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“I think if I’m really lucky we’ll come up with something and distract him from yelling.” I pushed away from Gary’s cab, looking between it and him. “I’d invite you along, but you’re covering Mickey’s shift.”
“Think you can handle it without me?”
That was actually a surprisingly good question. I glanced at Billy, who shrugged his eyebrows. “Mel can pull up that power circle by herself, if that’s what you need.”
I turned back to Gary, knocking my shoulder against his. “Okay, so probably, if I’m just looking for residue.” I sounded confident. I wished I felt half as certain. “I’ll call if something comes up, okay?”
“Arright, doll.” Gary lumbered into his cab and I leaned over the open door as he buckled in.
“Look, Gary, in case nobody else says it. Thank you. You caught us a break here this morning.”
He gave a dismissive snort, but his eyes were bright with pleasure as he pulled the door closed and drove off. I waved after him and turned to Billy with a smile still on my face.
My partner had his own smile, smirkier than mine, though there wasn’t any meanness in it. I puffed up, indignant without knowing why. “What?”
“Nothing.” Billy’s amusement expanded as I huffed. “I swear, nothing! You’ve changed a lot in the last year, that’s all. Gary’s good for you.”
“Oh, don’t you start that, too.”
“Nah, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Nothing. Get in the car.” Billy, grinning unrepentantly, herded me toward the minivan, and I went, muttering dire but unmeant imprecations on the way.
Tuesday, December 20, 7:42 A.M.
My pique at Billy couldn’t withstand the warm fuzzy feeling I always got at seeing his sprawling house, which said home to me in a way nowhere I’d lived ever had. A new front porch boasted Christmas decorations and colored lights, and a plastic snowman dominated the front yard. Two much smaller actual snowmen flanked him, the larger wearing a winter hat I recognized as belonging to Billy’s oldest son, Robert. He was pushing twelve, old enough to start thinking about looking cool over being cold, and I doubted the hat would be rescued before spring.
Billy’s wife, Melinda, appeared on the porch in the midst of a rush of children. Most of them converged on the van, yanking the doors open hard enough to rock the whole vehicle as they spilled in with a cacophony worthy of a marching band. I picked out a demand from Clara to be brought to school and squeals of delight that I’d come to visit, followed by howls of dismay as six-year-old Jacquie realized she couldn’t both visit me and go to school. It made me feel loved, and somehow made up for the ear full of jam-slathered toast courtesy of Erik, the three-year-old.
Billy did an excellent impression of a roaring bull elephant, and ten seconds later the older kids were buckled in and I was standing in the driveway with Erik on my hip and strawberry jam in my hair. Melinda minced down the steps to join me, and we all waved goodbye, though baby Caroline—not quite two months old—required her mother’s assistance to do so. Billy pulled out of the driveway and I turned to Melinda, sagging in astonishment. “I honestly don’t know how you do it.”
Erik caroled, “With meeee!” and smeared some more jam across my face. I wrinkled my nose, trying to get the itchy, sticky stuff to retreat, and Melinda laughed aloud.
“Yes, with you. You’re mama’s helper, aren’t you? How about Joanne puts you down and you run inside to get us all a washcloth? Look how messy Joanne is! Silly Joanie!”
“Siwwy Joanie!” Erik squirmed down my side, depositing crumbs, butter and jam as he went, and ran for the house.
Melinda looked me up and down. “I’d lend you something clean to wear while I threw those in the wash, but all of my clothes would be too small and all of Bill’s would be too big.”
I rubbed a bit of jam off my cheek. “It’s okay. I just expect you to peel me off the walls if I get stuck to them.”
“Fair enough.” Melinda herded me inside the house as if I were one of her children, and I went without complaint. Erik met us in the front hall bearing a soaking wet washcloth, which his mother wrung out and applied to me with the same brutal efficiency she turned on her son a moment later. I stood there trying not to laugh, and a moment before Erik’s cherubic smile came clean, she realized what she’d done and turned to me with cheeks pink from mortification.
