The Shifters

“Light pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me…”

She chanted and stared into the mirror, focusing on the light, until the borders of her silhouette became hazy, insubstantial, until her whole body started wavering, like the warm flickering of a candle flame…until all she could see in the mirror was light.

And then she could see the cabinet behind her, as if she was no longer there. She felt, not saw, herself smile, and said softly to herself, “Everything seen and those not seen, let me walk now in between. As I say, so mote it be!”

She turned, invisibly, and walked toward the door.

On Bourbon, Caitlin strode through the crowds clogging the street with no fear of the prowling pickpockets and the inevitable drunk men who would have been hitting on her, hitting hard, had she not been protected by the cloak of the glamour. She loved the power of walking invisible as the air, through the warring music blasting from the wide-open doors of the clubs: Zydeco; karaoke; slow, sultry jazz.

The street looked, as always, like a stage set. There was something about the flatness of it, she thought—being able to see for blocks and blocks, and the balconies of revelers up above…there was a Shakespearean flavor to everything that she had to admit was appealing. especially when you were invisible.

She was entirely unnoticed by the drunk revelers, the break-tap-dancing teenagers…the buskers holding signs advertising Huge Ass Beers To Go and the opposing signs waved by religious crazies: God Punishes All Sinners. Caitlin squeezed quickly by the sign wielders, grimacing…. Then, as she was passing a blind street musician wearing sunglasses à la Ray Charles, he stepped right in her path and bowed, a breathtakingly courtly gesture, and spoke. “Lovely lady.”

Caitlin froze, as confused as the crowd of tourists around her, who looked around them with comic doubletakes, having no idea who or what the musician was talking to, unable to even wrap their minds around the idea that he was seeing anyone at all. It could all just have been part of the show to them.

No big surprise, Caitlin told herself. There were psychics of all kinds in NOLA—either the city drew them or actually bred them—and it wasn’t much of a stretch that a blind man would have learned to use other senses.

But she had her own mission, so she quickly sidestepped the jazzman and continued on into the crowd.

Behind her on the sidewalk, Ryder straightened in his Ray Charles body, swept up the hat containing his tips, and followed her at a distance, tapping his cane for show.

The glamour was a good one, he would give her that. It demonstrated as high a level of skill as unmasking him in the shop earlier that day had done. If this Keeper’s sisters were as good as she was, there was a strong Keeper presence in the city, as strong as he’d seen in any town for a long time…as strong as their parents’ had been rumored to be.

That didn’t mean he trusted her. She had issues, this one, obviously. But she might be useful, down the line. And she was on a mission tonight—first the vampire detective, now this obvious continuance of her investigation, which, whatever it was, required a glamour. Which made it his business to investigate.

Besides, invisible as she may have been to the others around them, for him, the view from behind wasn’t bad at all.

Ryder was enjoying being on Bourbon again. The sights and sounds were intoxicating…neon lights in all colors and the sparkling, feathered costumes of the revelers…the long, sleek legs of the showgirls, the bright, glazed eyes of the tourists, the smells of chocolate and piña coladas….

His impulse was to follow every impulse.

Instead he focused and followed Caitlin.

Caitlin weaved forward through the crowd, her jaw now clenched grimly. It was probably the influence of Halloween coming up, but it was barely nine o’clock and the partiers seemed even more out of control than usual. The drunk guy on the balcony to her right, blatantly taking camera phone shots of his girlfriend’s crotch. The college crowd on the left balcony dangling beads off the railing, shouting “Show me your tits!” and “Give me sumpin'!” to everyone passing by. The stumbling drunk bridal parties, one group right now passing Caitlin with a sullen bride in the middle wearing a T-shirt reading I’m The Bride, Those Are The Bitches.

And Caitlin knew it was just beginning. As the night and the bon temps rolled on, more and more people would be holding their friends up as they stumbled from one bar to the next, stopping to partake of every “Huge Ass Beer!” and Hurricane and Hand Grenade and Jello shot offered to them. I Got Bourbon-Faced On Shit Street T-shirts were popular souvenirs for a reason. So many wasted lives—literally.

