Walking Dead

by C. E. Murphy

  Way in the back of my brain, a penny dropped, and my mouth said, “Sown dead. Sowen, the day of the dead. Samhain,” without filtering it through the active thought process in my mind. It was just as well: if I’d thought about it, I’d have never figured it out. Samhain was the Irish new year, falling on the same date as the western Halloween, and the next day was, in plenty of cultures, the day of the dead. I’d learned all about it from a precognitive anthropologist who’d predicted my death wrongly, and her own with depressing accuracy. To the English-reading eye, the word looked like it should be pronounced Sam-hayn, but in Irish, it was Sowen. “They all died at Halloween.”

  The ghosts erupted in a shriek of triumph, and Billy twisted to give me a good hard look before he said, “Nice job,” without a hint of begrudgement. I didn’t quite know what the look was for. It sort of made me feel as if I’d been holding out on having an encyclopedia of arcane knowledge to draw from, but I really didn’t. I knew more than I had a year ago, but that wasn’t saying much.

  “It’s a pattern.” Billy was still looking at me, though the way his voice went calm suggested he was speaking to the ghosts. “It gives us a place to start. I want to make you an offer.” He turned his attention back to the Trans Am. Faces were beginning to appear beneath the translucent hood. Not fully fleshed human faces, but something more than skulls. They reminded me unpleasantly of The Scream painting.

  “We’ll find your bodies, if we can. We’ll find your killer, if we can. But I don’t have the skill, even here, to draw your memories out clearly enough to learn everything we can from you.” Billy sounded utterly at home with his talent’s boundaries. I envied that, not because I wanted more power, but because I didn’t know where the edges of mine lay. I’d read often enough that if you argue for your limitations, then sure enough, they’re yours, but that wasn’t what I heard in Billy’s voice, or saw in the image of himself. He’d had most of a lifetime to learn what he could and couldn’t do. The window in which he could see the dead had extended bit by bit over the years. In another thirty, he might be able to talk to ghosts a week dead instead of just a couple of days, but maybe not, too. Either way, I didn’t get the sense he rested on his laurels, only that he accepted what his gifts were.

  It wasn’t a bad lesson for me to learn. Man, I was getting all mature and stuff. That couldn’t be good for a person. Fortunately, the only person on hand to notice my leaps and bounds of maturity was Billy, and he was still talking to the ghosts. I rewound what he’d been saying—surprisingly easy, within the confines of my garden—and said, “Oh, no way, no how, hell no,” to what memory informed me he’d suggested.

  “I don’t see much other choice.” Billy stood up and faced me, broad arms folded over his chest. “They’ve got enough presence and opinion that they refused to cross through that door when you opened it, and I don’t have the ability to usher them through. We need a much stronger medium for that, or to resolve their murders so they’ve got nothing left to hang on to.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  He shook his head. “You can’t risk having them here. One healing trance and they’ll make a run for the short route out of imprisonment here and into someone else’s body.”

  “I’ve got them pretty well wrapped up here!” I gestured toward the Trans Am.

  Billy quirked an eyebrow. “Can you maintain that 24/7? Can you hold them apart from any healing you need to do? I watched how you pushed them out of me, Joanie. Eviction, then capture. You weren’t splitting your concentration.”

  “Okay, yeah, but—”

  “If I make them my riders voluntarily, it reduces their potential control, and right now they’re willing to try it.”

  “The words right now in that sentence concern me, Billy. What if they change their minds? And you already have riders from the party. Not all of them detached from you.” I looked around a little wildly, now that I’d remembered that. “Why don’t I see them here?”

  “They’re not part of my self-image.”

  Indignant, I pointed at the gray mist inside the Trans Am. “They’re not part of mine, either!”

  “No,” Billy said with exasperated patience, “but you opened up a door in your mind and invited dozens of spirits to pass through. The ones that refused to pass on didn’t get rejected, just trapped. You said you’d had uninvited visitors before. Well, you more or less invited these ones. They’re here whether you imagine them to be or not.”

