Urban Shaman (10 page)

I sat in the parking lot after Gary pulled out, both my hands on the steering wheel. I was tired, but it was the kind of twilight tired where I felt a little lighter than air and not quite like I could sleep. I knew I could, but as long as the false high was with me, I thought I should run with it. Somewhere not very far above me was a dead woman who’d needed my help, and somewhere inside my head things had happened that I didn’t understand. I leaned forward, folding my hands on top of each other on the steering wheel, and rested my forehead against them. I could smell the old leather on the wheel, and a faint lingering scent of a perfume I rarely wore.

Cars are my refuge, my comfort food. My first real memory is looking out the window of my father’s great big old Oldsmobile. I was about three, too little to know I’d be making a trip like that every few months until I left home. Dad tells me that when I was too little to see the cars, I’d hear them and go, “Oom!” because that’s what I thought they sounded like. He got into the habit of saying, “Zoom!” and “Vroom!” to make me happy. I still do it myself, from time to time.

Marie’s murder was a little too surreal for me. People you’ve just met aren’t supposed to end up dead twelve hours later. I shook my head and let my mind slide off that for a moment.

Of course, that left Cernunnos and Coyote to think about. You want to talk about surreal. I groaned quietly and thumped my head against the wheel. I should be going home. I should be
at
home, looking up Native American legends on the Net. Native American legends, and dream interpretation, and the name of a good psychologist, since it was pretty clear I was losing my mind. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone. It kept right on not having a hole in it. I kept right on not being dead. This was beyond mortal ken.

And dammit, I didn’t believe in beyond mortal ken. What did an atheist do if God shows up on the doorstep? I’d invited him in for breakfast.

A sharp rap on the window startled me into bolting upright. I drove the heel of my hand into the horn. A broad face under a blue hat leaned over the windshield, wincing quizzically. I puffed my cheeks out and took my hand off the horn, opening the door to hang out of it.

“Was I speeding, Officer?”

“Didn’t know it was you, Joey. Just wanted to check and make sure everything was okay.”

“Hi, Ray. Define okay.” I smiled wanly. Raymond was a short wide guy whom I was pretty sure could bench press a Buick. Not the fastest on his feet, but between him and a nuclear bunker, I’d take him every time. He stuck his hand out, and I stood up, leaning over the door to shake it.

“Heard you got your balls busted,” he said sympathetically. Ball-busting was Ray’s favorite term and he applied it with blithe disregard to gender-based improbability. “Guess I never thought about you going
to the academy. But you’re a real cop, huh? What’re you doing out here?”

“I’m a real cop,” I agreed. “Sort of.” The other question was easier to answer: I pointed a finger up toward Marie’s apartment. “I found the body a few hours ago.”

“Coming back to the scene of the crime? Common criminal mistake, you know. You know this is the fifth murder like this in the past couple weeks?” Ray shook his head.

My eyebrows went up. “I didn’t. Just got back from Europe.” God, that sounded pretentious. “What do they have in common?”

Ray shook his head again. “Not much. Different age ranges, different races, different day jobs, different genders, no phone calls to or from the same numbers, not even pizza joints. Different parts of the city, different everything.”

“No, there’s something linking them,” I said absently. I tugged my glasses off and pinched the bridge of my nose, glasses dangling from my fingertips. A piece of wire contracted around my heart and I took a deep breath, trying to shake the feeling off. A brief image of the spiderwebbed windshield flashed behind my eyelids. I frowned, trying to shake that off, too.

“Yeah? Don’t suppose you can tell me what it is.” Ray reached up and twisted his hat on his head. His hair was visibly thinner right where his hat sat on his head, from doing that for years. It occurred to me that I knew the guys at the department inside and out,
but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a date. My heart was still tight, the spiderweb image still bothering me. I put my shoulders back, trying to breathe.

“No, but there’s something. Can I look at the files?” The web inside me loosened a bit and I was able to catch my breath.

Ray twisted his mouth in much the same way he habitually twisted his hat. It dug deep lines around his mouth. Being a cop left its mark. “I don’t know. You’re not a detective.”

“Christ, Ray, the woman was murdered practically under my nose. Gimme a break.”

Ray frowned at me, then waved his hand. “Arright. I’ve got copies in the car. I thought this might be another by the same guy, so I brought ’em to compare pictures to the placement of the body.”

“And?”