Caitlin put on speed as she saw her goal ahead of her. The music literally rocked her as she approached; Bons Temps was one of the loudest clubs on Bourbon, and that was saying a lot.

She stepped through the doors and saw that there was a cover band up on stage, and even at this decibel range, the musical talent was obvious; the best musicians flocked to New Orleans just as surely as they did to Nashville and L.A.

These particular musicians, no surprise, were clearly altered: drunk, stoned, high.

Wasted.

The lead singer, Case, had a falsetto to rival Steve Connor and an Iggy Pop tilt to his slim hips; in his bandanna and artfully ripped T-shirt, he was a pirate who expertly twirled the mike in his fingers and charmed the female patrons with a mad and manic gleam in his eyes. The very young keyboard player, Danny, wore a Megadeth T-shirt and looked like an angel with his long, shimmering hair and beatific face…until you noticed his completely empty eyes.

Caitlin’s stomach heaved, and she had to turn away from the stage.

The floor was always packed at Bons Temps; no other Bourbon Street club was so crowded, so consistently. Not just because the guys were great musicians; they were, but there was a little something extra. When Case sang Aerosmith, sometimes you could swear you were looking at Steven Tyler. A Police number? It might have been that third Hurricane, but sometimes you would bet your life it was a young Sting up there singing. Eminem, Bono, Flo Rida…it was a subtle thing, but wildly effective with the drunk crowds….

Because Case and Danny were shapeshifters. The most skilled species: shifters whose expertise was taking on different human forms.

And Caitlin had a long and ambiguous acquaintance with these two shifters.

Shapeshifters were rarely productive members of society; their sense of self was too amorphous, and because of that inconstancy and lack of center, they tended toward indulgences of all kinds. But they were also wildly charismatic, in no small part because they could subtly alter their physical form to match other people’s fantasies, and they were often excellent psychics, because they passed through the astral, a parallel dimension of spirits and entities, easily used for transportation between planes of reality, every time they shifted. And in the astral, all kinds of things could be gleaned: past, present and future.

The rowdy lead singer, Case, was the charismatic. But Danny…Danny was the psychic. One of New Orleans’ best, which was saying a hell of a lot—that is, when he was straight enough to concentrate, which was almost never, these days.

Wasted, Caitlin thought again. Such a waste.

She pulled her eyes away from Danny and concentrated on Case: skinny as Keith Richards, for the same reasons, in pencil-leg black jeans, sporting alligator boots with outrageously long toes. He was leaning into the crowd with Danny now, threatening to topple off the stage into the throng, and shouting, “Somebody freakin’ scream!”

And then, as he straightened, his eyes fell on the corner where Caitlin stood…and he stopped for an instant, staring. Then his smile curved.

Caitlin thought, He’s good. He saw her. Of course he did; he always could. She let the glamour slip away from her like a cloak, and he gazed full into her face. Then he lifted the mike again and shouted, “Somebody make some noise!”

As the crowd went wild on the floor beneath him, he turned the mike over to the guitarist for a solo and dropped off the stage, landing hard on those ridiculous boots and swaggering out into the crowd, stopping to let some drunk sorority girl kiss him, openmouthed and sloppy.

Caitlin turned away and walked out the back door, into the small inner courtyard, away from the noise. The courtyard was mostly used for storage. Cases of booze were stacked to the eaves against the inner wall, but there was a small outdoor bar, framed by white strings of Christmas lights, tonight unmanned and deserted.

Case pushed out through the double doors and into the dark. He was already flicking a Zippo, lighting a cigarette, dragging hard, and Caitlin wondered wearily what it would be laced with tonight.

As if hearing her thoughts, he extended the cigarette toward her mockingly. She stared at him, ignoring his outstretched hand, and history vibrated between them like an electric pulse.

Finally he smiled. “Ah, the little Keeper. Sister Goldenhair Surprise. Nice glamour, by the way. You’re getting good at that. We’ll have you full-tilt shifting any day now.”

Her anger flared, and she answered without thinking. “Not in this lifetime.”

