Feebly, I said, “I thought she was in the right headspace,” but the question was a depressingly legitimate one. I did remember. Hell, after the antics I’d gone through to access the memories of his teachings from back when I’d been a teen, I’d better remember. Much of my bad attitude and mucked-up view of the world was my own fault, in a way that blithely disregarded the usual linear development of time. But I remembered discussing healing circles and the mental transport created by sweat lodges, how those things readied a human mind for the extraordinary. I’d just never applied them in my own roughshod shamanic practices.
In fact, I had the sudden sinking feeling that I’d been arrogantly assuming the rules didn’t apply to me. Other people had to build sweat lodges and use healing circles, but I could just go larking off doing what I wanted, because Grandfather Sky had seen fit to pump me full of extra-special magic mojo.
Coyote’d told me early on I was a new soul, mixed up fresh. The advantage to that was I had no baggage from previous incarnations, and could focus all my strength and power going forward. The disadvantage was I had no baggage from previous incarnations, and got to make great huge rutting mistakes that a more-experienced lizard brain might warn me about ahead of time.
I said, “Okay,” very quietly. “No more healing, especially big stuff, without the right preparations.”
Coyote’s shoulders dropped so far I half thought he was going to slide right out of his man shape and into dog form. He lifted his eyes to give me a sharp look and I smiled a little. “I know. Coyotes aren’t dogs.”
Instead of scolding, he said, “Tell me about the shapeshifting.”
“It was completely involuntary.” I outlined the dances and the collected power I’d felt, and somehow accidentally left out the detail that Morrison had been my date and he was the one who’d noticed me changing. “As soon as I got away from the theater I started reverting, but I could feel the potential still under my skin.” I rubbed my hands, remembering it even now, and in absolute, utter denial of what I’d experienced, whined, “People can’t shapeshift, Coyote.”
“Of course they can, although you’re so ungodly stubborn about it I might have believed you couldn’t. What’s your newest spirit animal, Joanne?” Coyote sounded tired, which made me feel guilty for whining, and my answer was subdued.
“A rattlesnake. You know that.”
“And what do rattlesnakes do?”
“They bite things. All right, all right, sorry. Mine’s a symbol of healing. And he gave me super reflexes in the Lower World, at least. Snakelike reflexes. Whssht, whssht.” I made a couple of karate chops, mimicking my snake-granted speed, and subsided at Coyote’s heartfelt sigh.
“What else, Jo?”
“Um. They shed their skins? Symbol of renewal and all that?”
“Symbol of change.”
I opened my mouth, shut it again, then said, “Oh,” in a smaller voice. “Like shapechanging, maybe?”
Coyote said, “She can be taught,” to the hard blue sky, which was probably kinder than I deserved. “I should be there for this, Jo. To teach you this in person. Shapechanging can be dangerous.”
Everything was dangerous. I just barely restrained myself from the snarky comment, reforming it into something slightly more constructive: “Like healing cancer dangerous or different dangerous?”
“Different. Overdrawing the healing power could kill you. Shapeshifting magic can make you forget who and what you are.”
That was twice in a row he’d subdued me with a look or a handful of words. I hunched my shoulders. “Like the wendigo?”
“No, the worst thing about wendigos is they remember, in some part, what they were. Uncontrolled shifting can just turn you into an animal for good. You got lucky tonight. Look, if I leave right now I can probably catch a six o’clock flight and be up there by noon. Can you promise not to do anything stupid before noon?”
What I really wanted to do between now and noon was sleep. I rubbed my eyes, which reminded me that in the waking world I hadn’t taken my contacts out before falling asleep, which meant my eyelids would be glued together when I actually woke up. I wondered if a little healing magic could lube up my eyeballs, a thought that had never occurred to me before, but I was fairly certain the magic would place a failure to remove contacts under the heading of my own dumb damned fault and be mysteriously unavailable to ease the discomfort. “I can probably manage not to do anything stupid before noon, but…is there anything you can just teach me now?”
Coyote went quiet. Not a good quiet, but the kind that worked its way through a lot of silent guesses and unspoken commentary and arrived at a conclusion it didn’t like. “You don’t want me to come up. Who’d you say your date this evening was?”
“I didn’t even say I had a date.”
“So it wasn’t Gary.”
“Gary’s in California for the weekend. Something about old army buddies and a pool of green beer. I didn’t want the details.” Actually I was dying for the details, but my septuagenarian buddy had sparkled his eyes at me, mimed zipping his lips, and jet-set off to San Diego for three days. My only consolation was imagining his profound disappointment at missing me learning to shapeshift.
“Morrison, then.”
“Cyrano, I didn’t even say I had a date!”
Bitter triumph flashed in Coyote’s eyes. I dropped my head into my hands. My mentor’s real name was Cyrano, but I’d spent most of our relationship thinking he was a spirit animal, the very coyote I usually saw him as. Consequently, even after learning he was a more or less ordinary human with a more or less ordinary name, I called him Coyote. Except, as he’d all-too-sagely noticed, when I was upset with him. “All right, fine, yes, I had a date, and it was with Morrison, and if you want to know so much he’s the one who noticed I was shapeshifting and got me out of the theater before I turned into a dog in front of everybody!”
“Coyotes aren’t dogs!”
“That’s what he said!”
I’d been right. That wasn’t a piece of our banter Coyote wanted to share with Morrison. He looked about five years old and utterly betrayed for a couple of seconds, then popped into his coyote shape so fast I was left with the afterimage of a man shadowing the beast.
“Shapeshifting,” he said through a mouthful of very pointy teeth, “is about control, and knowing yourself, and giving yourself up completely to the magic. It requires incredible focus if you don’t want to lose yourself, which is why it’s most safely done within the confines of a power circle, even when you’re as good at it as I am. The rattlesnake will help you make the shift and retain your sense of self, so call on him any time you even think about changing shape. Never make the change unless you’re alone or with someone you trust with your life, because you’ll be incredibly vulnerable in the moments of transition.
“It doesn’t hurt unless you fight it. It’s a flow from one state of being to another. Until you have absolute control over the skill, it’s possible for someone else to force you into the change, either deliberately or accidentally, so you’d better keep your shields at full strength, if you even remember how to do that.” He snapped his teeth on the last word sharply enough that the sound reverberated against hot stone.
I whispered, “I never said I didn’t want you to come up,” but I was talking to a dreamscape.
CHAPTER TEN
SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 6:32 A.M.
No decent person would show up on a friend’s doorstep at six in the morning. Not even if they were reasonably certain that the friends, who had a four-and-a-half-month-old baby, would be awake. That was why I’d sat in Petite for half an hour on the street by my partner’s house, growing steadily chillier because the idle on a 1969 Mustang was at best a dull roar. I didn’t dare leave her on for warmth and risk annoying the neighborhood.