drinking as Naturaleza. Or were not. If they are truly coming here, and if they truly intend battle, they will need to drink freely.”
“They are,” I said.
She looked at me, sloe eyes tilted and deceptively sleepy. “Many humans will die, if you allow him free feeding in your territory. His scions will capture you. They will lock you in a cage and drink you down. They will own you. The Flayer will try to take your mind, for you are a strange creature and he desires to possess strange creatures.”
“Not a chance in heaven,” I said, thinking about Edmund. Then thinking about Hayyel, I lifted my jaw in a Cherokee gesture, pride and certainty in my stance and tone. “I have an angel on my side.”
She shrugged, a bony shoulder moving beneath her thin T-shirt. “Angels have little interest in taking the side of humans or strange creatures. If you fight on the side of an angel, he will use you and then discard you.”
I’d think about that later. I said, “There’s a cottage for you on the grounds. Unit number three.” I glanced at Shaddock, who was no longer testing me, but standing with his hands in his jeans pockets, watching us. His face wore a hawkish, speculative expression, his eyes hooded by powerful brows. I wasn’t sure if the glare meant he was willing to help and follow me into battle or he was thinking about taking my head and mounting it on a pole. “Unit two is for you,” I said.
Shaddock interrupted me. “This place ain’t what you might call well defensible. A small army of European fighters is headed this way, along with any local recruits they might find. You gonna parley in town?”
“We have defenses and plans,” I said. “Talk to my partner, Eli Younger.”
Shaddock nodded to Eli. “Pleasure, sir.”
“At your service, sir,” Eli responded.
“Unit one belongs to Edmund,” I said, getting back to the immediate.
“A Mithran who will be my emperor,” Shaddock said. “If he can best me.”
“Yup. Once the Flayer is dead and everyone is healed, you can challenge him. He’ll love owning Asheville.”
Lincoln Shaddock barked a laugh. So did I.
Molly stuck her head around the corner. “You people finished playing fanghead games yet? I need to get in the kitchen.”
Smiling a purely human smile, Lincoln said, “Miz Everhart-Trueblood. It’s a pleasure, ma’am.” He gave her a small bow and stepped aside.
CHAPTER 7
If My Hands Had Worked, I’d Have Flipped Him Off
The Winter Court of the Dark Queen of the Mithrans had a new, traditional sweathouse above the tumbling creek out back. Well after midnight, in the freezing air, I stood in half-form at the sweathouse’s open door, smelling sawdust, the glue of the marine-grade plywood, and the pine two-by-fours from the construction. The interior was lightless. My Beast-eyes took their time adjusting to the dark after the snow-bright night outside, but things began to resolve and my brain made patterns of them.
Eli had built the sweathouse according to instructions given to him by Aggie One Feather, my mentor and Cherokee Elder back in NOLA. He had done compass measurements so the sweathouse was aligned to the rising sun on the equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices. There were little doors high in the gables on the eastern side to let in the rising sun on each of these days. A small table near the door held folded cloth, and there were empty hooks on the wall above it.
There was a stone-lined fire pit in the center, in a circular, clay-lined depression. There was an aged oak log, sawn in half and shellacked, the two halves at north and south. There was what could have been a shallow dough bowl, a pitcher and ladle, split wood and kindling, in stacks according to the wood type, each bundle bound by white cord. I smelled oak, walnut, hickory, and cedar. Near the pitcher and ladle was a drum. I walked in and picked it up, studying it in Beast’s night vision. It had an ancient clay pot–style base, the opening covered by a new tanned hide, maybe raccoon skin. There were tiny copper bells all around the top, and when I tapped the skin, they jingled.
A memory flashed like lightning through my brain, searing everything in the here and now, taking me back. A fire in a longhouse. The scent of smoke and man sweat and bear fat strong on the air. Burning herbs, different from the herbs used in women’s rituals. Different from