He gave her a “We’ll see” smile and dragged on his cigarette. “Well, Keeper, has someone been bad?” He asked the question slyly, and she jolted. So he does know something, she thought, trying to conceal her excitement.

“Why would you say that?” she answered, unconsciously echoing Jagger DeFarge.

“Someone must have been pretty bad, to bring you up to our little den of iniquity. Or is that din?” he corrected himself, reaching to his ears and pulling out earplugs, the only thing that had kept him from going deaf for all these years.

“I need…” She hesitated.

“My help?” His eyes gleamed at her.

“Some information,” she said coldly.

“You’re in luck. I’m running a special tonight.” He sat back on a bar stool, legs spread casually—nothing to do with the conversation, of course.

Caitlin’s heart turned over with the old, familiar pain, then she answered back, sharp and hard. “Good thing I’ve got credit running into the next century, then.”

To her surprise, he laughed aloud, and she realized with relief that with that comeback she had scored—enough to keep him playing along, at least for a while. “There are people dying of some kind of bad batch,” she said quickly, while he was still smiling. “Meth, the police think.”

His eyes widened innocently. “'Just Say No.’”

She ignored that. “I want to know if you know anything about it.”

Caitlin suddenly noticed there was a bartender behind the bar now, a young kid, college age, with good enough instincts not to hover; he was quietly restocking the shelves. Case snapped at him, “Jack and Cokes over here,” and waited until the kid turned away to answer Caitlin.

“What about drugs don’t I know?” he quipped. “But it’s only tourists who are dying, sugar. NHI.”

NHI was a cop insult referring to the lowest of low-lifes: No Humans Involved. Of course, in New Orleans that could get confusing..

“Just tourists,” Caitlin echoed, pondering.

“Drug virgins,” Case elaborated helpfully. “Couldn’t handle the high.”

But why? Caitlin wondered. Tourists doing meth? It didn’t make sense.

The young bartender set drinks in front of them. Caitlin ignored hers, while Case drained his in one pull.

Behind the bar, cloaked as the college kid, Ryder bided his time. It was taking everything he had to conceal his disgust for Case, for the scene playing out before him. Classic Shifter, this one, taking full advantage of his glamours, which wouldn’t work on an Other, obviously, but humans fell for them every time. And Keepers, too, it looked like. Even with her specialized knowledge, Caitlin had been ensnared, at least at one time. And by what? This pathetic excuse for an Other, so enamored of his powers that he’s lost all sense of who he ever was—the center cannot hold. And a drunk and an addict on top of that, clearly.

“Do you know a shifter named Ryder Mallory?” Caitlin asked suddenly, and Ryder was jarred out of his thoughts. Did she sense him?

He moved casually down the bar to get out of her range, crouched as if to reach under the sink.

Case stared at Caitlin, lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t say that I do.” He reached in front of her for her drink, lifted and drained it.

Lying, Caitlin thought. Not even bothering to cover.

He smiled at her, as if reading her thoughts. “Can’t keep track of everyone, cher.”

“Well, if anything comes to you, you’ll tell me, I’m sure,” she said.

“I’d rather come to you, cher. In you, with you, in every which way,” Case said softly, and leaned over to lift a strand of hair from her cheek, curling it around his finger, tugging her forward..

Behind the bar, Ryder abruptly stood, anger flaring, and in that moment Case turned sharply and stared toward him. Ryder adjusted his body, struggled to hold the cloak of illusion in place…and once again he was just a college kid, merely spacing out in Case’s direction.

After a long moment Case turned back to Caitlin, but Ryder could see that the younger shapeshifter was jumpy now, and figured he’d better get while the getting was good. He couldn’t afford to be caught, at least until he knew more. He picked up a case of Turbodog and headed for the kitchen door.

Caitlin didn’t know what had just gone on, but Case was suddenly edgy and hyper.

“Got to get back,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of the stage. “My public awaits.”

“I want to talk to Danny,” she said abruptly.

She saw Case stiffen subtly, but he covered it well, smiled at her. “Why would that be, Keeper?”

