Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  “Don’t touch me.”

  The pain was beginning to take over her conscious mind. She pushed it back down.

  “So killing her didn’t fix anything?” Jason asked. Samantha looked up from the ground at Sam.

  “Hair,” she said, gritting her teeth. He gave her a confused look. “Hair. Pull your hair up.”

  He turned and pulled his hair off of his neck. The tattoo was gone.

  “It fixed that,” she said.

  “She needs help,” Sam said, turning back to face her.

  “Hospital,” Jason said.

  “No,” Samantha said, holding up her backpack for Jason to put it on, then allowing him to pick her up. “Take me someplace where they have a phone book.”

  <><><>

  They stole the phone book from the gas station and Samantha held it for a moment, then handed it to Sam.

  “Open it and pick a number out of the white pages.”

  “What?”

  She grunted, trying to find a position where her foot didn’t move relative to her knee, and glared at him.

  “Just do it.”

  He opened the book at random and read down a page.

  “Fine. There. That one.”

  She pointed at Jason.

  “Dial.”

  “We need to get you a phone,” he said, punching the numbers. She shook her head.

  “Not going to happen.” She took the phone from him, and after two rings, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hi. I just got in a fight and fell through the floor in a warehouse. I’ve got a bone sticking out of my shin.”

  “Sounds like you need a hospital,” the woman said evenly.

  “That’s not what my psychic says,” Samantha answered, leaning her head back against the door. There was a long pause.

  “You have the address?” the woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  <><><>

  “Only one of you back in the room with her,” the middle-aged woman said when Sam tried to follow Jason through the front room of the townhouse. Jason looked back at Sam, then down at Samantha.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Jason said. The woman nodded and led them back through a small kitchen to an open tiled room with an exam table. Jason sat her down on the exam table and nodded once, leaving. Sam sat down on a chair next to the table and let his head hang, running his fingers through his hair.

  “It’s okay,” Samantha said softly. The doctor cut her pants leg away and left for a moment, bringing back a syringe.

  “What is that?” Sam asked. Samantha was feeling drifty from pain.

  “Local anesthetic,” the woman said. “Unless she wants to go without while I set the bone.”

  “It’s fine, Sam,” Samantha said.

  “You’d just let her inject you with something at random?”

  “You came to me, not the other way around,” the woman said, injecting Samantha. The numb spread with pleasant speed. “What were you fighting?”

  “Pair of demons,” Samantha said. The woman looked up at her, alarmed, but not shocked.

  “Four, actually,” Sam said.

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot about the other two.”

  “I’m usually by-reference only,” the woman said. Samantha put her head back, breathing more easily now.

  “Consider him my reference,” she said. The woman nodded.

  “I’m Janice. Elspeth should be down in a minute.”

  “I’m here,” a cajun voice called from the kitchen. Samantha looked over to see a dark-skinned woman with a cloth head wrap. She smiled.

  “You must be what he keyed on,” she said. The woman inclined her head, then walked into the exam room.

  “You’re here with the young man in the front room?” she asked. Samantha nodded. Elspeth muttered an angry curse.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “Shameful, a healthy body like that with two skeletons,” she said.

  “Elspeth?” Janice asked. Samantha was only confused for a moment.

  “Oh,” she said, then sighed. “Look closer. You’re seeing too much.”

  Elspeth frowned and bent down to look at Sam, then took a step back, putting her hand over her heart.

  “He’s covered in demon spit and half roasted,” she said. Sam looked away. “But what ails you, child?” she asked, turning her attention to Samantha.

  “Beyond the compound fracture, you mean?” Janice asked. Samantha looked at Sam.

  “Gut instinct, are they completely true?”

  He took a moment to realize he was talking to her, then looked up.

  “What? Oh. Yeah.”

  Samantha nodded, then looked at Elspeth.

  “You ever heard of bonding?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a soul-level tie. He’s running on my energy, right now.”

  Sam looked up again.

  “Apparently he didn’t know that,” Elspeth said, her sharp eyes darting between them. “What do you need, Janice?”

  “This looks pretty straightforward,” Janice said. “You may as well take a look at him.”

  Elspeth retrieved a box from the corner and sat it down on a shelf next to Sam. Janice tapped Samantha’s boot.

  “You telling me you were fighting hand to hand with demons in those?” she asked. Samantha smiled.

  “Yes.”

  “No wonder you broke your leg.”

  Elspeth looked over, then looked at Samantha knowingly. Samantha shrugged, then winced as a bolt of pain made its way through the drugs.

  “You want something stronger?” Janice asked. Samantha shook her head, looking over at Elspeth.

  “No ashwood. It has toxicity interactions with something I have planned later this week.”

  Elspeth cocked her head.

  “You’re trying to cure it?”

  Samantha nodded. Elspeth licked her lips, looking at Sam. He watched her for a minute, then dropped his head again.

