how clearly that capital letter disappeared when Honey talked about Coyote.
Laughingdog closed his eyes. “The last time—He stopped in long enough to make sure that I’d spend a few years here in prison instead of getting safely back to my apartment when I left the bar at closing time. I was walking down the sidewalk, and there He was. He said He was pleased I was about to become interesting again.” The expression on his face was suddenly horrified, and I felt a wave of the same magic that had sent me sneezing. “Don’t do that,” he told me as the pupils in his eyes widened until the brown was a narrow ring around it.
“Don’t do what?” asked Honey.
But I knew.
“Don’t ‘be interesting,’” I said. “Thank you for talking to me.”
He shook his head, his face bleak. “Don’t thank me for that.”
I reached out and touched his hand. It didn’t seem too forward an action when he was my almost half brother.
“Don’t worry so much,” I murmured. “I have support.”
He gave a bitter laugh and stood up, signaling the guards that the visit was over. “Nothing will protect you from Coyote. From…” His voice changed, deepened, and he said something in a language I’d never heard before. He stopped, then began again, “He is coming and his children cry his name into the world.” He threw his head back and howled, the high, whining cry of a coyote. As the guards broke into a run, he said something that sounded like Coyote’s name, but not quite, three times. It was oddly accented, making the first consonant a guttural sound and the final softer. “Guayota, Guayota, Guayota,” he repeated again in a soft chant that gave me goose bumps. “His children howl his name and hunger for blood until the night is broken with their cries.”
Before the guards touched him, he fell off the chair, body writhing for a moment, then every muscle in his body seized. His back arched off the floor, and his eyes rolled back in his head. I dropped to the floor and pulled his head into my lap so it wouldn’t slap the floor a second time. Honey protected his tongue by putting her fingers in his mouth. She didn’t flinch when he bit down.
When he lapsed into total unconsciousness, it was so sudden that it was more frightening than his sudden fit.
Luke crouched beside me. “We’ve called for help. You need to leave now.”
Honey and I were escorted out of the room with more speed than gentleness, but when we retrieved our IDs, Luke found us again.
“He has these fits, sometimes,” Luke told us. “The doctor thinks it’s the result of doing hallucinogenic drugs when he was young.”
Luke didn’t, quite, ask me what I’d been doing there—but only because Honey growled at him.
“Thank you,” I said. “He was helpful. Treat him kindly when you can.” Something in me rebelled at leaving him here, caged like a zoo animal. My half brother, he’d said. Coyote’s children. I shivered and hoped that his last words were hallucinogenic remnants, but it had felt, had smelled, like magic to me. It had smelled like Coyote.
Luke nodded at me, lips disapproving, but went back to his job obediently enough.
“Some of the pack like to forget who you are when Adam isn’t around,” Honey said softly. “I’ll have a discussion with Luke.”
I gave her a sharp look she didn’t see because she was watching Luke. Honey didn’t like being dominant—she avoided situations in which her natural temperament showed through. I’d thought Honey didn’t like me at all. So why had she just decided, out loud, to squelch Luke?
I opened the locker and collected the Vanagon’s keys. I walked out the prison door a free woman, but it wasn’t until I turned the van out onto the freeway that I really relaxed.
“So all you have to do to summon Coyote is be interesting,” Honey mused. “Shouldn’t take you long.”
“You could stake me out naked in the desert near an anthill,” I suggested.
She shook her head. “I don’t do clichés. Besides, Adam might object.”
My phone rang.
“Could you see who that is?” I asked.
She picked it up off the floor between our seats and, after a glance at the readout, answered it. “Adam, it’s Honey,” she said. “Mercy is driving.”
“Why hasn’t she picked up her phone for the past hour?” he asked.
She held the phone my direction and raised one eyebrow in inquiry.
“I’ve been in prison,” I said in a sad voice. And left