Skinwalker

CHAPTER 3 I’m a tea snob

With a last slash of claws across my psyche, Beast was gone and I was left, my flesh and muscles aching, my nostrils deadened, vision drab and colorless, even as the sun lit the eastern sky. Human once again, my hair draped over me like a shawl. My bones ached as if I were old, in mind and soul.

The final slash of pain had been deliberate. Beast had occasionally referred to me as thief-of-soul, and I knew that I had stolen her, somehow, by accident, so long ago I couldn’t remember it, though Beast remembered and sometimes punished me for it. I had feared Beast would not allow me to shift back. There had been times in the past when she held on to her form after dawn, which forced me to keep her shape until dusk or until the moon rose again, part of her punishment.

I don’t know exactly how long I lived as Beast in the Appalachian Mountains, my human self subsumed, hiding from humans, from man with his guns and dogs and fire. It was a long time of danger, of hunger. I feared that it might have been decades, far longer than the normal human or big cat life span, and that my kin were all dead and gone, as lost to me as my own past.

I had vague memories of returning to human form several times over the long years, then shifting back to panther, until the final time I shifted to my human shape. It had happened a few days before I was discovered walking, naked and scarred, in the woods of the Appalachian Mountains. I had appeared to be about twelve and had total amnesia, unable to remember language, or how to think like a socialized human. Unable, at the time, to remember even Beast.

I think something had happened, something deadly. I had scars on my human body, bullet shaped. I think—have guessed—that a hunter found Beast. Shot her. And I changed back into my human form to survive, just as I had once shifted into Beast’s to survive.

When the memory of Beast came back, other fractured, shattered memories came with it. I remembered her kits. I had memories of the hunger times, when Beast was alpha and I was beta. And before that, I remembered a few Cherokee words. Had memories of faces—elders, most of them. Memories that claimed I was a skinwalker. But that was all. I had no clear memories of time, or how or when I became what I—what we—were.

Since then, I had collected skins, claws, bones, teeth, feathers, and even scales of other animals. I had taught myself to skinwalk into other forms. And it always hurt like blue blazes to shift back into being human. Like now.

When I could breathe without pain, I unlatched the travel bag around my neck and rolled stiffly to my feet. I gathered my things and went into the house. Naked, I padded around my freebie-house kitchen, exploring. Like Beast, I was hungry after a shift, but unlike Beast, I wanted strong tea and cereal—caffeine, sugar, and carbs—to restore my sense of self. Comfort foods. I rinsed and filled a kettle and a pot with water, added salt to the pot. Opened a box of oatmeal from the supplies Troll had provided, and spotted the box I had shipped to Katie’s last week. I’d been pretty hopeful about getting the job. Inside were travel supplies, including ziplocked black foil bags of loose tea. I chose a good, strong, single-estate Kenyan-Millma Estate tea. Searching through the drawers and cabinets for a strainer or a tea filter, I found a nook off the kitchen where china, silver, stoneware, and serving dishes were stored in glass-fronted cabinets.

There were a dozen teapots in one cabinet, some Chinese pots—a copper block Yixing teapot and a Summer Blossom Yixing pot, both with square shapes, and one tall Yixing with an elongated spout and top so the steam could cool and fall back into the tea as it steeped. There was one very old, classic Chinese clayware with a rotting bamboo handle. I was entranced. Gingerly, I moved the Chinese pots aside to find two Japanese pots—a Bodum Chambord teapot and an iron pot that looked positively ancient, the crosshatching on the sides almost worn away.

There were English pots in various sizes; porcelain and cast-iron pots with iron handles that rotated across the tops. In the front corner near the door were a dozen tea filters in different shapes and sizes, including a woven bamboo filter that crumbled when I touched it. The cabinet smelled like Katie, though from long ago, the scent muted by time.