  That made an irritating amount of sense. I glowered. “I still think it’s a really bad idea for you to play host to a bunch of ectoplasmic parasites.”

  “I agree.” Billy breathed a quiet laugh as bewilderment smeared across my face. “It’s dangerous. But I think it’s less dangerous than leaving them here. If you dissolve the car—” His mouth suddenly contorted as he tried not to laugh.

  “The car just happened! I needed something the ghosts could communicate through, and he can talk! It’s not my fault!”

  “He,” Billy said, and gave up trying not to laugh. My ears burned red and he whooped until tears came to his eyes, finally promising, “It’s completely you,” as he wiped moisture away. “Release them from the car and they’ll come to me. It’ll be fine.”

  I folded my arms, half sulking at being teased and half genuinely reluctant. I only had one argument to dissuade him, and I didn’t like it much. On the other hand, but besides being persuasive, it struck me as a genuine concern. “Okay. Look. We know I can keep them locked in, if necessary. Can you? Because…what happens if one of these things changes its mind about hanging around on you, and latches on to the baby when it’s born?”

  I’d never seen Billy get so grim, which told me I was right: it was a legitimate danger. “We just won’t let that happen.”

  “If Mel goes into labor before we get this thing resolved,” I said very steadily, “I’m taking the ghosts back. I don’t care what the other risks are.”

  “Yeah.” Billy nodded, small tense motion that wasn’t like him. “Yeah, okay. It’s a deal.”

  We shook on it, and I released the Trans Am thought-form to infect Billy with the vengeful dead.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It jolted us out of my garden, me blinking the Sight on as soon as I realized we were back in the real world. Morrison stopped drumming, but his hand remained raised, ready to strike the drum again if necessary. His aura hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d done this: it was still filled with rough edges of discomfort, purple and blue rubbing against each other wrong, but not badly enough to connote anger or fear. All too aware of the statement’s inaccuracy, I said, “We’re good,” and Morrison lowered the drumstick to wait on those of us with more esoteric skills to tell him what had happened.

  Billy’s colors were grayed out, filmed over by his ghost riders. I could see varying shades, half a dozen or more soiling his presence. They amalgamated, darkening, and I imagined the ones he’d picked up in my garden were communicating Billy’s offer of help to those he’d carried from the party himself.

  Either that or they were staging a hostile takeover, the thought of which didn’t reassure me at all. Mel sat up straight, her aura going bright with concern, though her daughter’s was rosy pink and serene with sleep. “What did you do to Bill?”

  “Walker?” That was Morrison, a warning note in his voice before I had a chance to say anything. Then Billy spoke, and I was grateful, because anything I could say would sound like I was trying to fob off responsibility. It was his idea just didn’t cut it, even if it was true.

  “It was my idea.” Billy lifted his head wearily. His eyes were dull. “The hauntings that held on to Joanne were old murder cases, and I promised we’d get them to a stronger medium to see if we could help.”

  “A medium?” Morrison managed to keep the derision out of his voice, but he couldn’t bury the disbelief.

  Billy swung his head toward the captain, the motion too heavy, like he didn’t have proper control of his actions. “It’s what I am
, Captain. I communicate with the dead.” He didn’t exactly sound challenging, but there was a note of undeterrable conviction in his words. I knew Morrison was aware Billy had an affiliation for the weird that allowed his homicide cases to be solved in record time. That was why he’d partnered us. Still, from their expressions, it was safe to say they’d never discussed it over a beer.

  After a few seconds Morrison bared his teeth, though the look came and went so fast I couldn’t have sworn I’d seen it. “Medium,” he said, and if I wasn’t sure his teeth had been bared, I was positive they were now clenched. “Shaman.” He scowled at Melinda. “Anything weird you want to put a label on?”

  Melinda gave him another one of those devastating smiles, only this time tempered with deep sympathy. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Michael.”

  It seemed like a bad time to mention I’d like those answers. Morrison pulled a hand over his face and nodded, then gave me a grim look. “Need anything else, Walker?”