I held on to solemnity with every ounce of my being and thrust my jam-sticky hands out for her to scrub. Melinda hit me with the washcloth, and I threw my head back and laughed. “You’re the best mom ever, Mel. Woe betide any mess that gets in your way.” I went to wash my hands, still laughing, and Melinda turned her ruthless washing back on her son. Half an hour later he was involved with a complex game of “pile up blocks and knock them over” in the playroom, and Melinda and I slipped into the room off it that was hers alone.
The only time I’d been in there previously, it had been a place of ritual lit by candles. It was dramatically less mystical with floor lamps turned on and light pouring in from the playroom, but the wide power circle painted on the concrete floor remained the same. A sister circle marked the ceiling, and I’d seen how power could flood between the two of them, making a column of living magic. Caroline unfolded a hand from within her sling and grasped for the upper circle, burbling with dismay when it didn’t come closer. I found myself eyeing the baby, then her mother, who lifted a hand, palm out, to deny me. “She can’t talk. I’m not even sure she can see as far as the circle.”
“They all saw the Thing in the kitchen.” “They” were Melinda’s kids, and the Thing had been a terrible, enormous serpent: a monster made manifest in the Hollidays’ home. It, in fact, was the reason there was a new front porch; half the house had been stretched and torn in getting the serpent out of there.
Melinda gave me a flat look. “The Thing in the kitchen was real. Anybody would’ve seen it.”
“Robert knows when magic’s being done. He says the dead make hospitals cold. And he says Clara senses things, too.”
“Does that really surprise you? Given Billy? Given me?”
“Mel, the day this all stops surprising me is probably the day I wake up dead. I know Billy’s a medium, and I know you see auras and know how to run a coven, but I don’t know anything about your talent. Do you have a name for what you are?” I’d been wanting to ask for months. It’d just never seemed like the right time.
I wasn’t sure now was right, either, but Melinda considered me briefly before shrugging. “Only a wise woman, maybe. A witch, a midwife. I would have been the one people came to for potions and cures in Mexico, but only because my grandmother was truly a bruja. She had the Sight, she had power, and she was the one who taught me to honor la diosa, the goddess. My mother,” she added, eyebrows elevating, “was very Catholic, and hated that I was drawn from the church to follow Nana’s path. My own children will not have to face that fight.”
A smile crooked my lips. “What if they go back to the church?”
“That’s their decision. They will not face that fight,” she said again. “Not from me.” She gave Caroline a finger to hold on to and waggled the baby’s hand for a moment before speaking again. “I grew up watching Nana communicate with and see into a world beyond ours. She called me sensitive and taught me what she could, but that’s all I am, Joanie. Sensitive. I see auras, but not to the depth you do. I can gather my energy and waken a power circle, but I can’t heal. I’ve been part of a coven, and found it didn’t suit me. My grandmother had seven children, but she lived alone after my grandfather died. Wise women in the tales often do, and let those who need them come to them. Not many people come looking, but I’m here when they do.”
“I’m grateful.” I cleared my throat on the words, discomfited at how they’d burst out. I was more grateful than I could say. Without people like Billy and Melinda, the past year of adapting to my burgeoning powers would have been impossible, rather than merely extraordinarily difficult. I still thought I didn’t deserve them, but I was trying hard to step up so I did.
Melinda smiled, then tipped her head toward the power circle. “I awakened it after Billy called so there would be residue for you to investigate. At least, if it works that way.”
“I hope it does, because I doubt whoever’s out there—” I broke off, glancing out of the room toward Erik, and breathed, “eating people” before continuing in a normal voice, “I doubt they’re going to light up any kind of power circle just for my benefit in finding them.”
“Caroline and I will get out of your way. I’ll be in the playroom with the babies if you need anything.”
A smile didn’t seem sufficient. I stepped over to her and squooshed both friend and baby into a hug. “I don’t think it’ll take long. Thanks, Mel.”
“My pleasure,” she said, and from the light in her aura, I knew she meant it. Inexplicably happy despite having been awakened at two in the morning to hunt cannibalistic killers, I turned my attention and the Sight on the remnants of the power circle, eager to see what could be seen.
CHAPTER FOUR
A whisper of power danced in the room, so faint with sunshine yellow and streaked orange that I wouldn’t have been able to name the colors if I hadn’t already associated them with Mel. They glimmered up and down like a fine sheen of waterfall mist caught between the wheels inscribed on the floor and ceiling.
