Mercy Blade

CHAPTER 18 Woad

I danced another set, accepting a drink from Tex, the vamp who had been patrolling the compound with the huge dog, letting him lead me into a bump and grind dance to one of the band’s original country songs, the music too loud and the crowd too boisterous to converse. Beast watched him through my eyes with an intensity that was always surprising to me. She was too interested in vamps for her own good. I scent-searched while we danced, but never caught a whiff of Tyler, Rick, or anyone else I hoped I might find.

When the dance was over, I left the bar, walking through the night, the air like a sauna, my skin glistening with perspiration, my mind free and clear and open. Dancing did that to me—driving away the demons, letting me think. My dancing shoes made soft clips of sound. My dress moved with the barest caress across my heated flesh. My muscles felt relaxed and supple. And with the night breezes blowing a rainstorm in off the Gulf of Mexico, I let my mind float free.

And narrowed the focus of the events of the last few days, starting with the Mercy Blade. He had spelled me the first time we met, with that weird bluish spell that crawled up my flesh. Beast had stopped his enchantment, but I hadn’t been thinking like myself since then; I hadn’t been thinking about Girrard DiMercy at all, and his scent had been on Safia’s body.

Kemnebi’s scent had been there too, and in a far more personal way, but he didn’t strike me as stupid. Not stupid enough to murder his girlfriend in the business office of the most powerful vamp in the Southern states. Strike Kem off my list.

But then there was Tyler Sullivan. The Mercy Blade and Tyler. The two men were the keys to everything. Whatever the heck it all was.

The front porch lights and the living room lights were lit when I reached the house, and I unbuckled and removed my dancing shoes on the front porch before entering, feet silent on the wood floors. Bruiser and Evangelina were sitting in the living room, a Parcheesi Royal Edition game board on the table between them. Evangelina was dressed in some silky pale pink top, which should have contrasted poorly with her red hair but didn’t, and skintight jeans. She looked svelte and toned and oddly younger than I’d noticed, which was strange. Evangelina had always struck me as a Valkyrie warrior woman, brusque and demanding and in charge, riding roughshod over all opposition. But lately she was looking softer, more feminine, far sweeter than I remembered, with a glow to her skin.

When I stopped inside the front door, she was looking up at Bruiser with a teasing expression. Crap. She was wearing lipstick. And eye shadow. The sexual tension in the room was heavy enough to stub my bare toes on. Evangelina was flirting with Bruiser, leaning so close the pink of her silk shirt covered them in a pinkish glow.

Beast roared up into my eyes. Mine, she thought at me. And in the same instant, I remembered Rick. My heart did a little dump and splat. Rick. “Not really,” I said aloud to my alter ego. “Not now.”

Evangelina and Bruiser looked up at the sound of my voice and Bruiser stood in a motion that looked ingrained, old world charm left over from his early years in England and reinforced by living with a feudal-lord vamp-master. He looked great, his hair shoved back, jeans cupping that great-looking butt, a crisp white shirt tucked into the waist, the sleeves rolled up to expose corded arms. He looked good enough to scoop up on a spoon and lick all over. I smiled at the mental image as Beast growled unhappily and slunk away again, muttering, Mine. Mine.

“Evening,” I said, aware that I was interrupting much more than a board game. “I need a spell to counteract a spell.”

“What kind?” Evangelina asked.

“One somebody put on me to keep me from thinking about him, or being able to analyze his plans, or even remember that he was around.”

“A sorcerer? The Witch Council would punish him for using spells against . . . well against humans. I don’t know what they’d do about spelling you.”

“Not a sorcerer. Something else, not human, not vamp, not witch. He smells like pine and jasmine and . . .” I thought back. Remembered my own surprise when I had visited the woo-woo room at NOPD. And the weird feeling, when I was in my freebie house, doing research, a sensation as if I wasn’t alone. Maybe . . . “Maybe a spell to watch me,” I whispered, “put there by Girrard DiMercy, Leo’s Mercy Blade.”

