Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  “Sorry. Witch.”

  He grinned.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “She’s a White Knight,” Jason called. “They take this crap seriously.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “You may as well just come in here,” she yelled back.

  “I’m reading a book.”

  “Anyway, that’s plenty for today. I don’t want to mix the measuring mixes up with anything else. I’m going to beat Sam up, now.”

  Sam groaned. She had been pushing him much harder, since the pit lord factory. He was enjoying it, in truth, but he had complained the previous day that his abs were getting sore with so much dry-heaving.

  “Can I watch?” Carson asked. Samantha shrugged. Let Sam know it was up to him.

  “Get me a bucket,” he said.

  “Seriously?” Carson asked. Samantha nodded.

  “Magic is easy compared to psychic-ing.”

  He stood and left.

  “Why did you give him such a hard time?” Sam asked. “You just asked us if we trusted you.”

  “Rules,” Samantha said. “He’s a Shaman.” She paused. “Rules.”

  “So Carter made you decide if magic was evil?”

  “My guiding stars are justice and freewill,” she said. “If it is just and does not impede others’ freewill or my own, that covers a lot of ground. I also knew what I believed about the nature of God.”

  Sam laughed.

  “Easier just to trust you,” he said.

  “Faith is interesting,” she said. Sam grinned.

  “So you know how much power he has?” Sam asked.

  “Potentially. Yes. Give or take.”

  “How much power do I have?” Sam asked.

  “Psychics are a black hole,” Samantha said. “No telling. I can’t read, because my readings bounce off the far side of hell.”

  Sam wrinkled his nose.

  “That’s awesome. What about Jason?”

  “I’ve never tested. I had no intention of training anyone, up until Brandt. Training takes more power than being trained, as it turns out. But even so, he’s a warrior, and a sin-eater, at that. They aren’t known for interest in magic.”

  “Damn straight,” Jason called.

  “Seriously,” Samantha yelled back. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Reading.”

  She grinned. Looked at Sam.

  “This is a good place,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  <><><>

  Jason took her out dancing after dinner. Sam was wistful but glad to see them go; Samantha couldn’t talk him into going with them.

  “It’s weird,” he said.

  “It’s not weird,” she told him. He sighed.

  “I want it to be weird,” he said. “This is the right play.”

  “Never ever,” Samantha said. Grinned. “Ever.”

  “Ever,” he said. “Sure. Go.”

  So they ended up at a bar, drinking and not talking much because of the volume.

  “You want to dance?” Jason shouted into her ear.

  “You aren’t medically cleared,” she yelled back, “but yes, I would.”

  She stuck her tongue between her teeth and grinned, making her way into the crowd of people dancing. Well, if they wanted to call it that. She thought of Kara. She thought of New York. She shrugged it off and put herself away, pulling inside her head, just dancing, her body an instrument, part of the music. Her fitness was better; she’d been working on that, and her muscles responded as they hadn’t in a long time. Before long, she was sweating, heart racing to keep up, completely by herself. And then there was someone else.

  She didn’t know how long it took her to notice him. He would appear in the crowd, moving like he was playing in the same orchestra as she, then disappear again. He saw her, but he didn’t look at her. She was unsettled for a minute, ultimately giving up and standing still, looking for him, as the music played on.

  “You standing still there is such a waste,” someone said in her ear. She spun and he turned on clever feet, hands, fingers, playing out the ideas of the words of the song and the rhythm of the bass. She swiveled over her hips, reacting as much to him as to the rhythm, rolling and pivoting her shoulders down through her waist, watching for him. He appeared again from around a drunk couple, eyes playful, and dropped, walking on his knees, feet sweeping the floor around him, and she rolled over his shoulder, sliding her feet around the one that swept under the spot where he had been standing. She couched her chin into her shoulder, playful, flirty, and he offered her a hand, just fingers, shapes of motion, sounds.

  And she was back into the music. A place she had always been by herself, but he came with. He moved like she did, strong, staccato, happy, but powerful and masculine, matching her body rolls and light fingers with strong limbs and clever feet. She was entranced, mentally absent.

  Her hair stuck to her back and her face. She ran her fingers through it to push it away, to let air against her skin. Sweat ran into her eyes. She had no concept of time. The dancers around them didn’t give way, they wove their dance around the pillars of drunk leaners, the broad stances of grinders, the tightly-woven rings of shy circle dancers. They were furniture. Staging. She had him fixed in her mind now, and he no longer vanished.

  They played.

  Other than his fingertips, he never touched her. They were dancing together, but it wasn’t about the together, it was about the dancing. A stray thought escaped from her wandering mind. I thought I was the only one who danced like this.

  The song ended and another picked up, and he jerked his chin at her, motioning her back toward the bar.

  “I have to go,” he said. “This was fun. I’ll see you around?”

  She shook her head, taking him in. First. Last. One night only. Cinderella.

  “No. You won’t.”

  He grinned, pulling her hair off of her forehead and back toward her ear.

  “Sure I will. No way I wouldn’t.”

