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His beast moved through me in a wash of power and sensation that left me gasping. My beast responded to his. I couldn’t seem to stop it. Maybe I didn’t want to. Those shadow forms rolled in and out of each other, through us, until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. It was Richard who drew back first, and said, “Dear God, I never thought . . .” I felt the effort it cost him to draw back from me, to stop. His face showed a businesslike, no-nonsense look, but I could feel the trembling of other things inside him. His voice came out brisk. “I’ll call Jamil’s beast, the way it’s supposed to be done. Feel what I do, how I use my beast to call his.”

My voice was a little breathy. “Then I’ll do Gregory.”

He nodded. “Or I can call Shang-Da’s beast, if you need to see it one more time.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He slid a hand around my waist, drawing me against him. It didn’t seem as intimate as the roil of our beasts inside us. Jamil stood facing us. He’d stripped off his shirt and shoes, but kept on his pants. It occurred to me for the first time that I’d never seen him nude, except when he’d been injured and near death. Jamil didn’t do casual nudity. One of the few modest shapeshifters I knew.

“I’m ready, Ulfric.”

After what Richard had done to Stephen I thought Jamil was being awful trusting. But then, everyone trusted Richard; he was very trustworthy. No, lack of trust wasn’t the problem.

“I don’t need to physically touch anyone to do this, but it’s easier that way, so I’ll touch him, so you can understand better how it works.”

I nodded, wrapped in the circle of his arm, the firmness of his body, the velvet roll of our beasts like another arm to hold us against each other.

Richard touched Jamil’s bare shoulder, and I felt his power move outward like a warm wind. It caressed Jamil’s skin, and Richard’s beast flowed with it, pulling mine along for the ride. Richard’s power teased along Jamil, coaxing, and the best analogy I could think of was like someone trying to lure a cat down out of a tree. Beckoning, talking sweetly, promising caresses, and treats, if only it would come down. But Jamil’s beast didn’t come down, it came out. It rolled out of the center of his being like a pale golden fog, an almost shape. I saw his beast like I’d seen Micah’s earlier, for an instant, then Jamil collapsed to the deck, and his bare back began to ripple like water under a strong wind. The wolf drew out of his back in a long wet line, and his body dissolved into that dark furred shape, so that his human body became the wolf, like flipping over a coin, heads, tails, but still the same coin. I felt the rightness of it, the harmony of it. Jamil embraced what he was; there was no conflict between him and his beast. I’d never seen him in wolf form, man-wolf, but not this pony-sized black beast. He was like Little Red Riding Hood’s worst nightmare.

The wolf shook himself, and I realized that his fur was dry. There was more of that clear goop all over the deck, but very little of it had clung to the wolf itself. Yet another metaphysical mystery: How do werewolves stay dry when shapeshifting is such a mess?

I turned without a word, drawing Richard with me. I went to Gregory, still sitting on the picnic table, only Cherry and Dr. Lillian with him now. Zane had come to see what the matter was when Richard and I started writhing on the deck.

Gregory looked at me, blue eyes silvered in the moonlight. I smiled and touched his cheek, cupped the side of his face against my hand. I reached for his beast, not with my hand, but with that shadowy thing that swirled through Richard and me. I sent it shivering across Gregory’s skin, and he sat up, letting the quilt fall away from his bare upper body. Cherry moved away just enough so they wouldn’t touch, as if she was afraid to touch him now.

I tried to coax his beast, to call it with sweet caresses and gentle persuasion, but it remained stubbornly just under the surface, trapped by the drugs that still made Gregory’s body a prison and the shock that had further dampened everything I needed