More, there was a lingering sense of what she’d done to awaken the circle. The one time I’d seen her use magic, she’d been calling on a goddess in hopes of getting some questions answered. As it happened, talking with a goddess had been trumped by other events, but I could feel a hint of similar intent in the circle now. It wasn’t quite the same: then, we’d come as supplicants, and what was left now was more a greeting, offering honor and admiration, and taking nothing in return.
It reminded me that I’d promised my black-winged spirit guide that I’d do a better job of honoring and listening to it, and that I hadn’t made any effort to lately. “Hey, Melinda?”
Her answering, “Yeah?” came from the playroom, followed by Erik’s cheery shriek as he knocked over another pile of blocks. I smiled and put my hand up, not quite touching the shimmering curve of fading magic. “Was this a keep-things-in or a keep-things-out circle?”
“Figure it out yourself, Joanne!” She sounded rather like Erik, quite cheerful and maybe a little teasing. I raspberried her without rancor and focused on the circle again. She was right. If I was a slightly more clever shaman I’d have known it without asking. Nobody’d ever accused me of brilliance, though.
Emboldened, I touched the faint residue, trying to keep an open mind to learn what it could tell me. The open mind bit was the hard part: on one level I wanted to snort at myself for imagining thin air would give me any information at all.
The circle had been for keeping things in. Certainty exploded in me, then tumbled into bits of information that seemed to rise up rather than be the product of any conscious thought. For a few heartbeats I was Melinda, greeting my goddess with gladness and an open heart. The circle’s walls were protection both for the being within and for the world without: neither was entirely meant to interact with the other in this plane. Here, in the confines of Melinda’s sanctuary, there was very little chance of outside elements attacking, and so the power circle’s purpose was to constrain the goddess so she wouldn’t warp the world around her with her presence.
Constrain was an awkward word there, implying control. But it was the constraint of a thousand-acre wildlife preserve: the creatures inside it were free to do as they pleased, with no outside interference. Melissa didn’t control her goddess, and indeed, standing there with the awareness of her power circle thrumming through me, I knew that whomever she worshipped had barely been present at all. It was, again, like the sun: it would come up and warm the earth whether someone stood to greet it or not. I was half glad and half disappointed that she hadn’t had time to answer our call at Halloween. The gods I’d met had been awe-inspiring, but they’d both been men. Meeting the female of the species would’ve been interesting. Probably in the apocryphal Chinese curse sense of the word, but interesting.
I put a little pressure against the remaining magic, then stepped over the painted lines to enter the power circle. There was no resistance; wouldn’t have been even if Melinda had been pouring strength into it. It was meant to keep things in, after all. If it was active I might not be able to get out without Mel’s help, but with nothing more than a biding memory of magic in place, I thought I could come and go as I pleased. If not, Melinda would presumably rescue me as soon as I promised to babysit her horde of children so she and Billy could have a date night.
Amused, I turned to each of the four cardinal points of the circle and offered awkward bows in each direction before kneeling in its center. “I didn’t bring any gifts,” I said aloud, trusting that Melinda either wouldn’t hear or—more likely—wouldn’t think I was batshit insane for talking to an empty room. “I wasn’t really planning on dropping in, but I remembered that I promised I’d do better, so I thought I should strike while the iron was hot.”
I wet my lips, wondering if spirit guides worked in metaphor, then wondered what the hell else they could possibly work in. “I could use some help, if you’re in the mood to provide it.” It wasn’t graceful, but at least it acknowledged that my guide was autonomous, which was a lot smarter than trying to make demands.
Once upon a time, not all that long ago, I’d have been deep inside the spirit realm talking to my mentor, Coyote, when I asked for help. Chances were he’d have been six kinds of useless, offering up little more than cryptic advice for me to sort out on my own. That was one of several million problems with being a shaman: they dealt with, and often were, tricksters who never gave straight answers to anything. But Coyote had died months ago, leaving me with achingly little wisdom and even less surety as to the path I was on. The closest thing I had to a saving grace—aside from Billy and Melinda and Gary, who were angels from on high as far as I was concerned—was somewhere in the heart of the spirit world, a raven had befriended me and become my guide. Billy was alive because of that bird, and I wondered if I’d ever really said thank you.
