Ignoring my guests, I booted up the laptop, pulled up a city map, and found the location of the morgue. I finished off my tea, closed the laptop, and stood, the chair barking across the floor. “I’m going out. See you in the morning.” I intercepted the look my two houseguests exchanged but decided to pretend it hadn’t happened. In my bedroom, I grabbed a fetish necklace, made sure the gold nugget necklace was in place, repacked Beast’s travel bag, and added a handwritten note with Molly’s phone number on it in case I ended up in the pound.
Beast growled once and put her head on her paws, shutting her eyes, not interested in what I was doing. Maybe a little miffed. She could be part of this excursion if she wanted, but Beast was jealous of any time I spent in an animal form other than her own.
The two visitors were still sitting at the kitchen table, talking softly, when I walked back through, which meant that taking a stack of my own steaks from the fridge and a bag of Snickers wasn’t going to happen, which just brought home to me the fact that my life wasn’t my own anymore. Which really sucked the red off all my candy. I frowned at them, hoping they would take the hint that they were being pains in the butt, but they just sat silent and watched me. I was proud when I didn’t slam the door, and the murmur of their voices picked up when I was outside.
I was grouchy and irritated and acting like an idiot. I knew it would pass, but for now I rode the annoyance, letting it power me as I helmeted up and took off on Bitsa, leaving behind the itchy, uncomfortable feelings left over from taking a shower with Bruiser. I wove over to Langenstein’s on Arabella Street for meat, forgetting it wasn’t open all night, and, even more frustrated, drove around for half an hour, finally stopping at a twenty-four-hour fast-food place and buying a bucket of chicken. Cooked. But they might have called the cops if I’d ordered it raw. I strapped it to my bike, stopped for gasoline, bottled water, and candy bars, and wove around until I found the morgue.
The New Orleans Coroner’s Office and Forensic Center was on Martin Luther King Boulevard, in a busy, well-traveled part of town. The building was three stories of new, post-Katrina construction, well lighted, and patrolled by cops. And for the moment, a van was parked at a loading bay in the back, the doors of the van open, the loading bay brightly lit. Two cops stood near a corner stealing a smoke.
There was no wooded place to shift nearby, which wasn’t helpful; I needed privacy and calm to call on my magics. I located a private home with a recently planted flower and ornamental tree garden and pulled Bitsa off the street into the shadows under a short Japanese maple tree. I knew that she would be okay where I left her—one good thing about having a police presence nearby and a witchy locking system on the bike was that Bitsa wouldn’t get stolen. Standing in the shadows, I listened, scented, and watched for people, security cameras, and anything else that might cause me trouble. Satisfied that I was alone and unobserved, I strapped on the travel bag, opened the bucket of chicken, undressed, and pulled the fetish necklace out. The bones and teeth of a female bloodhound clacked and rattled.
I had acquired the bones from a taxidermist I frequented in the mountains. I had asked him to keep an eye out for any large mammal carcass he might find, and he had called me several times over the years, having acquired dead animals he thought I might like. He had stripped the flesh from the bones and teeth and strung them onto necklaces for me, believing that I was into some strange voudon practice. I had never set him straight. Someday the strange things people believed about me were gonna come back and bite me. Hard. I set the bloodhound necklace around my neck and sat in the midst of ferns, protected from eyes on the street by azaleas and big-leafed hostas. And I ripped off the bandages Evangelina had so carefully applied.
I had never tried the bloodhound form before, but I needed a really good nose right now. I closed my eyes and blew out hard, searching for a calm center, which eluded me for a number of reasons: Beast didn’t like it when I shifted into any creature other than big-cat, my emotions were ragged and on edge because of Bruiser, I was angry because Rick hadn’t called, and seeing the stupid photos. And getting naked in my own walled garden was one thing, but getting naked in a private yard was very different. It took too long, but eventually I was calm enough to feel my skinwalker energies rise.
I held the necklace and relaxed, listening to the night breezes, feeling the pull of the three-day, sharp-pointed moon, still thin, far overhead. I felt the beat of my heart in my throat, in the palms of my hands, and the soles of my feet as I slowed the functions of my body, slowed my heart rate, let my blood pressure drop, my muscles relax, as if I were going to sleep. I lay on the ground beneath the trees in the humid air, leafy ferns a cushion.
Mind slowing, I sank inside, my consciousness falling away, all but the purpose of this hunt. As always, I set that purpose into the lining of my skin, into the depths of my brain, so I wouldn’t lose it when I shifted, when I changed. I dropped deeper. Lower. Into the darkness inside where broken, painful memories danced in a gray world of shadow, blood, and doubt. I heard a drum beating a measured beat, steady and slow, smelled herbs and the scent of fresh smoke. The night wind seemed to cool and freshen. As I dropped deeper, I sought the fetish and the memory of form and structure hidden in the inner snake lying inside the bones and teeth of the necklace, the coiled, curled snake, resting deep in the cells, in the remains of the marrow.
I took up the snake and I dropped within, like water flowing across a sandy streambed, like sleet peppering the ground with a bitter icy shush of sound. Grayness enveloped me, sparkling and cold as the world fell away. And I was in the gray place of the change.
Beast was sulking far out of sight, and my mind was empty and private and alone.
My breathing deepened. Heart rate sped up. And my bones ... slid. Skin rippled. Hair, brown and black and sleek, sprouted. Pain slid like a knife between muscle and bone. My nose and jaw compressed and grew forward. My nostrils drew deep. My shoulders and hips ground and scraped as bone flowed into new shapes.