C.E. Murphy - Raven Calls

“Thank you,” Cernunnos went on, still to Gary. “Had she not called you—”

“But I didn’t.” It was a terrible time to interrupt, but I honestly had no idea how Gary had arrived in the nick of time. “I needed the sword, I tried to call it, but…”

Cernunnos paused, looking at me, then waited on Gary, who spread his hands. “The fight was over, doll. Had been for a while. I was ridin’ with the Hunt when the sword went all blue and started fadin’. I held on as hard as I could, an’ next thing I know I was here and you looked like you could use some rescuin’.”

“All I had to do to get you back was call the sword?” I had not called the sword at least twice in the past day, thinking it out of reach. All that worry over Gary for nothing. I clicked my heels together a couple times and muttered, “There’s no place like home,” then exhaled and gestured to Cernunnos, giving the floor back to him.

He inclined his crown of horns toward me, then addressed Gary again. “Had she not called you, I could not have followed. This is not my place, this world below the world. I belong elsewhere.” He left us to crouch and collect Méabh’s lanky form. She didn’t move, didn’t even groan, which scared me, but I wasn’t about to risk another healing. Maybe Cernunnos could tell me someday if she’d made it. If he’d succeeded in bringing her to his world, and all the rest of her people with her.

As if he’d heard the thoughts, he said, “The sí are a gift to me, Joanne Walker. I could not have made this offer to them anywhere, anytime, else,” and I remembered that his memory worked in both directions.

I cracked a grimace meant to be a smile of relief. “You just kept me from howling down the roof and bringing the Master here. Let’s call it even.”

He nodded and gave me the brief, wicked look that made my heart go pitter-pat, then, Méabh in his arms, mounted his silver stallion and rode away again, sunset swallowing them whole.

I knelt by the smear of Méabh’s blood on the stones, fingertips just above it, not quite touching. There were ridges of dust in it already: some white, some black. I hadn’t even seen Gancanagh die. It was probably just as well. I didn’t think I’d have handled seeing Morrison fall very well. Still, it seemed like I’d owed him that much, even if Méabh and I had been trying to kill each other over him.

Gary came to stand beside me, a hand on my shoulder. “Pyrrhic victory, doll?”

I looked up, uncomprehending, and he said, “Me in exchange for her?”

“No. Jesus, no, don’t ever think that. They—she, but they, somebody else died, too—they were gone before you showed up. And you saved my life. No. I just…” I glanced back down at the blood, thinking I ought to have tears. I ought to be able to cry. Somehow I was just too tired, right then. “What happened to you? I lost you. I thought I wasn’t going to get you back. Did you win the fight?”

He said, “We won,” with an odd note. I looked up again and he shook his head. “I’ll tell you about it later. Point is, the cauldron got bound, and that was the whole reason for doin’ it, right? Now, look, Jo,” he went on before I could answer. His hand slid off my shoulder, an accusing finger pointed at my arm. “I know you said you could shapeshift now, but that ain’t good. What’s goin’ on with you?”

I sighed. “I got bit by a werewolf.”

His voice went suspiciously neutral. “When?”

I sighed again. “Saturday night. Sunday morning. Right before I got on the plane, anyway.”

“Mike know ’bout this?”

Never in a thousand years was I going to get used to Morrison being referred to as Mike. “No.”

“Joanne Grace Wa—” Gary’s register went up like an outraged parent’s, and almost idly, beneath the scold, I said, “Siobhán.”

“She—what?”

It didn’t seem quite possible that Gary, to whom I usually confessed all, was the last of my close friends to learn my proper name. People had been using it all day, in front of him even, but I kind of suspected it had been a lot more than one day for Gary, and that he’d probably had other things to worry about than what names people were calling me by. So I said, “Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick,” mostly to the sparkling mess on the floor. “My name’s not Joanne Grace, it’s Siobhán Grainne, which is more or less the Irish version of Joanne Grace. I just figure if you’re going to read me the riot act you might as well do it with all guns at your disposal.”

“Your name ain’t Joanne?” Gary sounded thunderstruck. I was afraid to look at him, for fear of seeing injury in his eyes.

“It is. It’s what I’ve used my whole life. It’s just not what’s actually on the birth certificate. You know everything else about me. I thought you should know that, too.”

“…does Mike? ”

This was not the time to ask him to stop calling Morrison that. My shoulders slumped. “Yeah, he has for months. It came up a while ago.”

“Jo.” Gary touched my shoulder again, then knelt beside me, bushy eyebrows furrowed. “Jo, does he know about…?”

Grace under pressure, that was my Gary. Not willing to spell out the details of something I’d clearly been uncomfortable talking about. I hadn’t been able to look at him while I told him about Aidan and Ayita, and he wasn’t making me look at him now, either. I could have kissed him for that, though mostly I just wanted to curl up in his arms and rest. “That came up then, too. He’s known longer than anybody else. Not the details, but he knows.”

Gary exhaled noisily and let his hands fall into his lap. I dared a glance at him and found his gray gaze serious on mine. “That’s about the most important thing, then, I figure. Even if I oughta read you the riot act. A werewolf, Jo? You got bit by a werewolf?”

“It was a rough weekend.” I couldn’t find anything else to say, except, eventually, “Méabh was trying to help me save my mother. Sheila was being turned into a banshee. I had to…” I made a small, almost helpless gesture. “I had to save her.” I wondered if I had. We’d burned her bones and killed the banshee queen, but none of the banshees had come flooding down to thank us for our work and then gone off to that happy banshee heaven in the sky. I had no idea where to look for Sheila MacNamarra anymore.

“’Scuze me for sayin’ so, but I think we gotta save you. What woulda happened if Horns hadn’t been here, Jo?”

I shuddered all the way from the bottom of my soul. “We’d all be toast. I was about to hand you over to my— the —Master. He made the werewolves. Méabh bound them to the moon. I figured if I gave you and her up to him, he’d break the binding. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” I’d cut holes in jeans and shirts as a small child for that same reason. My father had nearly exploded with frustration over not understanding why I would do such a thing. I’d never been able to get across that it seemed like a good idea at the time was all the reason I could possibly need. It wasn’t a good reason, I was willing to grant that, but it was the only one I had. And handing my best friend over to a murderous dark lord had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Gary was right. We needed to save me. Because Mom, rest her soul or not, was already dead, and could do only a limited amount of harm. I was alive, kicking and infected with a poison that made me think selling my friends to the devil was a good idea. “I don’t even know where to go, Gary. We lost our guide. Aibhill eviscerated him, too. She was the banshee queen.” There was so much he’d missed, in such a short time. My head spun as I tried to figure out what was most important. “Taking her out was supposed to free Mom, but…”