Second Skin

by Caitlin Kittredge

“No.” I sighed, sticking the Glock in my waistband. “Just wondering if I’ll ever understand men. Or if they’ll get less psycho.”

  “Not likely,” said Sunny. “I came to see if you wanted to go to a late-late dinner. Grandma’s playing poker at the Indian casino. Gods know when she’ll be back.”

  “I already tried supper,” I muttered. “Got attacked by a bunch of pissy weres. No closer to finding out why the Wendigo are playing executioner. Made out with Lucas. Think I may have broken something when I got thrown into that trash can.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Sunny came in and threw her purse down, sitting on the footstool across from me. “Go back to that third thing.”

  “Made out with Lucas? Believe me, that’s the least of it right now.”

  “The Wendigo. The one who might have ties to the killings. The sworn enemy of all things werewolf. You were snogging him?”

  I pressed my hands over my face, flopping over on the sofa. “I screwed up big-time, Sunny.”

  “Yeah, you did,” she said. “And now you have to figure out how you’re going to fix it.”

  “Get a fake passport and move to Turkmenistan?”

  “You could close your case, for starters,” she said, crossing her arms. “Did Lucas know anything?”

  “Nothing useful,” he said. “He doesn’t believe in Wendigo magick, which is exactly the thing I need to find the shaman . . .” I stared at Sunny through my fingers. “I have to get downtown. I know how we can find the guy. Girl. Thing. Whatever.”

  Sunny gave me an approving nod. “Better already. My car’s outside.”

  After we swung by the cottage and got the charm, we drove to the Twenty-fourth to find Bryson. His desk was empty.

  “Damn it,” I muttered. “Come on, Sunny. Let’s get out of here before somebody yells at us.”

  “I think they might do worse than that,” she said, pointing behind me. I turned my head, already knowing what I’d see. Captain Morgan appeared through the general come-and-go of detectives and uniforms, arms crossed over her periwinkle suit jacket and its Nocturne City Boosters pin. She had a look on her face that might lead to saying We are not amused in a prissy accent.

  I secreted the charm in my pocket and spun around. “Hey there, Captain Morgan.”

  “Officer Wilder. I wish I could say I was surprised to see you again, so very soon after I ordered you out of my station.”

  I tried smiling, but that just made Morgan glare harder, so I gave up. “Same here, Captain.”

  “I’m totally not involved in this,” Sunny said from over my shoulder. “I was just driving because somebody beat Luna up and she’s a little woozy.”

  “What a completely unsurprising development,” said Morgan. “Officer, may I ask what exactly you think you’re doing in my precinct?” She tilted her head. “What have you been into?”

  I shrugged in what I hoped was a devil-may-care manner. My shoulder twinged where I’d smacked the wall. I gasped. “Just hungry, I guess. Bryson’s always good for a snack. Where is he?”

  “He’s with a witness,” said Morgan. “As you well know. Now, I’m not stupid, Officer. What are you doing here?”

  “I thought of something pressing I needed to share with Bryson about the case,” I said. “But he’s not here, as you so eloquently stated, so I’ll just be on my merry and slightly lopsided way.”

  “You must think I’m just in this station to push paper and look good,” said Morgan. “Well, I’m not, Luna, and you are in serious trouble.”

  “I can’t do this with you right now, Matilda,” I said, turning. “I’m sorry, truly, but you wouldn’t believe me even if I tried to explain what’s really going on.”

  “Officer!” she shouted as I started to walk away. “You stop right there. I order you!”

  Sunny squeezed my forearm. “Luna. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I turned around. “I don’t give a good gods damn what you think, Captain Morgan. I understand that I can’t be in this case officially, but unofficially, without me, you are all fucked. Every last one of you is going to be worse off for shutting me out, so how about you bite down hard on that sour little candy you call a heart and let me do my job? Unless you want to hold me for interrogation, I believe I’m still allowed to come and go as I please, as an officer in good standing?” I jerked my arm free of Sunny’s grasp. “Let’s go. We have work to do.”

  Once we were clear of the precinct house, Sunny threw up her hands. “You’re impossible, Luna.”

