As I had said just that morning—God, had it really been so recently?— I was coming to the conclusion that it was my responsibility to figure out what these were, why they were here, what kind of problems they might cause or maybe even solve.
But in any case, somehow, I knew they were mine to deal with.
And right now, it was mine to use.
Like Janice, I was certain the wolves were the ones who had come to take the baby. Underneath that icy calm that I had wrapped around me, some part of me was terrified that they would kill the infant lamia before we could save it.
That just means I have to work faster.
But whatever was going to happen next, it had to have three parts: Find the wolves. Get the baby back. Put the wolves down for good.
I turned to Kelly. “Janice said to leave a message with the hospital operator if there was an emergency. See if maybe we can get her on the phone—if the operator can route us through to her? I want to talk to her before I start this.”
She nodded and moved across the room to the landline NICU phone. As we waited, I circled that magical rift in reality.
“Is there something significant about that spot?” Shane asked.
I’d forgotten he couldn’t see it, probably couldn’t sense anything about it at all. “It’s kind of a magical hotspot. I’m hoping I can use it to help find where they took the baby.”
“I’ve got Janice,” Kelly said, holding out the phone.
I took it from her to give Janice a quick update on the situation, only to discover she already knew what was going on.
“I’m going to see if I can pull on some of the Earth magic energy and learn more,” I said. “I don’t know if it’ll work, but it ... feels right.”
“I trust your instincts,” Janice said. “If they got out of the hospital with the infant, I’ll start coordinating a search.”
“I’m sure it was the wolves.” My words came out through clenched teeth.
“I am, too. But they’ll hide it. So you need to be prepared to do whatever’s necessary to find them.”
I hung up, but her words stayed with me, stoking the anger inside me.
I let it build until I could draw on it, use it. Then I moved back to stand directly in front of the magical spot.
As the rage poured through me, I pulled on that power I carried within. When that wasn’t enough, I reached outside myself to find the source of the energy, drawing it through me and around me until I was surrounded by a sparkling, shimmering light.
Tiny sparkles of energy danced through the power I pulled on. I drilled into my body and down into the center of myself, where I coiled it into a tight circle, wrapping around and around like a ball of yarn until it was dense and heavy.
It was like unstitching reality to move it into me.
The more I drew on it, the more the space in front of me unraveled. In some distant part of my mind, I knew I didn’t really want to do this. But by then it was too late.
That hole in the world just kept getting wider.
When I had built up enough of the energy in me, I began to use it as if I were knitting a new reality from inside myself. It powered my shift as I pulled myself up to my full human height and let the change overtake me.
Usually, my vision is the first thing to change, going gray. This time, however, I controlled the shift more carefully—I wanted to terrify the wolves and their allies with my sheer presence.
And then I want to rip them apart.
I started with my legs. They melded together in a way that usually made me drop to the floor. But this time, I added size even as the skin on my thighs roughened into scales and my feet melded together into a single tail.
I had enough space, enough growth, to coil in on myself and not lose any of my height.
The more magic I pulled into myself, the more I grew.
I let the shift continue to rise above my belly button. And then I allowed the rest of my skin turned to scales—the bright blues and greens of a jungle snake, contrasting with my human hair and eyes.
I was still me, but I was a version of me that no one had ever seen before. I was the color of jewels in sunlight, the size of a tree, and I carried the power of the world in the center of myself.
As I turned to go find the wolves, I caught a glimpse of the hole in the world I’d made.
And for the first time, I saw through it into another place.
It was like looking through a fogged mirror or window, slowly clearing. As it shimmered into view, I first saw buildings, high spires pointing into the air and squat cubes stacked atop one another in a city skyline that I did not recognize.
As the image resolved, it became not simply a city, but a ruined city—a desolate, gray space, where flashes of lightning crackled in the distance.
And then someone moved into my vision, a woman stepping into my line of sight.
She was tall and dark-haired, thin and muscular. Her clothes were odd—like some strange amalgamation of the Wild West and a Renaissance fair. A bodice over blue jeans with boots and a cowboy hat.
Her wide, gray eyes stared back at me in astonishment.
She could see me as well as I could see her. We stared at one another for the space of
