by E. A. Copen
On the other end, he grunted. “Trouble never comes alone, my friend. That we are both learning.” He paused and then added, “I must go. Survive until next we meet. Or at least die on your feet, da?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Take care, Abe.”
I hung up and sat in my car for a moment, just thinking. Dusk was coming. In addition to the two or three Vanguard Sal and Istaqua were hunting, Sal was also about to fight Valentino for leadership of the pack. After losing Chanter, I didn’t think he was in his right mind. Somewhere in all of that, I had to find the connection between Emiko’s ghost and Mia’s sickness, all without letting any more bodies drop.
“No pressure,” I muttered and reached down to turn the car over. I paused when I saw something hanging from my rearview mirror.
A year and a half ago, when I first found out Hunter was a werewolf, Chanter took us both inside of a Way, which is a sort of portal between worlds. While we were in there, he’d given me a small token that I used to find my way out. A golden eagle’s talon bound in hemp rope. Just a day or so before, he’d also given me a raven’s feather. Both now hung from a silver chain slipped behind my rear-view mirror, but I didn’t recall putting them there. In fact, I was sure I’d left them in my closet. When the house was vandalized, I’d seen them both sitting in a puddle of chocolate syrup on the floor.
I let go of the key, sat back in my seat, and looked around. The car had been parked right there in plain sight the whole time I’d been talking to Patsy. No one had come or gone. Not that I’d been watching the car. I should have heard if someone opened the door. But it was hard to tell what things on the reservation are capable of. It felt like a sick joke, one that made my heart ache.
For a long moment, I sat and watched the feather dance in the dry air coming from the vents. Then, I reached up and lifted the chain off the mirror, dropping it around my neck. It felt heavier than a small chain like that ought to, but I chalked it up to the weight of the talon. When the talon fell against my chest, I felt the faint, heartbeat thump of magick in it. Before, the feeling might have been comforting. Now all it did was remind me of the good friend I had lost.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I tried to call Sal’s cell twice on my way to Chanter’s. Part of me didn’t want to know if they’d caught the Vanguard behind the attack that morning. The rest of me hoped they had and that the bastards were still suffering.
The sun was still an hour or more from setting when I pulled down the long drive toward Chanter’s place. At the end of the drive, I found Shauna blocking my entry by standing in the middle of the driveway, arms crossed, face serious. She was wearing a white tank top with the name and logo of her gym and a pair of sweats. I stopped the car and waited for her to come around the side before I rolled the window down.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“I’m here to support Sal.”
She frowned at me. “I won’t turn you away now that you’re here, especially since how this goes will affect your son’s place in the pack.” She turned her head and looked up the driveway. “You know that if Valentino wins, Hunter is out?”
“I’ll deal with that as it comes.”
She nodded. “You know, maybe it’s a good thing you are here after all to back him up, even if you are human. If you two were officially mated, it would be better, but you’re something at least.”
When I gave her a blank look, she continued, “Anything that makes Sal look weak helps Valentino right now. The fact that Sal doesn’t have a mate is a big problem. A pack is traditionally led by a pair. Traditionalists would have demanded Sal give up his position as Chanter’s second the minute he chose Zoe over another wolf, and might have tossed him out altogether when the two of them split.” She shook her head. “Guess it’s a good thing Chanter wasn’t much of a traditionalist. I don’t like the idea of Valentino being my alpha.”
That was the most I’d ever heard Shauna speak at once. She was being surprisingly open with me, and I didn’t know how to take it. Maybe she was just worried about Sal.
“Turn off your car and park it here,” she instructed. “You and I need to talk.”
I did as she asked and got out of my car slowly. “What’s this about, Shauna?”
She crossed her arms, which only served to emphasize her biceps and chest muscles. “You were made privy to a lot of our secrets for an outsider while our alpha lived. I don’t know what he saw in you or what Daphne and Sal see in you. I trust Daphne and Sal to be good judges of character. That’s the only reason I’m telling you this.” Shauna looked one way, then the other, and lowered her voice an octave. “I am very worried about Sal.”
