Easy Pickings (13 page)

“Yeah, I bet you are.” I glanced at her. She looked worse than hungry, really. She looked like a big, soaking wet cat who hadn’t eaten in about three months. I lifted my own wet foot, sighed, and squelched it back down against the pavement. “You need to eat something.”

“We could hit Antoine’s again.” Jane got up.

I didn’t. She offered a hand and I took it, letting her pull me to my feet, but instead of striking off in search of food with her, I looked back at the vampire bar. “That sounds awesome, but there’s this one thing.”

Jane got a wary look, shoulders lifting like a cat ready to jump. “What?”

“Gods are kind of capricious. I’m kind of afraid if we don’t go home right now while Lazarus is still thinking about it we might never find him again so we can go home. He might keep not-quite-accidentally forgetting about us. We’re kind of a lot of magic. He might want to keep that around.”

“Ah, crap. Great. Does that mean we have to go through that freaky cold portal thing again?”

“I’m pretty sure it does.”

“No way,” Jane said firmly. “Not without food. I’ll die.”

I wasn’t entirely sure she was kidding. I pursed my lips. “Can’t have that. Not after all this trouble. Look, do you mind if I… ?” I called healing magic up. I was pretty certain Jane could see the power anyway, but I put a little extra effort in, making sure it had a visible component. Silvery blue washed down my arms, intensifying as it reached my hands.

She eyed the glow warily. “Mind if you what?”

“Just offer you a boost. It probably won’t stave off needing to eat an elephant later, but it should get you home without you collapsing.”

“You’re still gonna make me go through that nasty portal, aren’t you. I didn’t have to coming in to this … world. I mean, I was just in downtown and it went a little weird, that’s all.”

I crooked a smile. “Yeah, you’re still going to have to go through it. Serena’s magic brought us here, but Legba’s is going to send us home. So was that a yes?”

Jane grunted, which I took as an agreement. I reached out with two fingers, touching her over the heart. I did that a lot. Sometime when I got all introspective it would probably strike me that heart magic was, like, big important mojo and there was deep meaningful symbolism in the gesture. But I wasn’t much into introspection, so mostly I just let go a bubble of power: refreshing, strengthening, perky, enlivening.

Jane hissed, sounding like a surprised cat, and almost stepped back, but caught herself at the last moment. Around the tips of my fingers, a gray light swirled up, gray sparkling with black and silver sparks. It was cold and hot all at once, tingling against my fingertips like static electricity.

Jane took a breath and it too was filled with the silvery-gray light. I could See inside her, into a place filled by stalactites and stalagmites dripping water, with shadows and flames that danced on the walls, hiding and illuminating. I was used to Seeing souls as gardens, but I had no doubt that this dark cavern was Jane’s soul place.

She sat beside the fire as a little girl who watched me with an emotionless face. She was wearing a homespun dress and wore her hair in braids to either side of her face. Feathers were tucked into the braids, and around her neck was a necklace of claws and bones.

In the shadows, sitting on a ledge, was a … was her Beast, watching me with a predator’s intensity. Her tail draped off the ledge, hanging like a thick rope.

The little girl reached up and took my fingers. Her grip was hot, like the coals in her fire, and when she put my fingertips on her chest, over her heart, I sucked in a breath and steadied myself against the pull.

Her body ate the healing magics up like so much steak and eggs, hungry for more. The little girl before me stood, and stood and stood, growing in to an adult, the Jane I knew. On the human plane, her muscle mass swelled again, becoming healthier. I could almost feel the roar of emptiness in her belly. I couldn’t do anything about that, not exactly, but I could mask it for a little while longer. Long enough to get home, now that her bone and body were a little less fragile.

I gave a last push of energy and sagged, both impressed and faintly alarmed at the glimpse I’d gotten of Jane’s soul. That tough little girl inside her had been able to take exactly what she needed from me. I thought it was a damned good thing she hadn’t needed, or decided she wanted, more.

Jane staggered back a step when the magic sluiced off. “That was … I feel better. A lot better. I feel like I could shift again.”

“Don’t,” I said hastily. “Mostly you still really, really need to eat. I’ve just given you enough to claw your way through without passing out. I can’t actually replace the mass you lost, not without giving you some of my own, or something, and that would get—”

“Freaky,” Jane supplied, though I’d been going to go with “dangerous.” Either way, I nodded and she flexed, looking all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Or as bushy-tailed as somebody still sopping wet could be, anyway. “All right. Okay. I can face that stinking void now, I think. Let’s go before this wears off.”

We set off toward the bar. Jane’s stride matched mine exactly, and her competitiveness was just slightly greater. She kept pulling ahead. I kept catching up, until we were almost running and then both laughing. We broke into a full-on run, leaping swamp things and dead weres as we skidded toward the bar. We slammed into its front doors—what was left of its front doors—at exactly the same time, and burst out laughing again. A bunch of shell-shocked vampires stared at us, but not one of them made a move toward the kooky humans laughing it up on the doorstep.

