Lon scanned the gas-station shelves. I could tell by the glint in his eye that he was brewing up some kind of devious plan, but I was suddenly dead tired and angry-hungry. Whatever he was planning, it was all just going to have to wait. Lon scanned the gas-station shelves. I could tell by the glint in his eye that he was brewing up some kind of devious plan, but I was suddenly dead tired and angry-hungry. Whatever he was planning, it was all just going to have to wait.
“Screw Wildeye and my mother right now. There’s got to be an In-N-Out somewhere up the road.” I was having Donner Party fantasies—blame it on the mountain atmosphere and talk of sleeping on the hard ground. On top of feeling ravenous, I had to pee. Again. It was getting a little ridiculous.
Lon saw me eyeing the restroom. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll just have a look around and see if I can find a couple of things.”
“Food.”
“Food, too. Then we can head to the motel. If we’re stuck here, let’s make the most of it and get a little research done.”
After emptying my bladder and using a criminal amount of paper hand towels to shut off the dirty faucet, I discovered that whatever Lon had in mind involved a tarp—the kind you use to cover a tent when it’s raining—and some spray paint. I started to ask him what it was for, but he shut me up with a packet of smoked almonds. I downed them in the two minutes it took us to drive to the motel.
“Wait in the car,” was all he said, handing me some orange juice. Leave it to him to find the only halfway healthy things in the gas station. Before I could see what else was in the bag of goodies he’d bought, he strode out from beneath the orange neon of the Sierra Woodland lobby and jumped back into the driver’s seat.
“What’s going on? Did anyone know Wildeye?”
“No luck.” He handed me a chunky blue motel key fob with a room key attached.
“Cottage thirteen?” I read from the diamond-shaped plastic.
“They’re all individual cabins. Ours is down this hill.”
A funny sort of panic washed over me as we drove past tiny log cabins to a parking space in front of the one marked thirteen. Thirteen? Really? Not that I was superstitious about numbers, because most of numerology was total bullshit. What concerned me more was the single cabin. And the sharing. I guess I just figured we’d have adjoining rooms or something. But hey, it wasn’t as if we were here to sleep, so what I was so worried about?
I grabbed my overnight bag out of the back of the SUV and opened the cabin door. Lon carted the stuff he’d bought at the gas station inside as I flipped on the light. Sort of musty. All the furniture was the bad end of retro, and the bear-print curtains burned my eyes. At least it seemed fairly clean, and the bathroom had soap and towels. And there were two twin beds—a small relief. “God, I hope this isn’t bedbug country,” I said, setting my bag down on a luggage rack.
“Probably more likely to find those at one of the four-star hotels in Morella. The problem has more to do with the lack of tech.”
“No TV,” I said, realizing. “Wait, no phone, either?”
“According to the German lady at the desk, it’s so you can leave the real world behind and relax,” he said, tossing a motel pamphlet onto one of the beds. “Let’s hope we get a mobile broadband signal.”
“What are we going to do if we don’t?” I said, digging out my phone. “Are there even electrical outlets? I need to charge this thing.”
“I have a signal,” he said. “Barely.
“I don’t.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged out of his thin leather jacket, revealing tightly muscled golden arms. Never in my life had I been around a man whose body wound me up the way Lon’s did. Not even salacious parts of him, either. Just everyday parts. His arms and hands. His feet, even—how absurd was that? And I couldn’t even bring myself to think about his bare chest without having a hot flash. I’d seen that chest, in my backyard, when we’d built my house ward. I had the strangest feeling I’d seen it other times, but the exact when, why, and how were a little fuzzy.
Why was I even thinking about this? Empath, hello! He could hear what I was feeling, so I might as well be whistling and catcalling as if he were some stripper for my own personal amusement. They were just arms, for the love of Pete. Every man had them.
“I brought some research material.”
“Oh?” I said, trying to sound terribly interested. Focus, Bell. Focus.
He opened his bag and rummaged around for two cloth-wrapped books. Both of them were moldering Goetic tomes, illustrated encyclopedias of demons, written by medieval magicians who painstakingly cataloged each demon’s attributes, seal, class, innate powers, bargaining favorability, and so forth.
