Shadow Rites

by Faith Hunter

  I flushed slightly but held Bruiser’s eyes and said, “I was satisfied at the time, but there’s always room for more.”

  “Room. Room, you two,” Eli said, sounding long-suffering, keeping his eyes on the far wall.

  Bruiser and I sat silent, waiting on the brooches and the small repast. So dignified, that. Way better than a snack.

  Following a discreet knock, three blood-servants entered the room, one carrying a tray with a carved wooden box on it, the size of a child’s jewelry box. The other two blood-servants brought in the repast and a tea table with folding legs, which they set up in the center of the room. “That will be all,” Bruiser said. When the door closed, he poured my tea into a porcelain teacup so fine I could see the tea through the cup, and placed it on a saucer. Moving gingerly to keep from breaking the expensive china, I added sugar and real cream and stirred with a sterling silver spoon while Bruiser and Eli helped themselves to the carafe.

  When I had sipped and eaten, Bruiser slid the wooden box across the table to me. The wood was unfinished, the top and sides roughly carved in lotus blossoms. The wood was unfamiliar to me, but the tingle of magic when I reached for the box wasn’t.

  I opened the top and caught a single glimpse of the gems. A bright greenish magic slammed into me, sizzling into my left palm like a red-hot branding iron. The light in the room telescoped down to a single pinpoint of light. And then even that went black.

  * * *

  I came to, ears-first, hearing the conversation around me.

  “She’s breathing.”

  “Heart rate one eighty-five. BP two fifty-six over one twenty-seven.”

  “Too high. Too high. Stroke territory.”

  “How do you know what a normal blood pressure is for a . . . whatever she is?”

  “Skinwalker. Cherokee skinwalker.” That was Eli. He sounded pissed. “And it’s too high no matter what species she is.”

  “O² level is ridiculous. Two fourteen. I’ve never seen one that high except in a full code.”

  “I have,” Eli said. “It isn’t a problem. The only thing I’m worried about is the BP and the partial shift.”

  “When she wakes up she’ll finish the shift. What’s the big deal?”

  “If you don’t get him out of here, I’ll shoot him,” Eli said, using his combat voice.

  I heard a door open and close. I wanted to chuckle, but my body wasn’t responding. And my left hand was in misery, feeling as though it was in the middle of becoming a paw, all the bones expanding and breaking and reforming, but in slow motion. Stuck. They said I was stuck midshift. “Well, crap,” I whispered.

  “She’s awake.”

  “Mr. Obvious,” I muttered, taking a breath that stank of blood—mine—and magic—not mine. A stink of burning hair and ozone had filled the small room, and beneath it was a faint, distant reek of old iron and salt. The smells of the green magic that had scanned my house. And me. I remembered. In the moment of waking, I remembered what the scan had spelled me to forget. The familiar awareness of the reading. I had been read exactly that way once before, when I first came to New Orleans, by a magic user named Antoine. Antoine was dead, killed by the creature who had taken over the form of Immanuel, Leo’s son. A skinwalker, just like me, but one who had gone to the dark side and started eating people.

  And the green eye in my hand allowing Gee DiMercy to keep tabs on me, because he thought I was a little goddess, whatever that was. It was all tied in together. Somehow. And it was too much going on. “I need Gee DiMercy. And I need to talk to Rick LaFleur,” I said. “And make it snappy before I pass out again and forget everything I just figured out.”

  My mouth wasn’t working well, but Eli understood me and rephrased my orders, adding, “Get George back in here. Jane, do you need Edmund?”

  He meant to drink from to help me heal. “No. Just . . . Just Gee.”

  I must have passed out again, because suddenly Gee was in the room, the smell of him pine and jasmine, like lying in a cold waterfall surrounded by a conifer forest and a garden in bloom. “Sit me up,” I said, speaking louder this time, my voice a croak. I got my eyes open and when I was halfway upright, my spine pressing against the sofa foot, said to Eli, “Everybody out but Eli, Bruiser, and Gee.”

