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"I saw that," Jim said "Michelle was slippery, too"

I rose "We need to search the house"

We con of the two other shapeshifters: Neither Mina nor August had been in the house for at least thirty-six hours Their scents were old I swiped the log froht air swept along ht for Pooki and opened the log on the hood Four different types of handwriting filled the pages The last entry was three days old I flipped back athis or just flipping pages?"

"Jies, notes on shapeshifters caught in the city for one reason or another crashing at the house, routine, routine, routine … Mina’s entries identified different types of herbal tea she drank during her shift Roger docuhborhood cats, complete with battles for territory and places where they chose to es, and when I finally saw it, I alust failed to co in fourteen hours later His ps, gs, and ys showed longer vertical strokes than usual I ran e and felt the outlines of the letters August had pressed too hard on the paper He was excited when he signed in, confident, angry, maybe determined His reason for the failure to show up read "overslept," whichthe arim about the way he wrote, as if he’d etched each letter into the paper

I tapped the page, thinking A nekoust was half Japanese, half white by birth, but American culturally He couldn’t read kanji, and his Japanese was terrible Atlanta had a large Japanese population, with its own school and stores, a place where Aust visited his faot the Us and The a halfer, he was looked down on A few ust had gone to pick up the thirteen-year-old kid at Japanese school to take hi and he’d seen the boy sit on his friend’s lap after recess I had to explain that it was a cultural thing that didn’t indicate anything about his cousin’s sexuality, but it just didn’t couy point of view He didn’t completely believe me either and told me that if anyone ever picked on his cousin, he’d break their legs

Magic tended to stick to nationality and region People generated ic, and their superstitions and beliefs channeled it If enough people believed that a certain creature existed and, worse, took precautions against it, eventually theIf you had an area densely settled by Irish, you got banshees If you had Vietnary spirits, would be haunting the streets And if you had a Japanese coet yokai, deer’s skin really bothered me Either the top layer of his skin had turned to dust, or he’d been liberally powdered with so No creature I could think of could do that to a body

Of the four people in the office, August would be the end We had to retrace his steps

I flipped the pages The entries were beco shorter, more erratic On Saturday some of them looked unfinished, as if the writer had simply stopped in the middle of a sentence Sunday had no entries There should’ve been sole entry written in Michelle’s neat handwriting read, Can’t stay awake Help o to August’s place We need to figure out why he was out on Thursday" I looked up

Jiainst the car

"Jirabbed hiround, still asleep I slapped his face He didn’t move

I pulled Pooki’s door open, popped the trunk, jerked the extra gallon can of enchanted water out, and dumped it on his face

The water poured Cohed and shook hirabbed his shoulders "Wake up!"

Dark eyes looked at me "I’m awake"

"Don’t fall asleep! Don’t fall asleep, you hear?"

He growled and pushed off the ground "I’m okay"

No, he wasn’t okay We were in trouble We were really, really in trouble I paced back and forth My heart was beating so fast it felt about to explode So with er, a dry cadaver full of nasty ic

"Calencies called for desperate ot in I flopped into the driver’s seat and chanted the engine into life, watching hi brake and gunned it out of the parking lot "Roll the n," I yelled over the roar of the engine "You need wind on your face"

"Where are we going?" he roared back

"To see my mother!"

MY MOTHER LIVED in a ss in Riverdale It tookcity, and the entire time I watched Jim out of the corner of my eye I punched him in the arm a few tiht times he told me to quit it

I maneuvered down the smallish road and into the horseshoe formed by the squat two-story townhomes and parked in front of ht of her fey lantern filtered through theI cli the houses

"Why are those three buildings facing to the left?"

"Because this is an Indonesian coic They’re more superstitious than usual It’s bad luck to build a house facing north Some people believe it will make you poor The subdivision street was already laid out when people moved in, so those three fa east"

"Aha"

"It’s bad luck to build a house facing a field, it’s bad luck to have the kitchen face the front door, and it’s bad luck to build a fence taller than six feet This is just the way things are, Ji with it"