He shrugged. “And there’s nothing to compare. There’s no ritual in how the bodies have been laid out. They’ve all been punched through the chest with a sharp weapon, but that’s the only common element. Looks like they’ve all just been left to lie as they fell.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Neither. The repeat use of the weapon is good, the lack of any other ritual is bad. Nothing to pick up, nothing to deviate from. I don’t like it.” Ray twisted his cap around on his head again.

“Do you
usually
like horrible murders?”

Ray eyed me. I held up my hands in supplication. “Can I borrow those files?”

“You said look,” he objected.

“Look, borrow, whatever. I’ll be careful with them. Promise.” I made my eyes all big and wide and hopeful before remembering they were bloodshot. Eww.

Ray frowned at me for a while, then turned around and went and got the files. “Don’t let Morrison find out or he’ll be busting
my
balls,” he said as he handed them over.

I flipped one open, not really listening to him. “I won’t. Thanks, Ray.”

“Yeah, well, my car needs work.”

I looked up with a crooked grin. “As soon as I find out my new work schedule.”

“It’s a date.” He nodded at the files again. “Don’t mention where you got ’em.”

“I won’t.” I watched him walk back to his car, wondering if it really
was
a date. Not that I particularly wanted to date Ray. It was just that fixing guys’ cars seemed to be my idea of a pretty good date, which probably explained why I didn’t get out more. Maybe I could start my own escort service. Oil change and dinner. I’d have to come up with a catchy name for the place. The only things that came to mind involved lube jobs, and that was just bad.

I got back in my car and went home before I started taking myself seriously.

Wednesday, January 5th, 12:30 a.m.

T
en minutes later I spread out the files on my kitchen table, standing over them. There was no file on Marie yet, but I’d seen that in living—or not—color. Raymond was right. The victims didn’t appear to have anything in common. Nothing obvious, but there had to be something. I could feel it practically vibrating in my eardrums.

What did I know about Marie? She was an anthropologist who started believing in what she studied. She had a talent that let her see more than the average person saw, things that could be politely labeled esoteric. I yawned, and the wire around my heart went
spang,
releasing so fast it hurt. I swallowed a whimper and
rubbed my chest again. I could almost feel spiderweb cracks sealing up.

All right. What if that was what they had in common? They were all banshees. The spiderweb fissured again, and I sighed. “Okay, that’s not it,” I muttered. “How about they’re all, uh…aware of another plane of existence. Not the kind of thing you’re going to talk about, right?” The wire-web relaxed and let me breathe again. I scowled hugely at the photographs. It was Oh God Thirty and I was standing in my kitchen talking to heartburn. Talking out loud, no less. I needed sleep. Or a dog.

“Sleep,” I said out loud. “If any of you want to tell me what your gig was, stop by dreamland. Otherwise I’ll figure you out tomorrow.” I turned the lights off, went to bed and lay there a long time in the dark, looking at the ceiling, faintly white in the dimness. I used to do this when I was a kid, zone out until I could feel myself floating about three inches above my body. I always fell back down into myself as soon as I noticed. I felt like that now, very slightly detached from my flesh.

It was not a comforting feeling after a day like today. I tried closing my eyes and found out they were already closed, but the ceiling still glowed faintly white up above me. I blinked. Darkness came and went, but I didn’t feel my eyelids move. A shock ran through me, radiating out from my heart like the sudden release of a metal-on-metal lock, sharp and high-pitched and tingling through my whole body.

And then I was free, looking down at my shape
under the covers. I looked very comfortable. I looked down at my feet, the ones I was standing on. I could see the carpet through my toes.

Something tugged at me, pulling me up. I turned my face up, and disconnected with the floor entirely, floating upward.

Next time I go for a flight, I’ll go out through the window. Even a glimpse of what the upstairs neighbors were doing—well, I honestly hadn’t known human beings could get into that position.

The world outside glowed. I was sure there’d been no moon when I came home, but a brilliant crescent lit the sky with more wattage than usual, silver-blue light weighting down tree branches as if it were snow. Leaves glittered with color, reds and golds and greens that had more to do with neon than nature. Pathways and streets were dark blue streaks undershadowed with something else, like an artist had slapped paint on and let it slide down the canvas to expose other shards of colors beneath it. I stood in the sky, looking down over the streets as the dark blue slowly blurred away.