  “And me,” Leo said.

  “Sure. Whatever.”

  When the door closed behind the others, giving me some oxygen to breathe, I said, “Call Rick LaFleur’s number. Y’all need to hear this.”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Jane,” Eli said, cautiously, as he found my cell in my pocket.

  Bruiser said nothing and his scent didn’t change, but I read between Eli’s words and said, “I’m in my right mind. Rick was in town when something similar to this magic hit me once before.”

  Eli tapped the screen and held the cell to my ear. The number rang. And rang. I heard the line open and on the other end, a door closed. “Jane,” Rick said. The one word. Toneless. Waiting. Knowing that I wouldn’t call him except for business. Not anymore. Rick. My onetime boyfriend, who had publically dumped me for a black wereleopard, and who now worked for PsyLED, the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security. My life was so weird.

  “Sorry to wake you,” I said, my tone matching his. “Speakerphone.”

  Eli punched a button and set the cell on the table nearest me.

  “You sound like shit,” Rick said deliberately, to annoy me, because he knew, good and well, how I felt about cursing, even when I was the one who cursed. “What happened.”

  “I think I was spelled. It was a similar spell to the one used by Antoine, your friend who ran the diner. The one you took me to meet, so he could tell you what I was.”

  “Antoine’s dead,” he said, but I heard the undercurrent of interest in his voice.

  “Yeah. I was there. But in the diner, when he shook my hand, he scanned me. Read me. For you. Who was Antoine? What was Antoine?”

  “Antoine No Last Name. He wasn’t in the system. No prints on file. Went by the name Antoine Busho, an alias, as far as I could tell. Shaman. Originally from the Pedro Cays, underdeveloped islands south of Jamaica. No running water, no sanitation, no electric, no schools, no nothing but people living on the edge. I don’t know anything more about his magical system or who trained him. Except . . .” Rick paused, and I could almost see him tilting his head, thinking, remembering. “One time he said something about apprenticing to an African priestess for a summer. If he ever said the name, I don’t recall. How bad are you hurt?”

  Not are you hurt, but how bad, as if the connection we once had was active even now. Dang it. “I’m still breathing. Antoine said something about a wife. Marla? Maria? Marion? Something with an M?”

  “That was a joke in the diner. Something to lure in the tourists. So far as I know he was single. That’s all I got.”

  “Thank you for the information,” I said.

  “Take care.” The call ended.

  I nodded to Eli, who was already texting Alex with the info and the name to see what the Kid knew or could dig up about Antoine Busho. He spelled out, “Busho, Bucho, Buchoux, Boucheaux. Maybe a dozen others. There are so many names pronounced that way.” We heard a ding and Eli said, “Alex is on it. He’ll get back when or if he gets something.”

  It hurt like heck, but I got my head to turn on my neck and focused on Gee DiMercy. The small man was sitting on the chair farthest away from me. He was no longer bloodied and beaten. No bruises. No cuts or abrasions. The Anzu could heal others of most were-bites, if he got to them in time and was given enough time to work his magic, but he couldn’t heal himself. Someone had fed him vamp blood to heal.

  “You look better,” I said.

  His eyes flashed to my left hand and away. I still hadn’t looked at it.

  I said, “When we first met, you tagged me with a magic something-somet
hing. And I took it for my own somehow. Tell me about that spell.”

  “It wasn’t a spell,” Gee said. “It was part of the goddess’s power, the remnants of her curse that touches all weres and the remnants of her personal power, the energies that generated all skinwalker archetypes and all shape-shifters. That you made my magics your own said only that you were of her get. That she was responsible for your being. It made you easy to track, to follow, and to offer assistance had you needed it.”

  “The one you call a goddess. Artemis. Was she, like, an angel?” I had a feeling that she had been an arcenciel, but I had never gotten evidence to back up my hunch.

  “No. Angels are all male, in every scripture and history. No females existed. Ever. Despite the pretty sculptures in graveyards and paintings that Christians hang on their walls.”