Bruiser’s eyes tightened on me. “I’m having trouble remembering what Gee did to me, but I recall a blue, misty spell flowing up over my skin, and the smell of pine and jasmine. But I don’t think he got to finish laying it.”

“It’s not an egg,” Evangelina said.

“Casting it, then. Whatever. Can you take it off?”

“If I can see it, especially if it’s unfinished or frayed. Sit down. Let me get some things from my room.”

“Let me grab a shower,” I said, fleeing the room. Okay, I was fleeing Bruiser but no way could I say that. I took a fast shower, pulled on the clean pants and tee I’d worn earlier, and braided my hair out of the way.

Evangelina was sitting in a wingback chair when I reentered the room, and the Parcheesi game had been put away, replaced by two feathers, three candles, a small silver knife, a silver bell, and a gold cross on a gold chain. I took the seat she indicated, a pillow on the floor at her feet. Beast didn’t like the submissive position, but I overrode her, sat in a half lotus, and relaxed.

“You say the spell was blue, so I assume that you can see magic,” she said as she lit the candles. The smell of matches and flame scorched the air. I took a fast breath. I had given that away. But neither Evangelina nor Bruiser looked surprised or accusatory or even curious, so I managed a nod, my heart in my throat. Beast was crouched close to the surface where she could see, silent, shoulders hunched, her four paws close together, positioned so she could leap away if needed. Evangelina turned off the lamps, throwing the room into semidarkness, flames dancing on the pale wall.

Evangelina said, “You meditate, yes?” At my nod, she went on. “And you are a practicing Christian.” There was an odd note of distaste in her voice, and I remembered Evangelina practiced some other religion. I nodded and she placed the gold necklace over my head, rested it on my chest near the gold nugget. The metal was cold but warmed immediately. “I want you to watch the flame of the white candle. Breathe in its scent. Relax.” She drew out the word “relax.” The scent of conifers rose on the air, surprising somehow. I’d expected vanilla or some froufrou scent. I stared at the flame, bright in the dusky light.

“Close your eyes and think about the candle flame, vivid, alive in a dark room.” Her voice dropped in volume, deeper in tone, like a hypnotist, going for the deep, unconscious mind. I held the image of the flame in my mind and closed my eyes.

“The flame is white and yellow, warm and steady. The flame lights the darkness, throwing back the night. Can you see it?” I nodded. Her words slowed, softened as she spoke, “Good. The wick. It’s visible through the flame, rising up through the body of the candle from its base. It’s like your spine, rising from the center of you, strong and vital and filled with potential. Your mind and spirit are nestled at the tip of the candle, bright with power and energy. You are the candle. You are the wick. You are the flame.”

I nodded and relaxed my shoulders, letting each vertebra settle and loosen, slipping easily into the relaxation and meditation technique. A candle flame is used by many different religious and secular groups to begin the trek into the deepest mind. I breathed steadily, the pine scent now mixing with jasmine from another candle. Gee. It reminded me of Gee . . . Evangelina had chosen well. My facial muscles relaxed into an almost smile.

“The candle has no purpose without the flame. The flame has no home, no power, without the candle. Yet, the flame consumes that which gives it life,” she said, her voice falling lower, “in a cycle of fuel and energy, of matter and mass.” Her words filled the softness of the night, slow. Mellifluous. “Watch as the candle is burned by the flame. As the wick is consumed, it gives us light. It gives us warmth. It is a symbol of life and eternity. Yet, even the wick of life burns low, quivers, and dies.”

Evangelina was talking about the circle of life, the birth and death of all things, and the rebirth of some new thing from the ashes of the old. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” she said. I let my breath go slowly out, sighing, accepting what cannot be truly understood.

“Yet, for now, the soul of the candle burns, bright and steady, lighting your darkness.”

“Yessss,” I whispered, understanding. This wasn’t Cherokee meditation. This was the magic of the white man. But as always, there were similarities, connections, parallels. I watched the candle flame, pure and perfect.

“You are now in a tranquil place, calm, dark, and peaceful. It is the refuge where your soul resides. The home of your spirit. You are protected here in this place of darkness and light and peace. Safer than any place you have ever been. You are warm and sheltered. This is your soul place. Your secret haven.” I nodded, smiling fully. I knew this place.

