“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?”