I wasn’t sure what I felt about Katie loving tea as much as I did. It was the first time I thought about vamps liking anything besides the taste of blood or alcohol. Vamps went by lots of names, individually and collectively: vampire, vam pyre, sanguivore, damphyr, damphire, calmae, fledgling, elder, Mithran, childe, kindred, anarch, caitiff, and members of the camarilla, among others. I had studied what little reliable info was available about so-called sane vamps, and so far as I was concerned, they were all bloodsucking psychos. It wasn’t easy seeing them in another light, and Katie’s loss of control when she scented me hadn’t helped.

I chose an English eight-cup pot and a filter to match and rinsed them both at the tap. While the water heated and my stomach growled, I found a bedroom suite on the ground floor at the front, showered and dried off, and slung a soft chenille robe, hanging on the bathroom door, around my shoulders. I brushed out my hair and tied it out of the way by flipping it into a knot. I could braid it later.

After dumping my meager belongings on the bed in a heap, I stored my toiletries in the bathroom, my clothes on hangers and wire racks in the closet, and my special wooden box on the top shelf of the closet. The box was only four by four by two inches, give or take, composed of inlaid olive wood from a tree outside Jerusalem. It held charms that had cost me mucho buckos, and were my ace in the hole for killing rogues. The box itself was charmed with a spell to make it hard to see. Not an invisibility charm, but a disguise spell, what my witch-friend Molly called an obfuscation spell. Molly likes big words.

I folded down the sheets and put two vamp-killers— specially designed knives with a line of silver near the edge—on the bedside table. Vamps couldn’t move around in the daytime, but that didn’t mean that their human servants couldn’t attack. If the rogue had one, or more, he might be sane enough to send them after me. A little silver poisoning if he drank after I cut one might make him easier to kill later.

As satisfied with security as I could be without replacing the doors and windows, I took a tour of the house. It was beautiful, something out of a magazine. It had hardwood floors, the boards twelve inches wide, maybe local cypress; intricately carved, white-painted molding at ceiling and floor; wainscoting in one room, which might have been intended as a dining room; walls painted soft, muted colors—latte, off-white, taupe. Charming antique tables and hand-carved chairs mixed in with comfy modern furniture, and sofas and a leather recliner completed the eclectic look. The AC came on as I explored, blowing up the bed skirt, chilling my skin. Fans turned overhead in each of the twelve-foot-high-ceilinged rooms, redistributing the air. A lot nicer than my minuscule one-room apartment under the eaves of an old house near Asheville.

Back in the kitchen, I turned off the fire under the singing kettle and poured the nearly boiling water over tea leaves in the filter in the porcelain pot. While it steeped, I made oatmeal the way my housemother at the children’s home had taught me. Bring slightly salted water to a boil, add whole grain rolled oats—never the instant or quick kind—in equal proportion, and stir until heated through. Maybe a minute. Maybe less depending on my hunger. Dump it in a bowl, add sugar and milk. Eat. With properly prepared tea.

I’m a tea snob. My sensei had introduced me to teas and teaware when I was a teenager and I had made a study of tea after hours, after he had bruised and beaten me into a pulp and somehow along the way, taught me how to fight like a man.

I’d been up twenty-six hours and was exhausted, but I was more hungry than tired, so I ate fast, putting away three bowls of oatmeal. My belly bulged, satisfied, though I got a sleepy wisp of Beast’s disgust and an image of a deer eating grass. Ignoring it, I carried the mug with me to the table and tightened the chenille robe. It was clean, and I figured whoever had prepared the house for me had left it. Or maybe the previous tenant had forgotten it when he moved out. He. Yeah. The house smelled of male most recently, over the other scents of the ages.

I sipped and relaxed, my feet in the chair across the table, the robe closed chest to shins. The table was old, maybe an antique, though I hadn’t studied antiques. Maybe next year. Or maybe I’d start languages next year; I wanted to learn French, Spanish, and Cantonese—Cantonese because of tea, of course. When I finished the tea—eight cups, four mugs—I rinsed everything and placed pot, kettle, and stoneware on a drying cloth. I tossed the robe at the foot of the bed and crawled between the soft, lightly scented sheets.