One exposed path led under an arch of trees that reminded me of Anne Shirley’s “White Way of Delight.” It twisted, sliding underground, and somewhere down it I could feel a heavy presence waiting for me. It felt like it could drink down the light and me with it, like the rabbit hole pulling Alice in. I reached up to tug a leaf off one of the trees, watching it glow a soft silver in my palm. It brightened into a beacon as I scrambled down the pathway.

It met the mouth of the cave, sliding underground.
I hesitated at the dark entrance, lifting my leaf up to try to light the way. I saw a reflection, a glimpse of something bright, in the instant before a wall roared up, damming the cave’s mouth. I put my hand against it, the leaf gleaming, but nothing changed except the sensation of the thing waiting for me. It was somewhere beneath the earth, and amused, and patient. I stayed where I was a few moments longer, then slowly turned back up the White Way. The one who waited suddenly felt much more distant, and then I couldn’t feel it at all.

The world changed around me again, then again, and again, until they came so fast I could barely distinguish one from another. Some of the permutations I recognized: glimpses of Paris and New York, places that looked as solid as reality, overlooking the vibrant glow that had nothing to do with city lights and a great deal to do with things I didn’t want to think about. Others were harder to grasp, African plains with seas of violently purple grass, Australian Outback with a sky as bloody red as the stone beneath it. Every one got farther away from civilization, until I exploded into a place of absolute stillness with the hard white light of the stars pricking my skin.

“Well, she’s no good,” a tart little voice said. “Look at her. A baby, spilling out all over the place. You want a cosmic bed wetter to take care of this? She can’t even see us.”

“That’s no way to speak to our guest,” another voice said very firmly. This one was rich and dark and full
of very round vowels, chocolaty, like James Earl Jones. “She’s come a long way on nothing but faith.”

“She’s come a long way on
our
faith,” the tart voice said. It sounded like Granny Smith apples. “She hasn’t got any of her own.”

“She’s a newborn,” a third voice broke in. He sounded like mellow cheese. “She didn’t mean to invite us, but she’s willing to help.” Two more voices chimed in, everyone bickering and sniping at one another until they sounded like a flock of geese. I turned around in a full circle twice, trying to see the people the voices belonged to. The starlight jabbed at my eyes unrelentingly, no shadows or shapes to go with the voices clouding them. It suddenly felt weirdly familiar.

I hadn’t seen Coyote until I believed in him. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I’d better believe in the voices, because I was pretty sure I
had
invited them to do…whatever they’d done. Hauled me out of my body to somewhere that horribly murdered people hang out.

My brain just shut down around that thought.

“Look,” I finally said. It got very quiet in the star field. I turned around one more time to find a handful of people behind me, all staring at me with wide, curious eyes. “You’re wrong. I can see you.” I wasn’t sure which one was the Granny Smith, so I fixed them all with a gimlet eye. “And I’m not all that inclined to help somebody who called me a cosmic bed wetter, when you get right down to it.” A tall woman’s long nose twitched. I guessed her to be Granny Smith and
removed the gimlet eye from the others to give it just to her. Her nose twitched again.

“Sorry,” she said after being elbowed in the ribs by a short man whom I guessed to be the James Earl Jones voice. He didn’t look anything at all like Jones. I was hideously disappointed.

“You’ll have to forgive Hester,” he said. “She’s not taking well to having been interrupted.”

“Interrupted.” My eyebrows flew up. “You mean murdered?” I was sure these five were the files I had lying on my kitchen table. They were all the right general sizes and shapes, even if I’d only seen photos of their corpses.

He made a moue. “I suppose so. It’s really just an inconvenience, but Hester is young.”

I peered at Hester. She looked like she was well into her fifties, at least. Her mouth pursed up like she’d bitten into one of the apples she sounded like. “Not as young as
this
one,” she sniffed. I scowled, and suddenly there was an enormous distance between myself and the five, the star field endlessly expanded. I could see, with sharp-edged clarity, the alarm on all five faces.

“Dammit, Hester,” one of the others said, “you’re going to put her off us entirely before she’ll agree to help us at all.” Her voice was absolutely clear despite the distance between us, like she was standing on a sound stage. It echoed faintly. Hester flared her nostrils, then lifted her chin.

“I’m sorry.” It was much less grudging this time. “Roger is right. I was in the middle of something im
portant, and I’m not sure I’d done enough to make it last. But that’s no reason to be rude. You’ve been extraordinarily generous with your invitation already, even if you didn’t know it.” Her voice was still tart, but it was more like the tart of apple pie. I began to wonder if I was hungry. “Will you stay long enough to let us tell you what we know?”

