Easy Pickings by Faith Hunter, Ce Murphy

girl, aren’t you?” I tested my legs and found them worthy to stand on, but Laz kept an arm around my waist an extra minute anyway. I didn’t really have any complaints. “I’m not a demon. Are you?” Jane shook her head and we both looked at Laz, whose white teeth flashed brightly as he shook his head.
    Jane’s scowl deepened and I wished I had something to throw at her. “Yes, of course, Jane, he’d lie to us if he was a demon. But I would lie to you if I was a demon, and you’d lie to us if you were one, so we might as well just take each other at our words and move on. If the voodooine did bring a demon through and it’s not one of us, well then by gosh we’ve got three adepts to take it down with. And I’ve fought demons before.”
    “You fought demons?” Jane said incredulously. “And I thought my life was weird.”
    “You turn into a giant panther. Your life is weird. That aside, do either of you know where we’re going?” I wished I had my classic Mustang, Petite. I would feel a lot safer going anywhere with her sturdy steel body and 190 mph engine around me. But I’d left her on the outskirts of the city, its peculiarities—its wrongness—strong enough from out there that I hadn’t wanted to risk her custom purple paint job, nevermind the decade-plus of work I’d put into her.
    “Yeah,” Jane said, and jerked her thumb to the indistinct south. “The bayou. But we’re gonna need a vehicle, unless you two can adopt four fast legs.”
    “Actually, I can.” We both glanced at Laz, who shrugged apologetically.
    “D’hare, oui, I can do dat. D’snake, him too. Young man, old man—”
    “Beggar man,” I said under my breath, “thief.”
    Laz gave me a sharp, curious look, then flashed that grin again. “Oui, dem too, but de fox, maybe de coyote, dey d’fastest I can do, and dey smaller dan d’cat.”
    “Really? My mass stays the same when I change. I’d think you’d make a pretty, er, massive, coyote. You’d keep up with a—”
    A resounding crunch interrupted me. Laz and I turned to see Jane reaching through the smashed-in window of a 1987 AMC Eagle station wagon. She flipped the sun visor down, keys fell into her palm, and she jangled them at us. “We’ll drive.”
    I gawked, then threw my hands in the air. Stealing cars, what the hell, it wasn’t my world anyway. If there was a Joanne Walker up in Seattle to get blamed for it, I would feel very bad, but if this world had a Joanne Walker, it seemed to me like she should be the one down in the Big Easy, fighting this world’s fight. For a moment I wondered if, if there had been a Jo here, what had happened to her, and then decided I really didn’t want to know and said, “I’ll drive,” instead of pursuing the thought.
    I never let anybody else drive if I could help it, even if I didn’t know the territory. I’d been the best driver in my class at the police academy, and it was a point of pride. I figured I’d have to argue it, but to my astonishment, Jane handed the keys over, got in the front passenger’s seat. Laz got in behind me, and Jane played navigator all the way out of the city limits toward the rich green swamps of the bayou.
    Any other time in my life and I’d have reveled in just the drive. The roads weren’t good, but I’d cut my teeth on narrow, twisting Appalachian trails, so not good was a familiar variable. And the rest of it was amazing, the rich green scent of rot from old trees and stagnant water accompanying the endless buzz of mosquitoes, loud enough to be heard over the Eagle’s engine when we paused a time or two to decide which way to go. There were alligators and snapping turtles and birds I didn’t know the names of out there, and I dearly wanted to stop the car and roll around in it all. On the other hand, I also dearly wanted to know how we’d gotten to this world, and rolling around in slimy, duckweed-coated water would not get us any answers.
    After a while Jane’s directions