“That’s one of the books you stole from the Vatican when you were in the seminary,” I said, walking over to the small writing desk where he had laid them both out. “You found the name of the albino demon in that. It’s . . .”
“A Goetia of female demons,” he said in a low voice, eyes flicking to mine.
“But—” Oh. Yes, I understood now. He was looking for me. Or the essence of whatever was inside me. The building block my parents had used in their conception spell. “Have you looked through it? Is there an entry for something called Mother of Ahriman?”
“I’ve run across plenty of demon classes with serpentine attributes but haven’t read the entire book. I was too busy worrying you wouldn’t wake up from your coma.”
“Oh.” I busily scratched my arm, feeling overwhelmingly grateful. “Thanks. You know, for everything. For looking out for me. No one’s ever done that before.”
A strange look passed over his face, fading as quickly as it began. He gave me a curt nod before turning away. “Don’t thank me yet,” he said, pulling out the tent tarp and spray paint. “I need you to help me re-create the sigils I painted on the ceiling in the bedroom.”
I cocked my head. “Not getting it. What do the Goetias have to do with warding magick?”
He slowly shook the paint can and squinted at me. “I think it’s time we did a little experiment to see the real you, and those sigils are going to be your safety net.”
“Hold on. You want me to—”
“You can’t hide from her forever,” he argued evenly. “If she wants you so badly, and she’s powerful enough to murder an Æthyric demon like Chora, she’s going to find a way to get what she wants. Either you stand by and let it happen, or we find out what weapons you have against her. If you transmutate—”
“I can’t transmutate without getting her attention.”
“So says Priya. And he’s only basing that on what he’s seen in the Æthyr when you’ve done it in the past. He doesn’t have all the answers, Cady. I know you’re fond of him, but I’ve talked to him several times while you were in the hospital. And he’s trustworthy—I’ve got no doubts about that—but he’s . . .”
“What?”
“There’s an innocence in him. A . . . youthfulness. And his instincts lean toward passive. He’d encourage you to hide rather than fight, because that’s all he knows.”
“Not everyone can be a fighter, Lon. He’s a messenger. An adviser.”
“And you aren’t,” he said firmly, offering the can of spray paint.
“You’re suggesting . . . what, exactly?” I asked.
“Transmutate inside a protective ward.”
“So you basically want me to put up a flashing sign in the Æthyr to let her know I’m awake, so she can start hijacking my dreams.”
“No, I want you to see if you can tap into your power quietly, without getting her attention. And if she notices, then she does. We know she uses moon energy to connect to you, and you’re sleeping in the day, so she can’t get inside your dreams. If she’s found a way to cross the planes, she’d have already done it.”
True.
“You can’t learn something without practicing,” he said. “Better you master it while you can. And maybe you’ll find that you don’t have to light up the Æthyr when you shift. Just because I transmutate, that doesn’t mean I instantly turn on my knack.”
This surprised me. “You mean, you can shift and not hear my thoughts?”
“It’s like a radio. I can choose to turn it on or off. Turn it on just loud enough to hear, or crank it up to full blast. Maybe it’s the same for you, too. Maybe you can shift and refrain from—”
“Burning you to a crisp?”
He pointed a finger at me and winked. “That, for a start. If it’s possible, then it would allow me to get a look at your shifted form.”
He’d only seen it once, from a distance, outside his house while I was tearing the transmutation spell out of his ex-wife.
“You might have markings that would help me better identify what your parents were trying to create when they conceived you. I wouldn’t suggest this if I wasn’t confident that it was safe.”
I thought about the ward on the ceiling of his bedroom. I knew that magick well, and he was probably right.
“Look,” he said. “Afterward, you can call Priya and see if he ‘felt’ you connecting to your demon side in the Æthyr, just to be sure.”
“I’m not a demon.”
Lon pressed the paint can into my palm. “You damn sure aren’t human. Might as well face that fact and make the best of it. We aren’t all bad.”
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.”
“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.