Jeremy paused with a self-satisfied smile, obviously finding that little fact interesting
enough that it took him a moment to realize he hadn’t yet answered Jay’s question.
“Right,” he said, continuing on. He flipped pages as he spoke. “It took me a while
to find anything more about the Shantel, since they were incredibly isolationist,
and seem to have entirely disappeared in the last couple centuries. They were shapeshifters—leopards
and mountain lions—and were considered one of the great magical powers of the last
millennium, up there with the shm’Ahnmik and the Azteka.”
Both of the other cultures Jeremy referenced were mostly gone. There were pockets
of Azteka left, but none of their famous bloodwitches, and some believed that the
entire falcon civilization—known as the shm’Ahnmik—might have been no more than part
of serpiente myth, like the humans’ Atlantis.
“You think the shapeshifter I found was some kind of Shantel witch?”
“The Shantel describe their spirit-witch as white and silver in her leopard form,
but ink-black in human form, with white markings to make her power clear to all who
see her. Sound familiar?”
The description fit, including the fact that Jay had been given a cougar form with
which to seek her.
“She didn’t have a name,” Jay said, recalling that fact from his sojourn within her
power. “There was something about her remaining nameless, to—”
“Yes!” Jeremy interrupted, flipping to another page. “It says here the Shantel believed
that ‘only by remaining nameless and unclaimed by family or lover could the
sakkri
commune with and command the immortal powers of nature.’ I don’t have a
clue what that means, but any magic-user put in a group with falcons and Azteka has
to be scary powerful.”
“I
think
she’s on our side,” Jay answered uneasily. At least, he
hoped
she was. The fact that she had disappeared without speaking to anyone didn’t bode
well.
“The Shantel were never warlike,” Jeremy continued, still looking down at his book.
“Even during Midnight’s reign, they just used their magic to keep their people safe.
They never fought back. They’re one of the only shapeshifter cultures we know of that
no one ever went to war with.” He looked up at the bed. “Did she say where she was
going?”
“She didn’t say anything,” Jay answered.
If she came from such a peaceful culture, Jay didn’t know what she expected to do
against Midnight. On the other hand, two centuries in slavery was bound to change
a person.
“Jeremy, you didn’t happen to find anyone else who might know about the Shantel, did
you?” Jay asked, trying to keep the words casual.
“I’ve been trying to see if any of the older vampires in SingleEarth might know something,”
he said, “but I know the humans and witches here better. Vampires don’t often come
in for medical attention, you know?”
Who did Jay know who was old enough to have survived Midnight but wasn’t allied or
otherwise tied to Midnight? The list was pretty short. Even vampires who disapproved
of the slave trade tended to try not to cross the empire. Nikolas and Kristopher,
Sarah’s friends, were fifty years too young—and Jay wasn’t certain he wanted to get
them involved, anyway. He definitely
didn’t want to get
Sarah
involved, not with Midnight, not when she was still trying to find her place in the
vampiric world.
Wait.
There was a group Jay knew, and SingleEarth knew, that rumor claimed had been founded
to fight Midnight. Few of their members were vampires, unsurprisingly, but some were
shapeshifters or Tristes old enough to remember those days.
The Bruja guilds were technically three groups, known as Crimson, Onyx, and Frost.
They had been founded during Midnight’s reign in opposition to the slave-holding vampires,
and many of their members still considered themselves vampire hunters, though in recent
years they had branched out into other illegal and semi-legal actions.
Frost and SingleEarth had recently managed to find a mutually beneficial and profitable
arrangement. Frost provided bodyguarding and other protective services, as well as
a strong arm to help SingleEarth with the increasingly complicated process of securing
mostly legal documents for individuals whose lifestyles or life spans made anything
requiring a birth certificate or social security card difficult.
Jay went to the main SingleEarth office to find the contact information for their
Frost liaison. He had to sweet-talk the secretary to convince her to give him the
information without reporting the request, but he was soon back in his room and on
his cell phone, hoping he would be able to reach someone quickly.
