The Coyote's Chance (Masters of Maria Book 4)

by Holley Trent

  He snorted. “Here I was thinking she’d be pissed at me for telling her I was in the same boat.”

  Willa grabbed at his face, his hair, wild-eyed again. “Not boats. No. Not boats. Trucks. Take you all away. Why?” Her expression crumbled, projecting so much sadness that his brain seemed to short out for a few seconds. And like his heart stopped beating in that span.

  “Take who away, Willa? Who? I’m not going anywhere, do you hear me?”

  Her brow furrowed once more. “Who are you?”

  “Blue, sweetheart. Barrett. Can you see me?”

  Her gaze was unfocused, pupils different sizes. Amber irises spreading and retracting. “No.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Musing rather than frightened, and her scent confirmed as much, though slowly. Her body was a few beats behind her mind.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” Kenny asked.

  Just that quickly, Blue had forgotten that Kenny and Lance were there. Under no circumstances would he have wanted them to see Willa so disordered—she deserved her privacy—but he’d do anything to set her to rights again. More brains working together was better than one on its own.

  “Call . . . ” Clutching Willa tight and propping the side of her head against his chest, he let out a frustrated breath. Call who?

  Who would she accept having so keenly aware of her business? Not a Coyote, beyond the ones already in the room. Noelle would help her, but Noelle couldn’t speak. Perhaps the angels, but the angels weren’t likely to know much about the vagaries of shapeshifter-demigod relationships.

  “Another demigod might,” Blue muttered. “Call Tito Perez,” Blue told Kenny. “Give him a brief rundown of the situation and see if he can come over. I think his number is on that contact list on the refrigerator.”

  Kenny didn’t hesitate. He had his phone out and the dial pad ready to use before he got halfway to the appliance.

  “Does she have any family?” Lance asked. “Anyone who’d know how to help her?”

  “She doesn’t speak to anyone in her family. They’re not in contact.”

  But that wasn’t quite true. Apollo had tried to get in contact. He’d left that coin for her, and had forced it back onto Blue. At that very moment, it was in Blue’s wallet. He hadn’t decided what to do with it. Destroy it? Give it away? Summon Apollo and fling the shit back into his face?

  Apollo . . .

  Shifting a drowsing Willa to one arm, he wrestled his phone out of his pocket and opened a wiki app.

  “What are you looking up?” Diana asked.

  “Not saying that out loud.” He tapped the name into the search box with his thumb, held the screen up to his sister long enough for her to read and confusion to seize her features, and then hit the enter button.

  He scrolled down, looking for the god’s list of attributes and domains.

  God of the sun, role inherited from Hyperion. Blue knew that.

  God of flocks and herds. Knew that, too, but not that Apollo was a bit of a shapeshifter himself and sometimes took a crow’s form when he needed to make a discreet escape.

  He was the god of music, poetry, and medicine.

  The next bullet point took Blue’s breath away.

  God of prophecy.

  “Shit. I should have known that.” That information wasn’t at all insignificant.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Diana asked, looking over his shoulder at the phone.

  “He acted like he didn’t know shit, but he must have.”

  “You mean Ap—”

  “Don’t say his name. If he knew this was going to happen, why did he do it?”

  “Who are we talking about?” Lance asked.

  “Her father?” Diana asked.

  “Keep that to yourselves,” Blue said as Kenny strode back into the room. “It’s not something she wants advertised, and she doesn’t even know I know.”

  “And that you met him, I take it,” Diana said.

  Blue grimaced. “I guess I just hoped it would never come up again and that it wouldn’t matter.”

  He was still fully committed to the belief that he’d done the right thing. He’d been trying to protect her from having to make unnecessary decisions. She didn’t need to stress when he could protect her from those things. After all, they were no skin off his teeth.

  He looked to Kenny. “What did Tito say?”