“So am I,” I said nodding. “And that’s why I came out. He hasn’t been himself lately.”
“He’s in pain. To him, it feels as if the whole world is lost, and he’s suddenly been thrown into a strong current. The mate and pack bonds are a lifeline, a sort of net that keep us from losing ourselves to the intoxication of the Change. If the wolf is put in charge, you must understand that it lives by survival instinct. Hunt. Kill. Protect.” She sighed and rubbed the side of her head. “You didn’t know Sal before Zoe. I only knew him a brief time before that, but even though she’s always been a vindictive, self-centered bitch, having that bond and having the alpha around mellowed him out a lot. I mean, he used to be an intense guy. Scary guy. I have nothing but respect for Sal, but I liked the new, easy going Sal a lot better.”
“You’re afraid he might lose control completely.”
Shauna nodded. “Chanter kept him level after Zoe. If he kills Valentino—and, in his state, he might before Ed or I can stop him—then the pack will shatter. You can’t let him kill Valentino when he’s like this. He won’t come back from it.”
“I don’t know what you think I can do about it, Shauna,” I said, leaning against the side of my car. “I’m just a human, remember?” There was an edge in my voice that I couldn’t keep out.
The pack was always reminding me that it wasn’t my business to be involved in pack affairs. I figured a dominance fight between the two top werewolves in the pack as about as pack as an event got. Intervening would make the whole thing void. Everyone there would hate me for it.
“You are his human,” she reminded me. “And he considers you as important as any of the rest of us when he isn’t fighting the wolf so hard. You might not be a wolf, but Sal considers you like pack, and would protect you with all the same fierceness. There may be no mate bond but he listens to you.”
I turned away from her, knowing she was right. If one of the pack stepped in, he would lose a lot of face accepting their intervention. As an outsider, I could step in without making him look weak, especially if I forced the issue. The price I would pay would be accusations and mean looks from Nina and Valentino for the rest of my time in Paint Rock. They might even take their frustrations out on Hunter, but they wouldn’t kill him for it.
“What does this fight entail?” I asked, turning back to her.
“You’ll see. It’ll be a while before we finish preparations. I thought maybe you’d like to go look around in the house. The rest of us have already been through the place.” I looked at her curiously so she added, “It’s a traditional way of mourning, viewing the deceased’s possessions.”
Shauna walked away. I looked up at the weary house of stone and treated wood baking in the late afternoon sun. Every memory hit me all at once, all the late evenings spent on his porch or in the backyard. We talked about cases, about Hunter, what to expect in a world that would never understand him. And we’d laughed. Chanter had been a very serious person most of the time, but his laugh was infectious. My chest felt tight at the memory of it.
I realized I was gripping the talon I wore around my neck and rubbing the rough edge of the feather with my thumb. I let my hand drop to the side. Maybe Chanter left some writings or information in his home, Marcus had suggested when we spoke of ghost sickness. I’d come out to the house ear
ly with the intention of searching the place just in case. Now that I’d been given permission, I almost didn’t want to go inside. It wasn’t dread that made me hesitate. It was respect. This was Chanter’s place. Going through his things without his permission felt wrong. But he was dead. I wouldn’t be getting his permission.
I trudged wearily up the short set of stairs and tugged open the screen door. The familiar scent of Chanter’s cigarettes and spicy cooking drifted out to meet me. It had probably been days since he’d cooked, even longer since he’d smoked in that entry way, but the house had soaked up the smells. He’d left a half-finished cup of water on the counter next to a bottle of prescription strength painkillers. I picked up the bottle, which had been filled almost three months ago. It still looked mostly full. He must have been in a lot of pain to bring it out that morning. I knew how much Chanter eschewed modern medicine.
I won’t find any answers here, I thought putting the bottle back down. I need to find where he kept his notes on magick and spells.
