Shifting Dreams (22 page)

Then he opened the door, stepped out, and shut it quietly behind him.

Jena couldn’t breathe.
Yazzie
. Same middle name. Cousin? Brother? Jena sank onto the couch, tears rolling down her face. Devin was quietly banging his head against the wall.

“Damn, damn, damn, I should have known.” Devin shook his head. “Stupid superstitions. He was the king of the department after that raid. It was all over the news. Even national. He’d been the one to coordinate the local teams with the feds. Hero cop and he takes early retirement. I should have known there was more to the story.”

“I should have known, too.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I feel horrible. He thinks I don’t trust him, Dev. Thinks I thought he’d hurt the boys. I know he wouldn’t. I’d never put his shifting together with the Navajo myths. But then I heard that word, and—”

“Don’t blame yourself. Skinwalkers make for some seriously messed up stories.”

Like Devin, Jena had acquainted herself with most of the local legends from the Native American tribes around them. There were lots of shapeshifter stories, few of them were anything but sinister, especially in Navajo beliefs. Skinwalkers were black magic witches that perverted the natural harmony in Navajo beliefs. They killed and cursed to get power. Broke traditional beliefs in a quest to trick and manipulate the people around them. They were said to be able to shift into any animal they wanted. The most evil among them, by killing a relative, were able to wear the skin of human beings themselves.

For anyone raised Navajo, the practice of shifting into an animal or anything else was considered black magic. Jena didn’t know the specifics, doubted anyone outside the tribe did, but it wasn’t good.

But those were just legends. Weren’t they?

“The dead,” she heard Devin say. “He must have touched the dead so many times…”

Dead bodies were a serious taboo for traditional Navajo.

“He worked in homicide before he went into Narcotics,” Devin said. “His family must have loved that. He told you much about them?”

“No. He doesn’t talk about the past. I think he grew up in Albuquerque. How bad would it have been for him?”

Devin shrugged. “Depends on how traditional his family was, but it could have been bad.”

And yet, he’d stood for those who’d been killed and couldn’t speak. Jena hung her head.

“I wonder if that’s why he switched to narcotics,” Devin said. “To appease his family.”
 

“And then he had to kill a family member?”

Devin slumped down next to her. “No wonder he wanted to leave New Mexico.”

“Then he comes out here and gets caught up in our craziness. A town full of shapeshifters. A murder. And now the poor guy’s turning into your ugly self.”

“Hey.” He nudged her shoulder, but Jena knew he wasn’t really annoyed. “You need to go talk to him.”

“He probably hates me. And he has every reason to.”

“Did you see his face, Jena? He doesn’t hate anyone but himself.”

Could your heart actually hurt? Jena’s did. “He’s probably sick from shifting, too.”

“You got anything to help that?”

She shrugged. “Ginger tea helps a little when you first shift.”

“Go. Take him some and apologize for doubting him. I’ll go track down your dad and talk to Caleb later. I owe him an apology, too.”

“He’s going to be mad.”

“Then he’ll be mad, Jena. He has a right to be. We still have to apologize.”

She sighed. “You’re right.”

Jena stepped out of the door a half an hour later holding a thermos of ginger tea. Her dad was walking back from Caleb’s trailer.

“Got the AC working again.”

She groaned. “I completely forgot about that.”

“Well, there was a bit of excitement. You’re mom’s gonna have to buckle down and get a new one for that unit. The old one’s shot. The boys are with her, by the way.”

“Okay.”

“You bringing him some tea?”

“Yep.”

“That’ll help.” Tom looked off toward the trailer. “Poor kid. Hell of a thing to stumble into. It’s a lot to deal with.”

“We all manage.”

“Yeah…” Tom was thoughtful. “But we’ve got family and clans and friends we’ve known our whole life here. He doesn’t have any of that. Not really. And he’s not really like any of us, either. I don’t envy the man.”

“Did Dev explain about the skinwalker thing?”

Tom shrugged. “A little. Said the guy had to kill his cousin or something in a police raid.”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

“That’s horrible. As for the rest of the superstitions?” Tom frowned, then looked away. “I don’t figure any legend tells the whole truth about anything, you know? It’s superstition. We’re more than the stories they tell about us, aren’t we, Jena?”

She blinked away tears and nodded. “Yeah, we are.”

Tom slapped his work gloves on his leg a few more times, then started back for the trailer parked on the far side of the property. “We’ll keep the boys for a while. I’ll tell Cathy to figure on fixing them dinner. Go help your friend.”

It was as good as an endorsement as Thomas Crowe was ever going to give to a man who liked his daughter. “Thanks, Dad.”

He nodded and Jena continued toward Caleb’s place. The blinds were all drawn, though she could hear some quiet music coming from inside. She tapped on the door, then stepped back, letting him decide whether he wanted to speak to her again.

After a few minutes, he opened the door. He was in a pair of sweatpants and nothing else.
 

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“I… uh, I came to apologize.”

He didn’t say anything. She almost wanted to him to yell. It would have been better than his quiet condemnation.

“I would never in a million years hurt a child. Any child. But especially yours.”

She brushed a tear that escaped down her cheek. “I know that. I
know
that. I was scared. And I didn’t know what to think. I reacted poorly when you were probably just as scared. And then Dev accused you of… you know. And I know there must be an explanation—not that you owe one to me, or anything—but I know there must be one. And it was… it was surprise and shock. And I’m so sorry.” She bit her lip and forced herself to look into his dark eyes. “I’m sorry, Caleb. Not my finest hour.”

His face had transformed from grim condemnation into something that looked almost amused. “That’s okay. When you first told me you turned into a bird, I wanted to ask if you could lay an egg.”