Stung by the thought, I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest. The circle’s power lines glowed against the back of my eyelids, much more strongly than before. Sometimes the Other was like that, easier to see when I wasn’t looking in the real world. “Actually, nevermind. I can probably get through what’s going on now on my own. Let me just say thanks for last time, instead. I wish I knew how to do this properly. Do spirit ravens like shiny things as much as real ones do?” I closed my fingers around my silver necklace, smiling at the idea of a raven trying to steal it. “Maybe I’ll find you something else.”
An approving klok! echoed, the big popping noise ravens made when they were interested in or scolding something. It sounded real, like it had happened in the room instead of in my head. I opened my eyes, bemused, to find a raven standing in front of me. He tilted his head and I tilted mine the same way, mirror image to a curious bird.
He was white outlines, like he’d grown up from the power lines of Melinda’s circle. I could see individual feathers etched in shining light, and I could also see right through him, to the concrete and paint beneath us. He’d looked that way before, in the darkness of a spirit animal quest, but mostly when I’d seen him he’d looked like a proper raven, glossy black-blue and startlingly large with a ruff of sharp feathers at his throat. He preened, stretching one translucent wing out to its full length, then tucked it back in and peered at me.
At a loss for what else to do, I extended a hand and said, “Hello, Mister Raven,” and only afterward considered the possibility that not everyone called animals “mister,” or worse, that my guide might somehow be offended by the human appellation. I frequently greeted animals that way, though, and evidently he didn’t mind, because he hopped forward, said klok! again, and nipped the sleeve of my sweater until the copper bracelet I wore was exposed.
He bit that even harder, hooked beak bouncing off beaten metal and scraping into the etched animals that encircled it. I pulled back, squelching the urge to thwap his beak. “Hey. That’s mine. No eating it, even if it is shiny. I’ll bring you tinsel or something, next time.” What possible use a spirit raven could have for tinsel or, in fact, any tangible object, I didn’t know, but at least I now had it confirmed that he liked shiny things. He went quaarrk and settled back, tilting his head again, so I tentatively scratched him under the beak, like he was a cat. His quark was softer this time and I smiled before mumbling, “So, thank you, anyway. For helping me with Billy. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
For a bird, he looked remarkably self-satisfied. I chuckled and rubbed his jaw harder, and he leaned into it, making little raveny sounds of contentment. I felt my own shoulders relax and only just then realized how tired I was. 2:30 A.M. wakeup calls were not my friend. I exhaled a long breath, and half-consciously watched it bead on the air like frost.
It wafted over my raven, making him sparkle briefly, and when it passed, he looked like a normal raven, gleaming black with bright eyes. He hopped into my lap and we both watched the remnants of my breath extend over the lines of Melinda’s power circle. Shadows made of light shifted in the paint, then drifted up, reaching for the matching circle above me. When they touched, brilliance flared, then faded again, leaving me feeling rather safe and warm and cozy in a wreath of active power.
“Ah,” I said a bit distantly. “Reached one of those altered states of being, have I? This is nicer than being hit on the head.” There were dozens of ways to reach power and other worlds: sleep deprivation, drugs, unconsciousness, drumming and simple practice were among them, and so far the only one I hadn’t tried was drugs. Drinking myself into oblivion and waking up with a god-infested mortal didn’t count. I tipped my head to peer at my raven. “Can you talk now?”
He said, “Nevermore,” then looked incredibly annoyed.
I couldn’t help it: I laughed, then more carefully rubbed the top of his feathery head. “Sorry. My subconscious probably made you say that, if it’s possible. What’s going on?”
He made a popping sound, his own breath steaming, and all around me Melinda’s sanctuary fell away.
Desolate snow and ice rose up in its place. A howling came with it, so high and sweet and sad it took a long time to understand it was the wind shrieking over frozen wastelands. Once I understood, I felt it, cutting through my sweater and into my bones, making them as cold as the spaces between stars. The Bigfoot print I’d seen under the snow had felt that way when I’d touched it, so icy it was almost beyond words.
