Riordan dumped his duffel bag on the floor of the cabin and looked around the little space with a critical eye. The space certainly wasn’t much to look at, having the layout and furniture of a hotel room. No, less than a hotel room. Hotels at least had bigger beds, more than one light, a television, and bathroom facilities that weren’t off in some shared room. Still, it had electricity capable of running a microwave and a fridge and a fan or a heater. It was well constructed, clean, and serviceable.

More than that, it was private.

He might have no choice about trusting the Sleeping Bear pack for now, since they were taking on his training and protection, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be up in their space all the time. Especially since he’d woken up in their guest room surrounded by elders with velvet covered claws last time.

Riordan dropped down on the bed, bouncing on the springs a few times, and sighed. Fuck, where did it all go wrong?

That was a rhetorical question, of course. Riordan’s life hadn’t been right for decades at this point. Nonetheless, everything had gotten more complicated in the last few weeks.

Inside of himself, Riordan could feel the pulse and flow of his altered magic. Before he’d gotten entangled with spirits and death mages and crazy rituals, he’d been a fairly standard shifter, if of a type rare in America. Honey badgers were uncommon in Israel, where his family pack remained, much less a whole continent away from that animal’s natural habitat. He’d been strong and stubborn for a shifter, but nothing extraordinary.

Now, in the aftermath of the last weeks, Riordan had three new affinities and his whole magical system was divided into two parallel systems, independent but interconnected.

The greater spirit behind the Sleeping Bear pack, the Mother Bear, granted Riordan his spirit affinity. Spirit affinity was the most common secondary affinity for a shifter, since the shifter affinity itself was a composite affinity of spirit and life. It made Riordan into a shaman, which was a whole mess in and of itself.

Another greater spirit, one who had yet to be named, had changed Riordan’s magical system, dividing his core and his well so that one side handled Riordan’s shifter and spirit affinities and the other handled his other new affinities. Rearranging his magical biology so drastically meant Riordan was having to learn how to access his magic all over again, not quite from scratch. He had some habits to unlearn, but at least he knew the theory.

It was his other two new affinities that really made Riordan uncomfortable. He’d been caught by death mages and tied to a ritual sacrifice. To resolve that situation and to prevent the main death mage from becoming a mad demigod, Riordan had channeled all that death magic through himself and into the realm being the Veil of death.

Normally, that would have been a death sentence for Riordan as well, since channeling that mess had left him corrupted with the remnants of all those lost lives. That corruption drove every death mage insane sooner or later. Except that greater spirit, that unnamed tree of life and death, had broken the rules as Riordan knew them and had drained the corruption right out of Riordan as part of reworking his magic.

Now Riordan had a well full of death and blood magic he was terrified to touch.

Worse, he had an affinity for death and blood magic. No one Riordan had ever heard of had an affinity for those things. Death mages stole their power from spilled blood and lost lives rather than being attuned to those energies. That meant they could become very powerful if they were willing to commit a few atrocities, but their power didn’t naturally recharge. When the head shaman of the Sleeping Bear pack had examined Riordan, Frankie had declared that the spirit’s meddling had left Riordan with a natural affinity instead of just a stagnant well.

In theory, that meant Riordan might be able to use death magic without ever having to hurt anyone, which was a unique proposition. Especially since it meant there was a good chance he wouldn’t get corruption from letting his well regenerate naturally. And even if he did get corrupted by interacting with other death magic, like if he was doing cleanup, it was possible whatever the spirit did to him to drain it before was still in effect.

Of course, it was still theory because Riordan hadn’t worked up the nerve to experiment with his death magic yet. He had too much going on in his head to be ready to approach that challenge with the right mindset yet.

“Argh,” Riordan muttered, scrubbing his hands over his face. This much brooding wasn’t like him. Or at least, not like the way he wanted to be. He’d lost nearly twenty years to moping about feeling guilty rather than doing something about his guilt. He was supposed to be a fighter, damn it.

“Hmm, I don’t think your cabin warrants that response,” an echoing voice near Riordan said dryly, “Unless you really loved being stuck in the pack house?”

Riordan snorted and glanced over at his friend. If there was one thing he was grateful for about having death magic now, it was that he could still see and hear ghosts.

“Hardly that,” he replied, “Just getting stuck in my head again. It’s been a bit of a rough patch. As you are well aware.”

Daniel laughed hard at that understatement, curling up where he floated midair. Riordan studied his friend. He hadn’t been dead long, having been murdered by the same death cultists that tried to sacrifice Riordan too, but Daniel was adapting quickly to his new existence. Being a ghost leached all the color from his form, but Riordan knew that shaggy hair had been brown and his skin a tanned pink. Daniel was all boy-next-door puppyish charm, lanky and a bit underfed but with one of those smiles that made Riordan want to smile in return.