  Which I knew. I wanted to ask how angels procreated with only one gender, but that wasn’t germane to this discussion. “So she was, what? And this time, don’t blow me off, Gee. I need the answer.”

  The slight man shrugged. “She belonged to the tribe that eventually became the Greeks. She was a prototype to modern-day witches but with the ability to charm and control any animal on Earth and in the sea. She was a legend who was elevated to the status of goddess by the worship of foolish humans around her. She was grace and beauty and power and wisdom.”

  I said, “Was. She. Arcenciel?” I enunciated.

  “I do not know, Enforcer.”

  My title, being used to call attention to his purpose. I asked, “How did something get hold of your magic and make you attack me? Who has that kind of power?”

  He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “There are few who might wield such might. Perhaps you, skinwalker?”

  This was getting me nowhere. I felt like I was dancing around the rim of a fire pit, almost on the edge of being scorched, almost on the edge of nothing at all. And the pain in my hand was growing steadily worse. I could smell my blood on the air. Eli knelt beside me and placed a linen tea napkin below my hand to absorb my blood. “You told me once to ask one of the Old Ones what it meant to be goddess-born. What is an Old One?”

  “One of my kind would do. One of the old arcenciels would do. You might ask Thales, Arcesilaus, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. Even Hegesinus of Pergamon might know.”

  Recognizing some of the names, I said, “They’re all dead.”

  “True. The oldest of the weres might know. Alas, I do not. I am only a few thousand years in age, not as ancient as the maker of were-kind. But the witches of old were different from the witches of this day. They were the first of the magic users, and they”—his head tilted from side to side as he searched for a word—“are our forbearers. The term goddess came from them, the women of power.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the sofa. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. I accept that your magic is something more intrinsic and less ritual-based than modern-day witch gifts.” I opened my eyes, focused on Gee, and said, “Tell me about the spell of watching that you put on my palms and in my soul home when you healed me of the were-taint.”

  Gee sat bolt upright and I caught a hint of blue flaring light, like an aura, the action of his magics, the layers of glamours that hid what he was to the world.

  “Tell me about the blue eyes and handprints that claimed me as your own. Molly Everhart Trueblood said I stole your watching magics. Then I burned them off and out of my soul home. And then I used the last eye I had scraped of the walls to track you down.”

  Gee stared at me, his face unreadable. A waiting silence stretched between us before he said, “You should not have been able to find me through my own magics. You should not have been able to burn them away. No one should. No one but Artemis.”

  I gestured with my right hand to Eli and the small carved wooden box on the table near him. “The person who used the magic on the brooches used a form of the watching magics to spy on me, to read me. I think they got to me so easily though the remnants of your original spell. I think that because they used the same seeing eye on my palm, but greenish, not your woad blue. We’re going to open the box, and you are going to tell me what you can about the energies on the brooches, and how their magic worked on your spell.”

  “Should we take the box elsewhere to open it again?” Bruiser asked.

  “No,” I said. “He should see what happens if it happens again. He can maybe tell us something about it.”

  Slowly, as if he was defusing a bomb, Eli opened the box. The stink of iron, salt, and burned-hair magic filled the air, nose curling even to Eli. The energies of two brooches were far more than simply the sum of their magic. It felt like the magic squared. I wanted to take them home and have Molly and Evan inspect them. But for now I watched as Gee DiMercy sniffed the brooches, then extended a hand over them, as if feeling for radiant heat. Finally he picked one up and hefted it, as if checking the weight, held it to the light overhead. Then he placed it back in the box. “It is unlike my magics. It is purely witch magic, but a working that draws from many doctrines and follows more than one set of principles. It is my feeling that it was constructed specifically for you, not me, Enforcer, and that you are correct in saying that it passed to me through the old healing I performed when we first met. Its purpose is to read and understand. To control. To pacify. And to enslave.”

  That was nothing new.