As I was thinking that, a floorboard creaked down the hall. My head snapped up, and my brain went on high alert. It wasn’t inconceivable that another member of the pack was in the house, but Shauna hadn’t mentioned anyone. I hadn’t sensed anyone either.
I came around the kitchen counter as slow and quiet as possible and headed down the darkened hallway. If there was another werewolf in there, I didn’t want to startle them, but on the off chance that it was someone with more sinister intentions, I still wanted to catch them.
The first door was to the bathroom. I pushed it open, checked inside and behind the door. Nothing. I moved to the second door and put my hand on the doorknob. There was a scraping sound down the hall so I abandoned the thought of checking the first bedroom in favor of the second. I rested my fingers lightly on the doorknob and waited, my ear pressed against the door. Silence on the other side.
After counting to three, I turned the knob, and pushed open the door on a bedroom I’d never been in before. I’d spent several nights at Chanter’s with Leo and Hunter while the rest of them went on a hunt, but I’d always either slept on the sofa or in the spare bedroom. This one belonged to Chanter. Like most werewolves, he was fiercely protective of his private spaces.
There was a queen-sized bed with a log headboard in the center of the room. Two dressers stood off to the left of the door lined with photos and knick-knacks. The wall displayed all kinds of things from deer antlers to feather fans. There was a pile of clothes in one corner that probably still needed to be washed and the bed was unmade.
I was about to turn around and go out when I saw an envelope with my name on it sticking out from under his bed. Not Judah Black. Chanter had an envelope bearing my real name. An icy panic ran down my spine. Real names had a lot of power in the world of magick. For that reason, and to protect their families, whenever new agents were accepted into the academy, they adopted a new identity. I had been Judah Black for over a decade and had only heard my real name spoken once or twice in that time. Yet there it was, written in shaky handwriting on a white envelope and tossed down beside the bed as if it were nothing of consequence.
Knowing I couldn’t just leave it there for anyone to find, I stepped into the room and knelt to grab the envelope.
I was still on my knees when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The air around me dropped several degrees and I shivered. As much as I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I stood and scanned the room slowly, looking for any tiny change in the place’s energy. My hand instinctively went to the eagle talon I wore around my neck, as if it could somehow protect me.
I jumped at a loud smack behind me as a picture frame tumbled off the dresser and onto the floor where it shattered, sending glass everywhere. I gave the area near the dresser a good, hard look using my aura sight. If there was a spirit or ghost of any kind lurking about, that would let me see it. There was nothing but a broken picture.
I sucked in a deep breath. There was no way that picture frame could have moved on its own. Nothing I did would have made it jump two feet off the edge of the dresser. Still, I couldn’t find whatever was responsible, and I was standing in the home of a now deceased Shoshone medicine man. Who knew what kind of weird stuff he had hiding in his room? Perhaps this was par for the course of Chanter’s abode. I walked over to pick up the picture and have a look. Maybe that would tell me more.
It was an old family photo. Chanter and his wife, Silvia, stood smiling in the back while a younger, happier Nina smiled in front. Next to her, but still distant, was Sal. He must have been fourteen or fifteen in the picture. Even back then, he looked like he had a bone to pick with the world. There was a darkness in his eyes that had never completely left him.
Silvia was the most striking presence in the picture, as she must have been in Chanter’s life. What I knew about the woman was sparse, pieced together from stories Sal had told me and things Chanter had mentioned in passing. A first generation Mexican-American, she traced her roots back to a native group somewhere in Mexico. Aztec or Mayan, I could never remember which. Dark and beautiful, it was clear that Nina had gotten her natural beauty from her mother. She had a smile akin to Mona Lisa’s: enigmatic, knowing and yet somehow playful.
I moved my finger along the side of the photograph and accidentally caught it against a tiny shard of glass still attached to the frame. The pain registered immediately, and I cursed before pulling my finger up to look at it. Blood raced down from a slice on the pad of my pointer finger and fell in droplets to the floor. I cursed again and stuck the finger in my mouth.
