TWENTY-TWO
NAOMI
It Takes a Village
"Are we absolutely certain everything is set up correctly?" I asked for maybe the sixth time, but thankfully no one around mentioned it. They were giving me grace considering what a big day it was for me. Or maybe they were as anxious about it as I was.
"Everything is set up exactly as it needs to be," Chuck said, his voice the calm I very much needed.
He was the newest addition to our team, and I had come to appreciate the shifter's candor.
I had no idea there were so many of us latent folks in the city, but it had only been a year since our debut event, and already seven of us were in contact with each other.
Not all wolves, of course, but that wasn't important.
What did matter was that we had found each other and were helping with different tips, tricks, and general support to get through our various situations.
The biggest being how to deal with family.
"It's gonna be okay," Reggie assured me from where he was standing by the window, pumping the dumbbells he always had in a bag in his car just in case he got a bit anxious and needed to self-soothe.
Speaking of family, mine both had and hadn't changed. I'd pretty much stopped going to the family dinners, although I did stop by on the holidays. However, if anyone got out of pocket, I cut it off or left the situation.
As a result, I didn't really speak to Maverick or my parents other than on those visits, and they also didn't try to interfere with my life.
As for my younger two siblings… Mason and I were at least friendly with each other, while Reggie and I had grown closer than we'd ever been in our entire life.
I didn't know if it was how I confronted them after my date with Rowan, if it was seeing me beat down our alpha brother with my purse, or if it was just a change in his views in general, but I had grown to really appreciate his company and his insight.
"From your mouth to the gods' ears," Carolina agreed from the laptop screen.
Once, that would have been the only way I would have been able to communicate with her, but she had come an incredible distance in such a short amount of time. Although she still had her bad days, and was most definitely a homebody more than anything else, she didn't have the same fear.
She did, however, have the flu, hence her virtual presence.
"We do not need the gods," Xiánlü said through the device that Rowan, Chuck, and Penelope—a technopath we'd met at the mixer—had all built together.
My boyfriend had contributed his instrumental and musical expertise, Chuck the coding, and Penelope the magic programming that somehow (it was explained to me, but after emotional neuropathic synthetic convalesce, I kind of zoned out) allowed her to control the tone, pitch, and everything like it was an extension of her.
I thought that was pretty amazing, and while the siren was quite the accomplished coder herself, it was a privilege to see her surprised by something so intricate and personal on her birthday.
"We've worked hard and the app is immaculate.
We just have to wait for the full integration into the scrying system, and I have no doubt we'll be inundated with the demand from new users. "
"I like your optimism," Daniella mused. "Never thought my graphic design degree would actually be useful for something, but man, if this does well, it's going to look amazeballs in my portfolio."
I nodded along, trying to present myself as calm even though my heart was racing.
Our little ragtag group of magical misfits had grown from roughly twenty-five to nearly a hundred in a single year, and our only reach was the city and surrounding suburbs.
Even though I was thrilled that we'd found so many common souls looking for connection and friendship, I couldn't help but think that there were thousands upon thousands of us out there, too far away to ever see a poster or flyer, no matter how many places we pinned them.
Naturally, when my mind had started to walk down that path, I realized that really everything that had happened between Rowan and I, as well as the mixers, was all by chance, or rather ByChance. If it weren't for both of us downloading that human dating app and matching, we'd all still be so alone.
And that was what inspired me to make an app of our own. Something for all the supernatural folks who felt like an unfitting puzzle piece. We called it Mis-Matched, and our core group had been working on it for nine months.
"I'm sure it will be magnificent," Iko said from the kitchen before coming around the corner with a comically large tray in his hands. "Tea, anyone?"
"Oh, me, please!"
"I'd like some!"
"Yes, please."
"I miss your tea."
That last one was Carolina, of course, who was the one who had originally suggested us meeting at Iko's place.
Not just because of how much she apparently liked his tea, but also because Iko had enough space and furniture to fit our group.
Between me, Rowan, Daniella, Xiánlü, Chuck, and Carolina, we were a full house.
"I shall deliver some tout de suite tomorrow," the cyclops declared.
"Don't you dare! I'm not letting you get sick again. The last time you got a cold, your ears got clogged, and it was literal hell for you."
The cyclops muttered something, which none of us quite caught, but he didn't argue beyond that because he knew she was right.
I'd heard man-colds mentioned plenty of times teasingly, but cyclops-colds were the real deal.
And stealing or even dulling the senses of someone who relied on scent and hearing to get around was especially cruel.
"Besides, I've been brewing the custom tea bags you sent me."
"Good. You had better."
"I never got any custom teabags," Chuck murmured, only for Daniella to shush him.
"Mind your business."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Guys, guys," Carolina interrupted. "The mirror!"
All of our gazes snapped to the large looking glass we'd mounted on the wall; it was taller than me (not like that was difficult) and its frame was golden filigree woven in intricate loops of metal.
Much fancier than anything I owned, but it was a fitting splurge considering it was our portal to the scrying mobile network.
But the frame wasn't what captured our attention. No, what did was the swirling miasma of multiple colors churning in the middle. It was barely the size of my fist, but expanding rapidly in kaleidoscopic bursts of iridescent shades.