There was no point in lying to him; he always knew. “I want a sitting. To see what he’s seen out there.” She knew Case would know she didn’t mean on the streets but in the astral.

Case shook his head mockingly. “Danny’s not home tonight.”

Meaning Danny was high, as if she didn’t know. Her anger burned. “How do you live with yourself?” she asked, not bothering to hide her contempt.

“Same way Danny does, cher. One hit at a time.”

Too angry to speak, she turned and stalked for the door.

His voice came from the dark behind her, mocking. “Rough night out there. Don’t forget your glamour.”

She faced him stoically. He was right, of course.

He stared across the dark courtyard, into her eyes. “And don’t forget—I taught you that, little sister.”

“Yes,” she heard herself saying bitterly. “You taught me a lot.”

She turned again and was gone.

Inside the club, she leaned against the wall in the narrow hallway and breathed deeply until she could focus enough to pull the glamour back on.

The music was blasting, but strangely, the rhythm made the glamour easier to conjure. When she straightened away from the wall, the drunk bridesmaids who tumbled by her en route to the bathroom didn’t even give her a glance.

Caitlin weaved her way across the crowded floor. On stage, Danny was at the piano, hair shimmering like dark water over his shoulders, beautiful and empty-eyed. Caitlin turned away, disturbed…and caught a glimpse of Case standing on the dance floor in front of the stage. He suddenly crouched down, dropping out of sight. Caitlin stopped, craning to see what was going on. He was on his haunches talking very seriously to a blonde little girl of maybe five, sporting a rakish, sequined hat. As the little girl watched, enthralled, Case twirled a drumstick between his fingers and then extended the drumstick toward her.

She took it and without hesitation twirled the stick in imitation. As Case laughed, his whole face transformed.

Caitlin blinked back tears and fled the club.

Chapter 5

Once out in the kaleidoscopic cacophony of the street, Caitlin realized she was so shaky she could barely hold the glamour in place. She always felt that way, seeing Case. And Danny, too. Her feelings for them were so complex…. Longing, despair, anger, protectiveness…

And failure. As shifters, they were her charges, and not only had she been manipulated and controlled by the very people she was supposed to have charge of, she hadn’t helped them. Not a bit.

She took long breaths, forcing the spell to stabilize.

Part of the trouble was that she had known Case forever, it seemed, since she was just a teenager. As the middle MacDonald child, she’d had a rebellious streak. Fiona was so good, so perfect, and Shauna so outgoing and loved, and their parents had been such pillars of the community, all the communities. Caitlin never felt she could live up to any of them. So she found relief by sneaking out of the house, out of the compound, up to big bad Bourbon Street, to listen to music, drink the Hurricanes that older guys would buy her..

Case had saved her from a bad situation one night, when a drunker than usual frat boy thought that buying Caitlin a drink meant anything went, including date rape. Of course, that turned out to be the proverbial “out of the frying pan, into the fire” scenario in the end, but at first Case had been so charming, as rebellious as Caitlin herself, but also a naturally talented shifter as well as singer, and very willing to teach her. She had spent many hours after-hours in clubs, listening to Case and Danny jamming with their band of the moment, and learning the shortcuts of shapeshifting.

Then came the War, and her parents’ deaths had devastated Caitlin and her sisters. Caitlin, in particular, had been consumed by guilt. She’d taken her parents for granted, had gone behind their backs, and now she could never make up for any of it. In her zeal to reform she had become completely devoted to her sisters, obedient to Fiona and fiercely protective of Shauna.

Caitlin had kept her distance from Case as well as she could, as the three MacDonald sisters had thrown themselves into the grueling task of building the trust and connection with the communities of Others that their parents had had.

But in recent years she had been increasingly disturbed by rumors of his drug use—Danny’s, too. Rumors that they had fallen prey to the drugs and disillusion that claimed so many shifters. Caitlin had tried to intervene, in her official capacity as a Keeper. But old feelings proved overwhelming. She’d slipped and reconnected with Case, wanting to believe his stories of being clean, of reforming…only to be horrified to discover the extent of his new addictions. She had pressured and badgered and ranted, and then sunk into despair, all the time hiding it from her sisters, until, ironically, it was Case who dumped her, unable to take her condemnation.

