“Did they, now. Well, tell them I said this.” I shut the door in the servant’s face. Turned the lock. Pulled my official cell phone, the Kevlar-cased one that allowed the Master of the City to track me, listen in on me, and read all my texts. It was daytime and he was probably in bed, but no way could I just take this. Vamps had a thing for pecking order. I couldn’t refuse the invitation, but I was neither blood in Leo’s fangs nor at the bottom of the suckhead hierarchy. I was the Enforcer to the MOC. This required more finesse than my usual hammer-and-machete style of retort.
I scrolled for Leo’s number. It was listed under Chief Fanghead.
As a skinwalker—a supernatural being who can shape-shift into animals, provided I have enough genetic material to work with—I’ve actually flown, and not just in planes. But Gee might not know that. A familiarity with flight was my first wild joker.
Deep in the darks of my mind, my Beast huffed.Eat order from Gee, she thought at me. Beast didn’t like it when I took the form of an animal other than hers—thePuma concolor—the mountain lion. She especially didn’t like flying.
We made a promise, I thought back at her. I wandered to my room as I punched Leo’s number.
Promises are stupid human things. We are Beast. Eat note.
Beast is opinionated, with a mind and feelings of her own. I had pulled her soul into my body in an act of accidental black magic when I was fiveyears old, while fighting for my life. That was back in the eighteen hundreds. Skinwalkers, even the two-souled, can live a long time.
The cell trilled the first ring. Thinking that I would balk at the order, Leo would keep me waiting.
My second wild joker was a blue feather. Not so long ago, I came upon the glamoured body of a slain Anzu. She had looked perfectly human, albeit dead, except for the bright blue feathers on the floor around her body, downy and fluffy, catching the air currents and waving at me as if alive.
I hadn’t intended to take a feather. I had forgotten I had stolen one. I’m guessing that Beast did it while I wasn’t looking, a theft she had accomplished using my hands while my mind was occupied with more important things, which is scary in all sorts of ways. I hadn’t discovered the feather until much later, in my collection of magical trinkets, but had never used it because taking the form of a sentient being was one of the darkest kinds of evil. Black magic. Unless I had permission. “Jane.” Leo answered my call. “You have refused Girrard’s invitation.”
“Nope. But I need to talk to Sabina.” Sabina was the woo-woo priestess of the Mithran-Vamps and she lived in the vampire cemetery. I’d need permission to enter.
There was a long pause, and I was sure Leo’s brain was clicking through all the possibilities of why I’d need to talk to the eldest of the local Mithrans. “One moment.”
A much longer pause later, I heard the sounds of movement and theshushof fabrics and soft-voiced instructions. The ambient noise changed and I knew I was being put on speakerphone, which made no sense. Until a voice spoke. “I am here,” Sabina said.
I blinked and opened my mouth. Closed it. This saved me hours of afternoon traveling across the Mississippi and back. But I had to do this right. I drew on the scraps of vamp etiquette I had learned in my time as Leo’s Enforcer and said, “Sabina Delgado y Aguilera, outclan priestess of the Mithrans, keeper of the sacred grounds, keeper of the Blood Cross, arbiter of disputes, deliverer of judgment, I have a question and... uh... and I wish you to determine if the path I wish to take is one of sin.”
“If I say it is sin, will you take another path, my child?”
“Yes.”
“Speak.”
I took a deep breath. “I want to know if it’s black magic for a skinwalker to shift into the same kind of creature as Gee.”
The silence on the other end of the connection was total. And then, in the background, Leo laughed. It was one of those vampire laughs, the kind that writers and producers and other creators of fiction got right. Seductive, warm, enticing, like heated silk sliding across my skin. A laugh that reminds you vamps are predators, built to seduce and charm before they kill. The liquid notes cut off in midpeal, interrupted by a gasp of surprise or pain.
“You wish to know if this will turn you to the path ofu’tlun’ta,” Sabina said, “the evil your kind becomes when they eat of sentient flesh.”
Chills raced over me.U’tlun’tawas what my kind became when we got old and went insane and started eating people. “Pretty much, yes.”
“Is the Anzu alive, and will you eat her flesh?”
“No!” I looked at the blank screen in revulsion, put the cell back to my ear, and said, “No. She’s dead and I didn’t kill her.”
“What do you use for the snake that resides in the heart of all beasts?”
The words Sabina used froze me for several heartbeats. They were skinwalker words, for a skinwalker concept. “A feather,” I whispered.
“With this action, you walk the sharp edge of a blade between light and dark. You do not cross that edge into darkness, but if you slip, you may bleed.”
“I’ll try not to slip.”
The call went dead. I dropped to my mattress. I had no idea if I’d be able to shift into an Anzu. No idea if there was enough genetic material in the core of the feather to allow me to shift. No idea if Gee would kill me at first sight. Or, for that matter, how much an Anzu weighed. Even though I’m a magical creature, I am still bound by the law of conservation of mass-energy. Taking on extra mass or leaving part of myself behind is dangerous. Flying by the seat of my pants never got any easier. No winged pun intended.
Stepping around piles of clothes and boots, junk mail, and a small stack of theTimes-Picayune, I picked up my gobag and shook the grindylow out of the folds. The neon green, kitten-sized thing spat at me and showed her steel claws. “Stop that,” I scolded. She wrinkled her nose atme and leaped to my shoulder. Grindys kill were-creatures. It’s their mission. This one liked nesting in my clothes. Absently, I patted her, and she cooed at me, nuzzling under my ear.
I packed a special gobag with a change of clothes, lightweight shoes, and my cell phone. I laid out the weapons candidates and then weeded them down, ending with a nine-millimeter, extra mags, six stakes: three ash wood, three sterling. And one vamp-killer—a steel-edged, long-bladed, silver-plated knife created especially for beheading vampires.
