The Shifters Read Online Free PDF

meant to call on rarely showed their faces before sunset. And that gave her time to go back to the shop and dress for the occasion…in a glamour.
    A glamour was one of Caitlin’s favorite spells. Not everyone could do it, but she was a quick study, and she’d had a good teacher…but she wasn’t going to think about that.
    Standing in front of a full-length mirror by the light of the moon helped but wasn’t mandatory. In a pinch, the light of a candle did nicely. What was mandatory was the relaxation, the becoming conscious of every part of her body…and then focusing particularly on the whole of her skin. She looked into the mirror and breathed slowly, keenly aware of the glow of the candlelight on her…until she began to feel the glowas photons of light, a rain of warmth over her entire body. She began to chant softly:
    â€œLight pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me. Light pass through me, no one will see me…”
    She chanted and stared into the mirror, focusing on the light, until the borders of her silhouette became hazy, insubstantial, until her whole body started wavering, like the warm flickering of a candle flame…until all she could see in the mirror was light.
    And then she could see the cabinet behind her, as if she was no longer there. She felt, not saw, herself smile, and said softly to herself, “Everything seen and those not seen, let me walk now in between. As I say, so mote it be!”
    She turned, invisibly, and walked toward the door.
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    On Bourbon, Caitlin strode through the crowds clogging the street with no fear of the prowling pickpockets and the inevitable drunk men who would have been hitting on her, hitting hard, had she not been protected by the cloak of the glamour. She loved the power of walking invisible as the air, through the warring music blasting from the wide-open doors of the clubs: Zydeco; karaoke; slow, sultry jazz…
    The street looked, as always, like a stage set. There was something about the flatness of it, shethought—being able to see for blocks and blocks, and the balconies of revelers up above…there was a Shakespearean flavor to everything that she had to admit was appealing…especially when you were invisible.
    She was entirely unnoticed by the drunk revelers, the break-tap-dancing teenagers…the buskers holding signs advertising Huge Ass Beers To Go and the opposing signs waved by religious crazies: God Punishes All Sinners. Caitlin squeezed quickly by the sign wielders, grimacing…. Then, as she was passing a blind street musician wearing sunglasses à la Ray Charles, he stepped right in her path and bowed, a breathtakingly courtly gesture, and spoke. “Lovely lady.”
    Caitlin froze, as confused as the crowd of tourists around her, who looked around them with comic double-takes, having no idea who or what the musician was talking to, unable to even wrap their minds around the idea that he was seeing anyone at all. It could all just have been part of the show to them.
    No big surprise, Caitlin told herself. There were psychics of all kinds in NOLA—either the city drew them or actually bred them—and it wasn’t much of a stretch that a blind man would have learned to use other senses.
    But she had her own mission, so she quickly side stepped the jazzman and continued on into the crowd.
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    Behind her on the sidewalk, Ryder straightened in his Ray Charles body, swept up the hat containing his tips, and followed her at a distance, tapping his cane for show.
    The glamour was a good one, he would give her that. It demonstrated as high a level of skill as unmasking him in the shop earlier that day had done. If this Keeper’s sisters were as good as she was, there was a strong Keeper presence in the city, as strong as he’d seen in any town for a long time…as strong as their parents’ had been rumored to be.
    That didn’t