“Come on, you stupid bird!” Gretta started digging at the hole with her bare hands to widen the opening. “I only heard three shots. That’s amateur hour. I took twelve, and you don’t see me lying around. Get your ass out here.”

She stopped digging and looked back into the hole. The raven still hadn’t moved. Her heart sped up, which was shocking because she didn’t think it could beat faster. She dug harder.

Gretta had been sweating profusely in the sun before digging, and now she was drenched. By the time she finally reached the raven, she had tears in her eyes. His body was still warm, but rigid. She gently pulled him out.

“You need to shift,” she whispered as she pulled him close.

She could see now that he had been hit twice. His right wing was seriously damaged, but the real issue was the bloody wound on his side. Both bullets had passed straight through his small body. She couldn’t feel a pulse, but she admitted to herself that she had no idea how to find a pulse on a bird. He was still warm, but he might be even if he had died.

She looked around and spotted a Palo Verde, which was tall enough to offer shade. She rushed under the tree, set the Raven down, and knelt over him. Placing both hands on his body. She willed her mind open to channel enough magic for a healing spell. Nothing happened. There was barely a trickle that she had been sending to her tiger form. She had been pushing herself too hard all day. She gritted her teeth and tried harder, worrying she might have an aneurysm with the effort. She failed to open a greater channel. She didn’t have the strength.

With nothing left, she diverted the magic she had been sending to heal her other form toward Rowan, worried there might not be enough to trigger the spell. She spoke the ancient word of power, “Lathiel.”

A spark of power leaped from her to the bird, but it was the feeblest magic she’d ever worked. The channel she had been holding open collapsed, and even the little power she had been using was gone.

She felt fresh tears of frustration. “Wake up, bird brain!”

Rowan didn’t hear her. He was drifting in a place of darkness. Somewhere he had only visited while escaping the goddess of judgment’s domain and returning to the mortal world. He realized he was in the between place. The place where mortals and gods didn’t dwell. It was dark.

He felt a sudden jolt and saw a faint light that pulled at him. The thought that Ellie, the goddess of judgment, might be pulling him toward her domain gave him a shock of panic.

The woman's voice, which he hadn’t heard in at least a day, called to him: Sofia needs you. Come back.

“Where am I?” he muttered.

You are lying in the desert, and the PI is taking care of your body, but your mind has to come back.

“This doesn’t look like a desert,” he said.

The pull of the light was getting stronger, and he realized he could resist it if he tried. He could slow down his descent. He wondered if he could escape the pull if he exerted enough effort. The idea of being trapped back in Ellie’s domain scared him.

Gabriela will take Sofia if you don’t come back now. Please.

He decided to trust the voice and let himself fall into the light. His world was blazing light and burning pain, and then he realized he was lying on the ground in the desert and he had been shot.

“Shift, damn it,” Gretta whispered.

She was looking down at him with tears dripping down.

Rowan blinked and thought he saw a shadow move from behind a large saguaro cactus. Had he seen somebody watching them? He was too hurt to move, but finally, Gretta’s words registered.

With an effort, he pulled in the magic and shifted back to human form.

Gretta hit him with both clenched fists, hammer strikes right in the chest. “You stupid, effing bird. You scared the shit out of me.”

Rowan coughed and rolled over before she could strike again.

Gretta was irate. “Don’t you ever play dead again.”

Rowan coughed some more, sucking in hot, dusty desert air. “I wasn’t playing.”

Gretta was all but incoherent. “You left Jonathan for me to find, and then I heard the shots. Do you know how tired I am? A bird in a badger hole?! What were you thinking? How many shots did you think you could take as a bird?”

Rowan sat up and felt himself for injuries. “I’m glad to see you, too.”

Gretta punched him in the arm. “Effing trickster disciples!” She stood up and stomped back toward the ATV path. “Come on, Gabriela is still after Miguel and Sofia.”

He heard the woman’s voice again: Thank you for coming back. Gretta is right. Sofia needs you.

Rowan stood and walked over to the cactus where he had seen the shadow, but nobody was there. “Was somebody else here?”

Gretta wiped her face with her hands, leaving streaks of dust and dirt. “Just you and me. Come on!”

Rowan frowned at the shadow but decided that the mystery would wait. He was starting to wonder if the mysterious woman was following him. Might she be a sorceress or a goddess?

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“Nadia?” he asked, but if the goddess of shadows and secrets heard him, she didn’t answer.

“Have you lost your mind?” Gretta asked. “Please, let’s go.”

Rowan shrugged, gave one last look around, and then followed after Gretta. They walked briskly, which was the best speed either of them could manage.

“Why did you leave Jonathan for me to find?” Gretta asked. “He still had a gun.”

Rowan tried to shift mental gears. “I didn’t see Jonathan, but that explains why Gabriela was alone when I caught up to her.”

“I found him passed out against a tree.”

“Damn, I had hoped he’d slow Gabriela down, but it looks like she doesn’t have enough compassion to keep her people alive.”

“I called 9-1-1 to get him help,” Gretta said. “Hopefully, they’ll get to him in time.”

Rowan looked back down the trail they had been following. “Great, now Ellie’s people will know where we are. I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“First of all, Jonathan needed medical attention, and I’m not going to just let him die. And second of all, who the hell is Ellie?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t want him to die, either.” Rowan rubbed his face with both hands. “Do you know who the goddess of justice and order is?”

“Of course I know who the goddess of justice is,” Gretta grumbled. “What does she have to do with anything?”

