In truth, Riordan wasn’t sure what a shaman could or couldn’t do about the mess Riordan had made, but he knew that he was fading fast. If they couldn’t help, Riordan still needed to get there soon enough to deliver his warning and information about the death mage. He didn’t have the energy to fall into his usual pattern of self-blame and low self-esteem that would have stated that dying was all he deserved.

 

For now, putting one foot in front of another was enough. Riordan had less than a mile to walk, but that was a lot when he was staggering like a drunk. He’d been forced to move to the shoulder of the road now that he wasn’t able to move as a badger. He hoped no one would go driving past this late to see him and haul him to the drunk tank or some other well meaning place, but he just couldn’t navigate the undergrowth, especially without his nightvision.

 

Daniel flitted around, heading back and forth down the road, keeping watch. Duane stayed as a solid presence at Riordan’s side, something Riordan found himself profoundly and quietly grateful for. He’d probably never get himself to tell the man that, of course, but that company kept Riordan moving past what he’d thought possible.

 

The two ghosts talked, but Riordan couldn’t focus on that. His world narrowed down to just taking one step and then the next, slow and unsteady. If he stopped, Riordan was pretty sure he wouldn’t start up again.

 

He nearly walked into the border, his magic sensing too fucked up for Riordan to register what he’d been feeling until he was right on it. Without magic, the border looked like any other random foot of dirt along the road. With magic, even with his injury, Riordan could see the border as a glowing dome made of magical scriptwork, constantly moving and unreadable yet projecting its purpose with clarity.

 

Territory borders were one of the most complex spell workings in existence. After his recent attempts at external magic, Riordan had new appreciation for the detail and stable structure of the dome. Someone, or more likely several someones, planned this out and then got the magic to do specifically what they wanted and nothing more. Then they anchored it and maintained it for ages, making it able to adapt to changing leadership and shamans. Not many spells outlasted their casters without a spirit anchor.

 

The killing tree ritual had a spirit anchor, Riordan realized grimly. Killing the death mage wouldn’t be enough to end the spell on its own.

 

Fortunately, that was about to be someone else’s problem. Riordan stumbled forward and pressed his hand against the invisible dome of power. His exile mark flared to life on his forehead like a beacon. Scriptwork spun out of the gently flowing patterns to slam down in front of him, becoming a physically solid existence to him.

 

Access denied.

 

It was a damn good thing that Riordan had known that would happen or the despair of it would have dropped him. He held himself upright and waiting. Barely. The Guardians would be here soon, the second wave response to a threat on the border.

 

Less than a minute later, two glowing figures appeared, riding the dome’s curve to land in front of Riordan on the other side of the border, blocking his way and ready to deal with him should he persist. The first was a bird as tall as Riordan with long legs and neck, blue symbols all over its body, eyes blazing and beak opened to scream a challenge. The other was humanoid, except that its head and body shifted between different animal aspects constantly. Spirit Guardians.

 

Riordan had learned a lot about spirits in his recent horrible crash course. That same lesson made it clear to him that he was in no shape to try speaking to them as spirits speak. The Guardians would be able to use human words as part of their duty watching over the territory and shifters it contained, since most shifters were not shamans.

 

“Warning,” Riordan choked out, choosing his words carefully as he felt himself fading faster in the effort to stand up against the pressure of these antagonistic spirits, “Death mage. Thompsonville. Killing Tree. Gotta stop…”

 

That was as far as Riordan got before he reached his limit. As his knees hit the ground, a sense of peace and acceptance filled him. He’d gotten this far and passed a warning before he died. It wasn’t as much as he hoped, but it was enough. He toppled forward, blackness swallowing him, and he clung to that thought.

 

It was enough.

 

-------------------------------

 

“Vera, honey?”

 

Vera blinked awake, sleep muddling her thoughts even as she recognized her ex-husband’s quiet voice. She rolled over, glancing at the alarm clock on her nightstand. 1:23am. Why was Norris in here waking her up at this ungodly hour? She was an old woman and considered sleep one of the purest pleasures in life.

 

Her pack all knew that though, which meant if Norris was here waking her up, it had to be important. Vera sat up with a groan, swearing she could feel her body creak as she did so.

 

“What is it, Nory?” Vera asked, managing to keep both sleep and grumpiness out of her voice. She’d had lots of practice by this point in her life in sounding pleasant and calm under any circumstances.