  He nodded to her, still grinning, then went and pulled a jacket off the back of a chair at the bar and left. Tall, beautiful, Asian. Japanese, she thought. Short, spiked hair, extremely well-muscled arms and chest under a tank top. She stared, not knowing what else to do. Not wanting to do anything else. This wasn’t life. This was rocketship to the moon for fairy party magic. He was gone.

  “Looks like you made a friend,” Jason said. She jumped, nearly screaming. He laughed. “Sorry.”

  Her lips tried to form words that her brain wouldn’t source.

  “You want to head out?” he asked. She shook her head. She wasn’t done yet. She wanted more time.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just asking.”

  She looked at him.

  “I’m sorry. I just completely abandoned you.”

  “You had a good night,” he said. “I’m glad.”

  She found she was staring at the door again.

  “Did you at least get his number?” Jason asked.

  “Why?”

  There was a pause.

  “So you can call him… and see him again?”

  She looked at him, feet slowly settling back on the ground.

  “Why?”

  “Well, Sweetheart, when two people really like each other…”

  “I’d punch you if you weren’t already a gimp,” she said. “Go sit down. I’m going to dance for a while longer.”

  “Whatever you say, Sam.”

  She tried to regain her isolation again, just dance by herself, but it was slow coming. As she was about to give up, she found another guy dancing behind her. She stepped away, crowded, but he followed, hands reaching for her hips. She turned away and body-blocked him away with a couple of other dancers, closing her eyes to recenter on the music, but his hands were on her waist again. She smiled, backing away.

  “Hey,” Jason said as she backed into him. He put his arms around her waist and she turned her head to the side, resting her cheekbone against his arm. The new guy s
neered for a moment, but left. Samantha turned and put her arms around Jason’s neck.

  “I thought I told you no dancing,” she said.

  “Look at me. Technically, I’m not dancing. I’m just shifting my weight back and forth from one foot to the other. Harmless.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You sure you want to say? I’d say the shine’s come off it a little, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I just…”

  “Hate to admit that some guy leaving can end your night?”

  She laughed.

  “That’s why you go with him,” Jason said.

  “He didn’t ask,” Samantha said. He pulled his head back to look at her.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Must be gay.”

  She dropped her forehead against his chest and he leaned away further.

  “Don’t you go rubbing off your face on me. That’s gross.”

  She laughed.

  “Sorry.”

  “Did you at least get his name?”

  She frowned, blinking sweat out of her eyes again.

  “No.”

  “You really suck at this.”

  “I guess.”

  “You want to go?”

  She rubbed her forehead back and forth across his shirt.

  “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  <><><>

  Jason glanced at Samantha as he drove. He recognized that same look from Sam. She was somewhere far, far away. A waitress had once observed that he didn’t keep up with Samantha very well, but she slowed down for him. And that he didn’t need to worry until she found someone she didn’t need to slow down for. He didn’t know what he wanted, with her, but it bothered him a little that he might not get to pick. Not that she’d ever see the kid again. Not even a name to work with. What had she been thinking? He’d never seen her click with anyone like that.

  She jolted against her seatbelt, hands frantically searching, scraping over the console, hitting the window. She caught his arm and the door handle and arched her back and screamed.

  She choked at the end of her breath and drew a deep breath and screamed again, her whole body rigid. Jason slammed on the brakes, trying to figure out what to do. Her grip on his arm was going to leave fingermarks.

  She ran out of breath again.

  “Sam. What’s going on? Talk to me,” he said as she dropped to hang over her seatbelt, clutching her chest.

  “Sam,” she whispered. “It’s Sam. Go.”

  He dropped his foot to the floor, racing back to the house with an increasing sense of foreboding.

  <><><>

  “He just walked out,” Carson said. “I didn’t know I should have stopped him.”

  Jason shook his head, looking again at Samantha where she sat on the floor, sagging against the wall.

  “He’s just gone,” she said again.

  “It isn’t your fault,” Jason said to Carson. He squatted in front of Samantha.

  “Where is he, Sam?”

  She looked at him, eyes wide.

  “I don’t know. Even when he sent me away, I never just didn’t know.”

  “What can do that?” Jason asked her.

  “If he were dead,” she said softly.

  “Carson saw him walk out less than five minutes before we got here. He didn’t die. What else?” Jason asked. Her eyes hardened.

  “Demon.”

  She scrambled off the floor, arms wild, running upstairs. Jason chased her, with Carson just behind him. She went to the room where she and Sam had slept, rummaging through the sheets on the bed, then Sam’s bag.

  “What did he do?” Samantha asked. “What was he doing when he left?”

  “He took a shower, then he came downstairs and got something out of the fridge, then he walked out,” Carson said and shrugged.

  “Did he say anything?” Jason asked. Carson shook his head. Samantha ran out of the room and down the hall. She came out of the bathroom holding Sam’s pendant.

  “He took it off to shower,” she said, looking at it. Jason took it.

  “We’ll get it back to him,” he said. “We just have to find him.”

  She looked at him, apparently still in shock.