Riordan was damned grateful that Daniel had chosen to stick with Riordan instead of passing on. Daniel helped keep Riordan sane. He owed his friend so much. Speaking of which…

He kept a careful eye on Daniel’s reactions as Riordan said, “I was thinking about going to collect your body soon.”

The laughter and joy in Daniel’s face dimmed a lot, but didn’t go out. Instead, the ghost sighed. “Shoot. Yeah, that would be a thing, wouldn’t it. Do you think they found where you hid me?”

“Gods, I hope not,” Riordan sighed. He’d tried to cover his trail when he’d first run from the death mages, carrying a dying and then dead Daniel, but he couldn’t be certain that they hadn’t used magic later to track him. He hoped they hadn’t bothered though, since they had hit him with a tracking spell not much later that placed him quite a bit further away than where he’d stashed Daniel’s corpse.

He shook himself out of that negative train of thought and posed another one to Daniel, though one that Riordan didn’t expect an answer to immediately. “You should think about what you want your family to be told. And how. We can leave it to the agents or their local police, but I’d be willing to do it myself if you wanted me to.”

That offer startled Daniel. Clearly he hadn’t let himself think about it too much yet. His lips quirked up in a lopsided smile. “That would be quite the conversation. ‘Hey, your son got killed by death mages, but still hangs out with me as a ghost. Anything you want to tell him?’ They’d kick you to the curb like a con artist before you finished saying that much.”

“Well obviously I’d be more tactful than that,” Riordan objected. He couldn’t help but smile though and took the opportunity to move his duffel to the small dresser in the cabin. He probably wouldn’t unpack the thing, but he could at least pull out his sleep clothes or something, just to make it feel like he’d moved in a bit. Everything he owned at this point was new, freshly purchased for Riordan by the pack or taken from the pack communal goods.

He’d lost what few things he’d owned himself when he’d been kidnapped and left for dead.

“Are you sure?” Daniel countered. “I’ve heard you talk to people.”

“Is that a no for getting me involved in telling them, then?”

Daniel paused and actually thought about it, his lips pressed in a tight line. “I don’t think my parents would be receptive and I’m still kinda angry at them for the stuff that got me into this anyway. But I might want to go see my aunt at least, which would be easier if you were there. I’ll need to think about it.”

“Whatever you decide, I’ll try to make it happen,” Riordan said seriously, trying to convey how much he meant that. He owed Daniel so much so quickly, even if he knew that the ghost was truly his friend and not keeping accounts.

Apparently that was too serious for Daniel right now. The ghost nodded and then changed the subject. “So what are the rest of your plans for today?”

“Move in here, which seems to be done. And then it’s just keeping as far away from the pack house for the rest of the day as I can, preferably while managing to do the meditation work or reading that Frankie assigned,” Riordan reported. He gave another glance around the small cabin room, but there really wasn’t more he could do to make it feel like a home right now.

Riordan didn’t know how to have a home anymore. He’d have to work at that, even if this wasn’t where he’d stay forever.

“Avoiding the pack house?” Daniel asked, “Why? Is Vera annoying you again? Or Norris, somehow, though I can’t see anyone daring to be annoyed with him.”

Vera was the pack leader of Sleeping Bear and honestly, for all Riordan gave her shit, he respected the iron-spined grandmotherly old lady. It was her job to protect her pack, which meant she had to be professionally paranoid about Riordan and his issues. Norris, her ex-husband, made a good balancing counterpoint to that. Since the old man was retired, he had the leisure to make friends and be casual. He spent as much time as possible cooking for the pack and coddling children and watching over strays like Riordan.

Mistaking Norris’ age and hobbies for weakness was a stupid idea though. Riordan had watched Norris slice a death mage’s throat from ear to ear without a moment’s hesitation. Old shifters got that way by being very good at what they did.

Fortunately, Norris was happy to let Vera shine these days and found his ex-wife’s romance with their shaman, the acerbic and also elderly Frankie, to be adorable. Riordan found their whole dynamic perplexing, but hey, it worked for them and the pack couldn’t ask for stronger leaders.

So, no, it wasn’t the leadership of the pack that was driving Riordan out of the pack house. It was one of those unfortunate necessary evils of politics instead.

“Nothing like that,” Riordan grumbled, “The Department of Magic cleanup team is meeting with the pack today. I want no part of that.”