“But I didn’t die!” Noble managed to say in a weak and wheezy voice. He was aware of what was going on around him, but still dazed by his whole ordeal.

“Yeah, why not?” asked Argus.

“I think for a couple of reasons,” the ranger said, pouring out a fresh glass of water for Noble. “One is Noble’s age. As teenagers, your bodies are probably the strongest they’ll ever be to fight a thing like this. Two, the amount of actual silver that made it into Noble’s body had to be minute. The silver that’s in developing chemicals is a fraction of the total, then a spoonful of it—more or less—was poured into a cup of soda, diluting it even further, and then Noble just took a sip, lessening the amount of silver yet again.” A pause. “And three is Phelan’s suggestion to make Noble drink as much water as possible. I think that really helped flush the silver from Noble’s body.”

“A close call,” stated Argus.

“A very close call,” echoed the ranger. “But it should serve as a lesson to the four of you about how dangerous silver can be. Who knows how much more silver it would have taken to kill Noble? My guess is not very much at all.”

Harlan shook his head. “But how do we avoid it when we don’t even know it’s there half the time? There are so many things that have traces of silver in them, how will we know which ones they are?”

The ranger shook his head and shrugged. “You’re going to have to be careful, that’s all.”

Tora had been listening closely to the ranger and her brothers talk. Yes, they needed to be careful around silver, the same way any other person had to be careful around knives and guns and everything else that was dangerous in the world. But maybe they could use some help from the people around them. If others knew what they were, how they were different, and that silver could hurt them, then life might be that much easier for them.

“Maybe we could…” Her voice trailed off.

“Maybe what, Tora?” asked the ranger.

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I don’t know…maybe we could, you know, be more open about who and what we are. A lot of people are doing that these days and it seems to be working well for them.”

No one said anything for the longest time.

Harlan was the first to speak. “That’s crazy,” he said. “I’ve got enough trouble with Jake MacKinnon as it is just because he thinks I look like a dog. If he knew I was a werewolf my life would be over.”