Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel (16 page)

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.

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 neither 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.”

“No!” I said.

Leo flashed me a grin that was all teeth and fangs and bloodlust. “Yes, my Jane. It is done.” He popped away in a small sound of displaced air and the door slammed.

I gasped and my vision darkened around the edges in reaction to shock and pain. Eli, the evil man, laughed again. To Edmund, kneeling on the floor at Bruiser’s feet, I said, “This is all your fault.”

Edmund, whose face had gone white, and his eyes vamped out, looked up to me, the pupils like pits, staring into hell. With an effort of will, his fangs
schincked
back up on the little hinges in the roof of his mouth, and his eyes bled back to human. He bowed his head to me, leaning over his bended knee. “My master.”

I thought that I had avoided this, had actually thought that Edmund’s request to become my primo was a ploy on Leo’s part, something to delude the European Vamps that I had such strong magic that I deserved a vamp primo but was all bombast and no action. But . . . this had happened. It was serious. And with the little secretary putting it all in writing, there was no way to refuse. But I did it anyway. “I refuse. I don’t want a primo.”

“Then I shall face the dawn one day hence,” Edmund said, his brown eyes on the floor at my feet. “I will have this day to sleep here, in the council chambers, in safety. Then I must remove my belongings and myself. I no longer have the funds to purchase a lair in such a short time period, and banks are notoriously difficult for Mithrans to deal with.”

“Hotels? Boardinghouses? Acton House caters to vamps.”

“I am yours. Send me where you will.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Eli said, sounding as if he was holding in laughter. “We have time to figure out something.”

*   *   *

I might have slept, because when I woke, Eli was carrying me toward the sweat house at Aggie One Feather’s place. It was dawn, and the eastern horizon was golden as viewed through the pine trees near her home. Eli pushed open the door with an elbow and knelt on the packed clay floor, sitting me down in front of a fast-burning fire. The sweat house hadn’t been used in a while; I could tell because the air moved with the rising heat and the coolness of the wooden walls. And because there were no coals in the pit, only crackling wood, hickory and pine and cedar. I looked back to the open door to see that the rain had stopped. Mosquitoes buzzed in a cloud, kept at bay when Aggie closed the door on them.

I lifted my left hand. It was shaped like a war club, bones protruding beyond the pelt, bones that had no order or direction, as if they had been built by a toddler with sticks and Play-Doh. My wrist was now involved, the bones bulging. In a normal human wrist, there are twelve main bones. My left wrist looked as if I had twice that many, the tendons
attached in the wrong places, stretching in the wrong ways, pressing apart the bones of my lower arm. I was in agony. Closed my eyes and cradled my arm against me.

“How long before the witch is here?” Aggie asked.

“My brother is bringing her,” Eli said. “ETA twelve minutes.”

“I’ve never allowed workers of magic into a sweat.”

“You’re gonna need them. This is a magical attack on Jane.”

“We need her out of her clothes. It’s going to hurt her.”

“No, it’s not.”

I heard the familiar sound of steel sliding from a leather sheath and then Eli was cutting through the expensive clothing, undies and all. “Perv,” I whispered.

“Totally, babe.” He unbuckled all my hidden weapons and piled them beside me. “Miz Aggie, you got scissors? I don’t want to risk the blade near her arm.”

“I brought a pair,” Molly said from the door.

“I am Aggie One Feather. Welcome. Have you ever been to sweat before?”

“Witch version. Not Cherokee. We’ll work around it. What feels right from both practices, blended to help Jane. Yes?”

“I suppose. . . .” Aggie didn’t sound all that certain.

But Molly did. “Thank you, Eli,” she said. “But you need to go now. We’ll handle it.”

“But—”

“No buts,” Molly said. “This is women’s work.”

“Technically, it’s
Tsalagi
work,” he said.

“True. But also, technically, it’s
not
men’s work and it’s also
not
military work,” Molly said with asperity. “Honestly, Eli. Your energies are all wrong. You might cause problems with ceremonial aspects of this. We can handle this. Please go away.”

“You may wait with my mother, Eli,” Aggie said. “She was making breakfast when you called. Pancakes.”

Eli didn’t reply. He just turned on a heel and left the sweat house. I could smell his frustration and worry over the scent of burning wood. And I caught a whiff of Alex on the air as well. I managed to get my eyes open a slit
while the women finished ruining my clothing, and I found Aggie in my blurry vision. “No more cats.”

Aggie laughed. “How is Kit-Kit?”

“She’s Molly’s familiar now,” I said. “She adopted her.” Which might imply that Molly had adopted Kit-Kit or that Kit-Kit had adopted Molly, which was closer to the truth.

“My mother said Kit-Kit was supposed to keep you alive, someday,” Aggie said, reminding me of the prophecy warning.

“Mighta already happened,” I said, remembering the lightning that had struck me. Kit-Kit had been there and I had survived. “Or if it hasn’t happened yet, then she’ll be there when I need her.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Molly said. “I’m Molly Everhart Trueblood, earth witch with a touch of moon magics. I am honored to be seated before your hearth. That’s an old witch pleasantry, which means you’re in charge and I’m your willing and helpful assistant.”

“Except where Eli was concerned.” I could hear the laughter in Aggie’s tone.

“Men. Always underfoot.”

Aggie laughed and I felt the two women move toward accommodation until Aggie said, “You are pregnant. I can’t let you stay for a sweat. It’s bad for pregnancy. I’m sorry, but you have to go. You can’t stay here.”