  “No, sir. Go on home and get some rest.” I got up and thrust my hand at him awkwardly. “Thanks, Captain.”

  He shook my hand every bit as unnaturally as I’d offered it, nodded to the Hollidays and left without saying another word. All things considered, I thought that was the most rational choice. On the positive side, I didn’t have any particular impulse to follow him out and thus avoid whatever peculiarities or arguments were about to arise. Maybe it was a little thing, but I was pleased with it.

  With Morrison gone, Billy and I both turned our attention on Melinda, whose usual good nature had blackened. “You promised to find a stronger medium, and…?”

  “And it was too dangerous to let Joanie keep the riders. If she needs to heal someone—”

  “William Robert Holliday. Cut to the chase.” Melinda didn’t so much need him to as she wanted her ugly suspicions confirmed.

  “I took them on.” Billy held up a hand, stopping Mel’s indrawn breath from turning into a tirade. “You’re right. It’s dangerous for me, too, and I’m sorry. But it’s also four-thirty in the morning, and we’re both—all—exhausted, which isn’t going to help me keep my head with half a dozen ghosts riding me. Save the lecture until after we’ve slept, all right?”

  Melinda got to her feet and put her hands on her waist. Or she would’ve if she’d had a waist, but pregnancy precluded that. It also precluded her from looking all that threatening. She looked a bit like a deranged penguin, really, what with the tuxedo and the tummy. “You just want me to mellow out,” she snapped. “You know if I sleep on it I’ll wake up knowing you made the right choice, even if I hate it.”

  Billy crooked the tiniest grin I’d ever seen. “I’m counting on it, baby.”

  Mel said something along the lines of, “Mrgnnmnmm grr grr grr,” and waddled over to hug Billy hard. “You’re a wretch.”

  “Yeah, but you love me.” He got off my couch and tucked Melinda against his side, kissing her hair before looking at me. “There might be one thing you can do.”

  I said, “Anything,” without thinking, but once I’d thought, it didn’t matter. Anything barely began to cover what I’d do to help Billy or Melinda.

  “Ever shared energy with someone? It’s—”

  He didn’t have to finish explaining. I’d done it frequently with another friend, popping a bit of healing energy into a heart that’d been magicked into an attack. I stepped forward and put my hand over Billy’s heart, calling up power.

  Cheery blue-silver fireworks spat energy and comfort into his depleted aura. I’d drained myself damn near dry a couple of times early on in the year, but I got the impression that the more I accepted it, the deeper and more fundamental my magic became. If I had to go up against something huge, I might need to call in help from outside again, but even with the long night, I had more than enough juice to rev Billy’s engi—

  I really needed to get some different metaphors.

  Fortunately, Melinda couldn’t hear my thoughts, and Billy’s colors strengthened, which released me from having to think anymore about how to describe what I was doing. I shot another pulse of energy into him, essentially imagining it as refilling a fuel tank, and he exhaled gratefully. “Thanks. I don’t feel so worn down.”

  “You don’t look so worn down,” Melinda said with satisfaction. “The gray’s fading out of your aura. You sure they don’t have enough foothold to take over when you sleep?”

  “I’m sure now.” Billy hugged her shoulders, then nodded to me. “See you in the morning, Joanne.”

  “It’s already morning. See you later. And not enough later, either.” I gave Mel a quick hug and shooed them out the door before thunking my head on it.

  To the best of my ability to count—and for all my various faults, that much I could still do—this was the third time Billy’d gotten into hot water thanks to me and my magic. I didn’t know what his daily paranormal experiences were, but I was willing to bet banshees and comas and ghosts, oh my, had never been on the roster.

  On one very practical hand, it made sense: Billy belonged to the Mulder subset of humanity. He wanted to believe, and because he did, he was usually on hand when the weird went down. That put him in a position of strength if he was dealing with his own particular branch of Other, but it made him vulnerable when he was dealing with mine. Realistically I couldn’t keep him out of harm’s way, but one of these times I wasn’t going to be able to figure a way out of the crazy before he really got hurt. I either needed more friends to spread the risk around to, or fewer so I took all the scary stuff onto myself.