“Open your eyes,” she said, softly. “Look around you. The candle burning in this sanctuary is your soul, your life. There is no one here but you. You are alone and secure.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Alone. Safe.” I breathed in and let my breath flow from my lungs in a long steady exhalation, feeling all the tension fade away. Drums started beating, quietly, peacefully, a four beat rhythm, hard-soft-soft-soft, hard-soft-soft-soft. In the dark, in the fluttering shadows, misty fingers and ghostly hands slid against deer skin drums, tightly stretched. Herbs burned on a fire. Wood smoke crackled, dry and aromatic. I knew this place.

I focused on the candle flame, but it was wrong. The wrong shape, the wrong size. Wrong. “Not a candle,” I murmured. My soul would never be a candle. “Fire. In a pit. Coals . . .” I saw them, glowing and hot, fed by forest deadwood, the heat in the embers moving as if alive. No, I would never be a candle, but I could be a fire, potent with possibility and restrained violence. I licked my lips. They were dry from the heat of the coals, yet, around me, a cool, wet wind moved through the darkness, breathing up from the deeps of the heart of the world. I burned and shivered, balanced between the flame’s light and warmth, and the dark, chill night.

“Turn your eyes,” a voice murmured in the darkness. “Search out the far corners of the place where you are. What do you see in the light of your soul?”

I turned slowly. Seeing the place of my soul. “The heart of the world,” I said.

“Describe it to me.”

“It is the heart of the world.” What more was there to say? A woman of the People would have understood, but the white woman . . . no. Yet, I could try to describe the vision, the image. “Walls rise up to the rounded roof.” I tried to lift my hands to show her the shape, but they were heavy, as if tied to the earth. “The roof melts down. The floor of the earth rises up. And melts again, puddling like fat, rich from an autumn bear. Dripping like your white man’s candle.”

“Caves? With stalagmites and stalactites?”

I dipped my head. “Water drips everywhere. Little splats. Like the blood of the earth falling, sacrificed. The tears of the heart of the world. A drum beats, like a heartbeat. And on the breath of the dark there is sage and mint and”—I took a slow breath and relaxed totally—“sweetgrass. They burn on the fire. Flames light the walls.” I smiled. “And there is pine and jasmine. But only a little. A hint of them, buried under the perfume that burns in the heart of the world.” I fell silent.

“There is someone there,” the soft voice said. “That person is you. Do you see her?” I nodded. “Tell me what she looks like.”

And with the command, a trace of worry curled around me, faint and wispy, like a finger of smoke, questioning. Why would Evangelina ask about my soul home? Ask about my shadow self? But the worry escaped, like smoke through a longhouse smoke hole.

“I see my shadow on the walls. I see Dalonige’i Digadoli. A girl. She is four, maybe five. Or twelve. I can’t tell. She . . . shifts and flickers.” I smiled. “And the shadow of tlvdatsi sits facing her. Staring at her in the darkness. Like two . . .” I forced up my hands, lifting them from the floor despite their extraordinary weight. I spread my fingers, turned my hands toward each other, fingertips touching. “Like this.” I let my fingers slide together, interlacing, until my palms touched and my fingers curled around, making a two-handed fist.

“Till dot si?” She mangled the word.

Beast thought at me, All yunega are foolish about spirits of animals. Foolish about spirits of Earth. I repeated the word properly, so the white woman would not insult the spirit of my Beast. “Tlvdatsi. It sounds whispered, almost. The People do not shout their words like the white man.”

“There are two of you in this heart of the world?”

“Yes. Always two of us.”

Her voice changed. Her scent changed. “No. There is only one. One of you. Look again. See the girl.”

“Two,” I said.

She paused a moment, as if uncertain, before saying, “This tlvdatsi. It is always with you? Part of you?”

“V v.” Yes, in the tongue of the People.

She spoke softly again, as if to another. “It may be some Cherokee archetype, something I don’t understand. She needs a Cherokee shaman.”

