Suddenly, being bitten by a werewolf is the least of Joanne Walkerâs problems.
Her personal life in turmoil, her job as a cop over, sheâs been called to Ireland by the magic within her. And though Joanneâs skills have grown by leaps and bounds, Irelandâs magic is old and very powerfulâ¦.
In fact, this is a case of unfinished business. Because the woman Joanne has come to Ireland to rescue is the woman who sacrificed everything for Joanneâthe woman who died a year ago. Now, through a slip in time, sheâs in thrall to a dark power and Joanne must battle darkness, time and the godsthemselves to save her.
Praise for
C.E. Murphy and The Walker Papers series:
Urban Shaman
âA swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist, magic, dangerâUrban Shaman has them in spades.â âJim Butcher, bestselling author of The Dresden Files series
Thunderbird Falls
âFans of Jim Butcherâs Dresden Files novels and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should enjoy this fantasy/mysteryâs cosmic elements. A good choice.â âLibrary Journal
Coyote Dreams
âTightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes will captivate new and old readers alike.â âRT Book Reviews
Walking Dead
âMurphyâs fourth Walker Papers offering is another gripping, well-written tale of what must be the worldâs most reluctantâand stubbornâshaman.â âRT Book Reviews
Demon Hunts
âMurphy carefully crafts her scenes and I felt every gust of wind through the crispy frosted treesâ¦.I am heartily looking forward to further volumes.â âThe Discriminating Fangirl
Spirit Dances
âAn original and addictive urban fantasy!â âRomancing the Darkside
Chapter One
Sunday, March 19, 9:53 a.m.
The werewolf bite on my forearm itched.
Itching was wrong. It wasnât old enough to itch. It should hurt like the dickens, because Iâd obtained it maybe six hours earlier. Instead it itched like it was a two-week-old injury, well on the way to healing.
Only I was quite sure it wasnât healing. For one thing, I kept peeking at it, and it was still a big nasty slashy bite that oozed blood when the bandages were loosened. For another thing, my stock in trade was healing. Fourteen months, two weeks and three days agoâbut who was counting?âI had been stabbed through the chest. A smart-ass coyoteâkinda my spirit guideâhad given me a choice between dying or becoming a shaman. Even for someone with no use for the esoteric, like Iâd been, it hadnât been much of a choice. So now, nearly fifteen months on, a bite on my forearm was something I really should be able to deal with.
And it wasnât that I hadnât tried healing it, because I had. Magic slid off like oil and water, or possibly more like oil and gashed flesh, if oil slid off gashed flesh, which I assumed it did but didnât want to actually find out. Either way, the magic wasnât working. Normally that would be a bad sign, but my talent had taken both a beating and a boosting in the past twenty-four hours, and wasnât behaving. It reacted explosively when I tried using it, and I didnât want to explode my arm. So I was getting on a plane with absolutely no notice and flying to Ireland, because Iâd had a vision of the woman who had turned werewolves from slavering beasties 100% of the time into part-time monsters, and in my vision, sheâd been in Ireland. I figured if anybody could keep me human, it had to be the woman whoâd bound the wolves to the moonâs cycle.
Thatâs what I was telling myself, anyway, because it was slightly better than a full-on panic attack in the middle of the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. A day earlier I hadnât believed werewolves existed. Now I was petrified that come the next full moonâwhich was tonight, the second of threeâI would get all hairy and toothy. It was a dire possibility even without adding international air travel to the mix, which, who was I kidding, was possibly the worst idea Iâd ever had. Turning into a werewolf was potentially bad enough. Doing it mid-flight presumably meant a plane full of handy victims, although I might get lucky and have an air marshal on board so it would just be me who got dead.
My life was a mess, if I considered that lucky. But I had this rash idea that because Iâd be missing moonrise all the way around the globe, the magic shouldnât trigger. And I could always lock myself in the bathroom if I thought I was about to get bestial. Locking myself in the bathroom wasnât that bad an idea anyway. I was afraid of flying, and bathrooms didnât have windows. That automatically made them less scary than the body of the plane. Either way, it wasnât just the werewolf cure that had me wandering the duty-free shops at SeaTac. The other vision Iâd had, the one of a sneering warrior woman, had made my healing magic respond as if a gauntlet had been thrown down. It felt like fishhooks in my belly, hauling me east. I was going to Ireland whether I liked it or not.