I drew in a breath. “My grandmother says I can do it. I can change, I mean. Shapeshift. She says it's in my DNA.”
Dee blinked and then stared at me.
“I know, I know,” I said. “It’s weirding me out. First the telekinesis. Now maybe shapeshifting. I hardly know myself anymore.”
“A woman of many talents,” he said, and held up his glass in a silent toast.
Most people probably don’t feel frustration in their toes, but I do. I rubbed one foot on top of the other, trying to wipe the feeling away. “My parents should have told me. They should have trained me.”
“But they didn’t,” Dee said. “So you start from now and deal with what comes.” He paused. “When we met, you couldn’t cast a spell to save your life. You didn’t know anything about other planes, other worlds, other kinds of beings. But you learned. You learned and you triumphed. If it turns out you’re a shifter, mazel tov. One more thing for your bag of tricks.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “You always see the bright side.”
“There’s not really a good alternative.” He patted the spot next to him on the sofa. “We have a couple of hours before your grandmother gets here. If you want to sit around moping and moaning because you maybe have too many gifts, go ahead. But frankly, I can think of much more pleasant ways to spend that time.”
I liked the idea but said, “What I’d really like to do is learn how to cast invisibility on myself.”
Dee smiled. “We could do both.”
Dee was in the shower and I was toweling my hair dry when G-ma knocked at my door.
She kind of glowed with anticipation as she slid by me into the house. I wasn’t sure if the glow was real or the way I was perceiving her emotion.
“I do hope Diego is here and that radiance in your mind is the result of some recent and excellent sex,” she said and gave me a quick hug.
I blinked, stunned. “You know, it’s very weird to have your grandmother talk about your sex life.”
It was also weird to have someone see into me the way I saw into others.
G-ma laughed. “Not when I’ve come to help you learn to shapeshift and sex is one of the best ways for a wizard to up her personal power.”
I shrugged. Dee had told me about sex magic right after we’d become lovers, and it was a pretty pleasant way to juice up one’s powers. It was also something I wasn’t going to discuss with my G-ma.
“Where is Diego?” she asked.
“Upstairs. He’ll be down soon.”
“Good,” she said. “We’ll wait for him. Whether the shift works or not, it will be good for you to have him there for emotional support.”
G-ma might be as blunt as a hammer but she wasn’t wrong.
“Can I get you anything?” I said, being hospitable.
“Yes,” she said. “A large pitcher of ice water, if you have it. We’ll need very cold water.”
Lucky then that I kept a pitcher of water in the fridge. I got up to fetch it.
“Three glasses,” she called behind me.
I came back with the pitcher and three glasses on a tray, set them on the coffee table, and filled two of the glasses.
“Why do we need cold water?” I asked.
G-ma lifted one of the glasses to her lips and drank. She smiled at me over the rim. “In case we get thirsty.”
For a moment, I was annoyed with her sending me off for busy work until I realized she was keeping me occupied so I wouldn’t think too hard about why she was here and what my success or failure at shapeshifting might mean.
I lifted my glass and held it out for a toast. We clinked glasses just as Dee came into the parlor.
“Did I miss anything?” He walked over and gave G-ma a quick hug, which surprised me.
G-ma laughed. “You wondering when and how Diego and I know each other so well that he would hug me.”
I nodded. “He’s not really the “hug-a-stranger” type.” I looked up at Dee. “You’re not.”
He hiked one shoulder in admission.
“We met at your mother’s, when Diego brought in Drake. We spent time together while Katrina did her healing magic, and took to each other right away.”
Well, that was interesting. And pleasing.
“Sit with Oona,” G-ma told him, “and we’ll begin.”
Nerves shot through me. As soon as Dee sat, I took his hand and squeezed. He squeezed back with a lot less force than I’d used.
“Now, Oona,” she said, “I know you’ve seen and met werebeings at your mother’s clinic. You may also have met other shifters.”