  “What?” I said. “You told me not to do anything stupid. Nothing in there about saying anything stupid.”

  “Like I said,” Sunny muttered.

  I took the charm out of my pocket, holding it by the edge of the bag. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. We have this.”

  Sunny took it from me. “And are we planning to cast a dark spell, make this thing sit up and talk, and reveal the villain’s evil plot?”

  “I was more thinking we’d take another crack at figuring out who made it. If the Loup were dealing with Wendigo, there’s a good chance the witch knows the shaman we’re after.”

  “That I can do,” Sunny said. She opened the driver’s side of her convertible and started the engine. “Of course,” she said, “finding the shaman is the easy part. Wendigo can’t be killed, not the way weres and witches and humans can. I trust you factored that in.”

  “One of these days,” I muttered. “You’re going to forget something, and then I am going to point and laugh.”

  “Until that day, why don’t you be quiet and rest your shoulder?” Sunny suggested.

  “Not because you tell me to,” I said. “Just because I’m too tired right now to think of a witty rejoinder.”

  She turned the car onto a closed off-ramp that led down past the Port of Nocturne, down a dock that was pitted and rotted, showing flashes of light from the bay underneath.

  “Sunny,” I said. “Are you sure this road is safe to be driving on?”

  “Not much farther,” she said. “We’re going to have to walk.”

  We rolled to a stop under the belly of the Appleby Expressway, a girder dropping rusty water onto the hood with soft plonks.

  “What is this place?” I wondered out loud. The smell of the bay hit me as soon as I opened the door, along with exhaust and something else, the charred scent I associated with magick. Not the good kind.

  “This is Undertown,” Sunny said. “Grandma took me here once when I was about fourteen, after you’d run away.”

  “What a field trip,” I said sarcastically. “Did you buy matching shirts?”

  “Actually,” said Sunny, locking the convertible carefully, “we were looking for you.”

  She started down the rotten dock toward the collection of buildings at the end that could have been shops at the turn of the last century but were lit with neon now, and painted with murals of everything from the Virgin Mary to Duran Duran.

  “Wait, what?” I called after her, exasperated. “Sunny, get back here!” I ran to catch up with her, regretting it when my injuries stabbed me all over again. “What do you mean, looking for me?” I demanded, matching her pace.

  “Well, it’s pretty simple, Luna,” she said. “Grandma and I came to the city to look for you, about six months after you took off. A contact she had here in Undertown had heard something about a young female werewolf, but it turned into nothing. You’re right, though. It was an education for me. Undertown was where I realized I would be a caster witch, no matter if Grandma kept teaching me or not.”

  “Personally, I would have gone for the ‘or not’ option,” I said, to cover up the deep pit that had suddenly appeared in me. When five years went by with no contact from my mother and father, I wasn’t surprised, not at all. My mother preferred to pretend the real world was a pleasant illusion, and my father was so far inside a bottle of Pabst most of the time he probably didn’t even know I was gone. The surprise came when Sunny did eventually find me, and moved to the city. “You
never mentioned this,” I said out loud.

  “Well, now I have,” said Sunny. “Anyway, when they built the expressway in the fifties a whole parcel of Waterfront and the surface streets got shut down. Mostly Spanish families, Chinese, magick users all. They weren’t going to abandon their homes just because the sky closed over, so they stayed. Can’t say I blame them.”

  “How come I never heard of this place?” I asked. “I know Ghosttown like I know that a kitten heel looks better on me than a stiletto. Like I know where to find the best burger in the best dive bar in Waterfront and the best knockoff jeans. How did I miss a colony of witches living under a freeway?”

  Sunny gave me a conciliatory pat. “You don’t know everything, Luna.” She pointed at a bodega with a Chinese dragon scribed across the front, in blues and greens so vivid they glowed even in the half-light of this bottom-dwelling place. “This is the shop we went to last time. I think the woman who runs it might remember me.”

  “It’s so nice to go places with someone who doesn’t have an enemies list,” I said. “Is this woman a witch?”

  “No,” said Sunny. “She was an herb healer . . . used hearth magick and Chinese astrology, as I recall. Elemental stuff.”