  “He’s at work. He said he’d send his—”

  Before Blue could process the sudden shift of energy that changed the scent in the room, he was elbowed out of the way by a small brown woman whose strength belied her size.

  “Mother,” Kenny finished.

  “How long has she been like this?” Lola asked in her usual matter-of-fact tone.

  Blue didn’t know how, but she got Willa walking, though Willa didn’t seem to be doing it of her own volition. More like her body was responding to the goddess’s tacit commands.

  He hadn’t spent much time around the Cougar goddess. She had a reputation for ruthless practicality, and unlike Apollo, she actually frightened him. Damned if Blue could figure out why, but it may have had something to do with the fact that no one knew the extent of her capabilities. She wasn’t a god with a huge paper trail.

  “Since early this afternoon,” Diana said, following solemnly. “I called Blue, but he was out and couldn’t get here immediately.”

  “You should have called me sooner.”

  Diana raised a brow. “I should have?”

  “I work with her at the school.” Lola swiped her hand over her face, and the features changed subtly for a few seconds before reverting back to its original state. “She knows many of my forms.”

  “So, you’re friends?” Blue asked.

  “Women like me do not have friends.” There was no emotion in the statement. Blue couldn’t tell if she was sad about it or resigned. Or if she cared at all.

  Or if that was normal.

  Willa had practiced a similar sort of social isolation, but he didn’t think their reasons overlapped at all.

  Lola sat with Willa on the sofa and clasped her hands.

  “Can you tell what’s wrong with her?” Blue asked.

  Willa was completely out of it. Eyes closed, lips speaking silent words.

  Gods, let this be reversible, whatever it is.

  He’d do anything to fix her.

  “I can only guess. There are no certainties when diagnosing the children of other gods. Her energy frequency is higher now. Carrying more of what is hers and some of what is yours.”

  If she had an opinion on that matter, she, fortunately, didn’t speak it. Or perhaps she thought it was none of her business, which would make him like her a whole hell of a lot.

  “Where’d she pick up the extra that isn’t Blue’s?” Diana asked.

  “I cannot speculate. I only know that it was not there before, and that now it is.”

  “Can she adjust to it?” Blue squeezed onto the sofa beside Willa and tipped her a bit so she’d lean on him. She didn’t need him, but right then, he needed to be doing something. He needed to be needed.

  Lola grimaced. “I do not know. I gave to my son magic I had held back from him, but I knew he was capable of carrying it. I had been grooming him for centuries. I suspect the circumstances here are different.”

  “She was born with it. He took it.”

  Lola canted her head. Her eyes narrowed on him. “So, he is returning it? Funneling it through you?”

  “Me? What makes you think that?”

  She indicated Willa who, in her stupor, was cuddling close and fidgeting one of his shirt buttons.

  He hoped she knew who was holding her, or even that someone was there with her. People cared about her. He was going to make sure she never went another day without being reminded of that.

  “I believe you were the missing conduit,” Lola said. “If I may speculate?”

  “Please do, because I’m not having a hell of a lot of luck jumping to any conclusions on my own.”
<
br />   “Often, magic that is stolen cannot be returned without proper penance.”

  “And the bastard is using me as a loophole? Is that what you’re saying? He conveyed it through me so he wouldn’t have to apologize?”

  “That is as good a guess as any.”

  “Why would he even bother now, unless his goal was to punish her? I mean, look at her,” he demanded, though no one in the room really needed to be told that.

  She was wilting under the force of whatever magic was inside her, and there wasn’t a person on earth who could have thought what was happening to her was a gift.

  “Wait.” Blue squeezed his hand into his pocket and wrestled out his wallet. He rooted through the billfold with one hand, keeping his other arm firmly clenched around Willa.

  He held the golden coin up to Lola. “He gave me this. It was supposed to be hers to summon him, but I didn’t tell her. I can call him here and make him take it back.”

  “That is a choice,” Lola said.

  “A good choice? A bad choice?”

  “Simply a choice.”