  “What are you going to do when it kills him?” Elspeth asked. Sam looked up again, eyes going to Samantha.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Samantha said. Elspeth nodded.

  “You need to.”

  “You’re dying?” Sam asked.

  “Same as you,” Samantha said. Sam shook his head.

  “It was my mistake. I won’t let you pay for it.”

  “She’s keeping you alive as it is, boy,” Elspeth said. Sam’s eyes widened and he started to argue. Samantha closed her eyes, the odd sensation of bone moving against bone almost completely distracting her.

  “I’m buying time. Today is not the day for decisions.”

  “I should brace your wrist, too, from the way you’re rubbing it,” Janice said. Samantha looked down, surprised to find herself holding her wrist.

  “Shouldn’t you be x-raying her or something?”

  Janice looked condescendingly at him, then glanced at Samantha.

  “This is the man you trust your secrets to?”

  “He knows what he knows, and I know what he doesn’t know,” Samantha said. “She’s a healer. One of the best I’ve seen, actually. I’ll be walking on it tomorrow.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. I’m casting it and giving you crutches, to be sure.”

  “She’s one of your people?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Samantha said. “The one of us in this area is Argo. I know all of his people.”

  “You know Argo?” Elspeth said. Samantha smiled.

  “He and my mentor have hated each other from way back,” Samantha said. Elspeth snorted.

  “Everyone hates Argo going way back,” she said.

  “Same with Carter,” Samantha said.

  “I’m serious,” Janice said. “You don’t walk on this until it’s healed completely.”

  “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  Samantha slid to the edge of the table, letting the woman work on her wrist.

  “I’m kind of busy this month,�
�� she said.

  “You leave like it is, it takes six. You come back here next week, and I’ll speed it up again.”

  “We’ll stay,” Sam said. He rubbed his face and nodded. “We’ll stay until you’re ready to go.”

  Janice went to go get the casting materials and Elspeth stood, standing with her arms wrapped around her box. Samantha rubbed her wrist again. It felt better.

  “What have you tried?” Elspeth asked. Samantha told her. Elspeth nodded, closing her eyes as she listened.

  “Where did you learn?” she asked when Samantha finished. Samantha shrugged.

  “I’ve had access to a lot of sources of knowledge that most people don’t know exist.”

  “I would offer another eye, but I’m afraid I can offer you no new insight.”

  “What would you do?” Samantha asked.

  “Go home. Sit quietly with my family. Prepare.”

  Samantha didn’t look at Sam.

  “What would you try?”

  Elspeth inclined her head, indicating that she had known that that was the question all along.

  “I will meditate on it.”

  Samantha nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  “You could stand for some magazines out here,” Jason called.

  “You want magazines, go to a doctor’s office,” Janice called back as she returned. Samantha watched Sam as Janice wrapped her leg. He held his head in his hands without looking up.

  <><><>

  Where are you? Simon’s e-mail read.

  Sam sat with his hands over the keyboard, staring at it. He had been for hours.

  Jason was asleep, finally past his snoring stage, and Samantha sat with her laptop illuminating her face, sitting across the room from him. She had failed again. If she slept tonight, it would probably be on Jason’s bed.

  He glanced at his brother.

  He didn’t know how anyone ever slept with Jason. He expanded to fill whatever space he had available, when he slept. Sam had, on pressing occasion, tried to share a bed with him, and he always ended up sleeping on the floor.

  Apparently he made it work, though.

  Samantha was watching him, now. She looked at the chair across the table from her, then back at him. He came to join her.

  “I thought you were keeping your distance on purpose,” he said.

  “I am, but it’s okay.”

  “I can’t do this,” Sam said.

  “Do what?”

  “Just sit. Wait. Die.”

  Samantha sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.

  “Okay. Where do you want to go?”

  He looked at the e-mail from Simon again.

  “Let’s just say I’m not going to die. What would we do?”

  She shrugged.

  “Go kill stuff.”

  “So let’s do it.”

  “Brandt is still after you. He will be back.”

  “What does that change?”

  “You need to stay in sight for me. Other than that, I guess, nothing.”

  “Can you beat him?” Sam asked.

  “Yes.”

  Sam held his hands out over the keyboard.

  “I thought I was prepared for anything. That we’d seen everything, and that the only surprises were new kinds of the same old thing. I haven’t been overwhelmed like this in a long time.

  “What, you have a demon after you, personally, who wants to possess you, and you’re dying of soulburn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We call that Tuesday,” Samantha said, smiling. “No. It’s a big deal. I can’t save you with anything I know how to do, and I can’t keep you away from Brandt forever. I’m going to have to deal with him.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “You have any visions with Carly?”

  He frowned. He hadn’t thought about those in months.

  “No.”

  She steepled her fingers in front of her nose.

  “It’s interesting. If you continued to develop, they might have attracted more attention, but then you would have been a better catch for them, too.” She shook her head. “So add that to the list, anyway. She stunted you, and I’m going to have to figure out how and fix it, if we get past everything else.”

