“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.
CHAPTER 19
A Fashionista’s Closet Full of Falling Stilettos
Girrard DiMercy was sitting with his eyes closed, face tight and intent, his head back. The blue mist cloak spell wasn’t strong enough to keep me from seeing him; it was too late to hide himself from me. Way too late. I’d seen his handprints on the roof of my soul, marking me as his. And I’d blasted them away. Now, his hands were relaxed, the outer edges of his palms and little fingers resting on his lap, his fingers and thumbs curled toward one another, as if he held a ball loosely. Except for the blue hide-me mist, he wasn’t concealing himself. There was nothing defensive or dangerous about his posture, which made me figure that Gee thought he was invisible, or at least cloaked in night shadows. And one eye was swollen, caked with blood. I’d hurt him for real, just like the wolves had hurt him back in Booger’s Scoot.