  “What would you do if you were me?”

  “I find hypotheticals wearisome. Our circumstances are vastly different. It is difficult for me to speculate on what I would do had I been born mortal and without the magic I have.”

  “Can you tell me at least if this is reversible? Can she be fixed?”

  “What is given can always be taken away. That does not mean, however, that you can easily set everything to rights.”

  “What are the risks?”

  “Not my curse. Not my magic. I do not know.”

  Blue breathed out a frustrated exhalation and held his hand out to her to shake. “I’m sorry if I’m snarly. You don’t deserve it. You’re only trying to help.”

  Nodding curtly, Lola stood and smoothed her hands down her skirt. “If you require assistance later, you may phone me.”

  “You’re just going to leave?” Lance asked.

  Lola grunted and twined her fingers over her belly. “If you plan to summon that particular creature, I would prefer not to be here when you do. Meddling is a dangerous venture for beings of my ilk. I must limit my involvement.”

  “Understood,” Blue said.

  Lola vanished in a pop that left behind a waft of smoke and earthy spice.

  Blue rolled the coin between his fingers, pondering.

  “Do it,” Diana said. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Not here. I don’t want him here.” Blue didn’t want to let go of Willa, either, but if he was going to summon Apollo, he was going to do it someplace Willa wasn’t.

  “Just look after her.” He grazed his thumb across her parted lips and tried to push a little energy into her. He didn’t know if he still could. Didn’t know if his magic had any effect on her at all. But then some of the tension in her body melted and the rigidness in her spine gave way. She was limp in his arms. Sleeping, for the moment. Expression soft instead of strained. Breathing slower, quieter.

  He let her down gently onto the sofa and pulled her feet up onto the cushions, covering her ankles with her long skirt.

  “You stay here,” he said to Diana. “Kenny, you too. Call me immediately if she gets worse.”

  “Where are you going?” Kenny asked.

  In the foyer, Blue shoved his feet into his boots and got out of the way so Lance could do the same.

  “Oldest place in town. Seems an appropriate setting.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  That place was familiar, but Willa couldn’t remember why. Pretty, gold-tinged clouds, bright sun, and a honey scent on the breeze. All around her were butterflies. She hadn’t seen a butterfly in ages, so she chased after it, not caring that her skirt was dragging against the ground or that when she yanked it up, her legs were exposed.

  There was no one else in that place, wherever it was. She could probably run naked and no one would ever know.

  She giggled at the thought. “Wouldn’t that be a sight?”

  “Safya?” came a woman’s voice, and it brought Willa up short.

  “Who’s there?” Willa spun around, butterflies forgotten, seeing nothing and no one. “Hello?”

  “How did you get here, Safya?”

  “Where are you? I don’t see anyone.”

  “You don’t need to see that which you can hear. You don’t belong here. Your head doesn’t belong here in the clouds.”

  “My head has been in the clouds for the better part of five hundred years. Just not like this.”

  If the disembodied voice had a response to that, she didn’t speak it.

  “Where am I?” Willa asked. “What is this place?”

  “Here. There. Nowhere. You are welcome here, but you do not belong here. This isn’t for you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are better without it.”

  “But I’m not scared here. I’m not nervous. That’s a good thing.”

  “Perhaps, but you deserve more than this.”

  “Deserve.” Willa scoffed and fidgeted a loose thread at the side seam of her skirt. “That’s a word I don’t hear thrown around a lot where I’m concerned.”

  She’d never thought she’d been more deserving of things than anyone else. In fact, she’d come to believe she was less deserving due to her father.

  “So many tangled webs dangle from the branches of family trees like ours,” the voice mused. “So many contradictions. Benevolence and malice. Love and apathy. Everything is held together by lust of all sorts. For sex. For excitement. For influence. For power.”

  “Trees like ours?” Willa asked. “Who are you?”

  Another of Apollo’s bastard children?

