by C. E. Murphy
“Yeah. Mostly this isn’t patrol-car stuff anyway.”
“’Zactly. So how’d she know to turn up today?” Gary opened a hand, palm to the sky. “Listenin’ in on taxi frequencies, I bet. Henley called it in on his radio.”
I said, “Well, shit,” more philosophically than I thought those words could be said. “It had to happen eventually. Still, when Morrison comes over here to kill me, I’m putting you between us so I can run. He won’t kill you. You’re not his employee, and he respects his elders.” I didn’t know if that last part was true, but it seemed likely.
Gary chuckled. “You’re real thoughtful. So what’d you see over there?” He jerked his chin toward the crime scene.
“Bigfoot.” It was as good a name for whatever had left the claw marks as anything else. I looked over my shoulder toward my apartment building, where my bed lay cold and abandoned. “It’s Tuesday. I’m not even supposed to be at work today, but somehow I’m out chasing yeti at seven in the morning.”
“It’s a great life, innit?” Gary split a broad grin full of white teeth and I laughed despite myself.
“You have a demented sense of great. Hey! Billy!” I lifted my voice and waved as my partner ducked under the police tape. He crunched through snow turning to slush and joined us, rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth. “Morrison just gave us orders to go study Melinda’s power circle, right?”
“What you really want to know is if you can use that as an excuse to get out of here before Corvallis finishes with him and he comes to tear you a new-”
“Yes,” I admitted hastily. “Please. I’m trying not to think about my impending doom. Can we go?”
“You think he’s going to be any less pissed if he has to wait to yell at you?”
“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 y
ou.
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.