Before I slept I called Molly, holding the cell close to my ear.

“Big Cat!” she answered.

“Morning, Mol,” I mumbled, feeling sleep pull at me. “How’s the kits?”

“Kits? You’re still talking like Beast. You hunted last night.” When I mumbled a vague yes, she said, “Catch anything?”

“The rogue smells weird. Beast thinks it’s dying.”

“Vamps don’t die. Don’t eat that, Evan,” she said to her son, without missing a beat. “Crayons look pretty but taste bad. Angie, take the crayons away from him. Thank you. Vamps don’t die,” she repeated to me.

I closed my eyes, sleep so close it paralyzed my limbs, the world darkening. “I know. Weird, huh. You and your witch sisters figure out yet why Christian symbols kill vamps?”

“Not a clue, but the whole family’s looking. Interesting research.”

“Night, Mol.”

“Night, Big Cat.”

I woke at two in the afternoon to the sound of someone knocking. I rolled out of bed, feeling stiff, and pulled the robe on. I was still holding the cell phone and tucked it in the robe pocket. Barefoot, I padded to the front door and looked out through a clear pane in its stained-glass window. On the front stoop was the pretty boy, the Joe. Interesting.

He was standing at an angle so he could view the street and keep the door in sight. The too-cool, all-black look was gone. He was wearing well-worn five-button jeans and a tee so white it had to be brand-new, with scuffed, worn, stained, once-brown leather sandals. The sunglasses were still wrapped around his face. His nose had been broken once. A small scar across his collarbone disappeared into the shirt. On one bicep, I saw the fringes of a tattoo. I couldn’t see much, but it was a good quality tat, something dark with globes of red, like drops of blood, the ink bright and rich. An Oriental job, maybe. He hadn’t shaved, but the gnarly look suited him. I’d known kayakers—paddlers, river rats—who sported the look almost as well.

As if he sensed me, the Joe turned his head and removed his glasses. Black eyes looked at me through a tiny clear pane. The Joe didn’t appear to be armed. He had come to the front door in plain sight of anyone who happened by. I hadn’t heard the bike and smelled no fresh exhaust. He’d walked? He was alone. So I opened the door. Heat rolled in, sticky and heavy with moisture. “Morning,” I said.

He smiled. It was a really good smile, full lips moving wider before parting, to show white teeth, not perfectly straight, but uneven on the bottom. Something about the canted teeth pressing against his lower lip was unexpectedly appealing. His eyes traveled from my face down my body and back up in leisurely appreciation. “Actually, it’s afternoon,” he said.

I nodded and my hair fell forward, knotted in a half bun, bead free. I had forgotten to take the stone and plastic beads out before I shifted. Dang. Now I’d have to round them up out of the dirt. “So it is,” I said.

“You weren’t here last night.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “I knocked. Walked around. The bike was in the back, I could see it through the gate. But there were no lights on, no sound or indication of movement. You weren’t here.”

It wasn’t a question so I didn’t answer; it wasn’t quite an accusation, but it was close. This Joe was paying entirely too much attention to me and I had to wonder why. I was pretty sure he hadn’t fallen in love with me at first sight when I motored by him yesterday. I let a small smile start and he went on, a hint of amusement now in his eyes.

“When I checked with Tom, he said you had disabled all Katie’s security cameras. In eight minutes flat.” He knew Troll. More interesting. I quirked a brow, his amusement grew, and he said, “Tom said you gave him a nickname, but he wouldn’t tell me what.”

“You got a point, waking me from my nap?” I asked.

“Yeah. Let’s go for a late lunch. You can call Tom for an intro. Fair warning, though. He’ll tell you I’m trouble.”

I rested a hip against the door and considered. Whoever he was, he knew Troll, which made him a local boy; I needed someone with local contacts and connections, and it wasn’t too early in the investigation to start cultivating sources. With his looks and cocky attitude, I pegged him for a bad boy with associations in all the wrong places, making him perfect for the job. And even bad boys have to eat. “What do you have in mind?”

