Part of me was horrified and lurched toward her. Another part stopped me. And sent me a shock of vision, of a puma kitten tottering on the edge of a ledge. And my/our clawed paw reaching out to her. Swiping her back inside the ledge. A little too rough. But making a point. Teaching kit, Beast thought at me.
Child abuse, I thought back, kneeling beside Angie.
Beast chuffed at me in disgust.
Not now, I thought back at her. Mountain lions and the Cherokee had very different feelings and instincts about how to raise their young, and I wasn’t going to argue with my other soul. I studied the hedge, its energies a dull red of smooth shimmering light. In most wards, the energies were a coruscating light pattern, a roiling of thick and thin, fluidlike, waterlike power, or banded like an agate, or ringed like Saturn. Sometimes even a licking flame. But always there were weak spots in it. Not this time. The hedge was a ruby red, smooth as polished glass, except for the manacles that had trapped Angie’s hands at the wrists. That was actually a second working wrapped inside the first, blue energies sweeping up out of the hedge and coating Angie’s skin. I could see the tiny sparks of electric energy arc out and snap at Angie’s flesh.
This was new. Entirely new. Which was important, but it was more important to release Angie from the discomfort it was causing.
Molly’s family had created the original hedge spell and taken the unprecedented step of sharing it with other witches. They had given it, free of barter, to the New Orleans coven. I had thought it was to cement relations with the different covens, but now I realized that the gift had been an easy one to share because the Everhart sisters had already devised an update. Hedge of thorns 2.0. A better, faster, sneakier working. One I couldn’t figure out how to break, once it had been initiated, even seeing it out of time.
I saw Angie’s pinky finger move. The tiniest little tremor, a quiver of a fingertip. A black light arced out from that fingertip to zap the manacles.
Black light. Black . . . black magic full of darkness and prism sparkles. Something I had never seen before, or at least not like this. Black light with a hint of purple, a trace of blue, a faint reddish tinge around the edges. A second arc of black light zapped out. And a third. And the blue manacles began to fail, to disintegrate. Angie was using a type of magic I had never seen before, except once when a crazy vamp clan was about to sacrifice witches to accomplish a blood-magic working. Sacrifice Angie and her baby brother.
This was bad. This was very bad.
Angie was way too young to have access to her magic, which wasn’t supposed to manifest until puberty. She had been bound by her parents, her magic tightened around her like a second skin, still there, but not available to her. It was a binding that had been explained to me, how they’d done it, how it worked, like knitting magical swaddling clothes around her. I had seen them renew it as she grew, and it had to be renewed often, but it was a binding she had begun to notice, and probably fight against. And clearly that binding had stopped working. Again.
My gut tightened and twisted again and I pressed a fist against the pain. I hadn’t done anything but walk while time was bubbled, but that was enough. Bubbling or twisting or bending time made me sick. If I didn’t stop soon enough, it made me vomit blood, and it wasn’t a sickness that my Beast was able to heal. My Cherokee Elder teacher, Aggie One Feather, lisi, had told me that if I didn’t listen to my magic, and kept pushing its boundaries, it would one day kill me. I had a bad feeling that she was right, but I wasn’t always in control over it. Sometimes it was instinctive, like if I was in danger of dying, or someone I loved was in danger, then, sometimes, the magic itself took me over. At such times, my own life, our own lives, no longer mattered, and Beast would take over our magics and send me into the Gray Between. And bubble time so she could move outside of it.
I started to knead my belly, but the bruise stopped me fast. Pain doubled me over and the acid rose again. I swallowed it down. I didn’t have long. I dropped to the floor beside Angie, crossed my legs guru-style, and studied what she was doing. Yeah. Angie was definitely analyzing and breaking the hedge. The manacles weren’t hurting her, not like they should have been. She wasn’t writhing in pain, she was mad.
Pressing my belly gingerly, I let time snap back.
The echo of Angie’s furious scream assaulted my ears. The luggage hit the foyer floor. The cat screamed and yowled and the cage tumbled with the cat’s acrobatics. Eli landed inside the room. His eyes went wide at the sight of me there. Molly blew in and caught herself with both hands on the doorjamb, her body bowing into the room and back out. Her face was full of fear and shock to find me there. Molly’s lips moved tentatively, but no sound came when she said my name. Jane?