I nodded.
“Goodlights are not shifters like a were. We aren’t limited to one animal form. As far as I know, we can become any animal we choose. I’ve been birds, dogs, and cats of all sizes and ferocities, rodents, spiders, sea mammals, fish, you name it. Now, it is possible that the trait wasn’t handed down to you. Your mother couldn’t shift to an animal form if her life depended on it. It’s also possible that the ability skipped a generation and you’ll shift as easily as I do. There’s only one way to find out. We must unlock you.”
My mouth went dry. I lifted my glass and drank deeply.
“How do you ‘unlock’ someone?” Dee asked.
She smiled. “How would you do it, Diego?”
“With a spell.”
G-ma bent her head in acknowledgment. “And so would I.” She turned to me. “Are you ready?”
Spells were painless. The results could hurt, say, a wind spell that blew someone into a wall or the like. But spells, at least the ones I’d cast on myself or had cast on me, were so pain-free you only knew they’d been cast by the results. So why was I so apprehensive?
I nodded.
“You’ll have to undress if you want to become something larger than yourself,” G-ma said.
“How about I try for something small?” I said. “A rat?”
G-ma snorted. “A rat is fine. Okay. Here we go.”
The cadence of the spell she began to mutter was odd—like reggae music, with its own beat. She traced a design in the air with the fingers of her right hand. Dee stiffened next to me and his gaze flicked back and forth between G-ma and me. I felt worry in him, which kicked up my own nerves a notch. I felt him gathering his energy and will. If Dee was worried, shouldn’t I be, too?
I slipped into his mind to find out what worried him.
G-ma might have read his mind or read mine, or just noticed how big my eyes had suddenly gotten. She ended the chant and laid her free hand over mine.
“No need to worry,” she said. “The spell is targeted to shifting. If there are other latent abilities in you, they won’t be triggered and set loose.” She lifted her hand away but kept her eyes focused on me. “Shifting is like any other magic, it’s all about using your life force and will to shape what you want to happen. Relax and yet focus on what you wish to be. See the rat you want to be in your mind. See yourself flowing into its shape.”
It seemed a little silly to imagine myself as a rat, but I did it. I felt the warmth of fur and the acute hearing of large ears, the feel of air on my whiskers, the scent of food in the kitchen.
Dee’s eyes were suddenly huge and as round as dinner plates. I had to tilt my head back to see his face, which was odd. G-ma clapped her hands. Too loud. I sat on my haunches and covered my ears with my paws.
“How do I change back?” I said, but my voice came out as squeaks. My heart beat fast. My mouth went dry. How the hell do I change back?
It had to be the same but reversed. At least I hoped so.
I thought of myself in my human body. The change was instantaneous. I even slid back into my shirt and shorts and popped back as a full-clothed human. Dee’s eyes were still wide and his mouth hung slightly open. I laughed.
“That was incredible,” I said.
G-ma grinned and huffed in satisfaction. “I knew you had it in you, Oona. I never doubted. Honestly, I’m surprised you never accidentally discovered you
r ability, given that you shifted the first time you tried.”
“I want to try something else,” I said. “A bird. I want to fly.”
I thought of myself as a canary, small and yellow, with black eyes and a tan beak, and willed myself to become that.
I spread my wings and hopped off the couch to take flight.
And fell on the floor. I shook my small body head-to-tail, shaking off the surprise, disappointment, and ache in my left wing.
Dee reached down and gently picked me up. I stood on his outstretched palm and flapped my wings. When I felt I had control, I made a little hop and rose into the air. I flew around the room, laughing and whooping—all of which came out as tiny chirps.
I landed back on the couch and thought myself back into Oona. Flying had moved me away from my clothes and I was naked. Dee grinned. I slit my eyes at him and kept my back to G-ma as I hustled my shorts and shirt back on.
“What you have become once,” G-ma said behind me, “is ingrained in you. All you need do to be it again is want it.”
