I’m in love with Jack Long-Claw, my shapeshifting cougar shaman hero in Cougar’s Courage (Duals and Donovans: The
Different, Book 3). He’s sexy and brave and clever, quick with a quip as
well as a spell. And poor Cara, my heroine, how could I not love her? She has
to come to terms with a lot over the course of this book—and falling for
someone who isn’t human is easy compared to most of it.
But I’m just as in love with two of the secondary characters, Grand-mère and
Sam Many-Winters, aka Gramps. Grand-mère is old. How old? At one point she
condenses the history of white people in Canada to about three sentences,
because from her ancient perspective, that’s about as long as their puny little
history deserves. She’s not actually a goddess, but people have worshipped her.
And she just loves interfering in the lives of her descendants, especially
their love lives.
Gramps is a less formidable character. He may be a powerful human shaman,
but no one’s ever mistaken him for a deity. For one thing, deities aren’t prone
to wearing Bugs Bunny boxer shorts over their jeans instead of under them. On
the other hand, he’s good friends with Coyote, the Coyote. They watch Warner Brothers cartoons together on a TV
that doesn’t actually plug into anything. When the book starts, he’s fallen
into depression after the death of his only child, Cara’s mother, has stopped
practicing magic, and may die as a result. Luckily Cara and his good friend
Coyote pull him out of his funk.
Because when things get tough, Cara and Jack need the wisdom and experience
of Gramps and Grand-mère to save the day.
Here’s a brief introduction to Gramps in action:
“The green button means go,
right?” He began to dial. “What do you think? 1-800-COYOTE sounds promising.”
“I was kidding, Gramps. The
phone doesn’t work anyway.”
Gramps cackled so loudly they
could probably hear him above the Arctic Circle. “It doesn’t matter if the
phone works, Cara. I’m calling Coyote. If he wants to take the call, he
will.”
He held the small
red-and-silver device out a little gingerly and dialed.
Despite a dead battery and no
signal, she could hear it ringing.
She froze when she heard a
voice.
“Coyote’s not home right now,”
it said. It was raspy, whisky-and tobacco-laced, prankish and intimate, yet
doing its best to sound like a machine. “Or he is, but he’s eating or fucking
or napping and doesn’t feel like being interrupted. Please leave a message at
the sound of the…”
Then the tone changed, no
longer pretending to be a recording. “Sam, where have you been? Your time’s almost
up. Expiration date quickly approaching. But I don’t think earth’s quite done
with you yet.”
Cara didn’t think her
grandfather, with his weathered bronze skin, could turn pale. She was wrong.
Then again, she didn’t think a cartoon sledgehammer could pop out of her phone
and bop her grandfather on the head. “I never left you, Sam Many-Winters.
You’re a moron. I’ve. Been. Right. Here. All. Along.” The last six words were
punctuated by more bops on the head with the impossible hammer. The blows
didn’t seem to hurt. If anything, each one left Gramps looking more focused and
determined. “All you had to do was ask properly, and by properly I don’t mean
one more snore of a ritual, but in your own way. Now that you finally did, yes,
I’ll take you up on that steak—with a side of whoop-ass for sorcerers.”
And a little taste of Grand-mère:
The visitor wore a pale buckskin dress ornamented with beads and porcupine
quills, not a fashion statement but traditional Native clothing, and no coat
despite the frigid February weather. Her silvery braids were fastened with
rawhide strips. Not something you saw every day in Toronto. Maybe the old lady
figured serious business like a visit to the police station merited her version
of a weddings-and-funerals suit or dress uniform.
“May I help you, ma’am?” The unusual visitor had roused her curiosity, which
could only be good.
“No, but I can help you, Cara.”
How did she know Cara’s first name? Her name plate just said Mackenzie.
The elderly woman extended a small, bony hand, and Cara instinctively took
it. She expected it to be icy. Instead, it was hot. As soon as they touched,
Cara felt like she was focusing properly on the other woman for the first time.
She blinked and recognized her visitor at last. “Grand-mère? Is that you?”
It couldn’t be. Cara had been ten the last time she’d seen the elder of her
mother’s village, and the old lady must have been over eighty then. But the
woman nodded and smiled. It was an odd smile, like a tree smiling, serene in a
way that you didn’t normally see on a human face. “Of course it is, silly. Who
else would I be? It’s time to come home, Cara. Come to Couguar-Caché before
it’s too late.”
Couguar-Caché—“hidden cougar” in French—her mother’s ancestral village. A
place so remote Cara had never been able to find it on a map, even though she
knew she’d been there as a little girl. Yeah, just where she wanted to visit in
the depths of winter.
As the old woman spoke, the room closed in, leaving only Cara and
Grand-mère. The rest of the squad room was still out there—Cara could hear
voices, a ringing cell phone—but they were hidden somehow, masked by a fog.
Grand-mère had been seated, but suddenly, with no transition Cara noticed, she
was standing in an archway made of snow-weighted evergreen boughs. Behind her,
where Cara should have seen Dalhousie’s chaotic desk and the captain’s neat
one, was forest and snow, woodland twilight and the corner of a log cabin. A
cold, bracing wind blew through the archway, smelling of snow and pine and wood
smoke. Somewhere in the background, she could make out a tall man with long
dark hair. He turned and looked through the weird portal straight at her with
intense amber eyes. He was movie-star gorgeous.
Series blurb: Welcome to an
America where the non-human Different and magically gifted humans live among
ordinary people. Witches are both feared and honored, but shape-shifting Duals
are treated as second-class citizens. The Agency, a government agency that’s
supposed to monitor illegal uses of magic and Different abilities, has
developed its own dangerous agenda. But when Duals and witches join forces, the
Agency and other bad guys aren’t going to know what hit them.
And neither are the witches and Duals. Witch magic grows from the
positive energy of love and sex–and the only thing better than one Dual is two
of them! And then there are shamans, who work their chaotic magic to comfort
the afflicted and shake up the comfortable. Once shamans get involved,
everything gets weirder…and sexier.
Novel Blurb: Toronto cop Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie is
still reeling from her fiancé’s murder when her orderly life takes a turn
toward the weird, complete with voices in her head and phantom bleeding wounds.
This violent awakening
is the rise of her Different gift—a chaotic, Bugs-Bunny-on-crack magic that she
must learn to control before it destroys her. There’s only one place to get
help: her mother’s ancestral village, and a mentor who seems to have stepped
straight out of the smoke of her erotic dreams.
Cougar Dual Jack
Long-Claw reluctantly agrees to take Cara under his wing, though he’d much
rather take the beautiful city girl into his bed. As he guides her through a
crash course in shamanic magic, sparks fly—some sexy, some snarky. But when an
ancient enemy attacks the village, they must work together to hone a magical
weapon against certain destruction.
Common sense tells them
it’s a terrible time to fall in love. Their spirit guides have other ideas. And
shamans who don’t listen to their spirit guides are dead shamans…
Warning: Hot shape-shifting feline hero. Strong but shell-shocked heroine.
Snarky, meddling spirit guides. And lots and lots of sex: angry sex, crazy sex,
magical sex, and just plain sexy sex.
Like the sound of this? I’m running a contest on my own website for a chance to
win this book and the first book in the series, Lions’ Pride. Commenting here or at my site enters you. Comment here
and there, get two entries.
