This surprised me. “You mean, you can shift and not hear my thoughts?”

“It’s like a radio. I can choose to turn it on or off. Turn it on just loud enough to hear, or crank it up to full blast. Maybe it’s the same for you, too. Maybe you can shift and refrain from—”

“Burning you to a crisp?”

He pointed a finger at me and winked. “That, for a start. If it’s possible, then it would allow me to get a look at your shifted form.”

He’d only seen it once, from a distance, outside his house while I was tearing the transmutation spell out of his ex-wife.

“You might have markings that would help me better identify what your parents were trying to create when they conceived you. I wouldn’t suggest this if I wasn’t confident that it was safe.”

I thought about the ward on the ceiling of his bedroom. I knew that magick well, and he was probably right.

“Look,” he said. “Afterward, you can call Priya and see if he ‘felt’ you connecting to your demon side in the Æthyr, just to be sure.”

“I’m not a demon.”

Lon pressed the paint can into my palm. “You damn sure aren’t human. Might as well face that fact and make the best of it. We aren’t all bad.”

True. In fact, I’d say when it came to good and bad, humans and demons were pretty evenly matched.

Lon unfolded the tent tarp and spread it over the carpet. It looked as if we were psychotic serial killers, readying the room for bloodshed. Seemed somehow appropriate when dealing with matters related to my mother.

“Well, what do you say?” he asked when he was finished.

I tossed the can onto the bed. “Plastic paint isn’t going to hold a charge for shit. I have some red ochre chalk in my purse.”

I spent the next half hour or so carefully constructing a ward on the tarp with the heavily pigmented chalk, then blowing off the excess dust to prevent me from smudging it when I stepped on it. Pig’s blood would have been better, but a town that didn’t sell beer certainly didn’t have a late-night butcher. When I was done, I had a ward with a nine-foot radius, give or take. Now for charging it. I dug my portable caduceus out of my overnight bag.

“No,” Lon said. “Let me do it.”

“You barely have any Heka stores.”

“I don’t like you pulling a lot of electricity if you don’t have to. It’s dangerous.”

What in the living hell was he talking about? “It’s only dangerous without something to even out the release.” I held up the caduceus. “I’m prepared.”

He hung his head and muttered a string of obscenities. “Just don’t use any more than you need to, please. It might have a negative effect on . . . your memories.”

“Why would you think—”

“Christ, Cady,” he barked. “Can’t you please trust me, just this once?”

“All right, jeez. No need to shout.” I grumbled silently as I knelt by the tarp.

“Please be careful,” Lon mumbled.

“Hush. I don’t need much Heka for this.” I reached for the nearest current and gave it a delicate tug. Electricity flooded into me, nice and easy. It kindled my Heka reserves and created the more powerful energy I needed to charge the symbols. After setting the tip of my caduceus staff on the outer ring of the ward, I exhaled and pushed Heka into it. Like a lit fuse, white light sped along the sigils, giving life to the magical equation.

“There,” I said. “Easy-peasy.”

Lon looked me over and sighed. “If you feel any unusual pains, tell me immediately.”

“Are you sure you’re not feeling any pains? Because you’re being awfully weird.”

He didn’t respond. Just muttered to himself and brooded while he closed the curtains on the windows and checked the door lock. When he was satisfied, he crossed the room and pulled something out of his luggage, a black leather bag. Out came a camera.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making a record that I can refer to,” he said without emotion as he changed out the lens on his camera. “Take off your clothes.”

My jaw unhinged.

“How else am I going to see if you have any special markings?” he asked without turning around. I hated when he did that. Made me feel as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “The times you transmutated wearing jeans, your tail ripped right through them. So unless you want to shop for hiker’s shorts tomorrow, you’re going to want to take off your pants.”

Oh, he’d like that, wouldn’t he? I might have been fuzzy on a few details about Lon, but I definitely remembered standing in the doorway in my underwear the first time he came to my house and his “nice ass” comment.

“Do you know how many bodies I’ve seen?” he said, still not turning around. “Models aren’t shy, believe me.”

Anger warmed my chest. “And this is supposed to make me feel better how, exactly?”

“Everyone’s imperfect. I’m the one who has to Photoshop out the blemishes and knobby knees.” He switched on the camera and fiddled with the settings. “Let’s just get this over with so we can eat.”

Had he heard my stomach growling? What a cheap ploy. I supposed when I really thought about it, he was right about needing to see all of me. Hell, I didn’t exactly have a clear idea of what I looked like in that form, other than from a quick glance or two at my reflection.