“What do you mean, ‘If he has skin’?”

“He might have scales or a chitinous shell for all I know. There are all sorts of things that go bump in the night. Questions. One: do you still have his eye on your palm?”

Surprised, I opened my left hand and there, on my palm, was the faint tracing of an eyelid, closed as in sleep. “Yes. Sleeping.”

Molly chuckled, the sound grim. “That’s not low-level magic, to steal part of a spell and make it your own. You can probably track him with it, but if he figures out that you have his eye, he can turn it back on and use it against you. If he comes at you, physically or magically, you’ll need to be fast. Hit him and hit him hard.” Before I could respond, she said, “Your cave. Is it a real place? If so, maybe you should try to find it when you come home again.”

“Maybe,” I said. But if I was honest with myself, it was better than maybe. I could try to find the cave of my beginnings. I had found a few places from my long-forgotten past already. Excitement zinged along my nerves at the thought. “Thanks Mol. I owe you.”

“No, you don’t. Now say good night to your godchild so I can put her back to bed.”

I heard shifting on the other end of the connection and Angelina said, “Hey, Aunt Jane.” Her voice was heavy with sleep and the natural peacefulness of the very young raised in a loving and safe place. “You beat the blue man. But he’s watchin’ you and you gots to be careful. You gots to watch out for Bruiser and Ricky Bo and the man big-cat. Okay?”

Crap. The kid knew too much. Even with her parents binding them down, her powerful witch genes were expressing themselves in ways most witch genes never did. She was seeing the possibilities of the future. Of my future, which was weird. The girl was scary powerful.

“I’ll be careful. You keep safe and listen to your parents, okay? Be a good girl.”

“Will you bring me a new doll when you come back? A pretty one?”

I chuckled and said, “Yeah. I’ll do that. I love you, Angie Baby. Good night.”

“I love you too, Aunt Jane. Night.”

“Later, big-cat,” Molly said. And she was gone.

I closed the phone, stuffed it into a pocket, and studied the blue eye on the palm of my hand. It looked like an old tattoo, worn, faded, ink dispersing into my skin. I was pretty sure it was fainter than before, as it was evaporating away. If I was going to use it to track . . . I raised my hand and sniffed. Lifted my head and sniffed again. The reek of Girrard DiMercy’s blood filled my nostrils. But it came from close by, not from my hand.

I looked up. And spotted Girrard DiMercy. He was cloaked in the blue mist of a hide-me spell, sitting on a brick abutment just up the block, in a small nook, the minialcove where other men had spied on my house before. What was it with that doorway?

The spell clinging to him wavered and shifted, and other things seemed to be hidden beneath it, as if the layers of his glamours had separated and softened, allowing me glimpses of the visions beneath. He hadn’t seen me. I glanced back down at my palm, to see that the blue lines were even fainter.

I slid out of my loose shoes, leaving them on the sidewalk, and stalked silently toward him.

CHAPTER 19

A Fashionista’s Closet Full of Falling Stilettos

Girrard DiMercy was sitting with his eyes closed, face tight and intent, his head back. The blue mist cloak spell wasn’t strong enough to keep me from seeing him; it was too late to hide himself from me. Way too late. I’d seen his handprints on the roof of my soul, marking me as his. And I’d blasted them away. Now, his hands were relaxed, the outer edges of his palms and little fingers resting on his lap, his fingers and thumbs curled toward one another, as if he held a ball loosely. Except for the blue hide-me mist, he wasn’t concealing himself. There was nothing defensive or dangerous about his posture, which made me figure that Gee thought he was invisible, or at least cloaked in night shadows. And one eye was swollen, caked with blood. I’d hurt him for real, just like the wolves had hurt him back in Booger’s Scoot.

I pulled on Beast’s hunting attributes, moving up the street, my bare feet silent on the sidewalk. As I moved, I considered weapons, should I need one. There wasn’t a round in the 9 mil’s chamber and Gee would hear if I readied the weapon for firing. And the H&K was loaded with silver shot. Molly had said steel would probably disrupt Gee’s magic better than silver, so I pulled the vamp-killer. Though the back and the flat of the blade were coated with heavy silver plating, the cutting edge itself was high quality steel.I stood three feet in front of Gee and I might as well have been in Mexico for all the notice he paid me. He seemed somnolent, his breathing easy, as if he was sleeping, sitting, his body relaxed. The blue mist lay thick on his skin and seemed to swirl slowly with the energies of his spell, growing thin and gossamer away from his body, denser, and tight between his cupped hands. The mist was shaped like a sphere, dissipating entirely beyond the borders of his body, and I realized that the energies themselves formed a working circle that covered his whole physical form. I didn’t know a whole lot about magic, but I did know that most forms used circles to contain the energies, kinda like a force field, to keep anything nasty from escaping, and to hold the energies in place. I wondered what he looked like under his glamours.

