had gone on to explain that Skye had left them because she’d refused to marry the man predestined to be her husband—that’s how it was for Guardians. They married whomever the Maiden Bear chose for them. But Skye had refused, spit in the face of the creator of her tribe’s white magic. Skye had abandoned her family, her preordained station as the Guardian, and her standing in the tribe to marry for love. It had ended badly, and her husband, Takala’s father, had died prematurely of lung cancer.
Meikoda said his death was Skye’s reprimand from Maiden Bear. And Skye wallowed in her grief, turning to drugs for solace, until she could no longer care for her own daughters. That excuse didn’t mesh if Skye had gone to work for the State Department. No, Takala wanted the truth, to hear it from her mother’s own lips. That was if she was still alive. This Lilly Smith could be a dead end.
But Takala couldn’t dampen the hope stirring in her, or the dread. What if she found Skye, and it didn’t go well? What if she offered no explanation and resented Takala looking for her? Takala decided she’d cross that bridge when and if she ever reached it.
She rounded a corner and slowed. Number forty-five was a modest two-story with a white picket fence. Even a Christmas wreath still graced the door. Real homey. Fit right in the burb-style neighborhood. Maybe Lilly Smith had a family of her own.
At the thought, Takala grimaced and spotted the taxi sitting out front. Plumes of hot exhaust billowed from the muffler, condensing as soon as they hit the cold air. Someone was on their way out.
Takala slowed, about to pull over, when a woman appeared at the door, carrying a suitcase. Takala compared the woman’s features to the old photo she’d found hidden in Meikoda’s hope chest. Her grandmother had said she’d destroyed every picture of Skye when the tribe renounced her, but Takala knew Meikoda couldn’t wipe out all the pictures of her only daughter. She had to have kept one, and Takala hadn’t given up until she discovered it. Since finding it, she’d only looked at it a thousand times.
The woman on the porch appeared about fifty, tall, with short jet-black hair. She wore sleek brown slacks and a matching cashmere jacket. Her makeup looked flawless on her square face. Lilly Smith glanced nervously up at the taxi driver, and the classic Rainwater bright blue eyes beamed. Yep. Give or take twenty years and about two feet of long, thick braid, this woman was a dead ringer for the image in the photo.
Takala felt her chest swell and a lump form in her throat. Could this really be her mother? She was about to pull over and discover the truth when all hell broke loose.
A woman popped out from behind a hedge in the next yard. The taxi driver leaped out of the car and ran toward the front steps. A black mist appeared, swirled; then the dark mass congealed into the tall form of a guy. Definitely not human travel arrangements. By his pale skin, he looked undead. A zombie maybe. But zombies weren’t capable of doing the human-fog-Houdini thing.
Lilly Smith had already seen her pursuers and was leaping over the porch railing. When she spotted Houdini, real fear filled her face.
Houdini must have had the ability to teleport, because he disappeared. Takala couldn’t track him until he reappeared at Lilly’s back and grabbed her.
Takala jumped into the action. She laid on the horn and stomped on the gas. The car hopped the curb, heading directly for the struggling Lilly. The other two thugs were in her path, and she barreled straight for them.
Seconds before her bumper reached them, they leaped aside.
A fist came out of nowhere and slammed through the driver’s side window.
Glass flew and rained down on Takala. A gust of wind picked up the photo and address and blew it out the busted window before Takala could catch it.
She cursed, whipped around and stared into the pink, lizardlike eyes of the person who’d broken her window. The creature looked female, but not all human. Her hair was whitish green, stubbly. A green, sticky ooze covered lips that were so wide they looked like a distorted image in a funhouse mirror. She wore a black jumpsuit designed so that the sticky proboscis that jutted from her belly could pop out unencumbered. It looked like a third hand but with suction cups for fingers. She clung to the car by it, her supple body crouched there like a fly on flypaper. The creature smiled; then her long, grotesque tongue flicked out.
Takala’s cheek stung as the creature’s hands grabbed her neck.
Takala slammed on the brakes, gasping, “Back off, Freakzilla.”
The shifter’s sticky fingers stretched like rubber bands, her sharp nails digging into Takala’s neck. “Who you calling a freak?” The woman’s long tongue flipped out and burned Takala’s forehead this time.
Takala could take a lot of two-skins, but gecko shifters just plain grossed her out; so did the little talking green guy on the insurance commercials. But this one was real and had broken her car window and was trying to strangle her.
“Okay, I warned you,” Takala gasped past the pressure on her neck. Then she elbowed the shifter in the face.
The blow sent the freak rocketing from the car window. The gecko two-skin hit a cement birdbath with a loud high-pitched squeal.
If Takala had been a normal woman, she felt certain the gecko shifter’s gluey body wouldn’t have budged. But Takala had the strength of twenty men. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been fast enough, and the shifter had raked her reptilian claws across Takala’s neck.
“Oooh! Gross.” Takala grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt and wiped the sticky green saliva from her burning cheek, then moved to the bloody claw marks on her neck. That’s when she saw Lilly struggling with Houdini.
Abruptly, Lilly’s body vibrated into a yellow throbbing orb. She spun out of his grasp and leaped straight through his body like a ghost. When she passed through and out on the other side, Houdini staggered and collapsed.
The atoms of Lilly’s body expanded like a rubber balloon, stretching her features into a grotesque ball. Then she blew a cloud of black mist from her mouth, and her body shrunk to normal size again. The dark energy funneled into a small tornado above her head. Then it headed back for Houdini’s body.
Takala had overheard forbidden whispered snippets of conversation among her aunts and her grandmother where they had spoken about her mother’s power. Skye was a spirit eater, capable of draining the energy from supernatural beings and temporarily paralyzing them. Takala’s tribe, the Patomani Indians, had a name for the power: egtonha. The power would have been invaluable to an agent. Was this truly her mother?
Takala floored the accelerator, crashed over a pretty picket fence, and skidded to a stop near Lilly, barely missing the downed Houdini. She motioned for Lilly to hop in.
The energy reentered Houdini, and he staggered to his feet. In seconds, he’d gain his full power back.
Lilly seemed to realize this, her gaze shifting between the two Supes coming for her, Houdini, and Takala. Then she leaped inside Takala’s car—the least of the three evils.
Takala heard Houdini’s icy warning. “You’re helping a killer. You’ll regret—”
Lilly slammed the door, cutting off his words. She looked over at Takala and yelled, “Drive.”
Takala floored it, taking out the other side of the fence and a flower bed. They hopped the curve and sped down the street.
Lilly