“Well, I’m here,” I said. Distance contracted again, so that the five and I were only a few feet apart, stars glittering around us. “I might as well listen. Maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on.” There was a note of miserable confusion in my voice. I straightened my shoulders and pretended I hadn’t really sounded that pathetic.

“You almost died this morning,” a petite blond woman said. She had dumpling cheeks that went with Earth Mother curves. I remembered from the file that her name was Samantha.

“Yeah, I was there for that part.” I rubbed my breastbone uncomfortably and screwed up my face.

“Do you know that near-death experiences often open people’s eyes to another world?”

“I know that’s what they
say,
” I replied. Samantha smiled a tolerant little smile. It occurred to me that my current position was a fragile one for argument. “All right.” I gritted my teeth and pushed the words out. “So maybe there’s more than meets the eye.” I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone again and took a deep breath. “All right, there
is
more than meets the eye,” I said defensively. “Normal people don’t start burning and smoking when you stick a knife in them.
The guy who stabbed me this morning was definitely not normal.”

Hester snorted faintly. Roger elbowed her again. “Be quiet. That’s quite an admission for her.”

“Must it be an admission to come around to stating the obvious?” Hester asked. Apparently sour was just her nature. The moment of grace earlier must have come hard-won. It had worked to make me stay, but she wasn’t earning any brownie points.

“Give me a break, Hes,” I said. She looked up sharply. I bet nobody had called her that since third grade. “Yesterday the world made sense and today I’m standing in a star pit talking to ghosts.” I looked back at Samantha. “So what happened to me?”

“You got to make a choice. Most people don’t get to.”

I spread my hands. “Why me?”

“You must have a lot to offer,” she said. “Many times, those who need the most healing are the ones who can in turn heal the most.”

I took a step backward, a scowl falling down my face like pitch, until I was glaring at her through my eyebrows. “What do you mean, need the most healing,” I said. She was clever enough to withhold an answer. Instead, she spread her hands, a polite mimicry of my earlier gesture.

“I did not mean to intrude,” she said so deferentially that the anger drained out of me again. “What do you know about shamans, Siobhán Walkingstick?”

My eyebrows went up and my jaw went down until my face was as long as a donkey’s. My father had
taken one look at the unpronounceable Gaelic first name my mother had bestowed on me and had given me another one. I’d looked up the pronunciation when I was a teenager, but I actually hadn’t been sure that the bizarre combination of letters was pronounced
She-vaun,
not
See-oh-bawn,
until my mother used the name when she called to ask to meet me. Aside from that one conversation, not even she’d called me Siobhán. It was even less a part of me than the Walkingstick name I’d abandoned a decade ago. “How did you know that name?”

Samantha drew an outline around me with her fingertip, a loose general shape. “It’s a part of you that you’ve been denying your whole life, and now it’s spilling over. Think of it like a floodlight shining on you, illuminating all the information you’ve been keeping filed away. It’s very clear to anyone who knows how to read it. It’s eager to be acknowledged. You have a remarkable heritage, Siobhán. You ought to explore it, not turn your back on it.”

I stood there and stared at her. After a while I tried to crank my jaw back up. Part of me wondered why I was reacting physically when my body, as far as I could tell, was tucked safely in bed, back at home. Wherever back at home was, from here. “Right,” I said eventually. “This is getting a little too thick for me.” It came out exactly right, casual bullshit. I was very pleased. The thing was, right down in my gut, I believed her.

“You’re not a very good liar, are you?” The fifth person finally spoke up. He was taller than me and had a
wonderful Grecian nose and broad cheekbones. He hadn’t looked so good in the murder photos. It was too bad he was dead, or I’d have asked him on a date. His mouth curved in half a smile, and I had the sinking feeling he’d somehow heard that. Coyote and Cernunnos had certainly heard things I hadn’t said out loud.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell anybody. But thanks.” He winked, and the half smile turned into a grin. I told myself I couldn’t possibly blush, without a body handy. I think it even worked.

“I always thought I was a pretty good liar,” I finally mumbled.

He shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with your delivery. But the truth flares up around you like a spotlight. We probably don’t have much time, Joanne. Let’s save the pretenses for later.”

“Subtle, Jackson.” Samantha smiled. He grinned and shrugged.