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I didn't notice the first time it happened. That's what gets me now, lying here in the dark with my skin humming like a live wire. I thought it was just a fever. Three days of chills and sweating through the sheets, my bones aching in ways that felt wrong, deep, like someone was hollowing them out with a spoon.

Elle brought me soup. She always brings soup. That's her thing, the thing she does when she doesn't know what else to do. Chicken broth with ginger and turmeric, the way her grandmother taught her. She sat on the edge of my bed and pushed the hair off my forehead, her fingers cool against my skin.

"You're burning up," she said.

"I noticed."

She laughed. That sound. Low and rough, like gravel wrapped in velvet. I'd heard it a thousand times, but that night it made something twist in my chest. She was wearing that old sweater of mine, the gray one with the hole in the elbow. Her hair was pulled back in a messy knot. She looked tired. She looked beautiful. She looked like she knew something I didn't.

I was wrong about that part.

The second time, I was awake. It was three in the morning and I'd gotten up to piss, and I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My eyes. For a second they weren't mine. The pupils went wide, then vertical, thin slits of black in amber. I blinked and they were normal again. I stood there for five minutes, staring at my own face, waiting for it to happen again. It didn't.

I told myself I imagined it. The fever. The exhaustion. The stress of work, of money, of Elle moving in and all the ways that changes a person. I told myself a lot of things.

Elle was already in bed when I came back. She was on her side, facing the wall, the blanket pulled up to her chin. I slid in next to her and she made that small sound she makes, half asleep, half aware. Her hand found mine under the covers. Her fingers were warm.

"You okay?" she mumbled.

"Yeah. Just tired."

She squeezed my hand. "Me too."

I didn't tell her what I saw. I didn't tell her about the dream I'd had the night before, the one where I was running through the backyard on all fours, the grass wet against my palms, the moon so bright it hurt. I didn't tell her that in the dream I could smell everything. The neighbor's dog three houses down. The rot in the compost pile. The blood in her veins.

That part scared me most.

The third time, I caught her.

I came home early from work. The office was dead, nothing but spreadsheets and the hum of fluorescent lights, and I couldn't take it. I told my boss I was sick. Not a lie, not really. Something was wrong with me. I just didn't know what.

The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. I called her name and got nothing. I checked the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom. Empty. Her phone was on the nightstand. Her keys were by the door. She was here. I knew she was here.

I found her in the bathroom. The door was cracked open and I pushed it, and there she was, on her hands and knees on the tile floor. Her back was arched. Her head was down. Her fingers were changing, the nails growing dark and curved, the knuckles shifting, the skin rippling like water.

She looked up at me.

Her eyes were gold. Her pupils were slits. Her mouth opened and she made a sound that wasn't human. It was a growl and a purr and a cry all at once. And I should have run. I should have screamed. I should have done something normal.

Instead I dropped to my knees in front of her.

"What are you doing?" I said. My voice was shaking. My hands were shaking. Everything was shaking.

She reached for me. Her hand was still mostly a hand, but the claws were out, five dark points pressing against my cheek. She didn't break the skin. She didn't have to.

"Helping you," she said.

"Helping me with what?"

Her thumb traced my jawline. "You've been sick. You've been changing. You feel it, don't you? The bones. The blood. The way the world smells different now."

I wanted to say no. I wanted to tell her she was crazy. But I couldn't. Because she was right. I felt it. Every night I felt it, the thing inside me pushing against my skin, wanting out. I felt it in the way I couldn't stand the taste of meat anymore. In the way the moonlight made my chest ache. In the way her scent, her skin, her hair, the salt of her sweat, made me want to bury my face in her neck and never come up.

"Yes," I said.

She smiled. Her teeth were sharp.

"It happened to me first," she said. "Three months ago. I didn't know what it was. I thought I was dying. I thought I was losing my mind. But then I figured it out. It's a gift. It's a change. And I can give it to you."

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to. Not yet. Just trust me."

She pulled me closer. Her forehead touched mine. Her breath was warm and smelled like mint and something else, something wild. She closed her eyes and I closed mine, and I felt her hands on my shoulders, her fingers digging in, and then something passed between us. A heat. A pulse. A shift.

My body started to change.

It hurt. God, it hurt. My spine cracked and stretched. My ribs popped. My skin burned like it was being peeled off and replaced with something new. I heard myself scream, but it didn't sound like me. It sounded like an animal. It sounded like her.

And then it stopped.

I opened my eyes. The bathroom light was too bright. The tile was cold under my palms. I looked at my hands. They were covered in dark fur. My nails were claws. My arms were wrong, too long, too thin, too something.

I looked at Elle. She was on her knees in front of me, watching me with those golden eyes. She was covered in fur too. Her ears were pointed. Her tail, a long black thing, curled around her leg.

"Look," she said.

She pointed at the mirror.

I turned. I saw myself. A cat. A woman. Something in between. My face was still mine, mostly, but the eyes were wrong. The ears were wrong. The teeth were wrong.

I looked like a monster.

I looked like her.

"Now you understand," she said.

I shook my head. I couldn't stop shaking it. "This isn't real."

"It's real. And it's just the beginning."

"Of what?"

She stood up. She moved differently now. Fluid. Graceful. Predatory. She walked to the door and looked back at me, her tail flicking.

"Of everything," she said.

I stayed on the floor for a long time after she left. I looked at my hands. I touched my face. I felt the fur, the whiskers, the sharp points of my teeth. I tried to find the part of me that was still human.

I'm not sure I found it.

When I finally stood up, my legs were shaky. My balance was off. I had to learn how to walk again, how to hold myself, how to keep from falling forward onto my hands. I made it to the bedroom. Elle was on the bed, stretched out like a cat in a patch of moonlight. She looked at me and smiled.

"Come here," she said.

I climbed onto the bed. My body didn't fit right. My knees bent wrong. My spine wanted to curl. I lay down next to her and she wrapped her arms around me, her fur against mine, her heartbeat fast and steady.

"We're going to figure this out," she said. "Together."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe that this was a gift, that she hadn't turned me into something I couldn't come back from. But I could feel it now, the thing inside me, and it wasn't small. It wasn't quiet. It was hungry.

And it wanted out again.

I closed my eyes. I tried to sleep. But all I could think about was the smell of the neighbor's dog three houses down, and the blood in her veins, and the way the moon called to me through the window.

I don't know what I am anymore.

I don't know if I want to go back.

And that's the part that scares me most.