“Redeemer, I seek purity of heart, purity of mind, purity of soul, and, if not freedom from the darkness that is tied to my soul, then acceptance of it.” I dropped again and rose again. And this time when I opened my mouth, I started to cry, throat tight, tears streaming down my face, so hot against the plink of sleet. “To the spirit of my own uni lisi. I seek . . .” My breath juddered in my chest, as new understanding bloomed open inside me. “To forgive you. To forgive what you made of me. To forgive that you taught me to kill. That you pushed me into the storm as we-sa and abandoned me. That at every part of my life, you neglected or abused my soul, my spirit. My own lack of forgiveness until this time has allowed the dark shadow to find a home in my heart and to have power over my spirit.” I dunked myself. I stayed deep this time, letting the water carry away the pain that I never even knew was there. The pain of betrayal and abandonment. I felt something detach from my chest and slide away. The magic had wrapped the darkness. Waiting for me to understand. Waiting for me to release it.

I hadn’t had to cut the darkness away. Or give it away. Or hope that God would wrench it from me. I just had to let it go. There was an empty place there now, a hole in my soul, waiting for me to fill it. I stood. When the black water drained away enough to speak, I said, “To Elisi.” I sobbed, choking, and had to stop until I could breathe again, this time talking to my mother, so very long ago. “I forgive myself for not being strong enough or old enough or war woman enough to stop the men who hurt you.”

I slid under the water and back up. “To the spirit of my father, Edoda. I forgive myself for the torture of your killer. For the vow I made in your blood. I was a child. But I knew what I did. I knew. And though I am fiercely”—I grated out the word—“glad of their deaths, I have carried the pain of the vengeance for all these years. And I am forgiven.” I slid beneath the water once more and stood. Opened my eyes.

The magic synesthesia was gone, the fog just fog, the water just water, my breath just breath. I felt clean and free inside as I stood in the small black-water pond. I knew the water was not really as warm as I perceived it. I was hypothermic. But again, I didn’t care.

I gripped the hand that appeared before my face and let Aggie One Feather pull me to the bank. She was stronger than she looked. But then her magic had shown me that about both of them, their strengths and their mighty power, and their terrible purpose.

We dressed under the tent, my flesh ashen with cold. The strange burned and scarred places were gone, as if I had never been hit by lightning. Shifting shape hadn’t healed me. But facing my own dark demons had.

We dragged the tent down and set it under the trees far above the waterline. The rain put out the fire even as we worked to gather up all our belongings, but I still used the small shovel to toss mud over the smoking coals. Together we walked back to the car and got inside. Aggie turned the heater on high and we drove away.

We were nearly back to the small house that the two women shared when Aggie One Feather said, “You must take your family and make them your own. Claim them, according to your clan, according to the Cherokee Constitution and the old ways. This will give you strength within your own heart and at your own hearth.”

I thought about the Youngers and Edmund. Bruiser. The Everhart/Truebloods. Shivers snatched me up and my teeth chattered, but I talked anyway, though the words sounded odd. “We ppppplanned to go through the adoption ppppprocess this past October, but we couldn’t ggggget to a ppppowwow. Nnnnnext October for shshshsure.”

“Do not delay beyond that,” Uni lisi said.

“Yes, mamamama’am.”

“One last thing,” Aggie One Feather said as we turned down her street through the rain. “From the words you spoke in the water, it is clear that we must speak of your lineage. When we first met, you said that your father was of Panther Clan and your mother was Blue Holly Clan. But Panther Clan is a subdivision of Blue Holly, and the tribal elders would not have allowed them to marry. Your father was Panther Clan only after he married into Blue Holly Clan and, as a skinwalker, the clan grandmothers likely gave him the secondary Panther Clan designation. The old woman you call uni lisi was Panther Clan and she had yellow eyes like you and like him, but she would not have been his mother. The clan relation was too close. Do you understand?”

