David Coe - Spell Blind

I called Kona at her home. Margarite answered, gave me a big hello, and insisted that I join them for dinner this coming weekend. I didn’t bother reminding her that the full moon was coming up; even with friends, the phasings weren’t easy to talk about. I asked for a raincheck. She said the following week would be good, and passed the phone to Kona.

“You been with Robby all this time?” Kona asked without saying hello.

“No. A reporter who I met at the Deegans’ tracked me down at my office and asked me a bunch of questions.”

“A reporter?”

“A blogger, actually. But Wriker was afraid of her, so I assume she’s pretty big.”

“You mean Billie Castle?”

Why was I the only person who’d never heard of her? I guess I needed to spend more time online. Or not.

“Yeah. You know her work?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“Well, anyway,” I said. “She wanted to know all about the Blind Angel case and why the PPD hadn’t caught the guy yet, and what my firing had to do with it all.”

“What did you tell her?”

“As little as possible.”

I could almost see Kona nodding. “Good. How’d it go with Robby?”

“He admitted selling to Claudia. Seems they were an item for a while. But he denied having anything to do with the other victims.”

“You think he was lying?” Before I could answer, she said, “Never mind. Of course he was lying.”

“I doubt we can prove it, though,” I said.

“Yeah, so do I.”

“And speaking of things we can’t prove, you should tell narcotics to keep one eye on Robby and another on a Spark den on 23rd near the freeway and the railroad.”

“All right. Care to explain that?”

“Not really. Not now.”

We both fell silent for a few seconds.

“Listen, Kona, I know this is the PPD’s investigation, and I should stay away from actual investigating-”

“I never should have said what I did, Justis. It’s not like we’re tracking down leads or focusing in on suspects. We’ve got nothing here.”

“Then you won’t mind if I poke around a little, maybe check in with some of my kind?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Let me know what you find out.”

“Of course.”

“And partner?”

“Yeah.”

“Watch yourself. If you start getting close to this guy, he’s not going to like it.”

“Right. Talk to you tomorrow.”

I hung up and took care of some of that paperwork. I would have preferred to head home, but I wanted to make sure that Billie Castle was long gone before I stepped outside again.

By the time I headed for the Z-ster, night had fallen and the moon was up. It was well past a quarter full and bone white in a velvet sky. And though we were still several days away from the full, I could already feel it tugging at my mind, bending my thoughts, making me shiver in spite of the warm air.

Describing the phasings to someone who wasn’t a weremyste was like trying to describe color to someone who had been born blind. Words weren’t adequate. The closest I’d heard anyone come to getting it right was something my dad told me not long after my mom died. We weren’t getting along at the time, and his grip on reality, which had already become tenuous before Mom’s death, was slipping fast. But what he told me then in anger still rang true to this day.

“It’s like somebody reaches a hand into your stinkin’ brain,” he said, “and swirls it around, making a mess of everything. The thoughts are still there-your sense of who you are and how the people around you fit into your life-but they’re scrambled. There’s no order, no time or space or story line. The boundaries disappear. Love and hate, rage and joy, fear and comfort-you can’t tell anymore where one ends and the next begins. And the worst part is, you know it’s happened-you know that it all made sense a short while before, and that now it’s gone. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

That was how it felt to me every time. You’d think after a couple of hundred phasings-three days a month for half a lifetime-I’d get used to it, or find some way to fight my way through. But each one feels like the first. I’ve tried to brace myself, waiting for moonrise the way I would a shot at a doctor’s office. It doesn’t do a damn bit of good. As soon as the full moon appears on the horizon, I feel those boundaries my dad talked about being sucked out of my mind.

That was the tug I felt now, with the moon shining down on me. It wouldn’t happen until the end of the week, but already it was reaching for me, testing my defenses and finding them as weak as ever.

I was still staring up at the moon when I reached the Z-ster, which is probably why I didn’t notice anything as I got into the car and put the key in the ignition.

“Ohanko.”

“ Geez! ” I said, nearly jumping out of my skin.

The runemyste was in the passenger seat, his watery form glimmering with the pale light of a nearby street lamp.

“Good God, Namid! You scared the piss out of me.”

“You need to use more care, Ohanko. Did I not tell you-?”

“Yeah, tread like the fox. I remember.” I shook my head. My heart was trip hammering in my chest. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? I never see you unless you’re tying to get me to train.”

He shrugged, or came as close to a shrug as a liquid ghost could. “I thought to see how you were faring with your investigation.”

I stared at him.

“Have you learned anything?”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you telling me that you’re checking up on me?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“You’ve never done it before.”

He said nothing.

Abruptly I could see again the scrying I’d done in my office: that ghoulish dark hand, framed against the hot glow of embers.

“Is this about the vision I had this morning?”

Before he could answer, I thought of something else: crossing the street after my conversation with Robby, feeling so sure that someone was toying with the idea of killing me. I still had the instincts of a cop, and normally that was a good thing. But maybe in this case, without realizing it at the time, I had been feeling things a sorcerer would feel.

“You’ve never done anything like this before,” I said again. “Unless that was you following me earlier today.”

He frowned, the smooth waters of his face roughening, like when a sudden wind scythes across the surface of a calm lake. “What happened earlier? Tell me.”

“I thought someone was watching me, an enemy. But I have no idea who it could have been.”

The runemyste’s nod was slow, thoughtful. He turned his head so that he was looking through the windshield at the street. “Good, Ohanko. Trust your senses.”

Great. More riddles. Just once I wanted him to give me a straight answer. “You wouldn’t tell me before what all this is about. Are you ready to tell me now?”

“No.”

“Come on, Namid. You’re interested in my case, though you never have been before. You’re following me around, which you never do. Clearly something big is going on. You have to tell me what it is.”

He faced me again, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “You misunderstand, Ohanko. It is not that I refuse to tell you, but rather that I cannot. I do not know.”

Well, there you go. That’s a straight answer. Turns out I would have preferred another riddle.

I know precious little about Namid’s life as a Zuni shaman. I’ve studied the A’shiwi, as the Zuni people call themselves; I’ve studied most of the native peoples of the Southwest. But the K’ya’na-Kwe clan has been extinct for centuries, and since the ancient A’shiwi clans left no written histories, information on the runemyste’s people is pretty scarce. And it’s not as though Namid spends a lot of time talking about himself. I’ve asked him questions now and then, but he’s about as forthcoming with information about his own life as he is about anything else.