“About time,” said a strained but quiet voice behind me.
I turned around very slowly. Standing on the other side of the bed was a younger, more muscular and healthier face that matched the image in the photograph I’d just been holding. He raised a hand and offered me a sly smile. “How,” he said, mimicking the stereotypical Indians of film and TV.
My eyes widened. The picture frame crashed to the floor and broke into three pieces. “Holy shit,” I screamed. “Chanter?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chanter was dead. The pack knew it, the doctors knew it, and I knew it. The image standing in front of me couldn’t possibly have been Chanter, at least not the Chanter I knew. This one couldn’t have been older than forty. The deep laugh lines that mapped his face were fledgling wrinkles. His arms and chest were much more filled out than I had ever seen Chanter’s. I don’t normally drool over men’s hair, but this version of Chanter had long, smooth braids of black and glowing silver. It couldn’t be Chanter, and yet, I knew it was.
My heart dropped into my stomach. Either I was experiencing a strange form of grief or I was staring at Chanter’s ghost. If he was here, it meant something was very wrong.
“Something is very wrong,” Chanter said as if he’d been reading my thoughts. “But there isn’t much time. You must listen now, girl. Hear without hearing and see without sight. Speak without words.”
Cryptic medicine man language. Great. It seemed that only got worse with death.
“You’ll have to give me more than that to go on, Chanter,” I said quietly, afraid I would scare him away. “Sal needs help. If I don’t stop him, he’s going to make a huge mistake. He probably doesn’t even know he’s about to do it.”
“The wolf feels deep pain. To show it is to admit weakness.” He pointed at me.
“I know,” I said nodding. “But if he kills Valentino or the men who...” I choked a little. “...The people who shot Hunter. If he kills them, I’m afraid he’ll be gone.”
“Coyote is a trickster. He wears the skin of a wolf. A strong wolf should know better. He knows his own kind. And yet the boy follows.” He shook his head.
I wasn’t sure what he was trying to tell me. Ghosts can be like that sometimes. Most aren’t even aware that they’re dead because death has no sense of time or space. It also probably provides perspective that the living couldn’t hope to
grasp. Add to that the trauma of being a disembodied spirit, acknowledging your own death and the strain of manifesting, and it leads to a lot of garbled, cryptic sounding speech. In life, Chanter was good at the enigmatic Indian thing. In death, he was a master.
“Tell me what to do to help him,” I urged.
“Listen.”
When he spoke, my jaw snapped shut and I sank down onto the bed in an attentive pose. He’d thrown alpha magick behind his speech. I didn’t even know ghosts could use magick, let alone affect me with it. I was still learning which bits of werewolf magick could affect me and what couldn’t. Chanter had tried before to use it on me, but I’d never had such a strong response.
“The answers you seek are in that letter. But it’s not enough. You need her bones. Drink the dust. Take the fever and you will see it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. The effort to speak was incredible and moving my jaw hurt.
“The letter!” He pointed emphatically to the floor.
I looked down at my feet. The envelope bearing my name was under my right foot. Glass crunched as I bent down to retrieve it, but I was careful this time and avoided cutting myself. Without looking up at Chanter, I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope, breaking the seal. There was a handwritten, one-page note inside that I unfolded with shaky fingers.
Instead of the heartfelt and revealing letter I expected, I found a recipe for what looked like a cannabis infused chai latte. It was especially strange considering Chanter’s strong dislike of fancy drinks. He didn’t even take cream or sugar in his coffee.
I looked up, my mind racing with questions, but Chanter’s ghost was gone. I was alone in his bedroom with a broken picture frame, a fresh bloodstain on the floor, and a recipe for fancy pot-laced yuppie tea. Desperate to get an explanation or maybe just to see him again, I tried the room with my auric sight and didn’t find anything out of place. Even when I reached out with my power in search of his, all I found was empty room.
