by Rider, C. P.
Yeah, I totally believed that.
"I lost Mom's charms," I said. "I thought Barney Drath might have them, but he didn't."
"This upsets you?"
Tears filled my eyes and I sniffed. "They were hers."
"I'm sorry, Cornelia. For that, and for so many things."
"I know, Dad."
We hung up and I picked up the journal. I had been reading since Lucas left after breakfast to talk to Juan. My mother's writings contained the sweetness of a young mother combined with the chilling reality of a paranormal parent.
You're such a good eater, my Neely girl. You especially love sweet potatoes and green beans. You hate peas, though. And meat, which is odd for a shifter child. Your daddy thinks you'll develop the taste soon, but I'm not so sure. I can't discern any animal within you. At least, not without spiking you, and that's not a good idea. Not with the way the apathy has been lately. I nearly spiked your dad because he forgot to pick up coffee at the grocery store on his way home from work. There was no emotion attached to the act at all. I wasn't angry, simply annoyed. This is a spiker trait you will always have to be wary of, my sweet Neely. Because while I can't be sure that you're a shapeshifter, I am certain that you're a spiker. Moms know these things.
Amir, Lucas, and I flew home from Austin Friday afternoon and I had Lucas drop me off at the panaderia. I walked through the back door and was greeted by the combined scents of vanilla and yeast, with a light undertone of pine cleanser. Diego Flores, Tellis Malone, and Ana Cortez had left me a note welcoming me home, along with a plate of fresh pan dulce. I knew Ana had made the conchas the second I bit into one. She was getting really good.
After I took my suitcase upstairs, I changed into my cover-up and swimsuit, boxed up some of the pastries, and drove out to the tower to see my witches.
Fiera met me on the path to the mineral spring. She looked a little ragged, sad and tired. In other words, she looked the way I felt and probably also looked.
"I missed you." The red-headed fire witch threw her arms around me and squeezed.
"You missed everything." We broke the embrace and walked together. "I take it Dottie and Dolores filled you in?"
"Yeah. You okay about things?"
"About being a part-time shifter? Nope. Not by a long shot. But I'm working on being okay."
"'Working on being okay' is my personal mantra."
We followed the path into the circle of screwbean mesquite trees. Dolores and Dottie were already in the mineral hot spring. Chandra was on the bank in a black bikini, her feet dangling in the water.
"Our girlie is back home," Dolores said. "And look, sis, she's brought sweets."
Dottie waded to the side of the hot spring. She plucked a thermos from behind a rock and held it aloft. "I've got your margaritas right here, dear. Welcome home."
We drank wine and margaritas and ate all the pan dulce I'd brought. Conchas, mantecadas, polvorones, and cochinitos. I'd left the cuernos de crema, elotes pan dulce, and the galletas caritas con chocolate back at the bakery. I wanted to try them, and if I'd brought them here, they'd have been gone in minutes.
I was thrilled to see that Ana and Tellis had been experimenting with new recipes, and I was especially impressed with their version of cuernos de crema, puff pastry shells filled with pastry cream. I'd never offered galletas caritas to my customers, but I knew the smiley face cookies would be a big hit with kids—and Lucas, who loved all types of cookies and who once devoured two entire batches of polvorones and elotes—corn-shaped sweet bread—before they were even cool. How the man stayed so fit was beyond me. If I ate all that, I'd have to buy a new wardrobe.
"How was your date with Herbert, Dolores?" I asked.
"It didn't go as well as the one with Alvin. But I suspect Alvin is a player. Not that I mind. I'm a player, too." She grinned.
"Earp said he was a good guy," Dottie said. "He agreed to double date with Alvin and Dolores, but he flat refused to go with Herbert. He said the guy wasn't good enough for Dolores."
Dolores's eyes widened. "He said that, Dot?"
"Yes, indeed."
"Well, that was real nice of him."
The conversation died out after that, and we all finished our drinks in silence.