  “I never knew witches could do that,” I said as we pushed open the door. A little bell jangled over my head, along with a soft feeling all over my skin, like I’d walked through a cloud of feathers. Magick, but not the usual unpleasant prickle that caster and blood workings evoked in me.

  “I never knew werewolves had nasty blood-drinking cousins who lived in the woods,” Sunny said. “Hello? Anybody here?”

  A small woman in a purple sarong appeared, her face gleaming with sweat in the close spice-scented heat of the shop. “I can help you?”

  Sunny stepped forward, into the light of the red lantern that hung from the center of the shop’s bare rafters, along with herbs and jars in rope nets. Some of the jars had moving objects inside. Apothecary shelves lined the walls, labeled in English and Chinese. The entire place had the effect of making me feel like I was in the attic of a pleasant, cookie-baking grandmother.

  “I hope so.” She held out the charm. “I was in here about fourteen years ago. Looking for my cousin.”

  “Found the cousin, I see,” the woman said, taking the bag. “And some trouble.”

  “Always, with that one,” Sunny said. “Can you tell us who might have made this charm?”

  The woman clucked between her teeth. “What does a nice white witch like you want to know a thing like that for, hm?”

  “Blame it on me again,” I volunteered.

  “It’s not one of mine,” said the woman. “This is very dark magick, made to combat dark magick, requiring a sacrifice of blood and soul.” She shoved it back at Sunny. “I don’t want it in my shop.”

  “I respect that,” I said, “but nasty as this is, it could help us catch something even nastier. Please, just tell us who around here could have put it together.”

  She sighed and then pointed behind her and to the left. “Behind the bodegas, in the alley where the transients sleep. He deals out of there. Gets way too many customers for a sack of mean old bones. Cuts into legitimate business.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “bet the chamber of commerce down here in Fraggle Rock is real upset.”

  The clerk let loose with a stream of abuse in Mandarin, and Sunny grabbed me by the elbow. “Thanks. We’ll be going now. Why do you always do that?” she hissed at me.

  “What?”

  “Antagonize people!”

  “I do not,” I argued as we pushed back out into the salty, fetid air.

  “Oh, yes you do,” Sunny said. “It’s why you get shot at and stabbed so often. You go out of your way to make people dislike you.”

  “Much as I appreciate this exploration into my many failings,” I said, “we’ve got a bit more pressing matters.”

  “Just saying,” said Sunny. “You might be here with Bryson or Dmitri instead of me. But you’ve pushed everyone away, as usual, and now you’re standing alone.”

  “Sunny, shut up,” I warned. “We’re not having this conversation.”

  “Fine,” she replied. “But you know it’s true.”

  I did, but I stormed ahead of her around the corner behind the bodegas so she wouldn’t see it in my face.

  The alley backed up to a brick retaining wall made to keep the old roads above the bay. It was marked with graffiti and fungus, and garbage from the expressway above made drifts on either side. Naked electric bulbs were strung from a wire that spit sparks every time water fell from the road.

  I realized with a start that what I’d mistaken for garbage bags were human figures, hunched or sleeping, a few of the faces lit by cigarettes.

  A semi truck went by on the expressway and the ground under my feet rattled in time with the pistons. “I’m Luna Wilder,” I said above the rumbling. “I’m looking for the man who made this charm.” I nudged Sunny and she extended the bag in front of her. In the low light the charm was blacker still, like it bounced light off it or simply sucked it in. I felt bad magick in the air, and breathed deep through my mouth, keeping calm like I did before a kickboxing bout. Just breathe and let everything else fall away.

  I still started when someone reached out and grabbed my ankle. Sunny screamed and jumped behind me. “Hex me!” I shouted. “Watch it, buddy!”

  “Down there,” he wheezed. “Under the last light before they go out.” A knobby finger directed us deeper into the humid darkness.

  “Great, because the thing I wanted most today was to wander down the creepy alley and talk to a dark witch who probably wants to peel my skin off and use it to make a party hat.” I sighed. “How did you guess?”

  “Thank you for your help,” said Sunny politely, trying to give the humped figure a dollar. He waved it off with a cough.