He realized he had walked out on Jeremy without a word
of explanation or apology. Jeremy probably wouldn’t take it personally.
A voice answered the phone, “Lydia’s Candy Shop, please hold.”
Was there was some kind of code he was supposed to give? For all he knew he had dialed
a wrong number and this actually
was
a candy shop.
Maybe he should go back to the secretary and check on how to handle this, or even
go through official channels. Better safe than sorry? But which was safer—going through
official channels and possibly dragging SingleEarth into the mess he might have made,
or trying to do this on his own so at the worst he was the only one likely to end
up sold into slavery?
By the time someone came back on the line, Jay had decided it didn’t hurt to try.
“Thank you for holding. How can I help you?”
“This is Jay Marinitch. I’m calling from SingleEarth, and I—”
“Is this the best number to reach you?” the voice asked, interrupting.
“Um … yes,” he replied. “It’s my cell phone.”
“I’ll have someone call you back.”
The line went dead.
It could still be a rude candy shop, but the likelihood he had reached Frost was high.
Jay left his room and scavenged the kitchen while he waited. The breakfast pickings
were pretty slim. He picked up a stale donut, and then his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Jay Marinitch?”
“Yes?”
Candy or mercenaries?
“I was told you called. What can I do for you?”
This was why he hated phones. “May I ask who’s calling?” he asked.
The voice on the other side of the line laughed and said, “No.
You
called
us
. What do you need?”
Not a candy shop
. He might still make an ass of himself, but at this point, who could blame him?
“I need some information,” he said, “or a contact who can get me that information.
Someone familiar with a culture that went extinct around the fall of Midnight but
who isn’t
allied
with Midnight.”
A slight pause from the other side of the line—man or woman? Jay couldn’t tell.
“What culture?”
“The Shantel. I want to know about their magic, and their spirit-witch, the …
sakkri
.”
“Aah.” A short pause, and then, “I’ll call you back.”
The phone beeped, and the screen announced,
Call Lost
.
Weird
.
Jay wasn’t used to cloak-and-dagger, at least in the metaphorical sense. Cover businesses
and cryptic, androgynous phone voices made him antsy.
He wanted to
hunt
, the way a cheetah hunts, just for the pure joy of tearing into something and bringing
it down. He
needed
to take on Midnight; it was a cancer in the free world,
run by vicious, evil creatures who didn’t hesitate to violate any natural law in their
quest for domination. But that hunt required careful planning, and coordination with
other hunters.
Caution. Patience
. And now,
wandering
, waiting for someone else to give him information.
The winter morning was crisp and freeze-the-bones cold, so even with his heavy jacket
on Jay had to use a thread of power to keep himself from shivering.
You all right?
The faint mental touch from Lynx made him smile.
Restless
, he answered,
but not hurt. Where are you?
Not far
. Lynx liked Haven #2. There were just enough big-predator shapeshifters for their
scents to scare away coyotes, the only local predator that could be a danger to him.
Also, Caryn knew Lynx, and always kept a stash of turkey jerky on hand.
Do you need me?
I’m okay
, Jay answered, just as his phone started vibrating. It was the same voice as before.
“If you’re sure you want to meet with her, I can set you up with someone who specializes
in archaic magic. But I’ll warn you, she might eat you alive.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
“That depends on whether or not she likes you.”
“Fantastic. How do I set up the meeting?”
The individual on the other side of the line took information about Jay’s location
and means of transportation, then gave him an address and the instruction to, “leave
within the hour if you don’t want to be late.” Then the caller hung up, without
saying whether Jay was looking for a short balding woman with a rose between her teeth
or a giant ferret.
Going hunting?
Lynx asked in response to Jay’s increased excitement.
Going talking first
, he replied.
But hopefully we’ll hunt soon
.
J
AY COULDN’T BEGIN
to recall where he had left his gloves, though he wished he did when he set his hands
to the steering wheel. He half expected his GPS to swear at him for waking it up when
it was so cold.