“My father’s birth clan would have been something else,” I said, feeling even lighter than after I walked from the bayou. “So that my grandmother with yellow eyes, the old woman that I recall in my few early memories.” My throat tightened again. “She was related as a skinwalker, but may not have been my biological grandmother. Or may have been a grandmother from many generations up the line.” I felt my mouth pull into a smile, tight and sere. Somewhere deep in my soul, I had hoped this.

Aggie turned off the Toyota and we sat in the driveway, none of us eager to go back into the cold, not even to get inside to the warmth of the tiny house. I let my mind wander through the revelation. The old woman who made me kill two men as a five-year-old child, the old woman who forced me into my bobcat shape and threw me into the snow on the Trail of Tears, she wasn’t my real grandmother.

Softly, Aggie said, “You have many memories, buried, suppressed. Memories of your mother. Of whom you never speak. Memories of your clan and tribe. Of the grandmothers who would have taught you to farm and how to gather foodstuffs, how to live off the land. How to make pottery or weave baskets. Even as a child of five, you would have begun learning such things, and you have no memories of this?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.” And maybe that should have frightened me, that I didn’t remember, but I had forgotten so much. This was only one more thing. The face of my mother. The vision of her hands working. The sound of her laughter. Was that all still buried inside me, in some place that could be found?

Aggie said, suddenly sounding stern and staring me down in the rearview mirror, “Last thing. We told your brother this. When you take the Youngers into your Cherokee family, they will not be Yellowrock Clan. That would be according to vampire tradition, not Cherokee tradition. So you will have to adopt them twice, once into Panther Clan as your grandmother chose for you, or into Blue Holly Clan. Then once into your own clan as the vampires do. Understood?”

I ducked my head, hiding my reaction from Aggie. “Yes. I understand.”

The rattletrap truck bearing the old Choctaw man and the Youngers pulled down the street and idled at the drive. Alex and Eli got out of the truck and shut the doors. Without looking our way, they went through the rain to the porch and waited. They looked different too. Tired. Wan. Worn out. Aggie One Feather and her mother got out of the car and we all trooped inside, silent, frozen.

Inside, the old women once again fed us a king’s feast.

CHAPTER 7

The Crown of the Orcs

It was nearly ten a.m. when we drove back into town, Eli at the wheel. He had spent the night feeding a dying vamp and being healed and the morning puking and voiding. He looked exactly like a human in those circumstances should. Wan, pale, slow moving, and weary. Eli never looked tired.

The rainstorm hit again as another band of showers wheeled across us. The air was warmer now, though not by much, and the rain was free of sleet. Lightning blasted again, multiple strikes, and my magic responded with a flicker of the Gray Between, which made me less than happy. I had hoped going to water would free me from that, but at least it wasn’t as intense as before.

We were turning into the French Quarter when Alex, sitting in the backseat, said, “Got a problem on Bourbon Street. Mob forming. Cops have been called in. SWAT. The gang task force.” He was scanning reports on his tablet and through his earbud. Eli tapped on the radio to a local channel that gave news, weather, and traffic updates every ten minutes.

Alex said, “They called in ambulances but ordered them to take shelter on the uptown side of Canal Street. Shots fired.”

Eli turned right and then left and began the slow process of fighting traffic to bypass the riot. Lightning struck again. And again. Each time, my newly altered magics reacted and fluttered inside me.

Alex said, “Dispatch says lightning hit the pavement at the corner of Bourbon Street and Bienville. Arnaud’s is on fire.” The Kid’s voice sounded funny and I angled the sun visor’s mirror so I could see him. He looked intent. Older. As if he had matured in the last twelve hours or so. “Two rioters are receiving medical attention from bystanders and cops until medic gets there,” he said, “but the downpour is so bad that traffic came to a standstill and the ambulances aren’t moving.” He shook his head, tight ringlets bobbing. “The Royal Sonesta Hotel has been invaded by tourists escaping the rain, but the gang followed and brought the fight into the hotel. The lobby and restaurant are being trashed.”