That had been just before a series of nightgown-clad blondes started turning up in New Orleans cemeteries, bodies drained of blood.

If Caitlin’s brain hadn’t been so scrambled, she surely would have seen the killer for what it really was. Instead, because of her confusion, her inattention, both she and Fiona had almost been killed….

And Caitlin had been living with that guilt, ever since.

But I’m going to do it right, this time, she vowed.

She straightened, squaring her shoulders, and moved down the crowded street, slipping like water around the drunken revelers—frat boys, businessmen, pimps.

The noise of the street was overwhelming, distracting, and she turned down a side street, heading for quieter Rue Royal so she could hear herself think. She was past the Rainbow line, St. Ann Street, where hetero clubs turned gay and the side streets turned seedier, but she had on the glamour and Royal was just one long block down.

Even so, she instinctively walked a little more quickly as she brooded over the clearest clue she had gotten from Case: these were tourists dropping dead, not junkies. Tourists doing meth? No wonder Jagger was perturbed. And despite his nonchalance, she could tell even Case thought it was strange.

Caitlin was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the footsteps until they were right up on her—heavy, pounding, manic—and before she could even turn, a heavy, live, stinking weight had tackled her, hurling her to the ground.

She hit the pavement so hard that her breath was knocked out of her and she heard as well as felt her head crack against the curb, and the pain was blinding; through the haze, she knew for the first time what it was like to see stars. Through her confusion she thought, How can he see me? Who is this?

Despite overwhelming pain, Caitlin heaved herself up and called on a weakening spell, something quick and forceful to stun her attacker.

She gathered energy in her mind and shoved…

The assailant—she had just enough time to register a Bourbon-Faced T-shirt and a man’s face so distorted with rage it barely looked human—growled like a bear and tackled her again.

Not human, Caitlin realized. He’s Other. And then she hit the sidewalk again, was crushed into the cobblestones.

Whoever was on top of her was so heavy she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and the smell was strange. Under the familiar sick-sweetness of too many Hurricanes was not the reek of human sweat, but something like ammonia, and then there were hands around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, and through the pain and descending blackness she realized she was being killed….

Panicked thoughts flooded her brain. She would never see her sisters again, never meet the love of her life….

So this is how it ends….

And then suddenly she felt the pressure lift and gulped in air….

Ryder seized the man in the Bourbon Street T-shirt in a full-out fury and hauled him off Caitlin. The attacker snarled and spun on Ryder, hulking and wired with superhuman strength. He was dressed like a tourist, but the face was a mask of inhuman rage, and beneath the innocuous jeans and T-shirt he was completely out of control, like someone on PCP and steroids at the same time, some drug-crazed, murderous, rapacious zombie.

Ryder seized the tourist by the scruff of his “Bourbon-Faced” T-shirt and slammed him against the side of the voodoo shop beside them. The tourist’s head hit the wall with a sickening thud. But the man merely roared and barreled forward again. Ryder sidestepped, grabbed the man’s arm and used his own momentum against him to snap the bone.

On the pavement behind them, Caitlin flinched as she heard the crack of her attacker’s arm breaking. The limb dropped against his side at an unnatural angle, but even with blood streaming from his head and the useless, dangling arm, he seemed to be feeling no pain at all. He roared again and scuttled off, listing to one side.

Ryder sprinted back to where Caitlin was crumpled on the street, stooped and picked her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and strode across the sidewalk to set her carefully up against the wall of the nearest shop. He knelt in front of her and took her face in his hands, looked into her eyes. She could feel the heat of him, the adrenaline of the fight—and more—a molten anger, which she realized, startled, was rage that she’d been attacked. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

She swallowed, overwhelmed.

“Caitlin,” he said roughly. “Do you know who I am?”

“Who?” she answered weakly. It was a joke, but he seemed to take it seriously.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked more urgently.

“St. Ann Street,” she answered meekly.