  “I take my trade in something a bit more personal, darling. Got any blood for me?”

  I pulled Sunny away before she could say anything that would end with our bodies floating up on some rich executive’s private beach down at the mouth of Siren Bay, and started down the alley toward the flickering place underneath the last bulb before blackness.

  A voice stopped us before we reached the shadows at the end of the alley. “Who are you?”

  I swallowed and answered in my best Cop Voice. “Luna Wilder.”

  He started to laugh. “You’re a long way from home, Luna Wilder.”

  “So what if I am?”

  The shadows unfolded and a small, stooped man leaning on a broken cane came into view. He had a braid of smoke-gray hair well past his waist and a face that could have been made from a wrinkled leather jacket, but his eyes were very, very bright and in the dimness they flickered from black to silver and back, just like Lucas’s. “So, you don’t belong down here is what, wolf.”

  I felt Sunny draw closer at my shoulder and I reached for her hand. “I don’t have anything against the Wendigo,” I said quietly. “Just the one who tried to kill me. I’m Insoli. Can I talk to you and not have to worry that you’re going to rip my heart out of my rib cage?”

  The Wendigo looked me over, his teeth gleaming silver as his tongue passed over them, and then he doubled over in a coughing fit. “Fine, fine,” he gasped. “What do you want?”

  “This charm,” I said. “You made it for Laurel Hicks. Why?”

  The Wendigo grinned. “She had trouble. Boyfriend was dead, and she was troubled by our kind, so I made her a . . . repellent.”

  “You made a charm against yourself?” Sunny demanded. “Isn’t that sort of counterproductive?”

  “Cutie, look around you. The clans outside the city got no love for me. They were content to leave me to the were packs when the treaty was signed, so why the hell am I gonna help out some psycho pups with hardons for werewolves?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “The Wendigo left you here when they moved out of the city?”

  “You deaf underneath all that
shiny hair?” the Wendigo demanded. “ ’S what I said.”

  “But . . . that was over a hundred and twenty years ago,” I said.

  The Wendigo dug into the pockets of his overcoat, which he shivered in despite the heat that was spreading sweat underneath my T-shirt, and pulled out a rusty flask. I smelled sour, rotted blood and saw a dark stain appear on the Wendigo’s chin. “You read a history book. Good for you.” He wiped his chin and sank back down on the pile of trash against the wall. “Now go away. I’m tired.”

  “Please, just a minute more,” I begged, crouching to his level. “What can you tell me about Wiskachee? And a wild Wendigo shaman working bad magick?”

  Sunny clapped a hand over her mouth as the Wendigo drew out a bone and began to chew reflectively on the end. “The hungry god. He who consumes and envelops. A clan deals with Wiskachee, they deal death to us all.”

  He grunted and folded his arms around himself. “Now, I’m tired and I ain’t hunted and fed in a month, so unless a junkie comes along I gotta make my flask last. Don’t have the energy to be telling ghost stories.”

  “Can your magick be dispelled?” I asked.

  The Wendigo spat. “It thrives on disbelief. Wiskachee rides the backs of the unwary. He feeds on ignorance. So no, little wolf pup. No, there’s no cure for what ails you now.” His chewing turned into the hacking long-term cough that comes with tuberculosis. “Now take your were treaty and get gone. I ain’t a library.”

  “I thought the treaty was a mutual agreement,” I said. “That’s what Lucas Kennuka made it sound like.”

  “Kennuka,” the Wendigo said. “Good name. Means ‘iron jaw.’ No, the treaty ain’t ours. They came on a night a lot like this.” He shivered and ducked inside his coat. “Hot. Summertime, but dry. No rain for weeks, no fog. We’d been conducting hunts on outlying settlements, trying to move Nischaka to tears.”

  “Rain goddess,” Sunny murmured.

  “I got that much,” I muttered back.

  The Wendigo chuffed. “The white settlers went in a delegation and they stirred up the people who had built their city on top of our burial lands. Chopin and his men came with torches and Winchester rifles, and when they were finished there was nothing left but ashes and a hot, hot wind.”