  “But the main peculiarity of the workings contained in the brooches is that they can fuse the energies of differing magics and use them. If the magics found a place in your spirit that was still touched by the memory of my magics, it was able to read that and return the information to the creators of the spells, who could then craft a new working using that information. And it would be able to use any other magics it discovered.” He looked again at my left hand. “Even the magics that belong to you alone. I have never seen such a thing.”

  “So could it also have traced back, through me to you, and used your magics against you?”

  Leo said, “Girrard? Is this why you attacked my Enforcer? Because your magics were turned to another’s purpose?”

  Gee’s face was pinched with worry, his black hair falling over his ears, tangled in front of his eyes. “It is possible. I do not recall much of the duel between Jane and me. I recall only a sense of euphoria and bliss. I do not recall other than the emotions of great joy. Until I smelled her blood. Then I began to awaken.”

  I needed to think, to meditate, to find some kind of healing, but my pain was too great and this was too important. I managed “Okay,” thinking about other things that had been inside, or part of, my soul home. Eli poured me glass of cold water and I took it in my good hand and drank it empty before passing it back. Casually, watching Leo’s face, I asked, “Do you think the green magic could reach out and control Leo?”

  The expressions that flitted across the face of the Master of the City of New Orleans were too swift and too numerous for me to catch, all except the ones that rode the crest of the emotional storm. Shock. Recognition of danger, followed by fury. Realization that he had screwed up majorly when he tried to force a binding on me, a binding that might let him be controlled or attacked through me. I almost said, Karmic payback is such a bitch, but I held it in and let a sweet smile onto my face, waiting him out. “I will have Grégoire drink of me regularly,” he said stiffly. “If there is external magic he will detect it.” With those words, Leo left the room.

  As the door swung closed behind him, I said very softly, “Karma’s payback is a bitch.” There was the barest movement of the door handle that let me know Leo had heard.

  CHAPTER 9

  Drugged Dream in My Soul Home

  The moment Leo was gone, Eli closed the box, chuckling evilly. Bruiser knelt beside me. “Jane. Your hand is getting worse.”

  “I noticed.” I raised the hand, which felt heavier than it should, and this time I looked at it. It was neit
her hand nor paw, not the long-fingered, knobby-knuckled version of my half-Beast form. It was more of a club, the way a hand might look if it was stuffed into a paw-shaped and furred mitten. Something a kid might wear trick-or-treating on Halloween.

  “You need to shift.”

  “Yeah. I noticed that too. What time is it?”

  Eli said, “O four twenty-three.”

  I had to time to change into Beast and then shift back. But I wanted to be at home, not here. Never here. “I have time to try. Take me home?”

  Bruiser knelt beside me and picked me up as if I were a small child. He stood, cradling me, just as the door to the small room opened again. In the hallway stood Leo, Edmund, and Leo’s new secretary, the redheaded scrappy-looking woman, Lee. She was holding a spiral notebook and a pen at the ready.

  Leo stared between Bruiser and me. “I have sipped from and read all my scions and my heir and the clan Blood Masters of the city. All are innocent of the disappearance of Ming Zoya of Mearkanis, and her presence in the pit.

  “Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley,” Leo said, and Scrappy wrote. He shoved Edmund into the room. The vamp stumbled and went down to one knee, his eyes on his master, “former clan Blood Master, once servus minime aestimata, lowest of my scions.” When Leo used titles, it meant serious Mithran business. And Edmund was breathing fast, in fear, the stink of his terror rising on the air. I had the mad thought that Leo was about to behead Edmund, right in front of me, and I had to stop it. I struggled to stand and Bruiser let my feet to the floor, still supporting my weight, the pain in my hand feeling as if I had just thrust it into a furnace. I grunted in pain, but Leo ignored me and went on. “I hereby reassign the last nineteen years of your servitude to Jane Doe Yellowrock of Yellowrock Securities, Enforcer to the Mithrans of New Orleans and the greater Southeast United States, with the exception of Florida. Your status shall be raised to the position of Mithran primo and you will serve her well.”