Promises to Keep

snow beneath. What surprised Jay was the lack of animal tracks. The snow had fallen two days before. Why weren’t there signs of foxes, rabbits, and deer?

When he finally did sense life, he pursued it.

What he found, curled in the snow, was a woman with skin and hair the color of the night sky, and white streaks like moonlight in her hair. She wasn’t sleeping, but neither was she awake. She was just lying in the snow, in a long gown covered in frost.

Her breathing was barely more perceptible than her hypothermic thoughts. When Jay knelt and set his fingers to her throat, he felt that her pulse was steady. He touched her arm, and a whisper of magic replied. A shapeshifter of some sort? That would be good. Shapeshifters were very sturdy.

He put a hand over her heart and slowly trickled warmth into her body, wondering who she was and what might have brought her to be here like this.

Most breeds of shapeshifter had certain defining features. The Mistari-tigers were of African-Asian descent. Serpiente tended toward dark hair with fair skin. The lions were black in human form, but this woman wasn’t just black in the way that humans were; she was actually black, like coal. Lynx would have been able to guess her breed by her smell, but Jay couldn’t.

She stirred slightly, moaning.

Jay tried to reach for her mind, but it fluttered away, as elusive as a faerie.

As he continued to pour warm power into her, he sensed her body remembering injuries both recent and from long ago. There was a sense of resignation in her flesh, and a memory less substantial than scars that remembered cut and burned flesh, broken bones, blood flowing.

And an even deeper agony.

Suddenly, that agony lashed out at Jay.

He staggered backward and thudded into the snowdrift behind him. His connection to the shapeshifter had been completely severed.

Wind whipped through the forest, making the trees shiver and groan in sympathy. The air rippled like heat rising from pavement. A force whispered to him, She must come home.

The force that spoke was … maybe not malevolent, but maybe so. He knew only that it was powerful, and it had stopped him from helping the woman.

She can’t go home if she dies here, he thought.

He lifted her gently in his arms. If he couldn’t keep her warm with his magic, he had to find another way. He wished he hadn’t locked Xeke’s door behind him. He arranged her in the backseat of his car, wrapped in an emergency blanket. He wanted to call SingleEarth’s healers for advice, but his cell phone was still dead. The best he could do was turn on his GPS and ask it to take him to the closest SingleEarth Haven, which was #2.

Perfect; his cousin Caryn Smoke worked at the clinic attached to #2. Caryn was twenty, just a year older than Jay, and hadn’t yet finished her formal medical training, but she was already one of the best magical healers he knew. He had recently received an engagement announcement from her, though he couldn’t remember who she was marrying, or when. Hopefully it hadn’t been a Christmas wedding. He wasn’t sure what would become of the shapeshifter if Caryn wasn’t there to help.

CHAPTER 6

HE REACHED SINGLEEARTH shortly after dawn, while the winter sky still had that gray-and-purple tone, as if it weren’t sure if it wanted to stay dark, get bright, or catch on fire.

After pulling up to the main entrance, Jay left his car running while he went inside to get help. The shapeshifter’s body temperature had returned to normal during the trip, but he still hadn’t been able to wake her, which meant this was a case for doctors and witches trained in healing, instead of a hunter with a rudimentary knowledge of magical and mundane first aid.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked as Jay looked around, hoping to find Caryn loitering conveniently nearby.

“I have a woman in my car out front,” he answered. “She’s a shapeshifter, she’s unconscious, and I can’t wake her.”

The receptionist pressed a button on her desk and said, “Medical needed at main entrance.” Two of SingleEarth’s EMTs appeared within moments. The receptionist echoed what Jay had just told her, looking at him only to ask, “What breed?”

“Not sure. You need a witch to look at her, though.”

“Bring her in,” the receptionist told the EMTs. To Jay, she added, “We have plenty of trained doctors on staff. If it looks like she needs magical care—”

“Where’s Caryn?” he interrupted. Jay had napped a couple hours at Xeke’s place, but he still needed real sleep, of the variety that he liked to regularly engage in for six to eight to twelve hours. He didn’t have patience for a bureaucratic runaround from a receptionist who normally dealt with things like shapeshifter obstetrics, minor human injuries and illnesses, and non-critical mystical mishaps.

Winter Village, her mind answered, as she said, “Ms. Smoke is not—”

“Never mind.” Though few shapeshifters and fewer witches celebrated Christmas, enough SingleEarth members did that Haven #2 had set up a “Winter Village” in the events hall.

Sure enough, Jay found Caryn there, arranging brightly wrapped presents around a half-dozen evergreen trees whose piney scent had filled the large room. While Caryn meticulously adjusted wrapping and ribbons, her mind raced through thoughts of schedules, dance lessons, and food. Something about a caterer and cake.

“Caryn?”

She turned with an expression that was half smile and half frown. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Medical needs you,” he said.

“They haven’t paged me.”

“Trust me.”

“Jay …” Caryn shook her head and bit back an explanation of why the triage process Jay was trying to circumvent existed. Caryn was the only witch regularly at this haven. If she were called for every skinned knee and headache, she would never have time to sleep or eat. “Fine,” she said. “What’s the issue?”

She followed him toward the medical wing as he explained.

“Was she with the others you called in earlier?” Caryn asked as she waved aside the triage nurse and started checking the shapeshifter’s vitals. Pulse was steady, though slow. Breathing even. Temperature slightly elevated for human norms but well within most shapeshifter norms.

“No. I went to a Christmas party and stayed with a friend after.” And Kendra’s house was … hmm. The name of the town was on the tip of his tongue. “Well, I found her in the woods, a bit ago.”

“Which woods?” Caryn asked.

Behind the apartment complex, which had been named … nope.

“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” he answered.

Caryn took a deep breath, mentally counting to ten, before she said, “Well, she’s in good hands now. Why don’t you go get some sleep? Your usual room is empty.”

Finally—permission to sleep! Jay didn’t need to be told twice. He picked up the key at the front desk, stretched out on the sun-streaked bed the moment he entered his room, and then let his mind settle into the shape of cat.

His body didn’t change, but mentally he was cat. A house cat, who lived only to laze about in the sun and be pampered. And one of the things cats liked most was to sleep long, long hours, which was why cat was one of Jay’s favorite things to be.

The Jay-cat dreamed of forests. Of pouncing on butterflies and stalking motes of dust as they drifted in the warm air. Bit by bit, though, he realized something bigger was hunting him.

He crouched low, trying to hide. He swiveled his head slowly, looking around, but couldn’t find the source of