“Crawfish, hush puppies, beer. Salads if you want ’em,” he added, but sounding as if salads were an afterthought. Something he included because girls liked them.

“I’ve never had crawfish.”

“So?” He drew out the word, waiting.

“You got a name?”

“Rick LaFleur.”

“Walking or bikes?”

“Walk. I’ll show you the Quarter. Or part of it.”

I’d seen the Quarter last night, but I nodded anyway. “I’ll get dressed.” I pushed the door and the Joe’s hand caught it, holding it open two inches. I could see more of the tat, four points just above the bloody globes. And another tat on the other shoulder. Black and gray.

“You’re not going to ask me in?”

“Nope.”

“Kinda blunt, aren’t you. Fine. How long?”

“Ten minutes, tops.” Rick’s brows went up in disbelief. This time when I pushed the door, he didn’t try to hold it. He musta wanted to keep his fingers.

I dialed Katie’s Ladies, and when a sleepy-sounding female answered, I asked for Tom. Like Rick promised, Troll labeled him trouble, but then offered more. Rick LaFleur was his nephew, a good kid gone bad. Went to Tulane, got a degree, then went to work for a scumbag as muscle for hire. When his new boss went to jail for tax fraud, Rick started doing odd jobs: unofficial security, protection gigs, strong-arm stuff, and some low-level security jobs for the vampire community, Katie especially. He knew people. He had skills usually cultivated by thugs and thieves. Perfect for my needs. Troll suggested I stay away from Rick. I told him I’d take his recommendation under advisement.

Hanging up, I brushed my teeth and hair and dressed in yesterday’s jeans, a tank top, and my one pair of sandals in four minutes. No weapons. Not in broad daylight. Not in heat like this. I slashed on a swish of lipstick. Red. War paint, of a sort.

I opened the door and pulled it closed behind me, locking it. Standing on the empty stoop, I saw Rick across the street. His bike was in the shade of a low tree and he was chaining it to the trunk. He stood in surprise, tossed his keys and caught them, tucked them in a pocket. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the lenses, but I was pretty sure he was looking me over again.

I pulled my hair back and tied it in a ponytail. The ends hung lower than my hips, curling, kinking in the humidity. I had straight black hair. No curl. Not ever. Not even after I brushed the braids out. Until now. The day was wet and hot. Hotter than I’d ever felt it. And it wasn’t even full summer.

My stomach growled. I pulled on sunglasses and stepped into the street, meeting him halfway. “Rick, your great-uncle said you were full of unrealized potential and info,” I said.

He quirked a half grin, amused by my blunt manner. “A blight on the family name,” he agreed. “And you’re Jane Yellowrock. The out-of-town talent.”

“You want to chat, let’s do it somewhere with air-conditioning and beer.”

Rick laughed, flashing the sexy little tooth, and gestured to the sidewalk in an exaggerated bow, like a carnival barker. He smelled good—heat, male sweat, and the faintest touch of scent, like Ivory soap. I resisted the desire to sniff the side of his neck and up behind his ear, but could do nothing about the hungers rising in me, pushing against my skin like a pelt. Beast’s hunger, Beast’s nature. I sighed. Beast wanted me to mate. She was getting pretty insistent about it, kinda like a mother wanting her daughter to settle down, get married, and have babies. A mother image with fangs and claws. This full moon, when Beast was closer to the surface, and harder to control? Was gonna be a bitch.

It was too soon to pump him for information, so we chatted about the weather, bikes, and music on the five-block walk—the Joe mentioned that, among other things, he played saxophone in a few local bands. It was casual conversation of the get-to-know-you variety, and we ended up in a dive near the river, one long narrow room with a bar on the right and red leather upholstered booths on the left. I’d have wondered at Joe’s choice except the place was packed with everything from city blue-collar employees in work boots, to men and women in suits. Banker types. Maybe a few musicians. I smelled grass on some. And in the far corner sat three cops. I’d learned that if cops liked an eatery, the food was good.

