River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(31)

"You know what I am," I said, suddenly certain of it. My heartbeat picked up with the excitement of it. He knew what I was and who my father had been.

"Use that salve on your feet," he said. "They look sore." He canted his head toward Adam without taking his eyes off me. "Do you have something for an old man to drink?"

"Soda or apple juice."

"Root beer?" The old man's voice was hopeful.

Adam got a cloth out of a drawer near the little sink and dampened it. Then he opened the miniature fridge and pulled out the silver can and handed it over Gordon's shoulder. He tossed me the damp cloth, then went back to his self- appointed observation post.

I wiped my feet. My calf was still sore, but it wasn't the bonedeep throbbing, and there was no itching. It felt like a rope burn and nothing worse. There had been some sort of magic on whatever had cut my calf, magic that the old man had nullified.

I'm immune to a lot of magic--but not all. Usually, the worse the magic is, the less likely I am to be immune.

The old man opened his pop can and drank it down. He drank the whole thing without taking a breath. When I was a kid, we used to say anyone who could drink a can or bottle dry had killed it. We'd tried it a lot, but the only one of us who could do it was one of the older boys. I'd forgotten his name. He died before I left Montana--a victim of the Change.

Gordon Seeker and I could bandy words back and forth all night--I grew up in a werewolf pack; I knew how to not-lie, too. However, sometimes straightforward was more useful.

"I'm a walker," I told the old man as I rubbed his magic Bag Balm on my feet. "How did you know what I was?"

He laughed, slapping his hands on his thighs. "Is that what they call it?" he said. "After those abominations down south, I suppose? You don't go around wearing the skins of those you kill, do you? How can you be a skinwalker, then? Abominations." He hissed through his teeth, and the sound whistled a little as the air escaped in the gap where the tooth was missing.

"Not a skinwalker but a shapechanger, you are. Coyote, right? Ai." He shook his head. "Coyote brings change and chaos." His head tilted sideways, and he looked as though he was listening to someone I couldn't hear. I glanced at Adam, but he was frowning at the old man.

Gordon Seeker laughed. "Better than death and destruction, surely--but those often follow change anyway. Very well." The eyes he turned to me were fever-bright.

He reached out and tapped my injured leg. "River marked. It meant for you to be its servant-- good thing for you that coyotes don't make good servants. But it means more than that. It tells me that tomorrow you need to go to Maryhill Museum. Enjoy the art and the furniture built by the foreign queen--and then go see what they have in their basement. At noon, you meet my young grandson at Horsethief Lake, and he'll take you to see She Who Watches."

I knew what She Who Watches was though I hadn't ever actually seen her in person. She was the most famous of the pictographs at Horsethief Lake.

"The tours are only open on Fridays," commented Adam. "At ten in the morning."

The old man grunted. "Indians go anytime they want to--it is our place." He tapped me. "She's Indian, no matter what she believes. My grandson is Indian. The two of them can take one Anglo wolf who belongs to an Indian coyote girl."

He stretched and tossed the empty pop can to Adam--who caught it. "Time for this old Indian to go." He looked at me again. "If you are going to use white man's words to describe yourself, `avatar' is more accurate than `walker.'"

He took his bag and indicated the little pot with his chin. "Better you keep that, little sister. A coyote will get herself hurt a lot if she runs with wolves."

And then he left.

Adam and I both waited, holding our breaths, but we heard neither footsteps nor car or boat.

After a moment, I shed my clothes and took coyote shape--and I had about one more change in me tonight. But it was better that I changed than Adam. He opened the door of the trailer and walked out behind me as I put my nose to the ground and scent-trailed the old man. He'd headed for the river and not the road.

I followed him down to the little backwater where Adam and I had played in the river. About ten feet from the drop-off to the beach area, Gordon Seeker's scent and the imprint of his cowboy boots just disappeared. "WHAT DO YOU THINK? WAS HE A GHOST?" ASKED ADAM, as he scrubbed my feet again while I sat on the couch.

I'd told him they were fine. But he'd ignored me and insisted on cleaning them again after I'd gone out running around on them, even though I'd been on paws and not bare feet. It didn't hurt as much as it should have because the salve had healed the minor cuts better than any mundane Bag Balm could have. All I had left was a whole bunch of bruises.

"I think that there is more in heaven and earth, Horatio," I said. "I can usually tell if someone is a ghost. Or if I can't, I've never found out. How about you?"

"He smelled like woodsmoke and predator," said Adam. "He breathed, and I could hear his heart pump. If I had to guess, I'd say not a ghost. But I've never actually seen a ghost, so it's just a guess. A ghost was the first explanation that occurred to me for his disappearing act."

"You've never seen a ghost?" I saw them all the time, so I forgot how seldom other people could perceive them.