack went their separate ways until that night's sleepover. Naomi, Kadie, and Layla went off together. While hanging out in the town zoo (checking out they hyenas that started it all, of course), the three girls bumped into Katelynn. The girl was staring at the hyenas, lost in thought.
"Katelynn!" Naomi called brightly. "Hi there!"
Katelynn turned waved. "Oh hi, Naomi! You too, Kadie and Layla! I was just checking out the hyena exhibit and... thinking."
"About Selena's offer?" Naomi asked, approaching the pale girl and placing a caramel-colored hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah," Katelynn said, smiling bashfully. "I know I was being a crappy team player, but... it's a big step, giving up your humanity. Kinda scary. Of course, you guys make really beautiful werehyenas."
"Layla and Kadie do, anyway," Naomi laughed. "I'm still waiting on that hyena dick."
Katelynn joined in the biracial girl's self-effacing laughter. "Yeah, that sucked. Pity the Ring of Embraces or whatever it's called ran out of charge right on your turn. At least it gave me time to figure out what I really want. Do I really wanna be a werehyena, or am I more comfortable staying human?" The pale, blonde-haired girl paused for a second before locking her blue eyes with Naomi's brown ones. "Or maybe there's some other magical creature that suits me better."
"Like what, Katelynn?" Naomi asked as she flipped her cornrow braids behind her shoulders.
"I honestly can't answer that," said Katelynn. "I only just learned that magic was real earlier today, so I don't really know most of my options. I know about werehyenas, werewolves, and vampires, but I don't even know much about THOSE, nevermind what else there is out there in this crazy, fantastical world. How the hell do I decide what I wanna end up as?!"
"I say we do some research!" Kadie chimed in. "I've been doing that for years. Studying the paranormal's always been my passion, you know. The trick is figuring out which sites on the 'net are full of shit and which can be trusted. Luckily for you, I have a bit of a knack for that."
"Sounds like a plan," Katelynn agreed. "I wanna make an informed decision."
"Let's go to my place," said Naomi. "I've got a nice, new laptop with a 16-inch screen in my room."
Naomi led the girls to her home and walked into the living room. They were greeted by a sandy-haired man with green eyes and an African-American woman with her hair cropped short.
"Hi, Mom, hi, Dad," said Naomi. "Katelynn, this my mom Ladonna and my dad Matt."
"Nice to meet you," said Katelynn. "I'm Katelynn Andersen."
"Great to meet you," said Matt Miller. "So you're Katelynn Andersen. You're family moved here a couple months ago, right? I've heard so much about you from your new basketball friends."
"Speaking of which," said Ladonna Miller, "it's great to have you over again, Layla and Kadie."
"Thanks, Mrs. Miller," said Kadie. "Naomi invited us over to hang out in her room for a bit. Is that okay?"
"Of course it is," said Ladonna. "Have fun!"
The girls waved goodbye to Naomi's parents and rushed up to her bedroom. Naomi sat herself down on her bed and fired up her laptop, and handed it to Kadie.
Kadie googled for info on supernatural creatures and began comparing sites. She ignored anything with entire paragraphs in all-caps or with randomly blinking text and focused on well-formatted, scholarly-looking websites. She also ignored anything mentioning aliens, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or Slenderman; Selena had mentioned those weren't real (or just hadn't landed yet, in the case of the aliens). She finally settled on a site called Vordenburg's Guide to Monsters.
"This one looks reliable," said Kadie. She began to read the introduction. "'Monsters are real. I should know; my family and I have been policing them for generations. Feel free not to believe me, but it'll be your loss if you ever find yourself face to face with a vampire or werewolf. I've created this website to give you the tools to identify monsters and defend yourselves from them. I offer you a database of monsters from A to Z. Each entry contains information ob a monster's appearance, behavior, powers, and (most importantly) weaknesses. I advise you to read everything carefully. You never know what scrap of knowledge might save your life.' Sounds like a monster hunter made this. Hey, isn't Vordenburg the maiden name of Beck Hamilton's mom?"
"I think so," said Layla. "I wonder if there's a connection there."
"Could be," said Naomi. "Sounds like one interesting family, if that's true."
"What's in the database?" asked Katelynn.
"Absolutely everything," said Kadie. "The Vordenburg person has entries on angels, centaurs, demons, dragons, faeries, feathered serpents, genies, gorgons, lamias, merfolk, minotaurs, nagas, ogres, satyrs, selkies, sphinxes, trolls, undead, unicorns, vanaras, werebeasts, and yokai. And some of those lead to drop-down menues with MORE stuff! 'Undead' leads to liches, ghouls, ghosts, and vampires. 'Faeries' leads to banshees, dwarves, enchantados, elves, goblins, gremlins, nymphs, pixies, rusalkas, swan maidens..."
"Encantados?" asked Katelynn. "Isn't that a Disney movie?"
"That's Encanto," said Kadie. "An encantado is a shapeshifting river dolphin from South America. Anyways, 'demons' breaks down into subpages like hellhounds, krampuses, lilin, nightmares, and succubi. And then there's 'Werebeasts.' Vordenburg breaks them down into all the major types. Werewolves, werefoxes, werehyenas, werecats, werelions, weretigers, werecoyotes, werecougars, werebats, werecrocodiles, werebears, weredeer, and even wererabbits. It's nearly as big as the 'Yokai' subfolder. That one's got bakeneko, kitsune, kappas, ningyo, oni, tanuki, tengu, and a ton of others."
"Whew!" said Katelynn. "We've got a lot of reading ahead of us! Well, best to get started. I think I can definitely rule out trolls and ogres from the start, though."