I hefted the vamp-killer, moonlight glinting on the silver and steel. I positioned my feet, left foot forward, right foot back, pointed at ninety degrees. Knees bent, my weight evenly distributed, I held the blade point forward and slashed down with a single hard, fast cut, through blue mist. Down toward the stone on which he sat, breaking the circle of his spell.

Time dilated and slowed. I could see the passage of the blade through the mist. The way the steel parted the strands and swirls of the spell. The way they fell away, as if recoiling from cold iron. Light exploded out around the blade. Blue and downy, soft and bright, like sparklers in the night. And still the blade descended. The mist had weight and texture. Like flesh, the thought popped into my mind. Heat billowed up my arm, warm and moist. And the smell of cauterized blood. The reek of burned evergreen. The stink of charred jasmine. Oh crap. The spell hid his body. I’d cut Gee himself instead of his spell.

The mist retreated, almost a flinch, and snapped back hard. A punch of power hit me. Electric and solid. Muscle, claws, and something soft, hit me, like a bronze, spiked fist in a down glove, the fist supercharged with electricity. I felt/heard a sharp, sizzling hiss. Stumbled and fell back. Barked my heels on the concrete.

Gee was awake and focused on me, his blueblueblue eyes stabbing. Something billowed out and up and over me in a wash of wet, steamy heat. Dark bloodred wings unfurled, beat down. I curled as I dropped, falling. Saw a dark-sapphire feathered beast with crimson breast and wings. Claws like spear points, glinting at wingtips and feet. A splatter of liquid flowers, perfume like rainbows hitting the ground. Sparks shooting up where the blossoms landed.

And he was gone. A raptor scree echoed into the night.

I landed on my butt, half rolling, half skidding across the concrete. My elbows took a bounce, ripping a layer of skin away. I rolled off the sidewalk into the street. And lay there, gasping. “Crap,” I whispered, wincing at the ragged rips of pain. “Cah-rap.”

I had never seen such a thing. Not in person. But I knew exactly where I had seen an image of one before. And Leo Pellissier had a lot of explaining to do. I eased to my feet and gathered up my stuff. Gee’s blood had nearly dissipated, evaporating like pure alcohol rather than drying and leaving a residue of ruptured cells like, well, like blood. I found a patch larger than the others and dipped a finger into it. Sniffed. It didn’t smell like human blood, but like pine and jasmine and heated copper. Big surprise. It was gone, evaporated, before I could figure out how to save any of it.

I limped to the house. Slammed back inside. Stared down Evangelina and Bruiser as I entered, throwing my sandals down in the foyer as I passed through and my weapons onto my bed. I went to the bathroom and turned on the shower, sticking my heels, then my arms from elbows to hands under the stream, cursing under my breath at the liquid’s cleansing burn. I pulled out a first-aid kit and applied salve to the wounds, covering them with bandages. It would have to do until I could shift. Then, ignoring the two standing in my bedroom doorway, I opened my closet and yanked out my vamp-fighting clothes.

The stink of my anger and my blood and the burned smell of wax and pine coiled inside me with each breath. Ignoring the audience, I ripped off my blood splattered, torn pants and tossed them to the floor, not caring if I flashed an audience. I pulled on the silk long johns and slid into leather biker pants, the zipper ripping the silence. I stepped into socks and the butt-stomper boots. Opening the weapon safe in the closet, I began loading for vamp, sliding each vamp-killer into place, checking to see that each was snug, yet pulled freely. The knife used to stab through Gee’s glamour had a nick in the blade a quarter inch deep, blackened as if by fire; the steel edge around it was shattered. I touched the blackened steel and it flaked away like ashes. It was useless. I could repair the blade, but I’d never trust it again. I could maybe replace the blade into the old hilt, but that would cost more than simply buying a new one. I hefted it into the garbage where it thumped hollowly, steel against plastic. I slid the M4’s soft leather harness over my T-shirt. When it was comfortable, I reached into the safe and pulled out the soft velvet bag holding the vamp weapon Sabina had lent me. The priestess had asked for it back; I’d tried to return it once. Maybe she would be there this time, and I could ask the old vamp some questions about vamps and Mercy Blades and old grudges against Leo and Bruiser without getting my throat torn out. And maybe she knew something about weres, because sure as angels sing, every problem I was seeing started with the appearance of the weres, even before I knew they existed. I stuffed the velvet bag into the leather jacket’s breast pocket.

“Jane?”

Fury blazed up in me. I whirled on Bruiser. “What? What do you want?” His mouth opened, confusion on his face. I let everything I was feeling rip through me. Heat flashed like lightning over my skin. I took a step toward him. “You know, don’t you? What Gee is.” Bruiser took a step back. “Tell me!” I hissed, Beast rising into my eyes. “You tell me what that thing is.”