“Egini Agayvlge i,” I said. I struggled to find her white man name. “Aggie One Feather. She knows.”

“I see. She is your shaman?”

“Elder. Elder of the People. Of Tsalagi.”

“She’s seeing someone, I think, a counselor. That’s good, Jane. That’s very good. I want you to relax. There’s no need to struggle or feel worried or anxious. This heart of the world is your soul home. The place where you envision your soul to be. It’s safe and warm and all yours.”

I nodded, relaxing once again. On the cave wall, Beast’s shadow flicked an ear tab. I put out a hand and stroked her pelt along her neck, down across her shoulder. Her muscles and sinews were strong. Her breath smoothed, and she purred softly.

“Jane, tell me what you are.”

“Evie, no!”

“Shut up. Tell me what you are.”

The worry rose again, like smoke from old coals. My shadow self tilted its head, ear tabs flicking, snout wrinkling to show killing teeth, sharply pointed. “No,” I said. It came out hoarse, chuffed. A warning.

“Stop it, Evangelina.” Bruiser’s voice. “This is wrong.”

“Fine,” the woman snapped. A long moment later she spoke, her voice again calm, soothing. “Jane. I want you to remember the last time you looked into this place. I want you to compare it to now. I want you to layer one vision over the other.”

“Yes.”

I/we are Beast. Better than Jane. Better than big-cat, Beast thought. We are more.

“Yes.” My voice dropped, a low growl of sound. My place. My den. Mine. This was the cave from before. Long before. The rounded, damp roof of stone, the walls melting like wax. The pillars reaching up and down. Light glinting through the darkness. The scent of burned herbs and wood smoke. The drums. The smell of blood and fat and earth and the sweat of the People.

“Search out the differences, Jane. Tell me what you see. Tell me what you remember.”

I stood on four legs and two. The shadows on the wall merged into one, a form with no certain shape, both cat and human, furred and skinned, four pawed and two footed. A shadow shimmering with black motes of light.

I turned slowly, walking in a circle. My breath a pant. Seeing. On one wall were circles and swirls painted in soot and fat and crushed pigments. Carved into the stone were arrows pointing to the right. Lines parallel. Lines like waves—the symbols of the People. And there were paw prints. They padded across the rounded stone roof of the world, big-cat paws in the red of old blood. Human footprints walked beside the paw prints, up and over the roof of the world. Side by side.

I reached out a hand/paw and touched them. They were cool to my touch. The paw and footprints had not been here, the last time I was here in the flesh, as a child of four or five. This was the cave of my being. Evidence of my life. There were also white man symbols, brought here since Jane had been alpha, diamonds and stars, signs and ciphers, and an image of a cross that burned.

My eyes followed the paw prints up across the walls, onto the roof, and into the far corners, where the light did not burn so brightly, where shadows crouched like spiders and hung like bats. And there I saw the hands. Hands did not belong in this place. The Cherokee did not mark rites of passage or lay claim to the caves, not as the ancient white man did. They did not make handprints on cave walls. The hands were not of Jane or of cat. They were other.

“Hands,” I whispered. “Hands on the roof of the world.” I tilted my head to see them. Blue hands in circles of white. White hands in circles of blue. Pigments, signs of ownership applied to the walls of my soul house. I growled low, pulling back lips to show killing teeth.

I could see how it had been done, how each kind of hand-print had been made. For the blue handprints, pigments had been crushed and mixed with fat or spit. The paste had been applied to the hand and the blue prints pressed against the walls. For the white handprints in circles of blue, the pigments had been crushed and sucked up into a reed. A hand had been placed on the cave wall, and the pigments had been blown over it, leaving the un-pigmented print. It was as if to say, I have been here. This is my place.

“Woad,” I said. “Woad.” And I struggled upward from the darkness as I understood. Woad. Yes. Woad. Woad was a European herb, an invasive herb that took over gardens, an herb used to make blue dye. Gee did this. Gee used woad to mark my soul house.

