C. Murphy - Demon Hunts

She glanced back at me with a frustrated huff. “What can I tell them? Nothing. I’m going to spend the next six months or more working on this case, until it goes cold to their satisfaction. You’re sure it’s over?”

“Yeah. Look, I’m sorry about your man, Sara.”

“Me, too.” Sara fell a step back, precursor to escaping my presence. “I’ll see you around, okay, Joanne?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t offer a hand, and neither did she. “I’ll see you.”

She walked away, and I waited until she was gone before following her in, and driving home to Seattle in time for Christmas.

Sunday, December 25, 5:20 A.M.

I had long since gotten over leaping out of bed bright and early on Christmas morning. Someone, though, apparently hadn’t: pervasive thumping on my door dragged me out of a very nice sleep. I crawled over Coyote and into my fuzzy green robe half inclined to yell at the interloper who’d dragged me out of bed at such an unreasonable hour, but holiday cheer got the better of me before I even got to the door.

There wasn’t even anyone there to be cheerful at. A gift-wrapped DVD-sized package sat outside my door, and I could hear somebody thudding down the apartment building’s stairs. Coyote said, “What happened, Santa forgot where the chimney is?” I shot him a sleepy smile as I tore the wrapping paper open.

It was, in fact, a DVD. Not a popular movie sort, just a silver disc with a note that said “For Joanne” stuck to it. I shuffled to my computer and dropped it in. Coyote sat behind me and I pulled his arm around my waist as the disc spun up and began to play.

Jeff the cameraman, it turned out, was a dab hand with a video camera. Even his crab-walked retreat from the wendigo was surprisingly steady, and Coyote looked like a native god in the moonlight as he fought the thing. I blew in from offscreen, slamming into the wendigo hard enough that I grunted again, watching it. It and I flung each other back and forth, and Jeff’s camerawork was only a half second behind as the wendigo leaped on Laurie Corvallis’s prone body.

The next couple minutes were spent enthralled by the utter peculiarities of seeing what one of my psychic/real-world battles looked like from the outside. Every fight, every step, every gesture and every expression I made in Laurie’s garden registered itself on my face and body in the Middle World. The wendigo wasn’t visible. I just looked like the world’s most dedicated mime, flying backward when something hit me, staggering around like a drunk after a bad blow. Not until I raised the spear and drove it down toward Corvallis, awakening her, did the fight have two participants. Moments later, Coyote opened a path to the Lower World for me, and I watched myself walk along it and disappear.

It looked, swear to God, like a magic trick. Like the audience should be peering around in search of the mirrors before applauding wildly. I was gone for a long time, long enough that Jeff panned around to the others. Coyote and Gary were all but leaning forward, both of them obviously-to me-offering strength and support and concern. Sara and Corvallis both looked grimly gobsmacked, and Laurie kept touching her breast where I’d very nearly impaled her. A clock came on in the screen’s lower right-hand corner, then jumped ahead by half an hour, footage cut out before I finally returned.

The me on the recording looked so very sad. So tired, and so glad to hand the spear to someone else. I reached out to turn it off, and Coyote stopped me. I said, “C’mon,” quietly. I’d already watched more than I wanted to, and all I could think was how utterly insane it was going to look on the evening news. Morrison would kill me.

The screen faded to black, then came up again in a news studio. Corvallis held a DVD between two fingers, turning it so it caught the light. “There are two copies. The one you’ve got, and this one.”

She broke hers into pieces, and the screen went dark.

After what seemed like a long time, I cleared my throat and turned the computer off. “Guess we scored one for the home team there.”

“So how come you don’t sound thrilled?”

I shook my head. “Because I don’t like making believers out of people. It’s too big a thing to ask.”

Coyote chuckled against my shoulder. “You went and grew up, Jo. While I wasn’t looking. I didn’t expect that.”

“Oh, believe me, neither did I. I tried hard not to.” I twisted, trying to see him, and he got to his feet, then pulled me to mine and herded me back toward the bedroom. I went, grateful he didn’t have an overwhelming urge to be up at five in the morning either, even if it was Christmas. We tucked up together, me tracing idle patterns on his chest before I mashed my nose against his pectoral and mumbled, “I can’t do things your way. You know that, right, Yote? I don’t know if I’d have been able to even if I’d stuck with studying with you all those years ago, or if the past six months had gone differently. But I don’t think so. You…you’re a healer. I’m something else.”

“Warrior’s path.” He put his mouth against my hair. “I don’t envy that. But you’ve still got a lot you can learn. A lot I could teach you,” he amended hesitantly. “If you want.”

I pushed up on my elbow, feeling all serious suddenly. “I can’t think of a better teacher.”

The man had a smile like no other. I thought it had just been how happy I was to see him at first, but I’d had a few days to get used to it now, and it was definitely a grade-A smile. Bright and fleeting and all the more delicious for its quickness. He caught my hand and kissed the palm, then folded our fingers together on his chest. “Okay. I’ll stop trying to remake you in my image, and you can…”

“Stop getting my ass kicked,” I finished firmly. “I want the shamanic handbook, Yote. I want it all.”

He laughed. “Oh how the mighty have fallen. It’d be easier if…” A crease appeared between his eyebrows and he sat up, exhaling a sharp breath that ended ruefully. “Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought.”

Nerves seized my heart and I sat up, too, clutching my pillow. I didn’t want him to say anything else, because I was pretty certain of what he’d say. We had, in fact, spent most of the past couple days not-quite-actively avoiding serious talk, which was made easier by me having to work. That made the hours we had together a little more precious, and neither of us had wanted to gum them up with anything other than living in the moment. It took everything I had to whisper, “What’s going to be hard?”

“My grandfather bought me a plane ticket home last night, so I could be there for Christmas evening. It leaves SeaTac at ten-thirty.” Coyote shot me an apologetic look and I shook it off even as a pang cut through me.

“You’ve been unconscious for months. I don’t blame him for wanting you home for Christmas.” I wanted him here for Christmas, but I wasn’t quite selfish enough to say so aloud. Or maybe I wasn’t quite brave enough. “That’s not the hard part, is it.”

“You’re not supposed to know me that well. No, the hard part…it’d be easier to teach you if we were together. In the same place, I mean,” he said hastily, and then, less certainly, “And maybe together, too. I know you can’t today, but…but you could come with me, Jo.”

I bent my head over the pillow, eyes closed. That was exactly what I’d thought he was going to say, and it made a hard little helpless place inside me. It took a long time to speak, and even then my voice was small and tight. “You’re the shape of my dreams, Coyote. You came to me in my sleep when I was a girl and taught me magic, and now you’re here and alive and beautiful and I-” I stumbled over the words so hard I almost swallowed my tongue, but I met his eyes so he could see me saying them: “I love you. You’re my dreams come true. And this was going to happen,” I said even more quietly, and mostly to myself. “Right from the moment you came back, this was going to happen. And it isn’t fair, because it would break my heart to go and it’ll break my heart to stay.”