Free Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel by Faith Hunter Page A

naked in front of Leo and Edmund . . . and Eli, who was sitting in a delicate, dainty floral-upholstered chair at a small ormolu table, his eyes on me.
    The lamp on the table was off and the room was deeply shadowed, my partner’s face not visible until I pulled on Beast’s night vision. Through her eyes, the room was silver and green, the details sharp and the shadows black as if drawn with india ink. Eli’s expression was grim, set, and hewas sitting as still as a vamp. There was a shotgun across his knees. I hadn’t seen the shotgun when we got to headquarters, so either he had gone home to get it or someone had brought it to him. I was betting that he hadn’t left my side and that one of Leo’s security peeps had brought it to him. Probably under duress.
    There was a glass of water on the bedside table and I drank it dry, replacing it on the table. I cleared my throat, which still felt scratchy, and said, “Debrief.”
    “That bird stabbed you. I shot him. You didn’t shift.”
    I had thought that Eli’s voice had been toneless many times in our relationship, but this was even more so. Robotic. Dead sounding.
    “I applied pressure. Leo flipped you over and ripped open your shirt. Arterial bleeding went everywhere. You were bleeding out. Leo sliced his fingertips and shoved them inside the wound.”
    Eli went quiet again. His jaw worked, tightening and relaxing in the edged shadows. When he began again, there was no indication that he was under strain, except for the total lack of emotion in his voice. “Edmund picked you up. Leo and he carried you here. I shot a couple of vamps who got in the way or got too close. Standard ammo. They’ll live.”
    I said nothing, just watched his face. After a long silence, he said, “You didn’t shift.” And this time there was a bare hint of emotion, a simple thread of . . . something.
    “I couldn’t. Since the lightning, I’ve shifted when I wasn’t in trouble, in danger, but this time, when I needed to shift or die, I couldn’t.”
    “Lightning?”
    “I don’t know, but . . .” I stopped and thought before I finished, reluctance in my tone. “. . . there seems to be a correlation.”
    “You said the bird might have been magicked to hurt you. Why do you think that?”
    “When I first met him . . . Seems like forever. He used his magic to heal me of a werewolf attack.”
    My partner gave a slight downward jut of his head to indicate he had heard me and understood.
    “Later.” I stopped. “You know the eye on the dollar bill? The one on top of the pyramid?”
    Nod.
    “I had one of those on each palm. Like a tattoo, the blue color of his magic. I knew he was spying on me. It was in my soul home too, watching me. The eye in my palm this morning was exactly the same eye, but green. In the fight, I saw it again in my left palm, the one the spell started in today. I think I was wrong about the spell being just a scan. I think it did something to me too. I think Gee’s watching eye and the witches’ eye are connected. Somehow. Water?”
    Eli poured me another glass from the pitcher beside the bed. It was a cut-crystal pitcher and looked heavy. And I had no energy. I drank the water down. Then two more. I was badly dehydrated and I probably needed a couple of liters of fluid. A gallon of Gatorade might do the trick. I could get that as soon as I was finished with my tale. “In the fight, Gee’s blue eye of seeing was in my palm, open. Then it faded to pale green, the color of the stronger witch’s power. The scent of the spell was weird too: iron and salt and something harsh like burning hair.”
    Eli seemed to mull that over, and something in his stance relaxed a fraction.
    I let a half smile form on my mouth, and my lips cracked. “Whatever it is, it may still be active. We need a way to thwart the spell.”
    “Thwart?” he asked, humor in his voice.
    “Magical word. Stuff you’ll learn if you hang around me long enough.”
    “It’s