"You want to talk about what happened?" Chandra asked me when I'd sunk up to my shoulders in the water, my belly pleasantly full of booze and Mexican sweet treats.
"I will. I need to think more first. Order my thoughts."
"Think with us." Dolores scooped a mesquite pod out of the water and tossed it onto the muddy grass. "You don't have to have it all figured out before you talk to your friends. That's what friends are for. It's not like we'll hold you to whatever you say here forever."
"Yes, dear. We understand that your ability is—or abilities are, rather—evolving, so it makes perfect sense that your ideas about it would evolve, too." Dottie smiled at me in that sweet way she did that always made me want to tear up.
Fiera swam over to me, not touching me, but lending me her calm. I loved that about her. I leaned against Chandra, who was still on the bank. She stayed there because she was always watching over us, always on duty. I wished she could relax all the way, slip into the water and close her eyes and let us take care of her, but that wasn't Chandra. So, instead she let me borrow some of her unending strength.
Holding tight to Dolores's understanding, Dottie’s empathy, Fiera's calm, and Chandra's strength, I began to pour out my feelings.
"My mother was this beautiful, slightly wicked, incredibly brave woman. She loved me. I didn't think that would matter to me as much as it does, which is dumb because who doesn't want their mother's love? But I've never had it, so I didn't think I needed it. But as I read her journal, I absorbed every drop of the love she flooded those pages with."
The women, my friends, nodded encouragingly.
"She was a telepathic-spiker-wolf shifter. Unlike me, she wasn't born a crossbreed—" Everyone made an ugh sound that I appreciated when I said the vile word. "—but was turned when she was sixteen. It was brutal. She describes it in detail, from the inside out." I looked at Dolores. "I'm going to loan you the journal so you can write it all down in one of your books. If this ever happens again, I want the person to have some reference."
"I'll write it in the Martinus tome," she replied softly. "That way everyone will have it."
"Will that work? I thought the book only detailed battles."
The Martinus tome was a living book, over a thousand years old, detailing wars between paranormals in Europe and the Americas. It contained an exhaustive list of paranormal abilities used in battle—which was pretty much all of them.
"There's a section for rare abilities. Since we met you, I've checked it daily for updates on your kind, but have gotten nowhere. Now we'll have some documentation. The wonderful thing about the Martinus tome is that it's not only a living book, it's a connected book. While this version serves the English-speaking world, there are many more, serving all parts of the world. Their tomes update alongside ours and into their own languages, no matter how obscure. This information might help a spiker in Nigeria or Taiwan or Pakistan, or Atlantis."
Fiera, Chandra, and I looked at Dottie, then each other.
Dolores nodded. "It's real, but like anything, it ain't what you think it is."
Bookmarking that subject to broach another day, I continued. "There's a drawback to all of this. My father told me a little about it, and my mother filled in the rest. It has to do with the apathy I've been feeling, and it has to do with something they call 'the bleeds.'"
"The bleeds? Sounds awful," Fiera said.
"It is," I said. "What's more, it has already begun to present in me."
"The nose bleeds?" Chandra asked.
"Yes. Among other types. To break it down simply, as I grow in power, my ability to draw energy from others becomes stronger than my ability to store the energy. It's the reason we had to make that magic bubble thing to protect the town when
I went into Lucas's head, remember?"
The witches nodded.
"While I was in Texas, I killed an entire property. At first we thought it was only a field, but after Alpha Juan took a closer look, it turns out I extracted the life energy out of everything within a country mile. The only reason his wolves survived was that he shifted to prehistoric and used every drop of moon magic he had to protect them. He told me later it was what he imagined standing in the center of a nuclear blast must be like."
"So you killed some grass," Chandra said.
"I don't think you quite grasp it. I killed the grass. I killed the gophers, rabbits, lizards. I killed the ants, the worms, the seeds that fell from the plants. I killed every microorganism in the soil. The land is dead."
"Shit." Chandra whistled.
