Wintermoon

by Mercedes Lackey

  Somehow I was able to understand every word he said. I usually couldn’t understand most of what I said when my mouth was full. I twisted around to look at the computer screen. “Interpol?”

  “Thought of it this morning. I remembered reading about some kind of ritual murders about thirty years ago—”

  “You read them thirty years ago?” Billy wasn’t more than ten years older than I was. He gave me a look that suggested I shut up. I pressed my lips together and widened my eyes, all innocence.

  “The murders were about thirty years ago. I read about them a few years ago. Pedant.”

  “Because you what, read about ritual murders for fun?”

  “Joanie,” Billy said, annoyed. I lifted my hands in apology and tried to keep quiet. Billy glared at me until he was sure I wasn’t going to interrupt again, then continued. “These women all had their intestines stretched out, connecting them with one another.”

  I suddenly wished I hadn’t drunk a lot of acidic coffee for breakfast, and looked around for something neutral to eat. There was nothing handy except Billy’s muffin, the second half of which he stuffed in his mouth, clearly suspecting that I was about to raid it. A burp rose up through the soured coffee in my stomach and I clamped my hand over my mouth, tasting coffee-flavored bile. Yuck.

  “You’ve got a soft heart, Joanie.” Billy gave me a very tiny smile that did a lot to make me feel better.

  “I’m not a homicide detective.”

  “Mmm. Yeah. Anyway, so I remembered this morning reading about a murder like that over in Europe. It’s not the kind of thing the authorities like to noise around.”

  “No kidding.” My stomach was still bubbling with ook. “So we’ve got a copycat?”

  “Either that or somebody’s changed his hunting grounds. Anyway, the only case there was an eyewitness for was, like I said, about thirty years ago. A woman who was presumably supposed to be the last victim—there’s never more than four—fought back and managed to escape. The Garda Siochana—”

  “This was in Ireland?” I didn’t mean to interrupt. It just popped out. Billy’s ears moved back with surprise.

  “Yeah. What, you had some run-ins with the cops while you were there?”

  “No, I just remember my mother talking about the Garda. She didn’t call them the Siochana.” I said the word carefully, SHE-a-CAWN-a. “I had to ask her what it meant.”

  “It means police,” Billy said helpfully, then waved off my exasperated raspberry. “Yeah, you know that, right. Anyway, they weren’t able to find the guy, and for a while the woman was under suspicion, but she got off when the marks on the victims’ bodies had obviously been made by somebody a lot bigger than she was. They’re usually strangled into semiconsciousness before the horrible stuff begins.”

  “Like being half-strangled isn’t horrible.” It had nothing on having your innards ripped out while you were still alive, and I lifted a hand to stop Billy’s protestation. “I know. So what was her name? Maybe we can talk to her, get some kind of information about this psycho that might help us.”

  Billy leaned forward, chair shrieking protest again, to pull up a minimized screen. “That was my thought. She was from Mayo. I’ve got some people there looking to see if they can find her. Her name was—oops, wrong window.” He pulled up another one, scrolling down. “Her name was—”

  “Sheila MacNamarra,” I finished, feeling light-headed.

  The woman on the computer screen looked more like me than the one I’d known had. There was a ranginess to her that I shared, and our eyes were shaped more alike than I’d realized. I’d never seen a picture of my mother when she was young, and young she was: the photo showed her from the thighs up. She was obviously several months pregnant.

  With me.

  I closed my eyes, unable to think while looking at the photograph on the computer screen. “You won’t—” I cleared my throat, trying to wash away the break I’d heard in my voice. “You won’t find her. She’s dead.”

  “Joanie?” Billy sounded bewildered. “You know this woman?”

  “Yeah.” I wished I was wearing my glasses so I could pull them off. Instead my hand wandered around my face like a bird looking for a resting space: my fingers pressed against my mouth, then spread out to cover the lower half of my face before curling in again. I couldn’t stop the little actions, even when I tried. “She’s my mother.”

