Adam would be there someday, assuming nothing killed him before then. I don’t know about me. I don’t think anyone does. My half brother, who is also Coyote’s child, says that sometimes we live a long time, half-mortal and half-avatar or manitou or whatever Coyote and his kindred spirits are. Coyote told me I was too caught up in naming things—which is an excuse to not understand them. I had a few names for Coyote that I was too polite to use.

I was trotting down a very narrow backstreet, this one less touristy than the first few I’d found, when, between one step and the next, every hair on my body rose.

I shrank down against the wall I’d been walking by, trying to hide myself between a step and a garbage can. Magic swept through the street and paused by me. Magic and something that called to my supernatural nature in a way I’d never felt before.

My hiding place had not worked, so I stepped out to face . . . a ghost.

I have an affinity for ghosts, something I inherited from my father in addition to being able to change into a coyote. I see them when other people don’t. I used to think I knew a lot about ghosts, but I’d started to believe that no one did. I generally tried not to pay attention to the ghosts because it made them pay attention back.

This one waited with the same utter stillness I’d seen in Stefan and a few other vampires. But it wasn’t the ghost of a vampire—yes, there are such things. It wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. I’d never seen a ghost that could hold as much magic as this one did.

Darkness gathered around it, giving it size without form. Ten feet at least, maybe a little more. There was a heaviness about it—it felt dense. The weight of the magic it held, a weave of magic filled, in part, with a kind of power I’d never felt before, made it difficult to breathe.

Some of the energy felt very familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t fae magic or witchcraft. Maybe if it hadn’t been entwined with the totally alien feel of the other magic, I could have placed where I’d felt it before.

I took another step, and the mist of magic touched my feet, washing over me with a strange, clean warmth. It should have scared me, that feeling. Whenever any magic feels good—that’s the time to worry.

But, alone in a strange city, with the monsters hunting me, I closed my eyes, and the shadow pulled away the weariness, the pain, and the fear that I’d been battling since I woke up in the house of the Lord of Night. It fed me comfort and energy and light—and it fed from me, too. At the time, caught in its magic, I didn’t care. I felt the magic brush the bonds I shared with Adam and the pack and hesitate on that other bond.