He programmed in the address from the mysterious telephone voice and let out a whine
when he realized it was almost three hours away. He wouldn’t get there until noon,
if
he didn’t hit traffic.
After an hour on the highway, he turned on to progressively smaller, more winding
roads. Midday became early afternoon, and he hadn’t yet arrived, because he had needed
to drop his speed to avoid spinning out on the increasingly common patches of black
ice on the badly plowed, poorly marked back roads.
Whoever he was visiting, she didn’t like visitors. Jay missed the unmarked driveway
the first time and had to turn around. His tires got a beating as he bumped his way
across potholes big enough to bury a body in.
Finally he reached the house, which was overhung by several bare maple trees.
I hope this is the right place
, Jay thought as he walked up the narrow, recently shoveled path. There didn’t seem
to be a bell, so he knocked on the door.
The person who answered the door was a young woman, maybe twenty years old at most,
whose brown eyes had dark circles beneath them. She exuded no particular thoughts
but a sense of bone-deep weariness that made Jay want to curl up and sleep for a month
just looking at her.
“Are you the person I’m supposed to meet?” he asked.
She stared at him for long, silent moments before saying, “I doubt it. Rikai’s in
her study. I think she’s expecting someone.”
Rikai!
The phone caller’s warning made sense now; like vampires, Tristes needed to feed,
but they did so by absorbing raw power instead of by taking blood. Of the three Wild
Cards, Jay had been excited to meet Xeke but hadn’t ever wanted to meet Rikai.
Nervously, Jay followed his guide to the study.
The walls in the hallway were painted a cool gray-rose color above wood paneling that
had been stained silvery birch. The floor was carpeted in a two-tone beige. The overall
effect was stylish but not
warm
.
Rikai’s study was lit by only two candles—a fat pillar on top of the fireplace mantel,
and a beeswax taper on a short table near the door. They barely illuminated the full
wall of glass-front bookcases, a desk scattered with unidentifiable objects, and two
chairs that were somehow ominous. Maybe Jay was simply crediting the atmosphere to
the chairs, but he didn’t want to sit down.
It took a moment for him to realize Rikai was even in the room, partially because
her long black hair matched a body sheathed from neck to ankle to wrist in more black,
but more so because his mind registered
nothing
.
Jay had occasionally met people who could put up walls against him, or who tried to
fight his power. He had rarely met an individual who was a complete blank.
“Jay Marinitch,” she said. Her voice had a soft lilt, lower than he might have expected,
like the sound of ocean waves moving over sand. “Of the Marinitch witches. Please,
sit.”
Jay looked to the chair nearest him, and hesitated.
“The power you’re sensing isn’t intended for you,” Rikai said. “If you can’t bring
yourself to overcome your instincts enough to sit in a chair to speak to me, you might
as well leave now.”
Jay sat, even though doing so made his skin crawl. The chair was nice enough, but
whatever power Rikai had going on here made his teeth ache.
Rikai leaned back in her deep, plush chair, stretching her legs out in front of her
and propping her feet on some kind of twisted sculpture that apparently doubled as
a footrest. Her dark eyes had a strange shine to them as she looked at Jay.
“So. Why do you want to know about the Shantel?”
“Do I need a reason?” he asked. He wasn’t coy by nature, but he hadn’t expected to
be asked
why
by a contact set up through Bruja.
“You’re a witch, an empath, and a hunter. You are not a scholar. You
are
tainted by all sorts of interesting power, though.”
“Such as?”
“Answer my question, and maybe I’ll answer yours.”
She leaned forward, bending at the waist, reminding him of a praying mantis. He had
a powerful feeling that it would be unwise to lie to her.
“I think I’ve met a Shantel,” he answered. “Specifically, a
sakkri
. I’d like to know more about her abilities.”
“Out of pure idle curiosity, oh?” Rikai replied. “How very SingleEarth, but utterly
unlikely for
you
. Where did you stumble across the spirit-witch of a dead civilization?”