  I wanted the next half hour or so to disappear into a jumble of confusion, but it adamantly refused to. It was all horribly clear, with an overwhelming babble of questions that I caught every syllable of and a host of concerned, confused, angry expressions that wouldn’t let me back up and take stock of the situation. No one had known my mother’s name, not any more than I knew Billy’s mom’s name. Everyone had known I’d gone to Ireland to meet her, and that she’d died, but nobody’d pried beyond that, which I’d been perfectly happy about.

  Now, though, Morrison was standing over me—well, trying to. I was on my feet, too, unable to stay sitting while he demanded to know how it was I coincidentally had connections to this woman who’d been a suspect, albeit briefly, in a murder case that was nearly thirty years old. He went on for quite a while, during which Billy tried to be the voice of reason and I watched them both with growing incredulity. Finally I edged between them and said, “Captain,” which brought Morrison up short. I rarely resorted to using his actual title.

  “Look.” This was my reasonable voice. I didn’t have a lot of hope for it working on Morrison, but I’d never tried it before, and anything was worth trying once. “My mother obviously didn’t kill those women. She wasn’t big enough. The police reports cover all that. I guess I am big enough.” I lifted one of my hands, with its long fingers, and shrugged. “And we have no idea when our women died, so—”

  “Actually,” Billy said. I winced and looked at him. He grimaced back apologetically and shrugged. “The first body has a fair amount of degradation. They figured she died about three weeks before it started getting cold enough to snow so much, probably around Christmas.”

  Morrison’s cheeks went a dangerous dark florid purple. “You’re telling me we had a body lying around Woodland Park for three weeks before it snowed and nobody noticed?”

  “The good news,” I said under his outrage, “is that I was in Ireland at a funeral on Christmas. Good alibi.”

  “How the hell,” Morrison shouted, ignoring me, “did a body lie around in a public park for three weeks without anyone noticing?”

  “I don’t—” Billy began.

  Morrison roared, “Find out!” and stalked into his office, slamming the door behind him. Everyone within forty feet flinched. I sucked my lower lip into my mouth and watched the venetian blinds inside the captain’s office swing from the force of the door crashing shut.

  “Do you think he does that for dramatic effect?” I didn’t realize that was my outside voice until nervous laughter broke around me, then rolled over into outright good humor. Someone smacked me on the shoulder and the audience that had gathered for the drama broke up. It never failed to astonish me how there were always people around to watch tense moments unfold. You’d think none of us had jobs to do.

  I followed Billy back to his desk, since I still wasn’t on shift for another forty minutes. “I really hate to say this.”

  He eyed me, wary. “But?”

  “But I’m pretty sure nobody was supposed to see that body. I don’t think it was cosmic coincidence. I think there was…” My tongue seemed to be swelling up and choking my throat in order to prevent me from continuing my sentence. Part of me wished it would succeed. “Power.” Power was easier to say than that other word, the five-letter one that began with m and ended with agic. “Involved.”

  “Yeah?” Billy’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “Can you do that?”

  “Billy, I can’t even pick my nose without using a finger.” Sometimes my mouth should stop and consult my brain before it says anything. Billy got this wide-eyed
look of admiration that belonged on a nine-year-old boy. It said, Wow, that was really gross, and, more important, How come I didn’t think of it? My mouth consulted my brain this time, and I asked, “I don’t suppose you could just forget I said that?”

  “No,” Billy said, in a tone that matched the admiration still in his eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’m going to have to tell that one to Robert.”

  “Melinda will kill you.”

  Billy’s grin turned beatific. “Yeah,” he said happily. “Girls don’t get stuff like that. Except you,” he added hastily. “But you’re sort of not like a girl.”

  I stared at him. After a while he realized he might have said something wrong, and backed up hastily. “I mean, you are—of course, you’re a girl, it’s just, you know, you’re one of the guys.”

  “Billy,” I said. “Bear in mind that what you’re saying is coming from a man who wears nail polish. I’m not sure it’s helping.”

  “See, that’s what I’m saying. Have you ever worn nail polish?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “I started to put some on once, but it made my fingers feel heavy and I hated it.”

  “Okay then. So what I’m saying is I bet more of the guys here have worn fingernail polish than you have.”