The cement floor had once been painted red, the paint worn off except in the corners; the walls were a sun-faded and moisture-streaked midnight. The bar was chipped Formica, black with sparkles in it, and a darkened mirror ran the length of the wall behind the bar. Dirty glass shelves in front of the mirror were stocked with a jillion bottles of liquor; some were dust covered, with curling labels. A fine set of cooking knives, with green stone inlaid handles and wicked-sharp blades, lay in an open, velvet-lined tray, gleaming in the overhead lights.

There was no music, which, as I had discovered last night, was odd for the Quarter. But here, people talked. A dozen conversations wove through the air with the scent of food. The dive smelled heavenly of beer steam, grease, and seafood so fresh it still smelled of salt and sea.

The black man behind the counter wore a crisp white jacket, a tall chef’s hat, and a smile. He patted the bar in front of the only two empty round seats and slid over little plastic bowls of hot sauce, ketchup, and tartar sauce. The Joe—Rick—and I sat in the indicated spots. The cook never said a word, just started dishing up food into red plastic baskets lined with newspaper to soak up the grease. He shoved baskets of hot onion rings, hush puppies, and round fried balls the size of golf balls at us; it smelled like heaven.

I tossed a scalding hush puppy into my mouth and bit down, sucking in air to cool my burning mouth. I groaned with delight. “This is good,” I said through spiced, fried corn bread and scalding lips. “Better’n good. Wonderful.” The man behind the counter set two mugs in front of us, again without asking, full of amber, frothy beer. I drank fast to cool my mouth and tried the onion rings. They too were fried, with beer-batter crust, and they crunched like God Himself had made them in His own kitchen. Lastly I tried the unknown fried balls and bit through the crust into highly spiced, ground hog meat and rice.

“Boudin, dat is, right dere,” the cook said. “Good, yes?”

“I’m in love,” I said to the cook as I chewed. “If you aren’t married, please consider this a proposal.”

He smiled, his face creasing into deep, dark chasms, exposing the biggest white teeth I’d ever seen in a human. “Your gal, I like her, I do, Ricky-bo,” he said, in what I assumed was a Cajun accent. He glanced at me, a twinkle in his eyes. “But you bes’ tell her ’bout my Marlene. I don’ like it when a new customer end up bleedin’ on my clean, purty floor.”

Rick, a half grin on his face, was sitting with both elbows on the bar, a hush puppy in one hand and his beer mug in the other. He slanted his eyes at me. “Marlene is his wife. Two hundred fifty pounds of jealous, dangerous woman.”

“And beautiful,” the man said. “Don’ forget beautiful, you.”

“Slap-dead gorgeous,” Rick agreed. “Like molten lava on the dance floor. Makes men moan just watching her. But she carries a fourteen-inch knife strapped to her thigh. In a garter.”

“Jealous,” the cook said again, sliding a steel mesh basket into a vat of hot fat, his chef’s hat canted to one side. “Deadly, she be, yeah.”

“Killed a woman in here last year,” Rick said. He pointed at the floor three feet away. “Woman tried to flirt with him. Died right there.”

Finally realizing I was being teased, I tossed another onion ring into my mouth and said as I crunched, “Buried her out back, I’m guessing? Under a full moon? Chants and drums?”

“Under a tree,” the man said, laughing. “Marlene done fount her a nice stone from de funeral home. It say, ‘Here lay fool woman done been messin’ wid my man.’ ” He dried off a hand and held it over the bar. “Antoine.”

“Jane,” I said, wiping grease off my fingers.

“Antoine never forgets a face or a customer,” Rick said. “And he knows everything there is to know about this town.”