  He wished he knew how she was feeling. The truth.

  “I thought you said that I only had the one chance to decide I didn’t want to be psychic.”

  “True. After that, any stunting is associated with brain damage and sudden, unexpected surges of growth that make psychic sickness look comfortable.”

  “Are you really that mad at me?” he asked. He felt so alone, even with Jason right over there and Samantha sitting across from him. Arthur was dead. There was no one left to tell him that he was doing a good job that he would believe. That he was okay.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Everything is so different,” he said. She closed her laptop and folded her hands across it, sighing. In the new darkness, her skin tone looked honeyed, more featured.

  “Unfiltered truth. I don’t feel like I can be close to you any more.”

  “Because of how I smell?” he asked, looking at his arms for the hundredth time, trying to find some visible symptom of the one that she saw and that he was more and more believing he felt. She rubbed her hands across her face and then rested her chin on the palms.

  “Nothing that exotic,” she said, looking down at the table. “Because of her.”

  “Carly?”

  “Yes.”

  “You killed her,” he said. He wasn’t sure why that was relevant, but it seemed like the thing to say.

  “Yes, but she won.”

  He waited, but there didn’t seem to be anything more coming. He went through the fight in his head, but couldn’t find anything that matched. Samantha raised her eyebrows.

  “You picked her over me?”

  Oh.

  Oh, yeah.

  He had gone through those days in his mind so many times, in the last week. They hadn’t really talked about it, yet. He couldn’t remember why he had left. They had been happy. Things had been working. Samantha and Jason were getting along, he had been happy with Carly; they had all been working together really well. Then suddenly there had just been this steady urge that she didn’t belong. She needed to go. He had appreciated everything she had done, but it was time for it to be over. It didn’t make any sense. Then things had gotten progressively weirder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. It was inadequate, but it was the only thing he could think of. She pressed her eyebrows in and smiled.

  “I know. And if it were just that… It would be different. But I know demons. I know demons like her.” She looked away and back. “I know what they’re like.” He still wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell him. She looked like she wished she could swallow her tongue. “What she was like with you.”

  He winced and looked away. He wondered about that, more often. What had he been thinking? He remembered every detail. Many made him blush; more made him ill. He remembered the high… the hook, somewhere deep down below who he had been before, that would jump at another chance at it. He looked at Samantha. She was watching him like she could read his thoughts unfolding, and he wondered again if she actually could. She was right. The girl who was embarrassed to sit on the floor, bare knees to bare knees would be appalled at the things he had done. He wondered if he could love a woman who had done the things he had done, and his mind rebelled. Never. Never, never.

  “I understand,” he said finally. She nodded.

  “I don’t know if I can get around it,” she said. “I mean, Jason is an okay game. He makes me feel… special. Which is dumb, because it means I’m special because I’m like everyone else, but…” she smiled with a silent laugh, “that’s what it is. Some days I’m actually a girl. But that’s all it is. It’s a game. To him and to me. No risk. And even that isn’t who I am. But… Nothing could happen. That was the truth from the beginning, but it didn’t stop…”


  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s for the best. Puts me on task. No distractions.”

  “I hate those words. For the best. Means that something bad happened, and we’re supposed to be happy about it.”

  She looked at him wistfully.

  “Yeah.”

  “May not matter for long,” he offered. She half-closed one eye.

  “You’re an idiot. I haven’t given up yet.”

  “No. But everyone thinks you can’t do it.”

  “Nothing new there.”

  “Even you.”

  She looked at him, surprised. He smiled, able to breathe for the first time in days. There was the truth. She thought that she had kept it secret, but had confirmed it. She thought he was going to die. Maybe that was easiest. He had made too much of a mess.

  “What will you do?”

  “You’re an idiot. If you give up on me, I will instruct Jason to beat you until you decide you actually do care about your life.”

  He looked down at his hands, still stretched out over the keyboard, and sighed at them.

  “You can’t live with the memories that are in my head. Think about how I feel.”

  “You’re welcome to be completely dysfunctional for the rest of your life. Giving up is part of the soulburn. It kills hope. You can fight that.”

  “What would you do?” he asked. She shook her head and looked at Jason.

  “I don’t think I could just stay with him. Doesn’t make any sense. Don’t think he’d want me, anyway. Probably go back to Carter. Stop fighting doing my job.”

  “Which is?”

  “Saving him, whatever that means.”

  “Right.”

  There was a long silence.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Tired. Dark.” He paused. “Like killing something.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Maybe that’s what we do. Life as normal. Keep too busy for any of us to give up on you.”

  He looked at the e-mail again. Pulled up a chat window.

  Simon was online.

  “You’re serious?” he asked. She nodded. He invited her to come watch his computer, but she smiled apologetically. Too close. He started a conversation with Simon.