  “So I’m more like a guy than one of the guys.” My tone was flat and dangerous. Well, I thought it was. Billy didn’t seem to feel threatened.

  “Kind of, yeah. You’re like an uberguy. You know everything about cars and you drink beer and shoot guns, only then you also clean up pretty good—”

  “Billy.” I was a hundred-percent cranky, and this time he heard it. He looked up, surprise lifting his eyebrows.

  “Solve your own damned case.” I turned on my heel and stalked away.

  5

  I stomped all the way down to the garage beneath the precinct building and peeked around the stairwell wall. Peeking wasn’t much in keeping with my stompy mood, but I wanted to see if my archnemesis, Thor the Thunder God, was in the garage before I went in.

  He was, of course. I sat down in the shadow at the foot of the stairs—the last flourescent light in the row above the steps had never, to the best of my recollection, been functional—and wrapped my arms around my knees, watching the mechanics at work.

  This was where I belonged. I’d gone to the academy because the department had paid my way, but I’d never wanted to be a cop. I was a mechanic and something of a computer geek. The two went hand in hand with modern cars, and I was happy with both labels. But my mother had taken her time dying, they had hired Thor as my replacement, and now I was a cop.

  His name wasn’t really Thor. It was Ed or Ted or something of that nature. He just looked like Thor, big and blond with muscles on his muscles. He was working on Mark Rodriguez’s car, which was forever having the wheels pulled out of alignment. I had a suspicion that Rodriguez went home and beat the axles with a hammer, but I couldn’t prove it. Thor wasn’t working on the wheels right now, though. He was under the hood, his convict-orange jumpsuit and blond hair bright against the shadows cast by the overhead lights. I put my chin on my knees, watching silently from the shadows. It wasn’t as good as being up to my elbows in grease myself, but the smell of oil and gasoline was as soothing to me as mother’s milk.

  Not that anything about my mother was soothing. I stifled a groan and put my forehead against my knees, listening to the muffled cursing and good-natured banter that went on over the rumbles and squeaks of fixing cars. Tension ebbed out of my shoulders as the comfort sounds and smells vied with my mother’s memory for priority in my thought process.

  Sheila won out. The image of her pregnant kept invading the backs of my eyelids. She was prettier than I was, and looked serenely confident as she stared back at me from behind my eyes. I could all but see the wind picking up her hair, long black strands that whisked back from her face with a life of their own, but no matter how hard I tried to meet her eyes, I couldn’t read any emotion in them. “Come on.” I didn’t think I was speaking aloud. I was talking to a memory of someone I’d never known. “Tell me what’s going on, can’t you? What’s this guy want? You stopped him once, O Mystical Mother. Give me something to work with here.”

  She didn’t. Evidently not even the memory of her responded well to sarcasm. I sighed and dropped my head farther against my knees. In the garage, metal bit into metal with a high-pitched squeal, a shriek that should have lifted hairs on my arms and made me shiver with discomfort. It had exactly the opposite effect, draining away tension from my neck and making my grip on my own arms slip a little, so that I slumped even more on the stairs. I’d spent far too much time in shops, listening to that sound, to find it uncomfortable. At least, not when I heard it someplace like the garage, where it belonged.

  “It’s a strange way you have of belonging.”

  That sound made me flinch, my fingers tightening around my arms again. I could still hear the scream of metal, although as I lifted my head it seemed to blend with a wuthering wind, no less eerie a sound.

  Sheila MacNamarra, my very own mother, stood a few feet away, wearing the cable-knit sweater and jeans she’d worn in the photograph taken almost twenty-seven years ago. A silver necklace glinted in the hollow of her throat, all but hidden by the sweater. Her hair was lifted on the wind, moving slowly, as if time was being stretched thin and we were slipping between moments of it.

  “Sure, and that’s what’s happening, now, isn’t it?” She took a step forward, the blustery gray sky behind her superimposed over the shop’s girders and lights. “Siobhan Grania MacNamarra.” My name sounded liquid and lovely in her accent, if I overlooked the fact that none of it was the name I considered mine. “You grew up so tall, my girl.” Sheila curved her hand over her tummy and smiled at me. “Your father was tall.”