I adjusted my shirt and turned to her. “So now I can be a rat or a canary just by—”
“Just by deciding to be it,” she said. “Since your goal is to protect the sea witch in the ocean, you’ll probably need to get in the ocean and work on becoming the animals you’ll want to be there.”
I rubbed my hands over my face, all the joy and fun of transforming gone in the instant of remembering the purpose.
Chapter 20
Dee convinced me not to immediately race down to the water and work on shifting to all things aquatic.
First thing the next morning, we headed down to the beach so I could exercise my new ability. And work on casting the invisibility spell, which Dee was teaching me. It took a few tries, but I finally got it right.
I waded into the ocean and dove under the first good-sized wave that came my way, getting completely wet. I swam out until I couldn’t touch bottom. A small group of corbina passed by under my feet. I pictured myself as one of them, all gray with a white underbelly, flipping my dark tail to glide through the water, just above the sand.
But a corbina wasn’t going to be able to protect the sea witch. I needed to be something bigger—something meaner.
I wasn’t sure if the invisibility spell held when I shifted. I swam out to deeper waters, past the surfers but not so far out that the pleasure boaters would spot me and pictured myself as a Great White shark.
Being a predator felt different. All my senses were on alert. I tracked every smell, keenly felt the water’s movement, and stared unblinkingly through the swirl of salt and sand for prey. Fish scattered at my approach. So, not invisible in a shifted form.
I swam toward shore, shifting back to human when I came near to a group of surfers bobbing on the surface, waiting for the next good wave. I came up next to a surfer on an old-school longboard and treaded water next to him. He made no sign that he saw me.
As a test, I put my hands on his board. The board tipped slightly at my weight. The surfer looked surprised and re-balanced himself but clearly didn’t see me. I was invisible in human form. Good to know
I came out of the water, shook myself off, sidled up next to Dee and started putting my clothes on. He turned his head and smiled. Shorts and a shirt moving by themselves and then disappearing as they came under the invisibility spell seemed to amuse him.
“Ready to be seen again?” he said.
I looked around. No one was looking our way.
“Sure.”
Dee undid the spell. “How was it?”
“Amazing. I tried out a fish and a Great White. Being a predator is a whole different experience.”
We walked the rest of the way to my house in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to be the shark. The ocean was my element and the Great White an apex predator. The power of that had surged through me. It was heady stuff. I could stand feeling like that all the time.
“You know what we need to do now,” Dee said, startling me from my revelry. “Tell Bridget we can protect her on land or in the water.”
Bridget looked pale. She sat quietly on The Gate’s couch, her arms wrapped across her stomach, and barely acknowledged Dee and me when we came in.
The Gate looked a little pale himself.
“She needs to get back in her element,” he said. “I’ve insisted she stay with me, where I can offer her protection, but it’s been too long. She’s starting to waste away. Soon she’ll be too weak to sit up.”
“She can go to the ocean,” I said. “I’ll go with her and keep her safe.”
Bridget made a small, shallow, but hopeful sound.
The Gate tilted his head and looked at me. “Has our fierce lamb learned to swim?”
I nodded, remembering again the feeling of power, of rightness, that surged in me when I was a shark. “Yeah. Like a fish.”
“Shifter?”
“Into anything I like, evidently. I was a Great White shark this morning. I can stay in the water with Bridget and make sure whatever is hunting her has no chance of bagging its prey.”
“Good. We’ll drive down. Bridget hasn’t the strength to walk even a few blocks.”
“You’ve been giving her your energy,” Dee said to The Gate.
The Gate nodded.
That was why he looked pale and tired himself.
“Come on,” Dee said and bent to help Bridget up.
She leaned on him all the way to the door, down the stairs, and out to the street and into the car. I felt him pushing his energy and magic into her, propping her up, giving her strength. She looked much better by the time we reached the sand and started across it to the water.
