Each time I shifted into my kitsune form, the pain receded a bit more, and I couldn’t be more grateful. The first time, my shift had been pure agony. But now I pictured myself as a fox, envisioning my rust colored fur, lithe little body, and violet eyes, as I built the purple magic of my kitsune deep within my center. When it had expanded so that it felt like the size of a soccer ball, completely filling my chest, I pulsed the energy outward, toward the image of my kitsune shape I held in my mind’s eye.
My magic tingled in a fast rush across my body, spreading from my center, across my limbs, and down my extremities. Then my form began to morph. My bones and cartilage cracked, my muscles snapped, my flesh stretched until … I landed on four feet in the figure of a fox. I shook my head to free myself of whatever pain lingered from the shift and tried to look behind me.
Brock chuckled softly and spoke to me through our pack bond.‘You have seven tails. So crazy.’
I felt a little bit crazy…
‘Great. Just two more to go and we can shut this thing down,’I said.
‘How does the gate look?’Brock asked me as I rounded from behind the copse of trees.
I sensed my dad’s gaze on every one of my movements as I passed him and his witch to inspect the gate.‘It looks about the same. Maybe the crack has expanded a bit, but not enough to suggest we’re in any deeper shit than we already were.’
“Is my daughter communicating with you?” my dad asked Brock.
“Yes, through our pack bond. She says the gate looks about the same as it did last time she inspected it.”
“Excellent. That’s the best we could hope for at this point.” Dad wheeled his chair closer to me. “Evie, we need to perform the ritual now. The sun is about to break the horizon. The ritual needs to be in progress when the sun appears.”
I nodded my little fox head and looked at him and Cho attentively.
The slim witch, who appeared to be of Japanese ancestry like my father, walked over to me and took a seat on the damp earth, pressing her palms flush against the ground on either side of her. “Please join me, Evie.”
But when I started to move in her direction, I stilled mid-step, and my jaw dropped before I managed to snap it shut. A … projection of my fox form was standing two feet from me, to the side of Cho.
‘What the fuck. Brock, are you seeing this?’
‘Whoa. I guess we just discovered your new power. That’s pretty wild…’
‘Uh, you can say that again. There’s another one of me standing where I was planning on going!’
“Evie has developed the ability to project herself,” my dad said, sounding pleased. “That will prove a useful power when dealing with the Akuma.”
He was totally unfazed, while I couldn’t stop staring at a projection of myself.
“And the sirens,” Brock added, reminding all of us we had enough enemies that they could form a club.
‘But I didn’t mean to project myself. I have no control over it,’I fretted.
The last thing I needed was another power I couldn’t control.
‘Don’t worry, Evie. It’s probably like everything else. With practice you’ll learn how to use this new power.’
‘Right,’I said, and continued toward Cho … and the other little rust-colored fox with seven tails and violet eyes. My body double was peering at me like she and I were separate instead of one and the same. What a mind trip!
I settled on the other side of Cho, shaking my seven tails once to get a feel for the new fit. The witch tilted her face toward me, but didn’t remove her hands from the earth. “All you have to do is follow my lead,” she said. “I’m going to connect the power of the earth that runs through this land to you. I’ll be directing the energy of the earth to link with you, so when you feel her energy, open to it. Don’t pull away. No matter what you do, make sure you don’t do anything to reject the connection I’ll be working on forming. You need to embrace her energy, allow it to weave together with yours. Any questions?”
A million or so. They didn’t make manuals for this kind of shit. But I shook my head anyway. If I’d learned anything since discovering I was a kitsune, it was that I just had to roll with things and hope for the best.
“Will it hurt the baby?” Brock asked, of course always thinking about the baby. I internally chastised myself for not doing so myself.
Cho shook her head. “Mother Earth nurtures and gives life. Her magic will do nothing but support the baby.”
Relief flooded through me.
“Alright.” Brock didn’t sound as sure, but what choice did we have at this point but to trust?
“Okay,” Cho said. “By binding your power to the earth closest to the gate, our hope is that you’ll be able to influence the land that contains the gate, helping you seal it once you have your nine tails.”