Eli put away his gun and the vamp-killer he had drawn without even noticing.
I turned to Angie and said, “If you don’t stop it trying to get into the hedge, I am going to turn you over my knees and tan your little backside.” Empty threat. I’d never hit my goddaughter, but still.
I didn’t know what Angie saw in my face, but she finished breaking the manacles with a snap of sound and a flash of light. She jerked her hands away from the hedge and scooted out of the closet, her back still to the door and her mother. Her cheeks were red apples of anger, her eyes flashing with fury. “It’s not fair! It’s dangerous. It’s gonna hurt Mama.”
“There is nothing in that bag that will hurt your mama. She made most of the spells.”
“Not the workings,” Angie said, thrusting out her bottom lip. “The shiny lizard that wants to hurt Mama. She’s gonna use the scabertoothed lion bone!”
And that shut me right up.
“I have to bind the bones,” she said, “like Mama and Daddy bind me. Or the lizard will find it, and that will be bad! Very, very bad.”
Molly’s eyes had gone dark with the realization of what Angie was saying and what her words might mean for Angie’s future. Keeping Angie bound was a way to keep her safe, and Angie wasn’t supposed to be able to sense the bindings, let alone bypass them or turn them off.
The witch gene was carried on the X chromosome, and due to the scarcity of male witches who lived to adulthood, Angie was one of only a very few witches to ever have received the witch gene from both parents, one on each of her X chromosomes. If PsyLED or the Department of Defense or any other government agency, or worse, some terrorist group, discovered how powerful Angie was likely to become, the fear was that she would disappear into their clutches forever. The development of the psy-meter, a device to measure the magic used by a person or a spell, had made it easy to detect witches. If one was ever used on Angie and she wasn’t bound, her secret would be out.
Molly sucked in a breath that sounded strangled and said, “She’s free of the bindings.”
Angie jerked and whirled all in one motion, her eyes wide at her mother.
“Might have been free for a long time,” I said, “and her magic is different from yours. Black light with some purple and a trace of blue.” I paused and took in Angie, whose eyes were full of guilt. “There’s a faint reddish tinge around the edges. Arcs of black light were zapping out. Black light.” It was raw power, which was unstable, dangerous all by itself, and needed to be soundly reined in by training and the proper workings mathematics. Her parents had made her bindings impregnable, keeping her magics under lock and key. Or so they’d thought.
Angie’s mouth fell open in an O. She looked terrified, her shoulders rising, her head ducking. “Uh-oh.”
Molly stood straight and dropped her arms from the jambs. “Come here.”
Angie looked at me and I shook my head. “Forget it.” She was getting no protection from the consequences of her actions, not from me, not when the real consequences of breaking her bindings and using unstable, untrained magic were beyond anything she could imagine. She could harm herself, burn herself, kill someone by accident. She could be taken away, disappeared into
a secret government program, and never heard from again.
Angie put a hand to the floor and stood. Her wrists were red where the blue manacles had trapped her, though the signs were resolving rapidly.
“I’m sorry, Mama.” Angie burst into tears. And every bit of my resolve crumpled with her. She threw herself at her mother and wrapped her arms around Molly’s waist, hugging her tightly.
“Your room is ready, Miz Molly,” Alex said. “The one directly overhead. I’ll bring up the luggage and put it in the hall outside your door.” Which was a terribly polite way to tell Molly she had a private place to take her daughter. The Kid was growing up finally. I gave him a nod of approval and his shoulders went back; an expression that might have been pride swept across his face and vanished. He shrugged and then gave me a faint smile, one slight enough to be Eli-worthy. I gave him one back.
Molly and Angie trudged up the stairs, Molly reprimanding her daughter in angry hissed sibilants, anger that was also suffused with fear. Alex gathered up the dropped bags and followed them at a distance to give them more privacy.
Eli came into my bedroom, his expression noncommittal. “How bad do you feel?”
