“I came,” I said. “My father was ani gilogi, Panther Clan of the Tsalagi. My mother was ani sahoni, Blue Holly Clan.” She nodded for me to continue, and I said, “I am called Jane Yellowrock, or Yellow-Eyes Gold, Dalonige i Digadoli, in the tongue of The People.”
“Yellow-Eyes Yellowrock. A strange name for a child. But the people of my mother were always a little pretentious, a little bit touched in the head. Not right since the nunna dual tsuny, the time of the Trail of Tears.” She must have noticed some small reaction at the insult because she laughed, not unkindly, and waved the words away, saying, “Don’t take offense. It’s just the words of an old woman who has lived too long and forgotten how to be careful of her tongue. No offense was meant.”
One did not take offense at the capriciousness of the very old. I tilted my head in acceptance, waiting.
She pursed her mouth as if thinking. “I am half-Cherokee, part Choctaw, a small part Natchez, and some white man, but we all have that.” When I didn’t reply, she went on, “Call me Kathyayini. It means ‘Goddess of Power’ in Cherokee. Like I said, a pretentious people. You know why I called you here. Yes?”
I shook my head. “Not entirely, no.”
“My son married an Acheé woman. He does not know his wife is a witch or that his mother is a spirit walker.” When I looked puzzled, she said, “A wise woman with the power to walk in dreams.”
Kathyayini rocked back and forth as if she were in a rocking chair, giving me time to absorb her words. The smell of the candle was filling the chapel, a sharp herbal scent like rosemary and lime. The power to walk in dreams. Like Aggie One Feather, back in New Orleans? I remembered the dreams I’d had in the sweathouse, and the forms Aggie had taken in them. Could she walk in dreams too? “Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” she repeated. “This old woman wants her secrets, and the secrets of the women, kept secrets,” Kathyayini said. “The men, they are no good with secrets. They freak out.”
I breathed out my laughter at the modern word on the old woman’s lips, and Kathyayini laughed with me. “I think it’s a bit late about the witches and Acheé men. They know. I’m sure the cops told them.”
“Stupid cops.” She shook her head. “No good comes of men knowing secrets. They do best when protected.
“I can see your soul, you know,” she went on. “Old soul. Older than me. Skinwalker soul. I only ever see one like it, and she was even older than you. Long time ago, in another place,” she said before I could ask. “You also coated with magics: magic of skinwalker, magic of a mountain lion, magic of blood-charms. Dark magic, blood-magic charms. You should throw them away. They no good for you.” I remembered the charms in the boot box back at Esmee’s and on the table with our files, and the blood diamond, hidden in a safe-deposit box.
“You also carry the shadow magics of one who should not walk the face of the earth,” she said, emphasizing the phrase with nods of her head, “drinker of blood. All that is bad. All of it. But the shadow magics of the blood drinker, that is the worst.”
Her talk sounded a lot like Aggie One Feather’s mother’s chatter, half incomprehensible. “Okay,” I said, not meaning that I understood, but an acknowledgment that she had spoken and that I was listening.
“Blood drinkers are like U’tlun’ta,” She pronounced it differently from hut luna of the Eastern Cherokee. “Stone finger,” she clarified, in case I had missed it. “Skinwalkers like you, but old. All stone fingers go crazy sooner or later. Then they should die true death. So should vampires, like the shadow one in your soul house.”
And then I understood. She could see Leo in my soul house. If she could see him, maybe she could get him out of me. My heart thumped hard.
CHAPTER 14
Try Not to Poison Me
Before I could ask, Kathyayini continued, “I don’t got so much time, so listen. Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” Which made no freaking sense. She rocked some more, her blue dress emerging from and falling into shadows, the crevices of her face deepening and softening, like the way the moon shadows show the folded hills and valleys of the Smoky Mountains—the Appalachians. Kathyayini added, “All that is for later, not for today. Today is for this: shadow and blood are a dark light buried beneath the ground.” Neither riddle made sense, but I had learned that they weren’t meant to. They were simply meant to light a path into a possible future.
“The one you seek,” Kathyayini said, “she is bound to the earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.”
“Uh huh. Okay.” My phone buzzed like a hornet in my pocket, but when I reached for it, it wasn’t there. Yet I still felt the buzzing in my pocket, against my thigh.
Something was very, very wrong. I had told Eli that the church might not really be here in our reality, but I hadn’t considered what that might mean about where I’d be if I went inside. “Kathyayini, where am I?”
She waved her hand as if waving away my question. “Neither here nor there. Nor any place in between.”
“How do I get back?”
“You done asking questions of me?”
Not really, but I didn’t want to stay wherever I was. “For now. Thank you.”
Kathyayini tossed me something and I identified it as I caught it. A coin, larger than a penny, heavier than a quarter. The metal felt cold, the engraving smooth and ancient. “You want me again, you come here at night and put that coin on the ground. I’ll come.” She waved the back of her hand at me, like shooing a fly. “Go now. We talk later, if you need.”
Behind me, the church doors opened, allowing in a strong breeze that swept through, making the candle flame flicker and sputter. I backed slowly toward the old church doors, my eyes on Kathyayini. When the door appeared in my peripheral vision, I turned and went out into the night and down the steps. And remembered to breathe. A fog had roiled up outside, moving on the breeze in fitful gusts of shadow and white, and I couldn’t see anything except the old trees just to my sides, which I was sure hadn’t been there before.
The church doors slammed shut, making me jump and turn. Behind me, the church was gone. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap,” I whispered.
“Jane?” a voice called, sounding muffled and distant, directionless in the heavy air.
“I’m here,” I shouted.
“Where? Say again!” Eli appeared in the mist, both hands clutching weapons, a nine mil in his right hand, his shooting hand, and a vamp-killer in his left. He brought up the gun, centering it on my chest, finger resting gently on the trigger. I had no doubt the gun was ready to fire.
I raised my hands. “Easy there, Eli.”
“Prove to me you are who you look like.”
That was a weird request, but no weirder than anything else had been lately. “I want a steak, still mooing, hold the salad.”
“And?”
Weirder and weirder. “And your brother, the computer geek criminal, wants ravioli. What about you?”
“I eat the steak and the salad. With beer.”
“I’m guessing these were identifiers. What’s going on?”
Eli approached slowly, growing firmer out of the fog. “Open your mouth.”
I frowned but opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. “You want me to say ah too?”
“Nope.” He sheathed the knife and ejected the round from the chamber before he holstered the weapon. “Just looking for fangs.”