by Jenn Bennett
True. In fact, I’d say when it came to good and bad, humans and demons were pretty evenly matched.
Lon unfolded the tent tarp and spread it over the carpet. It looked as if we were psychotic serial killers, readying the room for bloodshed. Seemed somehow appropriate when dealing with matters related to my mother.
“Well, what do you say?” he asked when he was finished.
I tossed the can onto the bed. “Plastic paint isn’t going to hold a charge for shit. I have some red ochre chalk in my purse.”
I spent the next half hour or so carefully constructing a ward on the tarp with the heavily pigmented chalk, then blowing off the excess dust to prevent me from smudging it when I stepped on it. Pig’s blood would have been better, but a town that didn’t sell beer certainly didn’t have a late-night butcher. When I was done, I had a ward with a nine-foot radius, give or take. Now for charging it. I dug my portable caduceus out of my overnight bag.
“No,” Lon said. “Let me do it.”
“You barely have any Heka stores.”
“I don’t like you pulling a lot of electricity if you don’t have to. It’s dangerous.”
What in the living hell was he talking about? “It’s only dangerous without something to even out the release.” I held up the caduceus. “I’m prepared.”
He hung his head and muttered a string of obscenities. “Just don’t use any more than you need to, please. It might have a negative effect on . . . your memories.”
“Why would you think—”
“Christ, Cady,” he barked. “Can’t you please trust me, just this once?”
“All right, jeez. No need to shout.” I grumbled silently as I knelt by the tarp.
“Please be careful,” Lon mumbled.
“Hush. I don’t need much Heka for this.” I reached for the nearest current and gave it a delicate tug. Electricity flooded into me, nice and easy. It kindled my Heka reserves and created the more powerful energy I needed to charge the symbols. After setting the tip of my caduceus staff on the outer ring of the ward, I exhaled and pushed Heka into it. Like a lit fuse, white light sped along the sigils, giving life to the magical equation.
“There,” I said. “Easy-peasy.”
Lon looked me over and sighed. “If you feel any unusual pains, tell me immediately.”
“Are you sure you’re not feeling any pains? Because you’re being awfully weird.”
He didn’t respond. Just muttered to himself and brooded while he closed the curtains on the windows and checked the door lock. When he was satisfied, he crossed the room and pulled something out of his luggage, a black leather bag. Out came a camera.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making a record that I can refer to,” he said without emotion as he changed out the lens on his camera. “Take off your clothes.”
My jaw unhinged.
“How else am I going to see if you have any special markings?” he asked without turning around. I hated when he did that. Made me feel as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “The times you transmutated wearing jeans, your tail ripped right through them. So unless you want to shop for hiker’s shorts tomorrow, you’re going to want to take off your pants.”
Oh, he’d like that, wouldn’t he? I might have been fuzzy on a few details about Lon, but I definitely remembered standing in the doorway in my underwear the first time he came to my house and his “nice ass” comment.
“Do you know how many bodies I’ve seen?” he said, still not turning around. “Models aren’t shy, believe me.”
Anger warmed my chest. “And this is supposed to make me feel better how, exactly?”
“Everyone’s imperfect. I’m the one who has to Photoshop out the blemishes and knobby knees.” He switched on the camera and fiddled with the settings. “Let’s just get this over with so we can eat.”
Had he heard my stomach growling? What a cheap ploy. I supposed when I really thought about it, he was right about needing to see all of me. Hell, I didn’t exactly have a clear idea of what I looked like in that form, other than from a quick glance or two at my reflection.
Fine. Starting with my shoes, I systematically stripped down. At least he was polite enough not to watch. The entire time, I reminded myself I could trust Lon. He wasn’t going to be looking at me as if I were a three-layer cake, which was pretty much how I’d been looking at him.
“You can leave your bra and panties on if it makes you feel better,” he said.
Oh.
