You back up, eyeballing one and then the other warily, arms coming up, fists clenching. "Enough. I came here for answers. I grew two or three inches overnight, none of my clothes fit, and I'm growing hair." Embarrassed, you close your fist around a thick cord of that golden, silken mane that drapes over the furred collar of your coat. "Someone is going to explain what's happening to me."
The twins stop in front of you, suddenly awkward and stiff. Their eyes meet, brows arched, startled. One of them asks an unspoken question with her widened, questioning eyes. The other cranes her neck and sniffs you. Her eyes squint and then snap open, the pupils in her emerald eyes contracting to dots. Both of them back away slowly, measured steps one at a time... and you can sense that they're... afraid of you.
You take a challenging step forward. "And the girl at the clothing shop. She's in on it. And the workers, they're in on it too."
"Jake," one of them says carefully. "And Jeff," the other answers.
Pausing, you start to add things up. Four of them so far. A blizzard that is still blocking escape from this place. There may be more.
Lucy, the spiky silver haired drummer of the group, shoulders her way between the two. "Frankie. Gerri. You're scaring her." She addresses you. "She didn't come all this way to be backed into a corner." Lucy rolls her neck backward, suddenly wary, as if she'd bumped into an invisible wall. "Oh. You're..."
You take a step backward, mindful of your escape route behind you, the doors still open. Things begin to narrow to spaces, distances, and your nostrils flare, the colors of the room sharper, their smells tangy and sharp in front of you. "I'm what?"
Lucy brings both hands up in front of her, palms outward, cautious, and her head lowers a bit and turns aside, her pale ice blue eyes looking up at you. "Easy. You have one of the totems on you." She cuts off your question with a glance of her eyes toward your neck. "You're still wearing it."
You paw your collarbone, and the necklace moves, the irregularly shaped wooden beads rolling against your skin. You never took it off, and didn't even notice that it had been the only thing left on you when you awoke naked in bed, your body not quite your own anymore.
"It's your choice to take it off, but you didn't because you had to like the first dose of what you got. Otherwise we would have heard it from Nina," Lucy continues with a roll of her eyes.
That makes five. Six, counting Nina now. Seven if you include the counter guy you just met. Your mind goes back to what you did after you'd put the necklace on. The snarl into the mirror that felt naughty. And right. The snuggle with that lovely furred blanket. The dream. And then... waking up amid shredded bedsheets, longer, taller, stronger than you were before. "I'm..."
Changing is the word unspoken. Lucy nods at you. "We all went through that. Don't mind Frankie and Gerri. They just like to tease the newcomers. Test them out and see how powerful they are. Since you never took the necklace off, some part of you must have really liked becoming something more." The strutting walk you made to the lodge reminds you of that. Maybe you did. Maybe this is all wrong. You look at the three of them, and even three on one, they seem to be leery of you. Because of what's happened to you so far. Still, Lucy extends a hand. "Come. Stay for the show. You're already part of things, and this Change has to feel good to you." Lucy speaks the word as if it's from a different language, and her intonation of it makes goosebumps rise on your skin. "Otherwise you'd have had the good sense to take the necklace off. There's more. A lot more. Stay and find out."
Is it too late to back out now?
Should you?
Can you?