I focused harder, pushing every ounce of me into forcing him through the black gates. I called on-no, I begged-Persephone to take him.

At last he went through, his physical body disintegrating as the Underworld sucked his spirit through.

Only it was pulling more than him through.

I’d pushed so hard that my spirit had touched more of the world of death than I normally allowed. In my weakened state, my focus wasn’t as sharp about keeping me out. My mind felt like it was being sucked in by a whirlwind, and I had the impression of ghostly, skeletal hands pulling at me.

“No, no, no, no!” Whether the words were in my head or on my lips, I didn’t know.

I struggled against the hands, trying to gain a grip on the human world. I would have even settled for the Otherworld. There I could survive, but from the world of death, there was no return. Half of me prayed to Hecate to pull me back through the gates while the other half of me prayed to Persephone to block me out.

At last I fell back with a snap, my spirit returning firmly to my physical body. My physical and mental senses burned. Almost immediately, I slumped forward, unable to support myself. Only my hand on the edge of the steering wheel caught me from falling out of the car.

I felt nauseated and dizzy, with too many parts of me hurting to count. Kiyo, still as that giant fox, stood by me, gleaming eyes watching me with all seriousness.

“Hey,” I said, reaching out a tentative hand. His fur was as soft as silk. I stroked it carefully, my motor control still not all it could be. Those fine hairs touched my skin like the lightest of kisses. “That was some trick. How’d you do it?”

He neither answered nor changed shape, merely nuzzling my hand with his nose. I smiled but then felt too tired to keep holding my arm up. I dropped the hand to my side, feeling something wet and sticky. Pulling my arm up, I saw blood covering my fingers, dark and glistening.

“Oh, man,” I muttered. The world had started spinning again; black spots danced in front of me. “We need to…go…somewhere. Do something. Change back; I can’t drive.”

He kept watching me, eyes solemn and intent.

“I mean it. Why aren’t you changing? Are you hurt?”

He rested his chin on my knees, and I petted him again, even though I got blood on that gleaming fur. I didn’t get why he wasn’t changing. Could he not hear me in this form? No, he’d always understood before.

Well, if he wasn’t going to help, I needed someone who could. I had a cell phone in the car somewhere. I could call Roland or Tim. But where was the phone? I couldn’t climb in the backseat, not in this shape. Could foxes fetch?

Maybe I could summon a spirit for help. Not Volusian, not like this. But maybe Finn? What were the words? How did I call him? It was suddenly too hard to think.

“Help me…” I whispered to Kiyo. “Why won’t you help me?”

White spots now danced with the black ones. I closed my eyes, and it felt better.

“I’m going to lie down,” I told him, stretching back. “Just for a minute, okay?” I rested my head on the passenger seat, lying perpendicular to the seats.

I heard a soft, almost doglike whine. He must have stood on his hind legs, because I next felt paws and a head resting near my knee.

“Why won’t you help me?” I asked again, feeling tears spill out of my eyes. “I need you.”

I heard the whine again, mournful and contrite. My hand reached out, grasping for soft fur. I clutched the strands as though they alone could keep me alive. Then, my fingers lost their grip and slipped away as my hand dropped.

It was like dйjа vu. Two fights, two blackouts, and two “mornings after” back in my own bed. Talk about tedious.

Only this time, I wasn’t alone in bed. I knew Kiyo was with me even before I opened my eyes. I recognized his smell, the way his arms wrapped around me. They held me with delicacy now, not with the fierceness that usually seized him.

“You don’t quit,” I murmured, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. “Even wounded, you’re still trying to get me back in bed.”

“I’ve already got you here.” He lay on his side, his eyes staring into mine. Smiling, he ran a hand over my hair, smoothing it back. “I was so worried about you.”

I snuggled against him, slowly dredging up memories from last night. “I was worried about you too. What happened? Why wouldn’t you change back?”

“I did…eventually.”

Well, that was obvious. I waited expectantly, needing more.

“Being a kitsune isn’t just about the novelty of turning into a fox. It’s more than that. It’s like…I also can turn into-I don’t know-a fox god. No. That’s not right. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“A superfox?”

His soft laughter vibrated against my forehead, and he kissed the skin there. “That’s not quite right either. The foxes of the Otherworld are like the progenitors of mortal foxes in this world. They’re stronger, more powerful, wilder. I can change into one of those, but to do so…I almost have to give up my humanity. They’re too animal, too…I don’t know, primordial. When I’m a normal red fox, I’m still pretty much the same as I am now unless I’ve been in that form for a really long time. Then the human part starts to go. But for your ‘superfox,’ I’m already gone in one transformation. I can hang on to only a few human instincts-like that I had to fight that thing and that I had to protect you.”

I took all this in, frowning. “But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t change back.”

“It takes time to go in and out of that form. The change is more than physical. I have to give up my human nature to go in, my fox nature to come out. Both are hard. That’s why it took me awhile to even help in the first place. I had to make a quick call, even though it left you undefended. I thought I’d do more damage in the other form.”

“Yeah, you did do a pretty good job. But you sure scared me there.” I fell silent, recalling those terrible moments of uncertainty while I bled all over myself. “When did you finally change back?”

“Not long after you passed out, I think.”

“That would explain why I’m still alive.”

He nodded. “You lost a lot of blood. You needed ten stitches.”

I blinked. “Did you take me to a doctor?”

He grinned. “You bet I did.”

It took me a moment to catch on. I pulled back the covers and lifted the skirt of one of my racier and rarely used nightgowns-how’d I get dressed in that anyway?-and saw black stitches standing out starkly against my skin, off to the side of my stomach.

“You did this?” I exclaimed. “You stitched me up? Without a doctor?”

“I am a doctor. I do this all the time.”

“Yeah…to cats and dogs. Not to people.”

“It’s exactly the same. We’re animals too.”

I eyed the stitches uneasily. The skin around them was red. “Was everything sanitized?”

He made a disparaging sound in his throat. “Of course it was. The standards are the same. Come on, stop worrying. It was either that or let you bleed to death in the car. I had a kit in the back and used it.”

“How’d you have enough light out there?”

“The overhead lamp still worked.”

I couldn’t believe he’d stitched me up in a smashed car with a vet’s kit. Improvisation at its best. “Did the car actually start?”

“Sort of…I got us back to the freeway before it died. I found your cell phone and called Tim.”

“Poor Tim. When I first told him I was a shaman, I think he thought it was as fake as his own Indian charade.”

“Wait-he’s not actually Indian? I’ve been trying forever to figure out what tribe he’s from.”

“He’s from the tribe of Tim Warkoski. It’s ridiculous, but-”

The air in the room rippled, pressure building. I had to blink a few times to ensure the shimmering around us wasn’t in my head.