The short shaman led the way to the building Riordan had identified as the shaman house. It smelled strongly of plants, smoke, and that odd scent of magic that was sort of like ozone or petrichor. The inside had a front office area that looked half living, half administrative. A desk covered in papers and surrounded by shelves and file cabinets sat along one wall and several comfy chairs circled a coffee table filled the rest of the space. Plants were everywhere, tucked into pots and hanging from the ceiling. All the decor was colorful and mismatched with plenty of rugs, blankets and tapestries.

Frankie moved past the front room and into a work space. This room was far cleaner. A long table with four chairs and a rolling stool next to it were near the door, flanked by tall cabinets and what looked like an apothecary setup for distilling home remedies. The majority of the space, however, was bare. Flagstone tiles were laid over the wooden floor in a circular pattern in that area. Riordan could feel how they were enchanted to reduce outside magical influences and to contain internal ones. A shaman’s work space.

Walking into the stone circle, Frankie grabbed two fat floor cushions off a pile and tossed them down. She grabbed the satchel she’d had at the dunes before she sat on one cushion and gestured for Riordan to take the other. He moved to the edge of the circle and found himself compelled to kick off his shoes and socks before walking barefoot the rest of the distance to his cushion seat.

Daniel smartly did not try to cross that boundary. He shared a glance with Riordan. Frankie noticed the motion and raised an eyebrow. “One of your ghosts?”

“Daniel,” Riordan corrected, disliking the way Frankie assigned him ownership and responsibility for the ghosts. They were their own people, pack or not, and should be treated accordingly. “Is it safe for him to be here?”

Eyeing the work room, Frankie considered that question with some seriousness at least. “Don’t touch anything magical. Don’t enter the stone circle. Don’t ever come here when I’m not present. It should be safe for him to observe. It’s your personal information if you care about privacy.”

Daniel shot a look at Riordan that spoke of genuine concern and caring. Riordan knew if he asked, Daniel would leave and not try to spy on this. They might be stuck uncomfortably close because of the whole haunting, but Daniel respected him.

“He can stay as long as it’s safe.”

The smile that bloomed on Daniel’s face at that answer made Riordan feel like he’d made the right choice. “Thank you,” Daniel told him quietly before settling in to watch from outside the circle.

Folding himself onto a cushion that was sized more for someone like Frankie felt a bit ridiculous. Riordan was grateful that the exercise had loosened up his stiff muscles, making the act possible at least. Frankie pulled the large flat dish out of the satchel, along with three bottles and a bundle of dried herbs.

“So,” she started as she arranged those items between them, “I’m going to start by asking questions and running a few tests. That will establish a baseline for where we are beginning. I expect it to be worse than nothing, but I am up to that challenge.”

“Fine,” Riordan replied when it seemed like she was waiting for a response. “Ask away. I have my own questions too.”

“I’m sure you do,” Frankie muttered, not quite under her breath, “And hopefully they aren’t utterly idiotic.”

Riordan bristled at her tone. “You don’t like me.”

“Am I required to like you to work with you?” Frankie challenged in return. “No, I don’t dislike you. I have no opinion on your character as a person yet. I do have opinions on dangerous ignorant spell casting. Far too many shifters assume that they need no knowledge about how magic works despite using magic every second of every day, as if instinct is the perfect answer to everything.”

Riordan winced at that. He had thought that way and he knew she knew it too. He tried to set aside that bias and listen to the expert.

Frankie continued, looking up from her magical supplies. “We breathe by instinct. We walk by instinct. We sleep by instinct. Yet, as humans, we can absolutely do every one of those things wrong and do damage to our bodies. Our conscious mind creates the environment with which we approach issues and guides the way we use our bodies and magic, even when we don’t consciously realize that.”

Opening one of the bottles, she poured a scented liquid into the mostly flat dish, creating a thin layer. She tilted her head, assessing it, and then grabbed a small bag out of the satchel. She placed a handful of stones onto the dish, creating small ripples. All of the stones were different types and carved into different shapes. Before Riordan could take a close look at them, Frankie grabbed both of his hands in hers and pulled them over the dish. Her touch was warm and dry and the contact tingled slightly with whatever she was doing.

She kept talking as she manipulated his hands and studied the stones. “Everyone has magic. Everyone even uses magic, including normal humans. They just can’t sense it and are utterly inefficient and unintentional in any manipulation they trigger. Sensing magic makes us more efficient in guiding its use. Having an affinity shapes what uses come naturally to us, where we are best able to apply our will to the fabric of reality. Were you ever tested for your affinities?”

