C.E. Murphy - Walking Dead

The ghosts erupted in a shriek of triumph, and Billy twisted to give me a good hard look before he said, “Nice job,” without a hint of begrudgement. I didn’t quite know what the look was for. It sort of made me feel as if I’d been holding out on having an encyclopedia of arcane knowledge to draw from, but I really didn’t. I knew more than I had a year ago, but that wasn’t saying much.

“It’s a pattern.” Billy was still looking at me, though the way his voice went calm suggested he was speaking to the ghosts. “It gives us a place to start. I want to make you an offer.” He turned his attention back to the Trans Am. Faces were beginning to appear beneath the translucent hood. Not fully fleshed human faces, but something more than skulls. They reminded me unpleasantly of The Scream painting.

“We’ll find your bodies, if we can. We’ll find your killer, if we can. But I don’t have the skill, even here, to draw your memories out clearly enough to learn everything we can from you.” Billy sounded utterly at home with his talent’s boundaries. I envied that, not because I wanted more power, but because I didn’t know where the edges of mine lay. I’d read often enough that if you argue for your limitations, then sure enough, they’re yours, but that wasn’t what I heard in Billy’s voice, or saw in the image of himself. He’d had most of a lifetime to learn what he could and couldn’t do. The window in which he could see the dead had extended bit by bit over the years. In another thirty, he might be able to talk to ghosts a week dead instead of just a couple of days, but maybe not, too. Either way, I didn’t get the sense he rested on his laurels, only that he accepted what his gifts were.

It wasn’t a bad lesson for me to learn. Man, I was getting all mature and stuff. That couldn’t be good for a person. Fortunately, the only person on hand to notice my leaps and bounds of maturity was Billy, and he was still talking to the ghosts. I rewound what he’d been saying—surprisingly easy, within the confines of my garden—and said, “Oh, no way, no how, hell no,” to what memory informed me he’d suggested.

“I don’t see much other choice.” Billy stood up and faced me, broad arms folded over his chest. “They’ve got enough presence and opinion that they refused to cross through that door when you opened it, and I don’t have the ability to usher them through. We need a much stronger medium for that, or to resolve their murders so they’ve got nothing left to hang on to.”

“Yeah, but—”

He shook his head. “You can’t risk having them here. One healing trance and they’ll make a run for the short route out of imprisonment here and into someone else’s body.”

“I’ve got them pretty well wrapped up here!” I gestured toward the Trans Am.

Billy quirked an eyebrow. “Can you maintain that 24/7? Can you hold them apart from any healing you need to do? I watched how you pushed them out of me, Joanie. Eviction, then capture. You weren’t splitting your concentration.”

“Okay, yeah, but—”

“If I make them my riders voluntarily, it reduces their potential control, and right now they’re willing to try it.”

“The words right now in that sentence concern me, Billy. What if they change their minds? And you already have riders from the party. Not all of them detached from you.” I looked around a little wildly, now that I’d remembered that. “Why don’t I see them here?”

“They’re not part of my self-image.”

Indignant, I pointed at the gray mist inside the Trans Am. “They’re not part of mine, either!”

“No,” Billy said with exasperated patience, “but you opened up a door in your mind and invited dozens of spirits to pass through. The ones that refused to pass on didn’t get rejected, just trapped. You said you’d had uninvited visitors before. Well, you more or less invited these ones. They’re here whether you imagine them to be or not.”

That made an irritating amount of sense. I glowered. “I still think it’s a really bad idea for you to play host to a bunch of ectoplasmic parasites.”

“I agree.” Billy breathed a quiet laugh as bewilderment smeared across my face. “It’s dangerous. But I think it’s less dangerous than leaving them here. If you dissolve the car—” His mouth suddenly contorted as he tried not to laugh.

“The car just happened! I needed something the ghosts could communicate through, and he can talk! It’s not my fault!”

“He,” Billy said, and gave up trying not to laugh. My ears burned red and he whooped until tears came to his eyes, finally promising, “It’s completely you,” as he wiped moisture away. “Release them from the car and they’ll come to me. It’ll be fine.”

I folded my arms, half sulking at being teased and half genuinely reluctant. I only had one argument to dissuade him, and I didn’t like it much. On the other hand, but besides being persuasive, it struck me as a genuine concern. “Okay. Look. We know I can keep them locked in, if necessary. Can you? Because…what happens if one of these things changes its mind about hanging around on you, and latches on to the baby when it’s born?”

I’d never seen Billy get so grim, which told me I was right: it was a legitimate danger. “We just won’t let that happen.”

“If Mel goes into labor before we get this thing resolved,” I said very steadily, “I’m taking the ghosts back. I don’t care what the other risks are.”

“Yeah.” Billy nodded, small tense motion that wasn’t like him. “Yeah, okay. It’s a deal.”

We shook on it, and I released the Trans Am thought-form to infect Billy with the vengeful dead.

It jolted us out of my garden, me blinking the Sight on as soon as I realized we were back in the real world. Morrison stopped drumming, but his hand remained raised, ready to strike the drum again if necessary. His aura hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d done this: it was still filled with rough edges of discomfort, purple and blue rubbing against each other wrong, but not badly enough to connote anger or fear. All too aware of the statement’s inaccuracy, I said, “We’re good,” and Morrison lowered the drumstick to wait on those of us with more esoteric skills to tell him what had happened.

Billy’s colors were grayed out, filmed over by his ghost riders. I could see varying shades, half a dozen or more soiling his presence. They amalgamated, darkening, and I imagined the ones he’d picked up in my garden were communicating Billy’s offer of help to those he’d carried from the party himself.

Either that or they were staging a hostile takeover, the thought of which didn’t reassure me at all. Mel sat up straight, her aura going bright with concern, though her daughter’s was rosy pink and serene with sleep. “What did you do to Bill?”

“Walker?” That was Morrison, a warning note in his voice before I had a chance to say anything. Then Billy spoke, and I was grateful, because anything I could say would sound like I was trying to fob off responsibility. It was his idea just didn’t cut it, even if it was true.

“It was my idea.” Billy lifted his head wearily. His eyes were dull. “The hauntings that held on to Joanne were old murder cases, and I promised we’d get them to a stronger medium to see if we could help.”

“A medium?” Morrison managed to keep the derision out of his voice, but he couldn’t bury the disbelief.

Billy swung his head toward the captain, the motion too heavy, like he didn’t have proper control of his actions. “It’s what I am, Captain. I communicate with the dead.” He didn’t exactly sound challenging, but there was a note of undeterrable conviction in his words. I knew Morrison was aware Billy had an affiliation for the weird that allowed his homicide cases to be solved in record time. That was why he’d partnered us. Still, from their expressions, it was safe to say they’d never discussed it over a beer.