Jena blinked. “A—an egg? Are you asking that just to piss me off?”

“Maybe. Can you?”

She huffed and pushed her way into the trailer. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

Caleb was smiling, almost back to his normally affable self. “It’s a reasonable question.”

“That I’m not gonna justify with a response. Drink your tea.” She put the thermos on the counter.

He examined it. “What is it?”

“Ginger tea.” She patted his stomach. Oh holy… abs. Jena cleared her throat and pulled her hand away. “It’ll help with the nausea. My dad’s right. We get the same reaction when we shift back to our human form. At least at first. It’ll pass, but the tea helps.”

“When did you shift the first time?” Despite his deliberately upbeat demeanor, he still looked a bit green around the edges. And tired. Jena was glad her father had gotten the AC fixed.

“Twelve. Pretty average. For shifter kids it tends to come right before puberty.”

“So my voice is going to change again?” he asked. “Thanks for the warning.”

“And don’t forget that strange hair in odd places.”

He took a mug from the cupboard and paused. “That takes on a whole new meaning when you’re talking about werewolves.”

“Uh…” She shook her head. “Don’t call them werewolves. They hate that. We’re not monsters or half-animals or anything. We look just like regular animals. Birds look like birds. Wolves look like wolves. About half the pack in the Springs is Timberwolves and half Mexican grey in their natural form.”

“Natural form?” He poured some tea into a cup.

“It’s the first animal we shift to. It’s what will always be easiest. For me, it was a hawk. My dad is a raven.”

“Alma?” He watched her reaction carefully.

“A barn owl.” She smiled.

“Beautiful bird.”

“Yep. She was.”

“Big?”

Jena nodded. “Almost two feet tall. She was on the big side for a female. Great flyer. Excellent hunter.”

“Right.” She saw Caleb shake his head. “Right. She was a barn owl when she was attacked. Of course. That’s why the blood pattern…” He blinked and looked at her. “Sorry. This probably isn’t the best time to ask, but does this mean you all are finished lying to me about this murder?”

He was already thinking about that? Jena decided to be relieved. “Yes. It was only ever because you weren’t supposed to know about the shifting. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you.”

“Nice to hear. So, Alma was an animal when she was attacked.” He nodded. “And it must have been another shifter in animal form…”

“Yes. That’s why Ted thinks the wounds are so warped. The claw marks were probably from a bobcat, but they grew bigger when she died.”

“They grew as she did.” Caleb was stretching his hands out, trying to picture it in his mind. “So she turned into a human when she died?” He paused to sip the tea before he sat down across from her in the small banquet. “Does everyone?”

“Turn back to human when we die? Yes. We’re humans first and finally. We only take on animal form when we want to and at the full moon.”

“You
have
to change during the full moon?” He narrowed his eyes. “Alma was murdered on the full moon. It was so bright that night it woke me up. But you were human when I came to the house. So was Jeremy. Ted? She a shifter, too?”

“Mountain lion.”

“That’s not terribly surprising.”

“And I changed back, but it was hard. The only other time I could resist the change was sometimes when I was living away from the Springs, and when I was pregnant with the boys.”

“No shifting for pregnant moms, huh?”

She shook her head. “It’d cause miscarriage. No idea why. But the first symptom of pregnancy for female shifters is an aversion to the shifting instinct. I felt it before I ever knew I was pregnant with either boy.”

“You just don’t want to?”

“No.” She shook her head. How to explain? “You
want
to, you just know you can’t. It’s very frustrating. By the time we deliver babies around here, we’re pretty bitchy.”
 

His mouth turned up at the corner. “Duly noted. I’ll have to look over all the files again. Talk to Ted and Jeremy…” He paused, took another sip of tea. “You probably don’t want to hear all this, though.”

“I’ll help with whatever I can. She was my grandmother.”

He nodded, watching her with an odd expression she couldn’t decipher. “The boys’ dad… you said he didn’t shift?”

The old wound ached, just a little. “It happens every now and then. It’s not common. If a child doesn’t shift, they always die young. Heart attack. Cancer. Stroke.”

“Their dad?”
 

“Brain cancer.” She kept blinking to suppress the tears. “Only took about five months.”

“Damn. But you knew? When you married him, you knew he was going to die young.”

Jena gave him a rueful laugh. “We both did. Tried to deny it. We ran away. Don’t know what we were thinking, but then, Lowell always hated it here, anyway. Hated being the only one of his cousins who was different. So we left. And in the back of my mind, I thought… maybe it would work. Maybe if we left the Springs, it wouldn’t get him. That we’d have more time.”

“How old was he?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“Wow. And you had two kids.”

She nodded. “He worried, but I knew… even if he was gone, I wanted to have a part of him. I was young, crazy in love. I was a baby myself when I had Low. Most of the women in my family wait until their thirties to have kids. I was barely out of high school.”

Caleb fell silent, sipping his tea again. “I’m glad you did.” His voice was hoarse. “They’re great kids, Jena. You’re lucky.”

“Not many would say that.”

“Then they’d be wrong.”

He was thinking about his family again. She could tell. Jena rose, took him by the hand, and led him back to the bedroom. “Don’t think you’re getting lucky, cowboy. You look ready to fall over. Just lay down for a nap.”

He sighed and let her lead him. “I’m exhausted. I don’t ever remember being exhausted like this before, not even in the middle of an investigation.”

“That’s normal, too.”

“You gonna tuck me in?”

She stifled the grin. Opportunistic, determined idiot. “You gonna behave?”

“Define ‘behave.’”

She chuckled and pushed him back on the bed, but he grabbed her hand and she tumbled after him.