Lazarus—Legba—had already made himself at home inside, sprawled over an overstuffed chair that had been dragged into the main bar from somewhere else. He had a cigar in one hand, a bottle of rum in the other, and Serena’s baby chortling on his lap. He looked to me as he had before: like a witch with a very strong connection to a god, not a god himself. But some of that fell away as Jane and I, still giggling, staggered in, and he offered up a sentence that was half a question: “You g’wan home now, girls.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we think we better. You’re, um. You’ll take care of New Orleans, right? You’ll get it back on track?”

“Cherie, dat’s what I do. Dese people, dey mine, no matter what d’world, no matter when d’time. We make it good, we make it whole again. D’city’s heart ain’t broken. D’rest can heal.” His gaze sharpened. “Wouldn’t hurt to have your magic here for dat.”

“No, but my world doesn’t have an active Papa Legba, either, so I think I better head on home.”

“Mmm.” Legba eyed Jane in turn. “How ‘bout you, cherie? You got power and control. Lotta folk in dis town gotta learn all ‘bout control again. You could help.”

Jane snorted. “I don’t think so. Gods and screwing around in alternate timelines aren’t my deal. I’ll go home, thanks.”

Legba shrugged, unsurprised, and lifted his rum in farewell. On either side of him, star-filled gateways opened. “I’ll miss you girls.”

“I’m sure we’ll miss you too,” Jane muttered under her breath. We nodded at each other, then drew identically deep breaths and headed for our gates.

Half a step out of mine, a thought shocked through me and I backpedaled. “Hey! Wait! Wait! Jane!”

Jane turned away from her gate, eyebrows lifted curiously. “Here.” I yanked one of my earrings free and offered it to her. An ivory coyote. It had been a gift from a friend, but it had also signaled a connection that wasn’t meant to be. I kind of liked the idea of handing it over to someone else, making another connection that had probably never been intended. “Look, here, it’s … not one of my totem animals, not quite, but it’s important. And maybe if, I don’t know, like, if you ever, like … need me …”

Ah yes, that was me, mistress of the English language. I shrugged, embarrassed at myself, and finished in a mumble: “I mean, God only knows if it would work, but hell, even if it doesn’t …”

Jane looked at the dangly earring, then twisted a slow grin. “You’re all right, Joanne Walker.” She took an ash wood, silver-tipped stake out of her hair and rubbed the wood across her gold nugget necklace as if anointing it. She tossed it to me. “I don’t know, rub it and click your heels together three times, Dorothy. We’ll see what happens.”

I caught the stake with a stupid twisty grin of my own. “You’re not bad yourself, Jane Yellowrock. Tell you what, I’ll see you on the flip side.”

We turned and walked away from one another, away from that world inverted.

… the end?

Fans are the only reason we have careers. Fans keep meals on our tables, and house payments made, and boots purchased. And most important, fans give us a reason to keep writing. Your letters and emails and chats keep us going when we are tired, overworked, and gave ourselves too many deadlines.

So, this is to recognize you, the fans. Easy Pickings is yours, written with you in mind, hoping you love this third-world-new-reality we’ve created herein.

Thank you for making it possible for us to write it.

—Faith and Catie

About the Authors

Faith Hunter was born in Louisiana and raised all over the south. She writes the Skinwalker series, featuring Jane Yellowrock. Her Rogue Mage novels, a dark, urban fantasy series feature Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage in a post-apocalyptic alternate reality. These novels are the basis for Rogue Mage RPG and World Book.

Hunter fell in love with reading in fifth grade, and best loved SiFi, fantasy, and gothic. She decided to become a writer in high school, when a teacher told her she had talent. Now, she writes full-time and works full-time in a hospital lab, (for the benefits) tries to keep house, and is a workaholic with a passion for travel, jewelry making, whitewater kayaking, and writing. She and her husband love to RV, traveling with their rescued Pomeranians to whitewater rivers all over the Southeast.

For more, please see
www.faithhunter.net
,
www.gwenhunter.com
&
www.magicalwords.net
.

C.E. Murphy began writing around age six, when she submitted three poems to a school publication. The teacher producing the magazine selected (inevitably) the one she thought was by far the worst, but also told her to keep writing, which she has. She has held the usual grab-bag of jobs usually seen in an authorial biography, including public library volunteer, archival assistant, cannery worker, and web designer. Writing books is better.

She was born and raised in Alaska, and now lives with her family in her ancestral homeland of Ireland, which is a magical land where it rains a lot but winter rarely actually arrives.

More information about C.E. Murphy, her career, and her writing can be found at
www.cemurphy.net
.

Also by

Faith Hunter

The Jane Yellowrock Books

STRANGE BREW*

RAVEN CURSED (Jan 2012)

CAT TALES (e-book)

anthology containing the short story “Signatures of the Dead”