“I wasn’t planning on staying the whole time. I’ll be in and out. Mostly out.” She patted her baby bump. “Casandra Evangeline Jane Yellowrock Everhart-Trueblood is demanding.”

And a witch,
I thought. Cassy’s parents didn’t yet know if she was a double-gened witch like Angie, or a single-gened witch like Molly. Either way, she would already be demanding. I remembered Molly pregnant with Little Evan. Her tantrums and emotional outbursts had been spectacular.

“It is against my best instincts, but if you are certain . . .”

Molly said, “I’m good. I promise.”

“Then I offer you welcome in the sweat house of the
Tsalagi
.”

“What herbs will you put on the fire?” Molly asked.

The two women talked herbs and herbal concoctions and herbal reactions and herbal interactions. They talked ceremony. And all the while, Molly drank from a gallon bottle of Gatorade. The blue kind that always made me want to barf. Just looking at it made me all gaggy.

“I’m thirsty,” I said. “But none a’ that blue stuff. Just water.”

“Soon, Jane,” Aggie said soothingly. More tentatively, she asked Molly, “What do you know about Jane?”

“Everything,” I said. “More than you do.” I tried to focus on Molly, but she was blurry in the firelight. She was dressed in one of Aggie’s coarse white shifts, and so was I, my once-pretty clothes in a heap by the fire, as if to be thrown in and burned. My weapons were nowhere in sight, and I knew that Eli had taken them with him. To Molly I said, “Aggie saw me half-shifted, and we’ve talked while I was under the influence of whatever stuff she gives me to drink, so she knows what I am. How old I am. But she doesn’t know about Beast.”

“Beast?” Aggie said.

“That’s my story to tell, I suppose, since you’re not yourself,” Molly said, settling to a log seat, her baby belly less obvious beneath the sweat clothes. “When Jane was five years old, her father was murdered by two white men. They also raped her mother, all right in front of Jane. She went to live with her grandmother, who helped her track down and kill the white men. The old bat made Jane help in the killings, according to the War Woman way.”

Aggie’s mouth tightened in response. My story sounded so violent and savage, so cruel and brutal when stripped of the emotions and the pain of a proper
Tsalagi
telling. “I have heard this tale. Jane was not responsible for the actions of her grandmother, nor what her grandmother forced her to do. There is no judgment against her for the deeds of another.”

“Agreed. But then the political world shifted,” Molly said, “and they were sent on the Trail of Tears.”

“So she has told me,” Aggie said, agreeable, though mildly irritated. I hadn’t decided if she believed me about it all. She might just think I was a nutcase.

Molly went on, relentless. “Jane doesn’t remember much about it. But at one point, in the middle of a raging snowstorm, her grandmother forced her into the animal she knew best, a bobcat, and tossed her out into the snow to live or die.”

“Jane has told me this, and that makes her over one hundred seventy years old.”

“Give or take.”

“And yes, I know that
Dalonige’i Digadoli
is a skinwalker.”

“Good,” Molly said. “I didn’t know if you got that part yet. Anyway, she was out in the snow, in her bobcat form, and she found a frozen deer carcass. She was eating when a nursing female cougar came back for her kill and attacked Jane. Jane did accidental black magic and took both the form of the mountain lion and its soul inside with her. She’s two-souled.”

Aggie One Feather muttered something in the tongue of The People. It contained the word
ti
, which was buttocks, and the phrase sounded like a curse, which made me chuckle. “Yeah. Kinda the way I feel about it,” I said, holding up my deformed left hand. “And it’s probably the major reason why weird stuff keeps happening to me.”

Molly said, “It’s taken a long time for her accept that she isn’t a liver-eater, but the possibility of someday becoming one still worries her.”

“I understand this better now,” Aggie said. “The two-souled are . . . dangerous.”

“She knows. But she and Beast have come to an accommodation and work together to achieve common goals.”

Which made me sound like a business merger with customer relations issues.

Molly continued. “She feels guilt for killing the two men who murdered her father and it’s shaped and formed her whole personality and being. But she’s been working on guilt with you, and things are better.”

Aggie muttered the same words, and this time I got them.
Tsalagi
don’t have cusswords or curses like the white man, but some phrases can be used in that way, according to the intent of the speaker. “
Uskanigigaluda tsi ti
,” loosely
translated, meant “scalping my butt.” I laughed, the movement shaking my hand, and ended on a pained breath and a curse of my own.

“You know she’s hurting if she’s cussing,” Molly said, of me. “And the little one doesn’t like the heat, so I’m moving back against the wall. I’m here if you need me.”

Through slitted eyes, I watched as Aggie stirred the wood and the new coals beneath, muttering in Cherokee too low for even me to hear. She now knew all my secrets, and she hadn’t tossed me to the curb, which had always been my private fear. She rearranged the river rocks that would take heat from the fire, pushing them closer to the flames. She rearranged the clay bowl filled with water and the dipper, and a fired red clay tile, like one off a roof, something new that she hadn’t used before, her actions and the way she was breathing indicating that she was using the motions as a formulary, a methodology, trying to settle herself, to make room inside for all the things she had heard.

She didn’t look at me, not even once, keeping her gaze on the fire, and I didn’t like the fact that she kept her gaze averted. Aggie was having a hard time dealing with this. With me. “Can you accept me, even knowing this, Aggie?” I asked.