“Time to make you two invisible,” Dee said when we reached the water. He muttered the spell. This wasn’t the first time I’d watched a companion disappear, but I hadn’t seen it so often that it didn’t faze me. I blinked when Bridget vanished and felt that sudden tightening in my stomach that comes from seeing something the rational mind says is wrong. It was strange to know I’d vanished from sight as well. I stripped off my clothes and waded into the water.
Once Bridget was in the water, she became visible to me. Her face was the same, though her pained expression was fading. Her long pale hair floated around her head like silk ribbons. She kept her human form but in her natural element moved smoothly through the water like a fish or a dolphin. I was so entranced watching her that I forgot to shift until my human lungs started burning.
I shifted into a corbina, holding off on the Great White form until we were beyond where the waves started breaking, in deeper waters, and wouldn’t frighten the surfers and swimmers. Though maybe that would be a good thing if it got everyone out of the water.
I was still considering becoming a shark when I caught sight of a half dozen or so black shapes moving off to my left. As a corbina, I couldn’t turn my head to look; I had to turn my whole body to see full on what had alerted me in my peripheral vision.
Divers. In wet suits but no tanks. Masks on their faces making their eyes and nose look distorted. Spear guns in two of the divers’ hands. Two other divers with some other sort of long tube with a trigger. I had no idea what that might be.
What were divers doing so close to shore? We were barely beyond where above us waves were cresting. They must be coming back from some kind of free-dive since they didn’t have tanks or even snorkels.
They’d seen Bridget though and were heading straight toward her. I shifted to my shark form and swam toward them. I was twice the length of their tallest man. I came at them fast, to scare them off.
They kept coming though, moving purposefully toward Bridget. Every time she changed direction, the divers did too. I put my shark body between her and the divers and rammed toward them. The diver in the lead fired a spear at me. I barely managed to dodge it, then had to half-turn my body around to make sure the spear hadn’t hit Bridget. Being a shark had advantages but also drawbacks.
Another sp
ear zoomed through the water. The sharp tip grazed my white belly, drawing blood. I screamed in shock at the pain. The sight of my open maw and all those very impressive teeth seemed to give the divers pause. They all stopped, waving their arms back and forth in the water to hold themselves in place.
Despite the pain, I pressed my advantage, swimming toward them, my maw wide, projecting my best I will eat you if you don’t back off vibe.
The divers spread out, swimming around both sides and above me, focused on Bridget. I picked a diver to my right and rammed him, sending him spinning through the water. I picked another diver and swam toward him.
The water around us began to churn. Sand and shells, small crabs and clams spun around us, Bridget working her sea witch magic, controlling the ocean. The divers rolled and tumbled in the turbulent water.
I rolled and tumbled along with them, as affected by the churn as they were, struggling to right myself.
A diver managed to aim the tube he carried at me. I barely registered the small flash of light that sent a large net speeding through the water. I tried to dodge the net, but it wrapped around me as if it had eyes. The more I thrashed trying to throw it off, the tighter the net closed.
There was magic in the net. I felt the tingle of it all over my skin. The tingle grew hot as I tried to free myself, the net biting into my flesh.
The ocean instantly calmed and Bridget was suddenly next to me, her hands tearing at the net, trying to pull it off me. I saw a diver aim his spear gun at her. I thrashed, trying to get my body between Bridget and the diver. The spear flew through the water, striking her in the chest. Blood gushed from her wound, a red plume floating out of her body and dissipating in the water.
I screamed and thrashed wildly within the net but couldn’t get free. I had to get free. Had to save Bridget if she was still alive and kill all the divers if she wasn’t.
The only thing I could think to do to get free of the net was to shift to a corbina again. A corbina was much, much smaller than a Great White. Not small enough to slip through the holes between the grid of the rope, though. There was a bit of an opening at the back of the net large enough to escape through. I’d have to be fast. Shift and swim for the opening and make it out before the diver could close it down.
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