I glanced at said items on the floor. Too late now. And with my luck, he’d catch me trying to put them back on. I licked dry lips and quietly shuffled onto the tarp. At least the magick was solid; I could definitely feel a soft prickling sensation when I stood inside the ward, much in the same way I felt electricity.
If that were all I felt, it would have been fine. But my mind had emptied itself to make room for all the blind panic it was brewing up. It was as if the rational part of my brain had woken up and realized that it had fallen asleep and left the stupid, foolish part of my brain in charge, and now the house was on fire.
“I want to see you shift,” he said. “Might learn something we didn’t know.”
“All right,” I said, voice cracking. “I’m ready.”
Lon turned around. When his head tilted up, his lips parted.
Just for a moment, my shield of panic dropped, and I could have sworn no one had ever looked at me like that in my entire life. But maybe I just wanted to believe I’d seen something more than I had. Because when I blinked, all I saw was his usual poker face.
He stopped in front of the tarp, expectant, not saying a word. I wasn’t sure what freaked me out more: standing in front of him naked or standing in front of that camera. “This better not end up on the internet,” I mumbled. Then I shut my eyes to concentrate.
Most times I’d called up the Moonchild power, I’d done it in a panic and under duress. But now I reached for it gingerly. The same instincts I used to sniff out electricity kicked in, and it took some effort to push past that and aim for the bigger source of power. It came rushing at me, fierce and chaotic. I did my best to slow it down. A little like trying to reel in a shark instead of a trout. Hard to do that delicately, but I managed.
The power streamed into me. I opened my eyes.
A silver light tinted my vision, lit by the fog of my expanding halo. Everything was now bathed in an eerie quicksilver glow, including Lon, whose eyes followed the chain of sensations I’d experienced only a few times: a strange coolness spreading across my skin, the pressure of horns springing from my head, and the disconcerting slither of a long reptilian tail as it tickled the back of my legs.
“Don’t panic,” Lon said. His voice sounded muffled and distant. “And don’t try to will any magick into action.”
“Oh . . . God,” I whispered, suddenly feeling as if I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
“You’re safe. I’m here. Just breathe. Long breaths in through your nose, slow exhalations through your mouth.”
It was easier to be calm when he was. And before I knew it, I was following his advice. Long breaths in, slow breaths out. His camera hid his face as he started snapping photos. And once I felt I had a handle on myself, I glanced down.
My skin was covered in iridescent scales. Dark ones. The first time I’d seen them in the mirror, I decided they looked black, but it was hard to tell with the quicksilver tint covering everything. A striking white-and-gray reticulated pattern broke up the black scales over my neck and shoulders.
“Breathe.”
Yes. I’d forgotten.
I lifted a hand to my head, to feel what I couldn’t see. Ridges came to a point on my forehead, like a widow’s peak, just above my eyes. The ridges flared to make a V shape, and above my hairline, they changed to horns, gently curving backward like crests on a dragon: one, two, three horns lined up in a neat row on either side of my head.
So different from Lon’s spiraling ram’s horns.
His were textured like a fingernail; mine were glossy and smooth.
He snapped a million pictures, circling me. I looked over my shoulder as he did, seeing what the camera’s eye captured: black and white stripes lining my back. Flowing into my tail.
It jutted out from my lower back and was a couple of inches in diameter and the same length as my legs. Black and white rings, all the way to the tip. Sort of attractive, in a strange way. I tested it, willing it to move. It swished around my ankles. I could feel my ankles with my tail. It was just another appendage, swaying back and forth like a pendulum over my ass cheeks.
Lon was taking an awful lot of pictures. Then again, my backside was my best side. While he circled me, I ran my fingers over the scales between my breasts. They were so smooth. Tougher than human skin but still soft and flexible. The camera stopped clicking. Warm fingers joined mine. I tried not to flinch, and I didn’t pull my hand away. He was inside the ward now, only a couple of feet away. And the tips of his fingers moved between mine, touching the scales that I touched. Marveling with me.