“Handy,” I said. I took his hand. It was big, long fingered, and smooth, and when I gripped it, the world seemed to slow down. Like a big bike after a long ride, energies pumping hotly, ready to roll, but puttering down to nearly nothing. Silence when the motor stops, silence almost as loud as the engine, thrumming and cavernous. Antoine stared at me. I stared at him.

His palm tingled with power, prickly and keen, like static electricity running just beneath his skin. Witchy power, like Molly’s, yet different in a way I could immediately discern. His pupils widened, his lips parted. Something passed between us. A moment of . . . something. Crap. What is this? I seldom felt Beast in my thoughts unless I was in danger, but she was suddenly alert, hunkered, belly down, claws pricking my soul with warning.

Antoine’s grip tightened. “Very please’ to meet you, I am, Miss Jane,” he said formally.

The prickly power traveled up my arm, questing. Beast coughed, the sound a warning deep in my mind. Antoine tilted his head in surprise, as if he’d heard her. “Likewise, Mr. Antoine,” I lied, my lips tingly, almost painful, as I resisted the questing power. It slid around my puny attempt to block it. Beast reached out a paw and placed it on the energy that was rising within me. Pressed down on the current. And stopped the sensation.

“Likewise,” I repeated. He released my hand, breaking the . . . whatever it was. The world crashed in, loud, boisterous. I took an onion ring and ate it, but the taste was now unpleasant, metallic, faintly bitter. I gulped beer. The odd taste washed away with the yeasty, peaty ale.

“Come anytime,” Antoine said. I looked back up, meeting his eyes. They seemed to be saying something more than his words. “We have at night de music and dancing, sometime.”

“Spills out in the street,” Rick said. “If you like to dance.”

I liked to dance. But maybe not here.

Except for the moments when he gripped my hand, Antoine had been working while chatting. He placed a bucket, like a gardening bucket, on the bar between Rick and me. Beer- and sea-flavored steam curled up, hot with pepper and spices. Rick reached, drew out a crawfish, its red shell curled. I was pretty sure the crustacean had been tossed alive into boiling beer.

I looked at Antoine, seeing nothing of the power that had tried to search through me. I had never felt anything like that before, and the man’s genial face seemed to imply that nothing had happened. If he could play innocent, I could certainly play stupid. But I wondered what he had picked up about Beast as he held my hand. Thoughtful, I ate another hush puppy. Rick had brought me here. He had wanted Antoine to read me. I tried to decide if that ticked me off.

Rick met my eyes in the dim mirror, holding up a four-inch-long crawfish as if in demonstration. His face held a hint of laughter and a warmth that claimed he was interested in me, if it was real. It had been some time since I’d seen that particular look in a man’s eyes. Maybe since I met Jack when I went into the security business. Not many men wanted to date a girl who could toss them into a corner and stomp them into the dirt. I didn’t need protecting and men seemed to sense that. It bothered a lot of them.

And . . . while I hadn’t been a nun, I hadn’t taken the dating world by storm either. I had friends who juggled several men, in and out of bed, at a time, but I was a one-man kinda woman. So far. And that man had been and gone a long time ago. I decided not to get mad about the reading. Not just yet, anyway.

To get the proper crawfish-eating protocol, I watched Rick as he broke the shell apart across the body, just above the tail, and pulled out the flesh. He ate the mouthful of seafood and then saluted me with the two pieces of mudbug shell. “Suck de head,” he said, like someone else might have said, “Cheers,” and he sucked the head part. I heard a liquid slurping. Rick smacked his lips and took another crawfish. I shrugged and broke apart the shellfish as he had, ate the meat, which turned out to be spicy with hot peppers, garlic, and onion, and beery. Good. Really good. Then I sucked the head as Rick had, and the spices exploded in my mouth.

He laughed at whatever was on my face, and said, “I forgot to tell you. The spices seem to concentrate in the head cavity.”

“No kidding,” I managed, half strangling on the potent stuff. “You forgot.”

Antoine laughed with Rick. “Dis boy been coming here for twenty year. He always done forget.”