A figure appeared in the blowing wind and snow, gray in the brightness. It walked erratically, pushed by the elements, and stumbled often, as if it had very little strength to carry on. I jumped to my feet and saw a blur of wings, the raven a singular midnight-colored spot in all the white. He latched on to my shoulder, digging in with powerful talons, but the pain was a comfortable thing compared to the cold bisecting me.
A second figure, then a third, joined the first. Other shadows made silver spots in the snowstorm, too indistinct for me to be certain they weren’t mere mirages. They all moved in different directions, though if I was close enough to see all of them, they had to be able to see each other. I waved a hand, shouting, and heard my own voice swallowed up by the wind. Anger burgeoned in me and I braced myself, drawing a deep breath and shouting from my diaphragm.
One of the figures hesitated, then turned a shadowy face toward me. I yelled in relief, waving madly, and it stopped where it was, then looked around as I bellowed, “Over here! Come on, over here!”
Instead, it swung around, suddenly purposeful, and strode away through the storm. I let out another yell, this time of frustration, and flung myself after it. Snow reached up and grabbed my thighs, my hips, and then gobbled me whole, ice and snow collapsing over my head.
I screamed, clawing for the surface, and the raven tightened his claws in my shoulder again. Inside a breath I was on top of the snow again, bullied by the wind and floundering with exhaustion. My compatriots were gone, leaving me alone on the ice field with only a raven as company. I ran a few feet, then fell to my knees, panting for air that was too wild to run smoothly into my lungs. “Where are we? Who are they?”
Quoth the raven, Nevermore, and this time he didn’t sound irritated by it. I craned my neck, trying to see the bird on my shoulder clearly. “They’re dead? This isn’t the Dead Zone. And I can’t see ghosts.”
As soon as I said it I knew I was wrong. I could see ghosts, when the raven was on my shoulder. I thought it was something to do with a raven’s transitory state between life and death, with its history as a beast found feasting after battles and its mythology of riding the shoulders of those who ushered the living into another world. “They’re ghosts?”
Ravens didn’t have lips to curl, but he did a fine job of curling his lip anyway, thereby relegating me to my usual position of being a day late and a dollar short in terms of esoteric knowledge. “If they’re not ghosts and this isn’t the Dead Zone—” Which it wasn’t; that much, at least, I was sure of. What I referred to as the Dead Zone was a bleak nothingness about half a meter smaller than eternity. This frozen landscape had bleak written all over it, but it also had the personality of a storm. The Dead Zone had no such thing. “—then where are we?”
The raven dumped me unceremoniously back into Melinda’s power circle.
I had not been lying on my back when I went under. I was now, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Melinda in the doorway, Caroline in her arms and a curious expression on both faces. With Caroline, it probably meant gas. With Mel, it probably meant she was trying really hard not to ask why I was flat on my back in the middle of her sanctuary. “Do you have any spirit animals, Mel?”
She, after a moment’s hesitation, said, “Yes….”
I fluttered a hand in reassurance. “Don’t worry, I’m not rude enough to ask what they are. Just, do they ever effectively coldcock you and leave you sprawled on the floor?”
The corner of her mouth quirked. “I’m afraid not.”
“I didn’t think so. I don’t get no respect.” The raven was no longer visible, though I could feel his weight on my chest, like he was staring at me. Waiting for me to get my act together, presumably. “I think I jump-started your power circle. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You shouldn’t have been able to, but it’s okay.”
“Really?” I pushed up on my elbows. Light still glimmered around the edges of the circle, stronger than the residuals Melinda’d left for me to study. I suddenly got the idea she was outside it because she wasn’t allowed in, which wasn’t good on two levels. One, it was her circle, so it seemed like she should be able to breeze right through anything I did. Two, and possibly more important, I didn’t know how to take it down. It felt nothing like the healing power I’d become reasonably competent at drawing on; that came from within, and the circle’s power seemed to be outside of me. Its strength had come from somewhere else. The raven, maybe. I squinted the Sight on to give him a hard look, but the little bastard disappeared and left me to deal with my own problems. “Really on both counts? It’s really okay, and I shouldn’t have been able to?”