My heart fluttered. Chills ran down my arms as a familiar heat spread between my legs. Wow. A couple of seconds of innocent touching, and my body was eager to climb his. My overenthusiastic reaction wasn’t as much of a surprise as what I saw when I glanced between us. No mistaking the tented fly of his jeans.
I mean, good God.
His fingers stilled on my scales.
He knew that I knew, which freaked me out. My conscience—surprise, I had one—backhanded my sex-starved body, and I lost my grip on the transmutation. The silver light faded. Sound returned to normal. And everything seemed to just draw up inside me. Horns, scales, tail—all of it receded, then disappeared. It was almost painful and very uncomfortable.
I stood in front of Lon, self-conscious and freezing and gasping for breath.
He made a low, frustrated noise as his face tightened into a scowl. Then he spun around and stomped away to the door. “Don’t summon Priya yourself,” he barked as he struggled to unlock the door with shaking hands. “If that got your mother’s attention, you don’t want her finding out Priya’s alive. Call Jupe, and get him to question Priya while he’s on the phone with you.”
And with that, he rushed out the door and slammed it hard behind him.
The awkwardness between us faded as the night bled into morning, but it was pretty easy to ignore something when you didn’t discuss it. And we didn’t. Not a single word. Which was fine by me. Because after hours of flipping through brittle pages of medieval woodcuts, I realized the likely cause of Lon’s brief carnal interest in me: my transmutated form must have brought back memories of Yvonne.
I’d seen her in her shifted state, right before I ripped out the spell that fueled it. She was easily the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on. God only knew how many times Lon had lusted over her when she was sporting horns. Plus, she was the mother of his child, so it was only natural that he still wanted her—and only natural that my serpentine form stirred up old feelings.
Maybe my supremely good ass helped. I liked to think so. But it was over and done, and as I sat across from him in a booth in the Redwood Diner at six a.m., belly filled with griddled breakfast, I was thankful it hadn’t created anything too weird between us. If I was going to struggle with it, better to do so alone, when he was well out of empathic earshot.
Besides, I had other things to worry about. Like how my pupils hadn’t returned to normal since I shifted last night. They were elliptical, slitlike snake eyes, and my blue irises were shot through with silver. My halo was also brighter than normal. A couple of hours ago, both of these problems were worse, so at least it was fading.
But still. Not good. I thought of Priya’s warning that the Moonchild would overpower the human part of me, which could strengthen my mother’s choke hold.
Lon wasn’t convinced. He thought maybe this was just a temporary side effect—that because my transmutation wasn’t aided by an artificial spell, as his was, maybe shifting back down just wasn’t ever going to be as clean as it was for him. We were both hopeful that the side effects would continue to fade, but for now, I was forced to hide my silvery irises by wearing sunglasses indoors, like a complete jackass.
“I don’t think I’ve ever put away that many pancakes before,” I said, slumping in my seat.
“I’m impressed,” he said, giving me a soft smile as he slid his empty plate over the scratched Formica tabletop. “Vitamins.” He nodded toward the three pills he’d foisted on me like some nagging parent—to aid in my continued recovery from the hospital stay, he insisted.
I took them with the pulpy dregs of my orange juice, then ran my finger through the puddle of cooling syrup on my plate and licked it. “If our waitress doesn’t show up soon, I might eat a few more.”
She was running late, apparently. And neither the cook nor the other waitress had heard the name Robert Wildeye. If our luck didn’t change soon, I didn’t know what we’d do. Walk around town holding up a sign like chauffeurs in airports?
I’d called Jupe after the whole naked, scaly modeling session. The kid sounded a little weird—I think he said “uh” a dozen times during the phone call—but he did what I asked and summoned my guardian. Upon being questioned, Priya informed us he hadn’t noticed my transmutation in the Æthyr. The tarp ward had worked. Whether my mother had noticed, though, Priya didn’t know. All he could tell was that she was still in the Æthyr, she was still on the run, and he was still tracking her.
