Shadow Rites

“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.”