I fought the pull of the heart of the world. I tried to stand, but the weight of the world was great, holding me down. “He came here. He marked my place.” I growled, exposing killing teeth, my tongue finding them blunt and human. Hands fisted, blunt nails pressing into palms.

“Relax, Jane. It’s okay, Jane. You are safe in your soul room. You are safe here. And we can make him go away.”

I looked up, seeing the handprints. And beside one was a pink flower. A rose. It hadn’t been there a moment past. I tilted my head, studying the rose, considering its meaning in this place of my soul. It smelled of roses and wormwood, sweet and bitter both. And it was put there with magic—witch magic. Evangelina had set her spell on me, tracing the lines of the Mercy Blade’s magic. Beast snorted, a hacking blend of anger and amusement. “Fire,” I whispered. “I can make them both go away. With my fire. The fire in my soul home.”

“Fire is dangerous, Jane. Let’s think of another way.” She sounded fearful.

Beast is not afraid. Beast is strong. “Fire,” the word was growled.

“No, Jane,” she crooned, “I want you to step away from the place of the soul. From the place where the hands are printed on the ceiling. I want you to come back to me, to us, to yourself, here in your house.”

“House is not mine,” I said. “Cave in the heart of the world is mine. Is ours.”

“I know,” she soothed.

In the cave at the heart of the world, I/we stood, the weight of the world heavy and thick against us. Our shadows rose with us. And they merged, merged, part tlvdatsi, part Dalonige’i Digadoli, part cat, part human. Our shadow was beautiful. Fearful. Deadly. The flames in the fire pit danced and rose. Water dripped. Drums beat faster, deeper, the beating heart of the world. The I/we of Beast, we whispered. Together we are more than big-cat and Jane.

We bent to the fire.

“Jane don’t—” White woman spoke, and I/we closed her voice out. Pushed it out of the cave. We bent over the fire, the scent rich and herbal and warm, and breathed in the sage and sweetgrass. We reached to the side and chose a thick sliver of wood, pointed on one end, sawn smooth on the other, one side wild and splintered, one side shaped by man’s hand. A stake. It was dry heartwood, its cedar scent resinous and tart. Heart wood to destroy the vampires we hunt and kill. Our hand closed over it, tlvdatsi claws at the ends of human fingers. Pelt, tawny and thick rose up over the bones of our arms. We hefted it and placed the splintered, sharp end of the stake into the flame. It took light. And we rose into the shadows.

The roof at the heart of the world reached down to us. With one hand, killing claws exposed, we scraped an eye from the cold stone. It glittered, lid closed as if sleeping, on our palm. With the other hand, we held the flame to the woad-made handprints. The fire from our torch blazed up, burning the woad, burning the handprints that had taken root. And in the center of each palm, a blue eye appeared, opened, and focused on us. Gee’s eyes, shocked. I stabbed at the eye in the center of a palm and it blinked away, but not before I drew blood. It splashed down onto my hand, copper and jasmine-scented. The flames blackened the stone of the roof and the woad lit, sizzling and hot. I stepped away as the flames roared up hot and cleansing. All the handprints took flame, all but the one I had stolen with my killing claws. “Mine,” I growled. “My place.”

I crouched on the stone floor and watched as the ceiling at the heart of the world flamed and burned. And was cleansed. It took a long time. And no time at all. And when it was done, I sat at my small fire pit and fed the stake into the coals, letting it too burn away. When the smoke cleared, the ceiling was clean again, only the soot above my small fire blacking the smooth rock. I lay down, folding my body, paws beneath me. And I closed my eyes.

I breathed out, and the movement of my chest, the contracting of my ribs, woke me. As the breath left me, I lay unmoving, as if still asleep, yet cracked open my eyes, seeing through my lashes. I focused on the ceiling twelve feet above me. It was smooth and painted white; shadows crouched in the corners, unmoving and without purpose, unlike the shadows of my vision, which had seemed alive and filled with evil intent. I was lying on my back with my head on a cushion, my body on a hardwood floor. I hadn’t started out in this pose, but had been moved, positioned so I could breathe easily. My clothes were intact, so I hadn’t shifted.