  Billy would give me a swirly for even thinking that way. I gave up on trying to figure out how to save the world and went to bed.

  Sunday, October 30, 11:57 a.m.

  Somewhere out there in the big brave world there was an extra-grande amaretto coffee with my name on it. All I had to do was get through the three minutes until it was technically lunchtime, and I could break free of my desk and go in search of that beautiful, luscious cup of coffee.

  I’d been a homicide detective for four months now. I was never in any way keen to put my detecting skills to the test, but for the last few hours, I’d have almost given my eyeteeth for a nice eventful murder. The morning had been filled with paperwork, some of it follow-up on a couple of cases we’d closed the week before, but more of it focused on trying to find anything about Halloween murders over the last hundred and fifty years in Seattle. I’d protested. I didn’t think there’d been anything in Seattle that long.

  Billy sent me to Wikipedia, where I learned that it’d been a Native American settlement forever. Well, okay, I’d known that, what with the whole Chief Seattle thing, but I hadn’t known that white people had been there since the 1850s. Having been educated, I wondered if we should go back more than a hundred and fifty years. Billy said I was welcome to locate criminal records kept by a people who didn’t have a written language, and wished me luck with that.

  Pointing out that we didn’t have any records that indicated people who did have a written language were being murdered on Halloween didn’t go over especially well. Billy, who was as tired as I was, stomped off, and I’d started craving my amaretto-flavored coffee right about then. That had been almost two hours ago. I glanced at the clock. Ninety seconds. I could survive another ninety seconds.

  A short slim man in a business suit and with an air of determination about him came through the door and stopped at the receptionist’s desk, which was, by default, simply the one closest to the door. Technically, as the newest detective on the force, it should’ve been mine, but I’d bribed my way to three desks back and one to the left by doing expensive and time-consuming vehicle repair jobs for free. The guys I’d bargained with had saved a collective thirteen and a half grand, which had earned me two months’ respite from the junior desk on each of their behalfs. I had another three months of no-desk-duties stored up, and a tingly hope that Morrison would hire another detective before my time ran out. Even if he didn’t, at leas
t I’d insinuated myself into the team and had gotten a chance to learn the ropes without being interrupted every thirty seconds by somebody coming in the front door.

  Speaking of thirty seconds. I let out a sigh of relief and grabbed my coat off the back of my chair. It would take thirty seconds to walk to the clock and punch out. I could get my coffee. I’d even bring one back for Billy. God, I was swell.

  “Detective Walker?”

  The officious little guy called my name as I stepped away from my desk. My shoulders hunched around my ears and I pretended not to hear him. I made it two more steps before one of the guys whose car I’d fixed helpfully bellowed, “Hey, Walker!” making it impossible for me to sneak away.

  I was going to pour sugar in his gas tank. I turned around with my best expression of seething discontent, hoping to both castigate the bellowing detective and scare off the suit.

  Neither worked. The detective looked way too pleased with himself, clearly knowing he’d just ruined my lunch hour, and the fellow in the suit looked like nothing short of thermonuclear war would put him off the trail. He put a briefcase on my desk and reached over it to offer a hand in greeting. “Detective Walker? I’m Daniel Doherty with First Ally Home-state Insurance. I’m here to talk to you about your vehicle.”

  There are words which, when spoken, are intended to strike fear into the hearts of men. Anything involving the phrase “We need to talk” is gut-clenching territory, and when it comes from an insurance adjudicator, it’s worse than that. My knees stopped working and instead of shaking Daniel Doherty’s hand, I caught myself on the edge of my desk and admired the cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. The only reason I was sure I’d caught myself was that I wasn’t on the floor: my hands were so icy I could’ve missed the desk entirely and I wouldn’t have felt it. My heart hung between beats, and foul air filled my lungs with agony before I forced out a whispered “Is she okay?”