Page 105 of Shifters Reckoning

“They’re no closer to figuring out what’s going on, but they’ve sent teams in to test the blight. The conjecture runs the gamut from an attack by a foreign government to something spiritual. With no real changes or explanations, the coverage has died down, though they’re still flying helicopters over, tracking the progress of the mysterious blight.”

“They can’t see Acheron?”

“So far? No.” Dr. Wise pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “We assume he’s blanketed his locale in a warding meant to keep humans from identifying anything.”

“Why would he do that? Why would he care?” I asked.

“That is unclear.”

“It’s been only a few days since they decided to test anything, so no human lab would have any answers yet.”

I sighed. “That won’t last long, and we’ll have to decide whether we’re going to announce ourselves to the world as a unified body of shifters or not. Cold Moon isn’t for two weeks, and that’s enough time to get lab results back.”

“Maybe our friends in the authorities will help keep the heat off for a little while,” I said. “I’m surprised they haven’t come to see us. Human panic will be a problem.”

“Olivia met with them.”

I jumped to my feet. “She what? Who the fuck let her do that? She’s not up to that.”

Dr. Wise raised her eyebrows. “She ran it by phone from her recovery bed. They took her threats seriously.”

My toes tapped the floor, and I crossed my arms. “Come again?”

“She rightly assumed you had too much on your plate, and she promised the authorities we’d have it sorted in thirty days. They reached a tentative agreement. It bought us a little time. Will that work?”

I snorted. “That’s not long enough, and I highly doubt they’ll keep stringing the public along.”

“In thirty days’ time, it’ll either be sorted for Acheron… or not.” Dr. Wise pronounced her dispassionate verdict as though she were a judge. “The death-duel is the end.”

“I should go,” I said. “I need to debrief Olivia. There’s no way they’ll be able to manage this. Not with social media in the mix.”

“Eat first,” Sophia said, dishing out before anybody argued. “You’ve both been running on adrenaline and stubbornness, and I’ll not have my daughter walk into a monster’s boxing ring hungry. Eleanor, tell them. They can chew and be horrified at the same time.” She gestured toward Emma. “I raised that one. I know she can multitask.”

Emma obediently put a large bite of cheesy potato casserole in her mouth. “Mmm,” she said around the food. “Just like Dad used to make.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she scolded even though she beamed in response to her daughter’s praise. “Eleanor?”

Dr. Wise laid a page on the table beside the casserole. The parchment was covered in brown ink, half-English, the crawling old script I’d seen before.

“The emergence before Emma’s was the 1840s,” she said. “I told you that much when I found the razor marks where they removed pages. What I didn’t have then was the ending. I have it now. Emma’s mother found the last of it in the water-damage crate, God bless the incompetence of whoever filed it.” Her finger grazed the page. “Every multimorph has an anchor, Mr. Blackwood. You know this. You are one. The complement, the ground, the one who holds the storm. It’s not a marriage, and it’s not a metaphor. It’s a working part of the magic, as necessary as the lightning.”

“Get to the part that matters,” Sophia said gently, and she put a hand on my shoulder.

“The last multimorph died,” Dr. Wise said, “in the 1840s. She spent herself against a threat that had come out of Europe, and she paid a price, and the histories flinch from writing which one, but her anchor did not die. Her anchor was left behind with his heart torn open. Most anchors pass on after their mates pass.” Her spectacles caught the light. “And into that hole, something got in, something older than either of them, older than the clans, a corruption that has been looking for an unguarded emptiness since before we had the words to name it. It found one in a grieving man with a multimorph-shaped wound, and it moved in, and it has been wearing him ever since.”

The dining room went so quiet I could hear the casserole steaming.

“Acheron,” I said.

“The name is a story,” Dr. Wise said. “A pretty one. A drowned child and a mother’s bargain with the underworld. Shifters have told it for centuries because it’s easier than the truth. The truth is that Acheron is not an ancient evil that learned to hate us, and he is not a man who chose the dark. He is both braided together and rotted through. He is an ancient corruption wearing what’s left of the last anchor. That’s the something older and fouler you’ve all felt in his work. That’s what’s threaded through the sister’s ruined mind, and through Marcus’s eyes, and through every soul he’s ever touched. It isn’t magic. It’s him. It’s what he’s made of.”

Emma had gone white.

I reached for her hand.

“There’s a man still in there,” Emma said slowly. “Under the corruption. The anchor for a multimorph. The one who lost her.”

“Then why my family?” I asked. “The vendetta is real. He’s said it himself. Me, my bloodline, forever. A man born in the 1840s never met my ancestors.”