I inhaled, and the harsh chemicals of the white man’s world assaulted me. Wax, smoke, cleansers, dyes in the fabric beneath my head, exhaust, mold and sour water, old wood, paint, human sweat. The smell of witch and blood-servant. Vamp-stink from Bruiser’s skin, fading now. Riding over it all was the stink of scorched flesh and pain pheromones. Mentally, I catalogued my body, and found nothing wrong, no pain, no injuries. Not my burned flesh, then.

Finding nothing to defend against in the scents or the silence of the room, I relaxed. Despite the reek, I felt . . . okay. Not sleepy. Not unhappy. But calm, full. Satisfied, as if I’d eaten a big meal and then taken a nap. And I felt like myself, which was a thought for later, when I had time to analyze the vision, maybe with Aggie One Feather as my guide.

Movement caught my eye through my lashes, and I saw Evangelina bending over, only feet away, a cloth and a spatula in her hands as she scraped at a tabletop. Her hair hung down in a heavy red tangle, a splendor of curls that caught the lamplight, longer and thicker than I remembered it. A rosy halo surrounded her, an aura in shades of ruby, maybe the aftereffects of using her power. White gauze bandages circled both forearms, six inches wide, heavily padded from elbow to wrist. They were new. They were defensive wounds. The sight of them made me want to laugh.

Evangelina had tried to take advantage of me when I asked her for help. She had tried some kind of witch-spell-empowered hypnosis on me, trying to learn what I was. Possibly trying to set a watch-me spell into my soul, tracing it in over Gee’s spell, so she could influence me in some way. Tricky-witch. But she paid the price. Savage victory swept through me like a cold wind. She had tried something magical on me, just as Gee had. And Beast and I had won.

Bruiser was sitting on the couch, watching Evangelina, his eyes hooded and intense. They were talking about me, and he asked, “How did she melt the candles?”

“Stop asking me that,” Evangelina snapped. “I didn’t know an hour ago, and I don’t know now.”

“So speculate.”

“Jane isn’t human. She isn’t witch or shaman or vampire,” she said, her irritated tone suggesting that this was repetition. “She isn’t anything associated with the Dark or anything of the Light. She isn’t an angel, a demon, or a ghost—not that I’ve ever seen any of those things, but she doesn’t fit the archetypes. She has no intrinsic magic that I can see or feel, but she did magic. Low level, but intense. She has some strange Cherokee magic, which is probably how she healed the wounds I bandaged after she fought Leo in the street.” Evangelina stood and wiped the spatula off into a paper bag. Softened wax fell into it with a soft thump. “It was magic,” she said, surprise in her tone. “We’ll know more when Molly calls me back.”

I had forgotten about the wounds that had healed when I shifted. Foolish kit mistake, Beast growled.

“Is she going to be all right?”

“I. Don’t. Know. Stop asking. But I’m sure she’ll be fine”—she hissed in pain as her wounded arm bumped her side—“whatever she is.” Evangelina left the room, her bare feet padding on the floor. Bruiser stood; I closed my eyes as he came into my field of vision, but not before I saw the ruby aura that surrounded him. It was the exact hue of Evangelina’s aura. I remembered the pinkish glow on Bruiser’s skin in the shower. I remembered their postures when I interrupted them earlier. Romantic. Rosy. I had thought it was her shirt . . . Crap. She was spelling him. Now why would Evangelina love-spell the prime blood-servant of the Master of the City, during negotiations between their races? I breathed out a sigh. Just one more worry.

They still didn’t know I was awake. Bruiser followed Evangelina out of the living room into the kitchen and I rolled soundlessly to my knees and up to my feet. Looked around the room. Huh. I had made a mess. All three white candles had melted to a sooty mass, dripped all over the end table and onto the floor. The two feathers, the small silver knife, and bell, were caught in the softened wax. The feathers were ruined, but the other things would be okay after a good cleaning. There was a small gray spot on the ceiling that looked like a shadow, but wasn’t. It was soot and wax from the fire that had melted the candles. Cushions were everywhere. A pillow had several scorched holes in it, as if ashes had fallen across it. A cup of tea I hadn’t noticed before had turned over, the reddish liquid splashed and the cup handle broken.