"Guillermo Martinez and I survived because I did that. Thankfully, I needed all that power that day. Because if I'd pulled it and had nowhere to focus it, I'd die. That's how my mother died, according to my dad's entries in the journal. She was taken to a sanctuary like I was, and when she pulled enough power to escape, it killed her. It also killed everyone else in the sanctuary, guards and paranormals alike." I sank deeper into the warm water. "Dad broke down what happened as best he could, given that he wasn't there and no one who actually was there at the time survived. It was what pushed him and some friends to start the agency."
Dad intimated that he'd joined the agency, but no, according to the journal, which I believed over anything the man had ever told me, he'd literally started the damn thing. Add it to the pile of all the other things he'd either lied about or never told me.
"Are you saying the energy will eventually consume you?" Fiera asked.
"Yes. If I don't find a way to manage it, I'll die. If what happened in Texas happens again, I won't survive. Technically, I didn't survive that time. The only reason I'm alive is because some sleepy DNA woke up when my candles got blown out and my latent wolf decided it was time to join the party."
"You sound like Dolores," Chandra said, and nudged me.
I smiled. "Dolores has a way of expressing things I don't always have words for."
"It's a gift," Dolores said. "And for that matter, so is your wolf."
"I know. I'm grateful to her, and I'm scared of her, and I'm terrified of what's coming next. Because we took care of a small part of Legion, but they aren't gone. Their leader is ruthless, and he knows how powerful I am. He'll show up here, mark my words."
"We'll fight." Jaw set, mouth pressed into a hard line, Fiera sat up, splashing water into my eyes. "Tower magic, moon magic, fire magic, Chandra's violence. We'll read Sun Tau's Art of War from cover to cover and study Machiavelli, Genghis Khan, and General Patton. We won't let them hurt you, Neely."
"She's not worried about herself." Chandra leaned down to peer into my water-logged face. "She's worried about us."
"I won't let them hurt any of you." My voice dropped low, a growl underscoring my point. My wolf had spoken. "And I won't let them have Lucas, either. No one hurts him on my watch."
A cool winter wind moved through the mesquite trees, shaking the screwbean pods like castanets. Normally, I'd have welcomed the icy breeze while I was neck deep in steamy water, but tonight it felt like a bad omen.
"I'll certainly consult the grimoire, but I've been reading it every day for the allotted forty-two minutes and haven't seen anything so far." Dottie asked.
Chandra frowned. "Allotted forty-two minutes?"
"Any more than that and it starts to drain her power and could possibly drive her insane," Dolores replied. She pulled herself out of the hot spring and onto the muddy bank, then squinted down at me. "Did your dad have any suggestions about what you could do about the energy problem?"
"His idea was to start a pack and then bring my mom into the pack to spread out her power. In the journal, he says theoretically that it would not only help her, but also empower any pack she joined."
"Empower?" Fiera asked.
"Like, make everyone way more powerful. The weakest beta would become as strong as the weakest alpha in the group. The alphas would have more power at their fingertips than they could fathom, and the alpha leader would be unstoppable."
"I don't get it. Why didn't your mom do it? Why didn't she join your dad's pack—or any pack?"
"As a teen, she was changed by a wolf against her will. Not my dad, but still," I said. "How do you think she would have felt about being in a pack after that?"
The women nodded. Except Chandra.
"But he was her husband. Didn't she trust him?"
I shook my head. "Mom was young, not dumb. She knew what he was capable of, even back then. She loved him, but I don't think she fully trusted him."
Chandra didn't say anything else, but I could tell what she was thinking without reading her or hearing the words out of her mouth.
You can trust Lucas.
Chapter Thirty-One
Chandra took me home at around eight p.m. I'd worn the sobering charm, so I wasn't tipsy anymore, but she didn't trust it and drove me home. Fiera would drive my car to town tomorrow when she came in for coffee and Chandra would give her a lift home.
I noticed how quickly the hyena shifter offered her assistance to the fire witch, but I said nothing to her about it. If something was happening between them, it was delicate and fragile, and I didn't want to damage it. Chandra didn't trust easily, but when she loved, it was an enormously powerful thing. Fiera would be so fortunate to have that love. I'd never met two people who needed it more.
