C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

He said exactly what I didn't want him to: "I don't know. That you found a second spirit animal is a good sign. That it's a snake is probably even better."

"The third one was a horse." I spoke without meaning to, and looked over my shoulder like I'd see someone else to blame. Or maybe like I'd see a horse, I wasn't sure. Coyote made a curious noise a lot like his dog-form snuffle, and I said, "When I did spirit quests with Judy. I know they weren't right, but two of the three animals I saw were a raven and a snake. A copperhead, not a rattlesnake like came to me today, but a snake, anyway. And the third was a horse. Do you think maybe that's right? That maybe I should…" I wasn't sure where that question ended, but Coyote got up to take my drum off the bed—Gary must've put it down while I was still under—and tapped his fingers against the smeared animal on its head.

"Raven and rattler. I don't know, Jo. If you're right, if this third animal was a coyote, then I don't think you'll find your third spirit guide until this has resolved."

"Or maybe it won't resolve until I find my third guide."

"Look, you kids are talkin' chicken and eggs here. It don't matter." Gary reached out to thunk the drum with a fingernail. "We work with what we got, and right now that's Jo's two spirit animals and whatever you bring to the table, son."

Coyote had upgraded to "son" again. I wondered if he'd gotten the promotion in the moment he'd picked up my drum and I'd almost thrown myself on him. It seemed possible. Gary worked hard at supporting my emotional well-being. Harder than I did, really. "It's gonna be enough," he went on, "'cause it's what we've got."

"Don't discount yourself," I said. "We'd have already lost, without you."

"Maybe so. So tell me what we know. It eats people, flesh and soul, and it ain't constrained to the physical world. What else do we know?"

Coyote and I exchanged glances, and I muttered, "Gary ought to be the detective here," before saying, "It's cold. Everything about this wendigo is cold and snowstormy. Is that normal? I should've brought a computer."

"My BlackBerry will do." Coyote got it from his coat and sat on a bed, poking at the tiny screen with the stylus. "Cold, wendigo, what else?"

"It didn't just try eating Mandy. It stole her spirit, but it could be retrieved. None of the other bodies have had ghosts, which isn't normal with violent death, so maybe theirs were too lost. Too eaten," I said grumpily. "Maybe she wasn't lost, just lucky there were still bits of my shield hanging around. Or maybe it was more interested in getting a look at me than finishing her off. Or may—"

Coyote said, "Lost souls," firmly. "Mine was lost and you found it in the snowstorm. We'll use it. I can always take it out again if it narrows the search parameters down too much. Give me a few minutes, okay?"

"Yeah." I finally got off the floor, which was less drafty than mine at home, and pulled my coat back on. I was hungry, but I didn't want to eat in case we had to do more spirit stuff in the near future. Instead I went out to the balcony and looked up at the stars, whose presence vaguely surprised me. It had still been daylight when we'd begun the journey to the other realms. I waved at the Big Dipper, then knocked snow off the balcony railing and put my forearms on it, weight leaned forward as I lowered my head and waited for the inevitable.

It took almost five minutes before the sliding glass door opened behind me and Gary, tentatively, said, "Joanie?"

It wasn't a good sign that he called me Joanie. The only other time he'd done it, I'd been completely falling apart. I waggled my fingers, inviting him out to the balcony, and he took up a post next to me, weight on his forearms against the rail, just like I stood. I knew what he wanted, but I wasn't quite man enough to broach the topic myself, so we stood there in silence awhile before he took a deep breath, released it as fog, and said, "I don't mean to be nosy, Jo, but…"

I laughed even though I knew what was coming. "You do, too. You're dying to be nosy. It's killing you. I'm amazed you lasted this long before cornering me."

"We been kinda busy."

"That we have." I still wasn't quite ready to talk, but Gary was unfailingly discreet for approximately forever, giving me time to work up to speaking. "Dad moved us around a lot when I was a kid, so I'd kind of never been anywhere long enough to have real friends. We moved to Qualla Boundary right after I turned fourteen, because I told him I wanted to go to high school in one place. So we went home. To his home. Where he'd grown up. It wasn't my home. Anyway. We'd been there about a year, and I was…Sara was my best friend. My only friend, I guess, except that sounds pathetic. I'd known who she was my whole freshman year, and I thought she basically walked on water, so when we started hanging out that summer, the year I turned fifteen, I thought I was in heaven. That was when I got the drum, too." Those couple months there had been some of the happiest I could remember, in fact. Up until this past six months, I wasn't sure I'd ever been happier in my life. It was an interesting thought.

"Anyway, so that fall there was a new boy in school. Lucas. And I had the worst crush on him. I'd never really had a crush and I was just…man. Stupid. And Sara said she didn't like him, and I wasn't anywhere near smart enough to figure out she was playing it cool. I don't think I knew people really did that. It was like something that happened on TV, to me. Anyway, I was desperate for him to like me, so I did the number one stupid thing that girls do and I slept with him."

Gary took a breath like he was going to say something, and didn't. It was just as well. I was afraid I'd either get angry or burst into tears, no matter what he said, and I'd had enough of both lately. "It didn't work. I mean, he was okay with sleeping with me, but it didn't make him like me any better. And I got pregnant, and I told him and Sara, and he went back to Canada where he'd come from, and Sara never spoke to me again. Until today."

I really wanted that to be the end of it, but it wasn't. Rushing through it all didn't really help, not after twelve and a half years of never mentioning this to anybody. It wasn't like ripping a bandage off. It hurt. It hurt so much I had to hurry and try not to let myself feel anything, which was how I'd been coping with my whole life for thirteen years. "I planned from the beginning to give them up for adoption. My mom abandoned me when I was a baby and my dad didn't seem to want me much, either, so I wanted them to go somewhere they were wanted, and I was, I mean, I was fifteen and basically a mess even before I got pregnant. So I wasn't going to keep them. I wouldn't have been any good for them. I wasn't much good for me until recently. Anyway." I was saying that word a lot, using it like a wall between myself and my emotions. I honestly didn't regret my choices, but that didn't make thinking about them any easier.

"They were early, they were twins, and…the little girl, Ayita, she…died. She was so tiny, and she wasn't strong, and I…wasn't what I am now. I don't know if I could've saved her even if I was. The doctors couldn't." My hands had turned to claws around the balcony railing. I kept my gaze fixed ahead, but my vision was blurred, nearby trees swimming and the distant stars dancing. For some reason my voice remained very steady. "It always seemed to me that there just wasn't enough life force for both of them. That it was going to be one or neither, and that Ayita decided…I mean, I know she couldn't have, she wasn't even old enough to think, but I just always felt like she decided that okay, Aidan was stronger, he could make it if he just had a little more to draw on, so she…gave him hers."