It looked like I had tried to burn up everything around me. I nearly snorted with disgust at the mess. I needed Aggie One Feather if I wanted to take a trip deep inside my psyche or into my past. But one thing was clear. Gee had been watching me, following me, with his spell. It had been a good one. Nearly perfect.

Drawing on Beast’s stealth attributes, I pulled the gold cross off and dropped it on the pillow, slipped to my bedroom, grabbed my go bag, slung my H&K holster over my shoulder, took up a single vamp-killer blade, a hand full of stakes, and a pair of sandals. I was out the front door before Evangelina and Bruiser were any the wiser. Up the canyon of the street, a heated mist rose from the asphalt on the night-cooled air. The quarter moon hung between the buildings, casting dim shadows. The buildings were ghostly and monochromatic, windows like jack-o’-lantern eyes, lit from within, bright with life, or prison eyes, barred and lit from without, reflective and empty and soulless. The night was oddly silent, the music of countless bars and dance halls and blues palaces a throttled, distant blurred sound. Overhead, storm clouds moved in from the gulf, obscuring half the stars. Rain was coming. Soon and hard.

Standing across the street, I weaponed up, watching in the windows of my own house; Bruiser and Evangelina had just noticed I wasn’t on the living room floor anymore. Bruiser raced up the stairs. Evangelina pushed aside the lacy curtains and looked out into the street. I stepped behind a car parked at the curb and stood where she couldn’t see me. Watching her, I flipped open the throwaway cell phone and dialed Molly.

She answered on the first ring. “What are doing to my big sister?” She nearly snarled. “And what took you so long to call me. I got three weird messages from her in the last half hour.”

I laughed, feeling free and lighthearted. “Evangelina is up to no good all on her own, Molly-girl.”

“I was afraid of that. Her message didn’t sound like her.”

“You mean not all stuffy and uptight and rigid? More like a regular person?”

“Play nice. That’s my sister we’re talking about.”

“We are playing nice. Beast didn’t eat her. But your stuffy big sister was trying to figure out what I am, and I think I burned her in the process.”

“Tell me.”

I left nothing out since our last chat, and it took several minutes. When I was done, Molly was quiet for a long moment, before she said, “Son of a witch on a stick. Okay. I’ll handle my sis. But you need to be ready, big-cat.”

Something tightened deep inside me. “For what?”

“For what you are to come out. Too many people have noticed you down there in the City of Mardi Gras, powerful people and powerful beings. Discovery of a skinwalker, of the Cherokee variety, would ride the news channels for days. You’d be the subject of speculation by TV and radio personalities and panel discussions by knowledgeable idiots. You’re something that no one really knows about, Jane, not anymore, maybe not for centuries. A magical creature of unknown properties, one with a dark and mystical and violent potential. And it’s only a matter of time before it comes out.”

I closed my eyes against her words. “You’re saying I’ll have trouble if . . . when I come out. That people will get in my way, in my face, chase me down, cause me problems.”

“Capture and dissect you if they can. Just like they would my . . . situations.” She meant her children, a sorcerer who had, so far, survived the usual childhood cancers that claimed most male witches, and a witch daughter with two witch genes. A powerful tool in the hands of, well, almost anyone. “Next time you come home, I’ll load you down with protection.”

Home. The mountains. An image of the moon hanging in the cleft of a mountain gorge, so alike, and so very different from, the vision of the moon over the French Quarter tonight. There, a breeze would be stirring the branches of oak and maple and evergreen, the moon shining on a slow-moving river as the mountain angled up sharply, cracked rock on either side. Mist rose from the black water, still warm from the day. A night bird called, a long trilling tweet. The image gripped me in a desperate, lonely fist. Home. I needed to be home, deep in the hills, not in this stinky city surrounded by cars and streetlights and thousands of humans.

But that was Beast talking. I had a job to do. I gripped the phone and opened my eyes on the nightscape of the city of New Orleans. “Okay. So what happened to me tonight and what should I do about it?”