Speaking of love, I caught the man I loved with an elote pan dulce in his mouth when I walked through the back door of my panaderia.
"Back off, Blacke. I need to sample those," I snapped.
He smiled at me, mouth full of pastry. "I can tell you right now. They're delicious."
"You are not exactly discerning when it comes to pastries."
"Take that back. I'm discerning. I just happen to have a sweet tooth for Mexican pastries, mi galleta azúcar." He waggled his brows at me and I rolled my eyes.
"Where did you learn to say sugar cookie in Spanish?"
"I asked Auntie Gert." He was so pleased with himself that I had to smile. Then I looked at the plate of pan dulce. He'd only left me one of each kind.
"Glutton," I muttered.
"Mean." Lucas polished off the last of his elote. "You should have said it in Spanish. I bet it sounds nicer. Most things sound nicer in Spanish."
"I'll let Tellis and Ana know that you liked their pastries. Diego left me a note telling me how hard they worked on them, and I was hoping to try each one so I could give them feedback."
He eyed the remaining pastries with naked longing. "You only need a bite to judge them, right?"
No, but it would have to do. I set my purse aside and tried a bite of each one. The cuerno was a little chewy but the pastry cream was exquisite, the elote was delicious though the bottom was a little overdone, and the smiley face cookie was perfect.
Lucas vacuumed up the rest, then kissed me with sugar on his mouth.
"What's the plan for the evening?" I asked.
"Watch TV with my best girl. Put on a little Air Supply later, see where the night takes us." Again came the brow waggle and again, I had to smile.
I locked up and led him up the stairs to my apartment. "Do you think we could find a documentary on that giant alligator you fought?"
"It was a giant crocodile. Couldn't you tell from the teeth?"
"No. I'm not a good judge of crocodile and alligator differences. I learned that a few days ago." I tossed my purse on the small table between the entry and the bathroom door, and picked up my laptop. "What was it called again? I bet I can find something on the internet about it."
"Sarcosuchus."
I plopped on the sofa and put my feet up. Lucas kicked his shoes off and sat down beside me. "I hated killing that shifter," he said.
"That's completely understandable."
"They're rare. Even kill
ing one is a huge loss to the community. I had no choice, but it sucks that he had to die."
"And the others?"
"Those assholes deserved it. I'd met those coyotes before. Seems like every time I run into a Pleistocene coyote, they're a giant dick. Take the one that assaulted you at the sanctuary. She was a special piece of work, right?"
"If by 'special' you mean she was especially horrible."
"That's exactly what I mean."
I found a couple of videos on the prehistoric crocodile. Lucas and I watched them with loose interest.
"So, what else did you find out from the journal?" he asked.
"I told you most of it on the trip home."
"But not all of it. You didn't explain the nosebleeds."
He was right. I'd avoided that part. "I'm okay. You don't have to worry about me."
"Someone needs to. You get into a lot of trouble."
"You aren't wrong. But you know what I mean."
He sat up straighter on the couch and regarded me. "I talked to your dad yesterday."
Wonderful. "And?"
"He told me you need an overflow valve, that the energy you pull will eventually kill you." In a quiet voice he said, "That's what happened, isn't it? That's why your wolf saved you."
"I believe so, yes."
"It's why you bleed when you spike now."
I nodded. "And the apathy I told you about. It comes from the same place."
Lucas slouched, rested his head against mine. "Can the witches help? Maybe give you a charm or something?"
That wasn't what I'd expected him to say. He'd been badgering me for months to join his group so he could better protect me. The one time that protection might actually be what I needed to stay alive and he doesn't offer it?
"They can't help. You can. But I think you already know that."
"Your dad explained the situation, yes. But I also know that joining my group isn't something that sits well with you. Don't worry. I know it's just how you feel and I don't take it personally anymore."
Now I was kind of offended. "So, you don't want me in your group?"