  Willa wouldn’t even be able to recognize most of them. She only knew the ones who were around the same age as her—her demigod cohort. The rest were too old for her to truly understand.

  “It is not yet your time to be here,” the voice said with a sigh. “Get your head out of the clouds.”

  “I don’t even know how I got here.”

  “There are already too many tragedies in our family’s lore. Do not let him make you the next one.”

  “Who? What tragedies? Please tell me something. Anything!”

  No response.

  • • •

  “Quiet for a weekend night,” Blue murmured. He put his foot up on the edge of the fountain at the mission church and watched a fat koi slowly shimmer past.

  “Foreboding as hell,” Lance said.

  “You don’t have to be here. I appreciate that you are, but it’s not necessary. You can wait across the street or down the block. I don’t want you seen.”

  Lance folded his arms across his chest and cleared his throat. “Nah. I’ll be all right.”

  “You’re getting reckless.”

  “I learned from the best, I guess.”

  Blue chuckled and let his foot down to the ground, pulling the coin from the pocket of his slacks. His most fundamental job as alpha was to prevent members of his pack from getting hurt, but Lance’s job as one of his lieutenants was to watch Blue’s back. There was a fine balance of give and take, of small sacrifices and tiny betrayals, that they had to observe. Even if they already knew how the other would respond, they had to say the words.

  “Brace yourself, I guess.”

  “Sure thing.” Lance bobbed his eyebrows. He was cool as a cucumber, and Blue was glad for it, because inside, he was a roiling disaster, sick with worry that the Greek god wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

  No, not what he wanted, but what Willa needed.

  Blue wrapped his fingers over the coin and said, “All right, Apollo. Come on out, you demented jackass.”

  It’d been quiet before, but suddenly, the world seemed to have been pulled into a vacuum of sound. No insects chirping. No nocturnal scavengers skittering in the alleyways. Even the incessant electronic buzz of the nearby bank’s sign seemed to have been silenced.

  Inside Blue, he felt as th
ough a bubble was expanding and about to burst. He put his hand over his throbbing right ear just as the drum exploded.

  Clawing at his ear, he watched Lance stagger to the church wall and, groaning, slap his hands to it. “Asshole is . . . trying to force us to shift! Where is he?”

  Apollo, sitting with a relaxed, princely posture on the bench near the statue, sighed and rolled his eyes.

  The pressure stopped, and Blue swiped away the blood trickling out of his ear.

  He should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. He was just mad—angrier than he’d ever been in his life.

  “What do you want?” Apollo asked.

  “You arrogant piece of shit,” Blue said, hurling the coin at him. “You know exactly what I want, don’t you? You set this whole mess in motion.”

  “You are extraordinarily rude.”

  “Here we go again with the name calling. You want to start that? Knock yourself out for all of ten seconds. Call me whatever you want. Get it out of your system and have your chuckles. When you’re all done, you’re going to fix whatever it is you did to Willa.”

  Apollo put a hand over his heart in faux outrage. “What I did to her? Surely, you must be mistaken. I only gave to her what any immortal would want, thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me? You son of a—” Clenching his hands into fists, Blue turned his back and put some distance between him and the golden god. He wanted to knock that grin off his perfect face, but he withheld the violence for the time being. There was a good chance someone was going to get hurt again, and before that happened, he needed Apollo to promise to reverse the flow of magic he’d sent to Willa.

  “For a soothsayer, she’s quite accurate, my Safya.”

  “Don’t call her that. Don’t even say her name.”

  “She could become a household name, just like Cassandra.”

  “Yeah, Cassandra, who if I’m not mistaken, you royally screwed over. You had everyone thinking she was crazy.”

  Apollo shrugged. “Small price to pay for infamy.”

  “That’s Willa’s father?” Lance asked with a scoff. “What the hell is wrong with that guy?”

  “Mind your tongue, dog,” Apollo snapped. “I could break you with a breath.”