  “He still is.” My voice was hoarse. I could see blowing grass around her knees, and a white two-story house in the middle of a field. I could also see, with a little more effort, the shop behind her. This was not like any of my limited experiences with worlds that were Other. As much as I wasn’t crazy about those, at least I kind of knew what to expect from them. This was a whole new ball game. “Are you real?”

  “That I am.” Sheila crouched so that she was looking up at me on my stair. “So it’s come ’round again, has it? We’re back to where we began, you and I. How’ve we been, girl? Have we had a good life together?”

  Cold shocked against my skin from the inside, making my cheeks burn. “What are you talking about? We haven’t had any life together at all. You’re dead.”

  Sheila’s shoulders pulled back, her face blanching. “Am I now.” She stood, hands pressed against her thighs, and took a few steps away. Her shoulder ended up lodged in the stairwell corner, which bothered the hell out of me and didn’t seem to phase her at all. “And how long have I been dead?”

  “About three months. What, you don’t kn—” Wire contracted around my lungs, forcing air out as surely as a sword could. I rubbed the heel of my hand against my breastbone and tried to pull in a breath deep enough to snap the feeling of suffocation. “You don’t know.” My words had no strength behind them. “I’m talking to the you from thirty years ago.”

  “I told you, now, didn’t I? That we were between moments of time.” Sheila turned back to me, sudden urgency crackling in her movements. “And here I thought this was something done on purpose, but it’s not, lass, is it? You’ve fallen through time and don’t even know how you’ve done it. Have I been such a poor mother to you, then? Taught you nothing of the old ways? Ah, Siobhan, what’s gone on?”

  “My name is Joanne.” Even as I spoke I saw the words cut her, something I hadn’t intended. Her eyes lost some of their light and she fell back a step, lowering her gaze.

  “I see. Joanne, then. It’s a fine name, and isn’t it though. Now tell me, girl. You called me, but I think it’s my own skill that’s brought me here, not yours.” She frowned at me, faint and censuring. “I can see the power in
you, but it’s raw and untempered. I don’t understand. You’re a woman grown. You should be at the height of your skill by now.”

  “There’s not really time to go into it right now, Mother. You stopped someone, a killer, right?” It was all coming out much more sharply than I meant it to, but I had no idea how to deal with this woman. There was softness in her, kindness. Love. It didn’t fit with the mother I’d known, and I was afraid distraction would keep me from ever understanding what was going on. She was already dead. It seemed a little late for her to be getting the answers she needed. “He’s back, or somebody like him is back. What’s going on?”

  I watched it happen. The gentleness drained from her, leaving behind something much colder and more stark. Lines that I hadn’t seen in her face a second earlier now etched themselves around her mouth and between her eyebrows. The serenity washed away, leaving behind nothing more than resolution.

  A wave of sickness and sorrow hit me in the stomach and overtook my whole body, making tears sting at the back of my eyes. My throat tightened up and my hands cramped from cold. The girl in the photograph was gone, and the woman I’d known as my mother had replaced her. I wanted to say I was sorry, to take the words back, because I’d liked the confused, light-voiced young woman from the photo, and I’d made her leave.

  I was never going to escape that. With a handful of sentences, I’d taken the joy out of my own mother’s heart and turned her into someone whose focus was so strong that she could will herself to death while I sat by her side and watched. The shriek of metal penetrated my awareness again, combining with the wind to scream in banshee cries that I thought would wake me up every night for the rest of my life.

  “I’ve yet to fight the Blade. Those poor women, their lives lost and to no avail.” Sheila curved both her hands over her belly now, then made fists of her hands. “Damn him, damn them both to Hell.”

  “Me?” There was something about an Irishman cursing someone to hell that carried far more conviction than an American making the same damnation. My voice came out a childish squeak, betraying a fear I thought should be absurd, but which seemed very real at that moment. Sheila jerked her head up, then yanked her hands away from her pregnant tummy.