“Really on both counts. If I didn’t like you, it wouldn’t be okay at all, but if I didn’t like you, I think you probably wouldn’t have been able to. I hope.” Melinda frowned, giving me the uncomfortable sensation that I was out of her league, magically speaking. I mean, I knew I was, according to what she and Billy kept telling me, but knowing it and feeling it were two different things.
“We’ll go with me not being able to. I’m not even sure I opened this one. Did you see a, um, bird on my chest?” I didn’t want to define my spirit guide as a raven any more than Mel wanted to confess to her own totem animals. It was irrational, but I felt strongly about it, and Mel didn’t look surprised as she shook her head.
I whooshed air out and put my head on my knees for a moment. Memory crept over me and I peeked up again, the Sight in place once more.
Breath only showed up in cold air, and Melinda’s sanctuary was nice and warm. But I still saw the particles of my exhalation dance across the power lines, shaking down the magic that had grown up. I stared at it, flabbergasted. The only other time I’d opened a power circle, it’d been with a blood sacrifice—not, in the grand scheme of things, the best way to go. It struck me that the breath in my lungs was just as important a component of what kept me alive, and, as far as offerings went, seemed pretty profound. “I think you’ve got to teach me how to deliberately awaken a power circle, Mel.” Before I did something critically stupid and woke up dead from attempting it someday. My raven guide probably wouldn’t have let that happen just now, but I didn’t like to think what could’ve happened if I hadn’t already entreated him.
It also struck me that breath was, in its way, incidental. Once it left the body, it became part of the air again, always in transition. That might have accounted for the disconnect I felt with the magic powering the circle.
I suspected that on a fundamental level, what I’d just accidentally done was extremely dangerous. I scrambled up out of the circle and did my best to hide behind Melinda, who was at least seven inches shorter than I was. “Soon,” I added. “Maybe now would be good.”
“Not unless you’ve got a babysitter in your pocket. The kids would be too much distraction.”
I felt my pocket. “I have a cell phone. That’s almost as good.”
Melinda laughed. “Cell phones are notoriously bad at watching three-year-olds. They have no defense system.”
“But Gary does! Maybe I can get him to come over when he gets off shift.” I pulled the phone out and it rang, surprising me enough that I nearly dropped it. Caroline giggled and waved her hands, apparently delighted by my antics. I gave her a finger to hold and, charmed by her smile, picked up the call without looking to see who it was.
“Walker,” Morrison said tightly. “Get to the morgue as fast as you can. Something’s happening to the bodies.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Charlie Groleski had shriveled into a husk.
If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he was an ice-age corpse, the kind that occasionally turns up in glaciers. His skin had that same dried brown leathery look to it, with his hair matted and stringy by turns, and his fingers clawed as if great age had withered them to nubs. He had a faint odor of decay, the smell of something so long dead that it’s given up stinking and is just a few hours away from collapsing into nothing. Part of me wanted to give him a prod and see if he would fall in on himself and become nothing more than a dust shadow on the cold morgue slab.
I resisted, based on the certainty that it wouldn’t win me any friends, but I really wanted to. Billy, as if suspecting the direction of my thoughts, edged between me and Groleski’s body, and pointed toward Karin Newcomb’s.
I’d been avoiding looking at her, a little afraid I might recognize her after all. I didn’t; either we’d never crossed paths in the months we’d lived in the same apartment building, or she’d become one of a blur of college-aged brunettes who’d lived there in the seven years I had. Either way, she deserved better. Whether she deserved better of the world at large, or me in specific, though, I wasn’t sure.
Unlike Groleski, she hadn’t had time to freeze, but like him, she was falling in on herself. Taken together, they looked like separate stages of a horror film special effect, with Groleski the advanced decomposition. “Know what it reminds me of?”
Billy gave me a pained look. “If you make a joke, Walker…”
“No, I’m being serious.” I crouched, studying Karin Newcomb’s deteriorating form. “They’re falling apart the same way Ida and the girls did, but more slowly. Like they weren’t just frozen, but they were being held together with magic, too.”
“Huh.” Billy put his arms akimbo and stared down at the dead people like he was trying to find fault in my comparison. Apparently he didn’t find any, because after a moment he said, “Think we’ve got another banshee on our hands?”