“Before she was a goddess, her name was Ellie,” Rowan said.

“Okay,” Gretta said. “Beyond the obvious that she’s a goddess, why does she care if I call the police?”

“Because the goddess of justice and order doesn’t get along with the trickster god, and she has connections in law enforcement,” he said carefully, not mentioning that he was the trickster god himself. If she wanted to think he was human, who was he to disabuse her of that notion?

Gretta frowned. “And you think she’ll come after you?”

Rowan smirked. “I know she will.”

Gretta shrugged. “She can’t possibly know that two guys found in the desert are related to you.”

“She will if there’s an investigation and they look for fingerprints. The FBI will find my prints all over the ATV, assuming she’s not already tracking Gabriela’s movements. For all we know, she’s trying to stop Gabriela, too.”

Gretta looked confused. “So, she’s on our side?”

Rowan laughed. “She’s not on my side, but maybe she’s working against Gabriela.”

Gretta frowned. “Does that make her the enemy of my enemy?”

“Maybe, but if Ellie gets involved, she’s going to lock me up, and if she thinks that you are with me, she’ll lock you up, too. I suspect she’s got at least one department of the FBI working for her, maybe more.”

“Great, now even the good guys are after us,” she said.

“Ellie isn’t a good guy. I’m not a bad guy. There is no us. It’d be better for you to get out before she thinks you are with me.”

Gretta scoffed. “The goddess of justice isn’t a good guy?”

“She’s more than justice,” Rowan said. “She only cares about perfect order and strict rules, which doesn’t make her good.”

“I suppose an agent of chaos and lawlessness would say that,” Gretta said.

Rowan decided to switch topics. “How exactly did a private investigator become a disciple of the Wild Mother? I thought Abby would have picked a zoologist or maybe an environmental activist rather than a hardboiled, magnifying-glass-wielding sleuth.”

“The Wild Mother deserves our respect and reverence; don’t speak her former human name so casually,” Gretta scolded.

Rowan rolled his eyes, imagining how appalled Abby would have felt about such formalities and absurdities. “How did her holiness, mother of nature, earn your servitude?”

Gretta growled, and there was a hint of the tiger in her voice. “She doesn’t demand servants. I follow her willingly. It’s a family thing.”

“A family thing,” Rowan mused. “She didn’t have any children.”

“My mother is a disciple, and when I was thirteen, I became one, too.”

Rowan pondered this new bit of information. “Your last name is Sullivan. What was your mother’s maiden name?”

“My mother’s last name is Turner. I have my father’s last name.”

Rowan scoffed. “You are Abby’s niece!”

A coyote in the distance yipped. It sounded like laughter, and Rowan smiled. Gretta was his best friend’s niece!

“Be more respectful.” Gretta punched Rowan in the arm. “I am a disciple of the Wild Mother, and I also once had an aunt named Abby, but she’s gone.”

“Okay, that explains why you are a disciple of the Wild Mother, but it doesn’t explain why you are a PI.”

Gretta looked away. “It’s no big mystery. My mother has been missing since I was 17. I wanted the skills to find her, but she’s gone, too.”

“Oh, sorry,” Rowan said. “I didn’t know.”

Rowan wondered if the voice he had been hearing had been Abby’s. It didn’t sound like Abby. Having javelinas harass him was more her style. If she could talk directly into his head, she would have done so long before now, right? The voice was somebody worried about the child. And while Abby might also want to protect the child, the javelinas were more likely a nudge from Abby to protect her niece. The niece he let get shot a dozen times.

Sorry, Abby. I’ll try to watch out for her.

“You are quiet all of a sudden,” Gretta said. “I didn’t think you ever shut up.”

“Was just pondering whether all of the local immortals were somehow twisted up in this deal with Sofia,” he said.

Gretta looked over at Rowan. “How did Gabriela manage to shoot you? I thought tricksters were super sneaky.”

Rowan shrugged. “That’s just it. She seemed to sense me. One moment, she was driving, looking straight ahead, and right as I was about to drop down on her, she turned around and shot me. She couldn’t have heard me over the engine’s noise, and my shadow didn’t cross her path. I think it must be part of her magic.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t disintegrate you,” Gretta said.

Rowan looked shocked. “Disintegrate me?”

“I saw a chunk of furniture at Miguel’s house that was simply missing, like somebody had vaporized it. Didn’t look like it was done with fire, so I figured it was the Lord of Destruction’s work.”

Rowan let out a humph. “We just call him that because he breaks everything he touches. He doesn’t do disintegration. That sounds much more like something Nadia would do.”

Gretta sounded utterly nonplussed. “Who is Nadia?”

“She’s the goddess of secrets and knowledge, but also shadows and the void. Seems like something she might be able to do.”

“Why would she be involved in this?” Gretta asked. “It feels like Sofia is at the center of something big.”

Rowan shook his head. “This is the first time all five immortals have had related interests, and I can’t tell who is on whose side. Of course, I’m on your side and Sofia’s side.”

Gretta squinted at him. “That’s just what a trickster would say if he weren’t on your side.”

A massive explosion to the north lit up the sky, sending plumes of dust and smoke billowing into the air. Bits of rock and metal rained down.

“What the hell was that?” Gretta asked.

“That’s something the Warlord might do.”

Rowan and Gretta began jogging toward a huge mining trench that cut into the rolling desert landscape. Smoke rose from the trench's depths, and the ATV tracks led in that direction.