"We're connecting! Oh my god, we're connecting!" Daniella crowed.
I was right there with her, except my heart was so high up in my throat I could barely speak. All our hard work was coming to fruition in front of me, and I really believed this could be a game changer for so many people.
"Connection at ninety-three percent!" Xiánlü added.
I held my breath, because even something as simple as inhaling seemed like it might jinx it. My hand found Rowan's, and he squeezed three times, his wordless way of saying I love you.
Because he did. I had no doubt of it. After a year and a half together, I'd learned much more about the natural pace of such a significant age-gap relationship, and he'd learned more about dating a relative youngster.
And as a now thirty-six-year-old woman who was about to turn thirty-seven, I wasn't mad about being the one robbed from the cradle.
I squeezed back, and that simple exchange helped ground me for the remaining seconds as the miasma filled the mirror, and then clarified into an actual picture.
"We have full connection to the network! Mis-Matched is now live. Expect a fifteen-to-thirty minute delay in our numbers at first, but hopefully soon, we'll have more expedient metrics."
"I can't believe it," I murmured, staring at the welcome screen for our project.
Although we weren't on the app itself, I'd wanted the launchpad of our server interface to have the same image that our clients would see.
Maybe I was crazy, but I always had to make sure we were connected to all those who used the platform and that we didn't lose sight of why we were doing all of this.
Sure, we'd hopefully make some coin, but that could and would never be the raison d'etre of Mis-Matched.
Our priority would always be genuine connection—whether friendship, networking for jobs, living arrangements, or whatever magical folks on the fringes needed and were often denied access to, or even romance.
We were going to make a real difference in the world.
We had to. Because things couldn't keep going how they were. It wasn't viable for anybody.
"I'd say this calls for a toast!" Carolina cheered before being interrupted by a small bout of hacking.
We waited for her to finish before all enthusiastically agreeing, and somehow Iko was right there again with a tray of champagne flutes.
It turned out that the cyclops could move quite quickly and quietly in his own territory.
"To Mis-Matched!" he declared, lifting his glass. "So that everyone, no matter what their situation, will know there's a place and a people for them!"
"To Mis-Matched!" I agreed, echoing his move. "To the people who made this happen, and all the people who it will help!" I was on the verge of crying, but I didn't even mind. Because they were tears of joy, salty and full of all sorts of hope Naomi in her twenties never had.
"To Mis-Matched," Rowan agreed. "And the beautiful mind and heart who came up with it. I can't wait to be by your side on our next adventure and all the ones to follow."
"To Mis-Matched!"
"To Mis-Matched!"
"Hear, hear!"
We clinked our glasses together and Carolina tapped hers against her camera, then we all drank it down. All in all, I felt like I was flying. Man, if lonely, teenage Naomi could just know what was going to be in store for her, I wouldn't have spent so many years feeling utterly hopeless.
"You really are amazing," Rowan said in my ear, his large, cool palms resting on either side of my waist. "I'm so proud of you. I hope you know that."
"I do. I really do. And I couldn't have done it without you."
"I'm not quite sure about that. You're unstoppable. But I certainly didn't mind helping along the way. Whatever you need, I want to be there for you."
"And I want you there," I said, pushing up onto my tiptoes. Rowan read my body language almost before I moved, leaning down so our lips could meet.
Once we parted, it was tempting to excuse ourselves back to our place, but there were snacks and conversation to be had, so we behaved ourselves and socialized with our friends.
"We're starting to get numbers!" Xiánlü said suddenly, jumping to her feet and holding her tablet up into the air. "Broadcasting to the main mirror now since it hasn't updated yet."
"Probably a localization issue," Chuck muttered, opening his own laptop. "I'll check into it."
"Later, later," the siren insisted. "Look!"
There was a moment's delay, but then the stagnant image on the screen did indeed change to one with all sorts of graphs and information that I couldn't quite decode.
Did I need glasses? I hoped not. I knew it was a possibility as a latent shifter, but considering that I couldn't even keep track of my sunglasses, I wasn't too keen on the idea.
"What does it mean?" I asked, crossing all my fingers that it was good news.
"We've got fifty original downloads already in the first half hour! And the CPM is the clickthrough on our targeted ad campaign." She scrolled a bit on her tablet and her voicecoder let out a squeal. "We've got ten new profiles up! Ten!"
Oh.
My.
God.
Sure, fifty wasn't that much and ten was even fewer, but we were only just starting and people were already joining the effort. And the more that did, the more connections were going to be made, the more community we were going to build from the ground up.
I could really just—wait, no, I was actually crying. The tears had spilled over and were now running down my face, uninhibited by anything because I wasn't ashamed.
"Oh, darling," Rowan sighed happily from beside me before using his thumb to wipe my tears. "You really are making a difference."
"We are," I corrected, because that was the truth. Sure, it wasn't like we were shifting the trajectory of the entire world, but that also wasn't the scale we were working on. What mattered was that we were making a difference for more than we ever could with the mixers alone.
Of course, we would keep having those mixers, because this latent shifter needed to dance, but now we could take solace in knowing that a supernatural misfit finding a community wouldn't have to be ByChance after all.
What else could a girl want?