  “A demon took him. Possessed him and walked away. He could be anywhere. A powerful-enough demon could glitch his body. Maybe. He’s gotten stronger in the last few days. I wouldn’t even know what I was up against.”

  “Can you pull it out of him?”

  The drifty look on her face again sharpened and he was looking at the woman he knew again.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I don’t know how, yet, but… yes. There isn’t a demon in existence who could cross through him and beat me every time.” She turned back to the room, grabbing her backpack and walking downstairs. “I have work to do.”

  “How do we find him?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know yet, but when I do, I’m going to be the scariest thing that demon has ever laid eyes on.”

  “What’s going on?” Doris asked, coming down the stairs behind them.

  “Sam just disappeared,” Carson said. “Sam thinks he…”

  “Demon-snatched,” Samantha said. “He got possessed.”

  She reached the living room and dropped her bag, turning back to look at Carson and Doris. Jason stepped aside.

  “I know what to do,” she said.

  “You know how to find Sam?” Carson asked. She shook her head. “For you two. What’s worse? Being paralyzed and possessed or just being possessed?”

  “Physically paralyzed?” Carson asked. She nodded.

  “Just possessed,” Doris said. Samantha nodded.

  “Good. Close your eyes. Both of you. If they can see what I do, they have a shot at untying it before I come get you.”

  Jason raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Won’t work on you,” she said. You can watch or not.”

  She put one hand over each of the other two, speaking words and drawing shapes in the air over them. Without ceremony, she sat down in front of her bag and started pulling things out.

  “I think you’re done,” Jason said. Doris and Carson opened their eyes.

  “What did she do?” Carson asked.

  “I did an inverted version of the spell I use to tie a bell to a demon. If either of you get possessed, I’ll know about it, and I’ll know where you are at that moment. Then I added a tripwire that will paralyze you until I come let you out.”

  “Why won’t it work on him?” Carson asked. She was mixing things in bowls, smearing some things on her skin and drinking others. She held a bowl up to Jason.

  “Drink this.”

  “Why wouldn’t it work?” Carson asked again.

  “I’m too close to him and he’s too stubborn. He’d hit the trip wire himself, fighting with me.”

  “What are you going to do, child?” Doris asked, rearranging herself to sit on the floor next to Samantha.

  “I’m going to make whoever has taken him regret ever drawing breath on this side,” Samantha said.

  “I have no doubt,” Doris said. “But what are you going to do?”

  Samantha looked at her, chewing on her lip.

  “I need more bleach and vinegar. May I help myself?”

  Doris put a hand on her shoulder. Did I just drink bleach? Jason wondered.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “This is me arming myself.” She pointed at the array of bowls in front of her. “Protection spells, strength spells, power spells. Stack them in the right order, a mugger would have a hard time hurting me, not to mention a demon.”

  “Humans are harder?” Carson asked.

  “Demons run on the residual power of freewill. It’s their currency and their power source. Like the sun. We have the original stuff. A demon can’t stab you if you have enough barriers up against him. A human can slit your throat on purpose or by accident, any day of the week.”

  Sh
e stood.

  “Of course, I can do the same thing right back. Demons are hard to kill. Bleach?”

  “In the laundry room,” Doris said. After Samantha left, Doris looked at Jason. “Are you okay?”

  He hadn’t stopped to consider it, really. When Samantha had fallen apart, he hadn’t given himself a chance to.

  “If anyone is going to find him and pull a demon out of him, it’s her,” Jason said. “No point worrying.”

  “You think she’s okay?” Doris asked. Jason looked the way Samantha had gone.

  “She is now.”

  Samantha returned and poured the bleach into a bowl, where it bubbled for a moment. She waited, then started mixing in the next round of stuff. She tasted it a few times along the way, then downed half of it and handed the rest of it up to Jason.

  “Drink this.”

  “You need little bottles with labels and ribbons,” he said, looking at it. “There’s bleach in here.”

  “It reacted with the phosphorus,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. She sounded like that should have explained it. He drank the rest of the mixture and handed it back to her.

  “Now it’s a poisonous acid,” she said. He put his fist to his mouth and coughed.

  “It’s what?”

  “Among other things, a flame retardant,” she said. “Drink this.”

  “I don’t like this game,” Jason said.

  “I haven’t handed you a single thing I haven’t drunk myself,” she said. “Do it.”

  “I’m not convinced you aren’t completely nuts,” he said. “Mix in some kool-aid flavoring and it’d be settled.”

  She looked up at him.

  “Good idea.” She looked at Doris. “Do you have any?”

  “Any what?”

  “Kool-aid. Preferably cherry.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  She went back to working.

  “Why cherry?” Carson asked. She frowned as she worked.

  “I like it best.”

  “Oh.”

  Jason looked at the bowl, then shrugged.

  “What the hell.”

  He emptied it then put it back in Samantha’s waiting hand.

  “What’s next?”

  She took a dropper and tipped her head back, dripping fluid into each eye, then looked up at Jason.

  “That’s a bridge too far, I think,” she said, emptying the dropper into her mouth then collecting the bowls and heading to the kitchen.