“I think you have a natural protection woven about you from the cave where you first shifted into a bobcat, when you were a kid. Maybe some kind of Cherokee mystical something or other put over you there, put over your soul by your father and your grandmother to keep you safe. Maybe even some latent magic, or a spell to offset the skinwalker natural proclivity to violence and dark arts.”

I raised my head at that. It was the first good news I’d heard about me and my kind in a while. Yeah . . . Why not? Just because most—okay, all—skinwalkers eventually went nutso and ate humans, didn’t mean that we were supposed to do that. The white man brought many contagions. Why not one that changed skinwalkers? Maybe my father and grandmother had come up with something special, some unique and now forgotten ritual that would keep me from that fate. Forever. And maybe the magic of that ritual just burned Evangelina, and stabbed Gee in the eye for interfering. Yeah. A grin spread across my face. Fire magic!

“Because Gee’s magic is bluish,” she went on, “I agree it’s European or Celtic based, which means iron will break it better than silver. The handprints suggest that his magic is something more intrinsic and less ritual-based than my own gift. Meaning that he’ll have defensives built into his skin. If he has skin.”

“What do you mean, ‘If he has skin’?”

“He might have scales or a chitinous shell for all I know. There are all sorts of things that go bump in the night. Questions. One: do you still have his eye on your palm?”

Surprised, I opened my left hand and there, on my palm, was the faint tracing of an eyelid, closed as in sleep. “Yes. Sleeping.”

Molly chuckled, the sound grim. “That’s not low-level magic, to steal part of a spell and make it your own. You can probably track him with it, but if he figures out that you have his eye, he can turn it back on and use it against you. If he comes at you, physically or magically, you’ll need to be fast. Hit him and hit him hard.” Before I could respond, she said, “Your cave. Is it a real place? If so, maybe you should try to find it when you come home again.”

“Maybe,” I said. But if I was honest with myself, it was better than maybe. I could try to find the cave of my beginnings. I had found a few places from my long-forgotten past already. Excitement zinged along my nerves at the thought. “Thanks Mol. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t. Now say good night to your godchild so I can put her back to bed.”

I heard shifting on the other end of the connection and Angelina said, “Hey, Aunt Jane.” Her voice was heavy with sleep and the natural peacefulness of the very young raised in a loving and safe place. “You beat the blue man. But he’s watchin’ you and you gots to be careful. You gots to watch out for Bruiser and Ricky Bo and the man big-cat. Okay?”

Crap. The kid knew too much. Even with her parents binding them down, her powerful witch genes were expressing themselves in ways most witch genes never did. She was seeing the possibilities of the future. Of my future, which was weird. The girl was scary powerful.

“I’ll be careful. You keep safe and listen to your parents, okay? Be a good girl.”

“Will you bring me a new doll when you come back? A pretty one?”

I chuckled and said, “Yeah. I’ll do that. I love you, Angie Baby. Good night.”

“I love you too, Aunt Jane. Night.”

“Later, big-cat,” Molly said. And she was gone.

I closed the phone, stuffed it into a pocket, and studied the blue eye on the palm of my hand. It looked like an old tattoo, worn, faded, ink dispersing into my skin. I was pretty sure it was fainter than before, as it was evaporating away. If I was going to use it to track . . . I raised my hand and sniffed. Lifted my head and sniffed again. The reek of Girrard DiMercy’s blood filled my nostrils. But it came from close by, not from my hand.

I looked up. And spotted Girrard DiMercy. He was cloaked in the blue mist of a hide-me spell, sitting on a brick abutment just up the block, in a small nook, the minialcove where other men had spied on my house before. What was it with that doorway?

The spell clinging to him wavered and shifted, and other things seemed to be hidden beneath it, as if the layers of his glamours had separated and softened, allowing me glimpses of the visions beneath. He hadn’t seen me. I glanced back down at my palm, to see that the blue lines were even fainter.

I slid out of my loose shoes, leaving them on the sidewalk, and stalked silently toward him.