 

“Guardians woke Frankie up. There was some sort of intruder or messenger, I’m not quite sure. Either way, he’s been brought to Frankie’s office and she’s swearing up a storm and scaring off all the young ones.”

 

Vera laughed, the sound fond even with the rest of the weird news, and got the rest of the way out of bed. “So they sent you to get me to protect them from her?”

 

Norris shrugged, holding up her outdoors coat which Vera walked over to claim. “And because the situation is weird and they could use your wisdom, I’m sure.”

 

Donning the coat, Vera took a quick mental inventory. Her soft nightgown clung to her curves, but it wasn’t so scandalous that it would scare the younger pack members. She slept with her long salt-and-pepper hair in a braid, keeping it contained despite its tendency to poof and frizz in the slightest humidity. The coat Norris had handed her had her usual leader kit in the pockets, except for her glasses and cellphone, both of which she quickly grabbed off of the nightstand. A pair of boots near the front door completed her outfit for now. If it was a real emergency, it was better to get there as soon as possible. She could always return to dress properly once she had more information.

 

Norris didn’t look any more put together than her, which only reinforced that decision. As Vera followed her ex-husband, and still very good friend, across the field between the pack leader’s house and the shaman’s formal spellworking building, she wondered when they had both gotten so old. Her own powerful personal well held off the effects of aging better, but Norris moved stiffly like the old man he was, his hair fully gray and shining in the moonlight and his face full of cheerful wrinkles. Even if they weren’t lovers anymore, he’d still been with Vera for almost her whole long life. It would be painful when she finally lost him.

 

Those thoughts were set aside in favor of straightening her posture and putting on her pack leader face as they approached the shaman’s building, casually referred to as “Frankie’s office” by most of the pack. Maudy stood guard at the door, her nervous gaze flickering from the nearby window to the field and back, Frankie’s loud voice audible to shifter senses despite the intervening rooms inside. As soon as Maudy spotted Vera, the young woman straightened and, a measure of her unease, tried a shaky salute.

 

Vera kindly nodded back despite such formalities being unnecessary in the loose leadership structures of the pack. Maudy was only in her twenties and new to guarding. The Sleeping Bear Pack was a peaceful place with no particular enemies, no rare resources to tempt further off scavengers, and alliances with their neighbors, shifter and mage alike, even if such things were always shaky at best. This was likely the first unusual crisis the guard had encountered since she left training. If nothing else, Frankie had a tendency to scare the youngsters when she was in a mood and as soon as Vera entered the building, she could tell her cranky lover was in fine form tonight.

 

“--idiot children messing with magic! A five year old would know better than this!” Frankie expounded from the work room, her voice becoming louder as Vera opened the inner door to the shaman’s work room.

 

Frankie’s apprentices, Mark and Lucinda, glanced over at Vera when she entered, but Frankie herself kept her attention focused on the man who was laid out on her worktable, two of the spirit Guardians by her side. Magic roiled around him like boiling water trying to escape a pot, thick enough that Vera had to consciously filter it out enough to see his physical state.

 

The stranger was a tall, sturdy man with strong muscles that seemed faded compared to his broad frame. His dark hair and skin proclaimed him as unlikely to be local. Michigan had originally been home to several native tribes, with the first settlers being French fur trappers who came to trap and trade. The British and American colonizations had suppressed both of those groups, leading to a heavily English-descended population. Most of the African Americans who came to Michigan settled near Detroit and other larger towns and then got hit hard during the race wars. They didn’t permeate out into the most rural parts of Michigan in significant numbers before Michigan’s economy was hit hard in the 1970s and never fully recovered.

 

This man looked middle-eastern, Indian perhaps, which wasn’t unheard of but certainly not common near the Sleeping Bear territory. He could have been a tourist, the dunes certainly drew enough of those in the summer, but the general air of worn poverty and fatigue under a layer of more recent hardship made that unlikely. He was unconscious, but did not rest easily, twitching and curling into himself in response to whatever Frankie was attempting, her thin gnarled hands whipping through motions of spell casting over him.

 

Vera glanced up at his face again and saw what she had missed the first time by excluding so much of her magical sight. The stranger was a shifter and he had an exile mark branded on his forehead, blazing sharply even through the rest of the magic.