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I glanced out at the water. No sign of a boat. I peered at the studio. The whole back side was glass, for the artist. The glare of the setting sun against the window made it impossible to see inside. Still, there didn't seem to be anyone there.
As I crouched to scamper across, a scent wafted past. One that made my legs freeze. My grandmother's scent, drifting from an open window. I glanced over and inhaled, feeling my sides shake.
So close. God, she was so close. All I had to do was--
No. Absolutely not. If this worked out, she'd know soon enough.
I took another step. A gasp. I turned and saw a figure silhouetted against the open patio door. It squealed open, and the sound jolted me back to life. I dived into the long grass on the other side.
"Maya!"
My grandmother's voice. I froze again.
Her feet thumped as she ran across the tiny lawn.
"Maya!"
No. This wasn't possible. I was imagining things. There was no way she could know--
I remembered the story she used to tell me when I was little. To explain my paw-print birthmark and the fact that my birth mother had abandoned me on the hospital steps.
She said my real mother was a cougar who'd had a late summer litter. She'd been an old cat and knew the signs that it would be a long, hard winter and her cubs wouldn't all survive. So she'd begged the sky god for mercy, and he turned her smallest cub into a human girl and told the cat to take her into the city. She'd left me at the hospital, but before she went, she'd pressed her paw to my hip, leaving me a mark to remember her by.
Had my grandmother known the truth? That I was a skin-walker? Was I wrong to think my parents hadn't been aware of the experiments?
My gut clenched. I turned to see her standing in the path, her hands to her mouth, her gaze locked on the dark patch of my birthmark.
"Maya."
She dropped to her knees. I slowly walked to her. When I was close enough, she reached out and grabbed me around the neck, pulling me to her.
&nbs
p; "It is you, isn't it?" she whispered. Then she hiccupped a laugh. "I guess, if I'm hugging a cougar and it isn't ripping out my throat, that answers my question."
She hugged me again.
"I'm sorry," she said. "You must be so angry and so confused. Are the others with you? Daniel and the rest?"
I let out a chirp.
She squeezed me again. "As horrible as this must be, at least you have each other." She clutched my face between her hands. "If there's any way for you to visit your parents, please, please do that. Your mother might not believe in the spirit world, but when she sees you, she'll recognize her child. She'll know you took the form of the cougar to come and say good-bye."
Good-bye? Spirit world?
She didn't know I was a skin-walker. She thought the birthmark meant I had a link to the big cats and that my spirit had taken their form to return one last time. It was like seeing a ghost.
I pulled back and shook my head.
"You can't go to them?" she said, her voice cracking, tears streaming down her face. "Do you want me to tell them I saw you?"
I shook my head again. Then I pulled from her grasp and started to run to the guys, to get them over here to explain.
"Maya!"
As she shouted, I caught a scent on the breeze. One I recognized. Moreno--a man who worked with Calvin Antone, my biological father.
Footsteps pounded so hard I could feel the vibration. I caught other scents. A Nast Cabal team with Moreno, approaching from the south.