Better there than here, I supposed.
The diner’s front door squeaked open. Lon and I both glanced at the woman striding into the restaurant. Middle-aged. Curly brown hair streaked with gray. A little plump and a whole lot in a rush. “Sorry I’m late, Carol,” she said, disappearing behind swinging doors for a couple of minutes before reappearing without her coat. Like the other waitress’s, her dress matched the avocado tile floor. She was still tying an apron around her waist when she approached our table with a pencil clamped between her teeth.
Her nametag read “June.” That was our gal. I guessed I hadn’t realized just how enthusiastic I was to finally see her, because I heard a loud crack and looked down to find that my fork had snapped in two, right in my hand. The tine side clanged against my plate as it fell.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
June stuffed the pencil in her apron pocket and smiled. “Don’t be. Those things break in the dishwasher all the time. Customers complain that they can’t cut into a steak without bending the knives. The owner is too cheap to buy anything better.” She whisked up the broken fork pieces along with our plates, deftly cleaning up the table as she talked. “Carol said you two were asking for me?”
“Kid at the gas station said you might be able to help us,” Lon said.
“Joey or Henry?”
“Joey,” I lied smoothly. As good a name as any. I didn’t want to get into a Who’s Who of Golden Peak; the sun had risen, so it was now officially my bedtime, and the fake maple syrup was giving me heartburn. “We’re looking for a man named Robert Wildeye. He’s a private detective. Supposed to have an office in town, but we can’t find it.”
“Robert Wildeye?” The waitress scrunched up her nose. “You don’t mean old Bobby Wilde, do you? Not a detective—at least, not to my knowledge. A retired pilot.”
I glanced at Lon and read what I was thinking on his face. Never discount coincidence, and that name was too close to the one we sought. Someone who kept his address secret—and someone who was able to uncover things about my family that an entire army of journalists and cops failed to find—well, someone like that could very well be using another name. Magicians did it all the time to keep their private lives private. Hell, I was doing it right that second.
“He’s a retired pilot?” Lon asked. “Does he have a son, maybe?”
The waitress shook her head. “Never married, no son. And he was a retired pilot—as in, he’s passed on.”
> Dammit. I discreetly kicked the table leg. Metal creaked. Loudly. For a second, I thought I’d kicked the leg away from where it was bolted to the floor. This diner was a freaking shambles.
“Maybe this isn’t the guy we’re looking for,” Lon said. “I think he would’ve had an office downtown—”
“Definitely not,” the waitress said. “Bobby hated coming into town. Never was much of a social creature. He moved out here about ten years ago now, I guess. Mostly kept to himself. Had a cabin near the state park. That’s where they found the body in early January. First murder in this area since the late eighties.”
“Murder?”
“Shot,” she said in a low, salacious tone. “One of the park rangers found him in his backyard. He’d been dead for two weeks, and no one knew. At first, they thought maybe a hunter had shot him, but the bullet was from a handgun at close range. Terrible. Scared the whole town to bits. Sheriff said we weren’t in danger, though. Bobby had likely just made the wrong person mad. He had dealings with a lot of the rich folks who build on the mountain.”
“Is that so?” Lon murmured.
“People from L.A. were always heading up to see him,” she said. “My bet is that it was something to do with a debt or money.”
“Usually is,” Lon said.
June smiled, happy to have Lon’s validation. “Anyway, his only family is a brother from Vancouver. He came down for the funeral. Nice man. Little harried and overwhelmed. Said he’d be back in a few weeks to clear out Bobby’s things and sell the cabin. I had to do that when my mother died—estate taxes and paperwork. What a nightmare.”
“I can imagine.”
“Still, the brother will make a pretty penny off that property. Everything on Diamond Trail is selling these days, and Bobby’s land butts up against the old state park entrance. Once the park gets its funding approved, they’re building a nice restaurant and gift shop up there. Oh, the Deacons are here.”