“Bad enough. But Beast can mitigate some of the problems, now that”—I attempted a joke—“I’m back in time.”
“Not funny,” he said.
“I know.”
Eli held out a hand and I let him help me to my feet. He said, “Let me see your belly.”
That was a lot more intimate than we usually got, but Eli had been a Ranger, which meant that he was a lot more knowledgeable about medical matters than your average Joe. Rangers and other special forces types often did their own battlefield medicine, saving lives on the run. I raised my shirt hem to the bottom of my bra and looked with him. The bruise delivered by the arcenciel, Opal, had spread across my belly, dark angry red with a purple point in the very center, spreading to paler red, and then to pinkish beneath my ribs.
Eli pointed to the spot between my ribs. “The xiphoid process is a little spear-shaped bone right there, just above where that thing hit you. If the process gets hit in just the right way, it can tilt in and puncture your liver.” He stepped closer and put a hand on the back of my head and pulled down my lower left eyelid. He frowned, a real frown, with wrinkles on either side of his mouth. “Your lids are too pale. You’ve lost blood. You need to shift. Now.”
Eli pushed me toward my bed and said, “Now, Jane. I’ll sear a steak and slip it in when you tap on the door.” He closed my door, leaving me alone.
I looked back at my belly. It didn’t look that awful, but I did feel kinda . . . weird. Tired. Playing with time on top of fighting an arcenciel was probably stupid.
I pulled the T off and tossed it and the jeans and the undies to the floor. Sitting on my bed, I thought about Beast. I used to have to wear my mountain lion tooth or be holding mountain lion bones, giving me access to the RNA and DNA in the marrow, using it as a guide to find the proper shape and form. But since Beast and I had merged on a deeper, more spiritual, metaphysical, and purely physical level, I hadn’t been stuck with that limitation. Now, though I still needed genetic structure to work with to shift into other animal forms, I could shift into Beast form most anytime I wanted. Easy-peasy.
The silver energies rose around me and I closed my eyes. Reached inside, to the strands of RNA. Once upon a time, I’d had a double strand, just like all other humans, and when I shifted into another animal, it was into its double strand. Now, Beast’s genetic makeup and mine were inextricably paired into tripled strands, each coated with silver and blue-green energies, each sparking darkly.
The change was almost, but not quite, pain this time, as my bones bent and snapped. Pelt sprang out on my arms and legs. My back arched, then threw me forward. Air wheezed from my lungs.
In a matter of seconds, I was Beast, crouching on the bed. I stopped Beast from extruding her claws. My linens do not need holes.
She snarled back and stood, stepping slowly to the floor. On the hardwood, she extruded her claws and stretched, almost sitting, to pull on shoulders, then lifting up to pull herself forward, her belly scraping the floor. She extended her back legs and lifted the right one, stretching from front paws to back toes. Then she did the other leg. Languid and svelte, she moved to the door and lifted a paw.
No scratches!
She snarled again and deliberately extended her claws, dragged her paw down the doorjamb, putting deep grooves in the paint.
Oh crap. Eli just painted the moldings.
She chuffed with amusement.
When he gets mad at you, don’t blame me. He’s the one who brings you steak these days.
Eli is good hunter. Brings good cow meat. She stared at the damaged door. Her appetite was growing at the thought of bloody meat, a totally different kind of cramping in her belly, the cramping of hunger from the energy used in the shift. Beast needs sharp claws. Eli will not see.
Eli sees everything.
A knock came at the door and I/we stepped back. The door opened and Eli bent inside, placing a platter on the floor. As he was rising, he stopped, his eyes on the scratches. For a long moment he didn’t move, halted half-bent-over. Beast looked away, offering to him her profile in a cat’s utter disinterest. “I’m going to let it go this time. I’m going to repair it. I’m even going to make a scratching post for your damn claws. But if you ever do that again, I’ll start cooking your steak well done. Charred. Are we clear on this?”
Beast sat, front paws close together, as if posing, but she snarled at him, eyes slit, lips pulled back, showing killing teeth.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Jane, are you better?”
I dropped my head down and back up in a human nod, which felt all wrong but was the best way to communicate with Eli in this form.