“Of course,” Riordan replied, doing his best to keep his hands loose while Frankie did her thing. It was uncomfortable in more than one way, but he put up with it. “My family tested all the kids at five, ten, and seventeen, just to make sure nothing had gotten missed or triggered as we developed. I only ever showed the shifter affinity. Additional affinities are uncommon in my family line anyway.”

“Hmm, good. Early identification and education in affinities is important for safety. The shifter affinity should be taught too, which is where most packs mess up. You are still registering for the shifter affinity but also spirit and a little of nature. This could be a permanent shift or just a side effect of your current connection to that tree spirit.”

Riordan froze. That was impossible. People didn’t just spontaneously develop affinities. He’d never shown any signs of those affinities before, whether in testing or the mana in his well. Surely he should have noticed? “That can’t be-- How--”

Frankie cut him off before Riordan could find the words for his thoughts. “Yes, yes. Normally affinities are determined at birth. You, however, have delved into direct spiritual contact. Not just any contact, but spirit-speech and pack bonding with a natural spirit and being blessed by a greater spirit who is our pack totem. Spirits follow different rules to magic because they are magic. They can entangle with our own spirits if you aren’t careful to set boundaries and change our magical natures.”

The weird plant spiral and void on his spirit body came to mind. “Would such a thing have a visual manifestation on my spiritual body?”

The shaman’s gaze became particularly sharp. “What changed?”

“Well, I had that gaping hole in my soul, with that spell I threaded through it,” Riordan tried to explain, rubbing his hand over his chest as if it still pained him. “When I went to the tree’s glade last night, I saw that the hole hadn’t returned to normal, just-- Where the edges of my damaged soul had been bleeding before, there were plants now, a dense garden just growing from my flesh, spiraling in towards where the spell thread still existed. It looked different too, I think. I didn’t get a proper look at it before I passed out the first time, but it was definitely more compact and orderly. And it passed through this starry void area inside the garden spiral.”

Frankie looked frankly disturbed, which did not reassure Riordan in the slightest. If what was happening to him was outside of even her experience, he was in incredibly dangerous territory indeed. Uncharted territory. And he’d already proven he didn’t make the wisest decisions regarding spirits.

“When Mother Bear healed your injury, how did it feel?”

Riordan struggled to find words for something so unexplainable. He had a hard enough time trying to explain human emotional feelings, much less human interpretations of spiritual effects. “It licked me. It made me wet and pressed me into the earth, like clay. It felt cleansing when it did that instead of gross. Then I felt the land around me. I perceived… The land can be this whole thing, an identity that encompassed it all. Its… Its spirit, really. But it’s also a bunch of little things inside that whole.”

He stopped, his eyes staring off into space as he tried to recapture that momentary complex sensation that felt like it had been imprinted into him with the press of the spirit’s tongue against him. He couldn’t comprehend the whole of that experience, but perhaps he could find meager words for this piece of it. For the knowledge of both the whole of a thing and its pieces, all at once.

“Something can be wholly itself and yet made up of many components. The components are important, but they can change-- No, they can be changed without changing the greater identity. Adaptation and survival. Lose your tail to save your life. Something like that. It’s hard to explain. It didn’t matter to my soul that I had a hole through it as long as I could find a way to become whole again. I didn’t need to heal the damage. I just needed to bring something else into my identity…”

Riordan’s voice trailed off at that last, horrified at the realization. The great spirit did not heal him directly. It could have, he was sure. Instead, it had offered him a path to survival that was predicated on both becoming part of something larger and accepting change in himself. That was the cost of having his exile mark removed. If he could pass the challenge and follow the directions on how to heal himself, he would be alive and forgiven. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be worthy of saving.

A strangled noise of pain ripped out of Riordan unbidden. He couldn’t say he was sorry to live. Riordan didn’t want to die. If he did, he would have let himself fade away ages ago. Still, to have this cost thrust at him and not even know what he was choosing when he chose it was cruel. He chose life but it apparently came with some bullshit baggage. He was still himself, but now part of his soul was also something else. Spirit magic had way too many hidden consequences.

“Riordan?!” Daniel cried from outside the circle as Riordan punched the floor next to him. The ghost fluttered around at the edge of the stones, distressed at not being able to get closer. Riordan sprang to his feet, heading towards the door. He couldn’t do this.

“Sit back down, boy. We’re not done.”