There was a third type of ward Mol called a hedge of thorns around the rocks in my garden. It was quiescent; the trigger to activate it was my blood, poured over the ground. Pretty macabre, but she wanted to protect me even after she was back home in the mountains, and the hedge was a last-ditch shielding, one that would seal me in over the rocks where I could shift into Beast form and heal, if I found myself in life-threatening danger. Beast was the only animal I could shift into without effort, and without having genetic material from which to take the pattern. She was something outside my skinwalker magic--something I thought a typical skinwalker wouldn't carry within her. Beast was another soul living inside me, revenant of a mountain lion whose skin I had hidden in for far, far too long, and she had her own goals, memories, needs, and secrets. She wasn't always easy to live with, but she did help keep me alive.
The inside ward over Angie's and Little Evan's room was shaped so that even I couldn't enter without setting off an alarm. But I could check in, making sure the kids were okay. I'm not the motherly sort, so it felt strange to have children in my home, and even stranger to feel protective. Fiercely, violently protective, as Beast's maternal instincts, so different from my own, spilled over into my human consciousness.
With my exceptional night vision, I could see well enough into the dim room. Little Evan was stretched out, covers thrown off, his fists tightly balled, arms to either side, his cheeks puffing with each breath. On the bed closer to the door, Angelina was curled into a ball beneath the covers, her face as angelic as her name. Both were, amazingly, already asleep. Kids.
"They won't disappear in a wisp of smoke," a soft voice said behind me.
I smiled, feeling rueful, wondering if Molly had set a ward I had never detected, one that notified her when someone even approached the children's doorway. Probably.
"Just checking," I said. Holding the tray in front of me, I turned, finding Molly in the shadows of the wide hallway. Her long, thin nightgown fluttered in the air from the open windows; her red ringlets hung down her back. She looked like something from the nineteen hundreds, except for the iPod around her neck. I set the tray on a little spindled table in the hall and offered her one of the mugs. Molly crossed the wide hallway on bare feet and took it.
"No one can get in," she said, sipping. "Not through my ward. Or at least not without fireworks going off. You don't have to prowl the house with butcher knives."
I pulled and flipped a knife. The blade caught the lamp, bright and glittering, the narrow, deep flukes along the blade appearing almost ornamental with their silvering, making the weapon strong, flexible, lightweight, beautiful, the blade's silver plating poisonous to vampires. A work of art. It was a new blade. I really liked it. "Not a butcher knife. It's a vamp-killer."
"It's a claw, is what it is," she said, the wry tone becoming drier, sharper. "I counted. You're wearing ten. Just like your Beast's front paw claws."
I shrugged. It was true; I had ten. As a skinwalker, I had a preference for big cats--puma, African lion, leopards, but mostly for the mountain lion form. It was easiest to be Beast. If I ever discover a skinwalker psychiatrist, I'm sure he'll apply some Jungian or Freudian school of thought to me, and the weapons I choose will be a big part of the analysis.
"Are you going hunting in human form?" she asked, her voice now carefully emotionless. When I nodded, she said, quietly, "Be careful, Big Cat. He's not finished grieving. If he has laid a trap, you might slip past him as Beast, but not as Jane."
"I know," I said. "But I have a job to do. And the sooner I get it done, the better." I slid the vamp-killer into its loop. "I still wish you and the kids would go back home."
She hesitated for an instant, clearly remembering Leo Pellissier and his vamp goons. She shook her head. "Not until Big Evan gets back from Brazil and the contractor has the new room closed in. A house with no walls means I can't ward it properly." She held up a hand to stop my protests. "We're in less danger here than we are in the hills without Big Evan. And you know we've had . . . trouble lately. My kind aren't exactly popular. I'll go back in two weeks like we planned. Besides"--her tone had turned ironic, and she sipped her tea--"you actually need us now. Angie's the reason why Leo didn't burn the house down around you. He won't be back, at least until he can make sure of killing only you and not a houseful of children. And the wards will never be down again."
I flinched just the tiniest bit. She had a point. "Okay," I said. "I'll be careful." I took my own mug in hand, the stoneware warm and oddly comforting. "See you in the morning. Night, Molly."
"Night, Big Cat."