“Good.” He closed the door.
Beast maintained the disinterest and indifference until we heard Eli’s footsteps recede to the kitchen. Beast then picked up the largest chunk of raw steak and half chewed it before swallowing it and taking the next.
• • •
Back in human form, I felt much better, except for the hunger that raged through me; I had used up a lot of energy on the second shift. I dressed and got a step stool, placing the vinyl bag on the top shelf of my closet behind everything, and initiated the hedge of thorns ward back over it. It looked weird up there, some ten feet off the ground. I had never set the super-duper ward on anything up high, and the energies had formed a sphere around the bag and through the shelf. It wasn’t easy to see in the dark of the closet except in Beast-vision, though I was certain that Angie would be able to see it if she got high enough. I took the step stool with me and inspected the room to see if an enterprising and determined little witchy girl could stack furniture and climb up there. I didn’t see how, and I was pretty sure that levitation wasn’t part of the witch repertoire.
When I came out of my room, I took the stool with me and deposited it in the butler’s pantry. On the top shelf was a mad cat, her tail tip twitching and her eyes slit nearly shut. “Sorry about dropping you, KitKit.” She managed to ignore me with utter disdain.
In the kitchen, I could smell oatmeal cooking, and my mouth watered. It was cooked just the way I like it—old-fashioned oats dumped into boiling, slightly salted water. Cooked for a minute, two at most, then re-dumped into a big bowl filled with enough real sugar to bring on a diabetic coma, and lots of milk. The absolute best. I practically inhaled it and felt the sugary energy and complex carbs start to work on me immediately.
Molly joined us and looked from the empty bowl to my hair, which was now unbraided and hanging to my hips in a black swing. And was dry, which was nice. “How’s Beast?” she asked, putting together the signs of a recent shift.
“She’s good. How’s Angie?”
“Pouting. She’s currently in magical time-out, which m
akes her angrier. I don’t understand what’s going on or how she . . .” Molly shook her head in frustration, her reddish mop bouncing. I only now noticed that she had cut her hair. The short, curly style looked good on her, professional, smart, and chic, but I bet Big Evan had not been happy. Molly added, “I don’t know how she did what she did.” She lifted her cell. “I have a dozen phone calls to make, including one to my husband about that child. I smell tea steeping, and I’d love to have a cup.”
“You want a shot of whiskey in it?” Eli asked.
“Actually that sounds amazing. I’m sure it’s five somewhere in the world. But just a dribble, please.” Molly turned and left the kitchen, already tapping calls into her cell. My eyebrows went up. Molly accepting alcohol in the middle of the day? That was another strange part of an already strange day.
Eli took my bowl—a mixing bowl that had held twelve cups of oatmeal—put it in the sink, and ran water into it while he poured tea for Molly and me. He put my mug on the table beside my elbow, along with a tub of Cool Whip and little cup of real cream, and carried Molly’s tea, with its drip of whiskey in it, to her. I looked at the Cool Whip and the cream. Cool Whip in tea was comfort food, but it only worked with cheap tea. This smelled like the good stuff, and so I added a teaspoon of sugar and a dollop of the cream. It was perfect. I sat, sipping, listening to Eli as he tiptoed up the stairs and checked in on Angie and then came back down. He took a cup from the espresso maker and sat across from me, his dark eyes even darker with worry. “What happened?” he asked.
I held the warm mug for a moment and set it down, leaving my fingers lightly circled around the ceramic heat. “Molly had sent me a portable hedge and I activated it over the vinyl bag holding the skull and Molly’s charms. It was a new working that was geared to not only stop a regular thief but also a magical thief. Most magical thieves. If the arcenciel had gotten to it, I can’t guarantee that she would have been stopped. For all I know she might have swallowed the whole thing and taken off.” I waved that thought away. “Anyway. The new working has manacles built into it so a thief can’t get to the bag, and also can’t get away. They’re trapped there. When Angie touched it, the working grabbed Angie’s hands and wrists with the manacles. When I was outside of time, I watched as she shot little black light magics into them and into the hedge, trying to get loose. I didn’t turn off the hedge. She used raw magics to get free.”