C.E. Murphy - Walking Dead

“The dye’s smearing, Jo. Didja get it wet?” He tested the drum’s surface just like I had two nights ago, and found it as taut and smooth as it had ever been.

“I don’t know what’s wrong. I think it’s…” All my confidence drained away. “I dunno. I always thought that was a wolf, but now I’m wondering if it’s a coyote and it’s been ruined because he’s gone.”

“Aw, c’mon, Jo, that sounds…” I could see him struggling between a couple choices of words: silly was one, and like magic was the other. Both were true. It sounded silly and it sounded like magic. Gary shrugged his bushy gray eyebrows. “Guess that could be it, then.”

“Yeah.” We sat down together on the museum’s front steps and I nerved myself up to take a look at the city with the Sight. I didn’t think I could see holy water sprinkling down and washing the cauldron’s black goo out of the air, but at least I should be able to see where the stuff had been washed away.

And in most places, it had been. There was a hint of light where the cemeteries were, residual water in the air, maybe. The clouds overhead were breaking up and moonlight lent more strength to the bright patches. I just didn’t know if it was enough. Most graveyards closed their gates at sunset, so hopefully any undead who had risen were stuck behind iron, but it wasn’t something I wanted to bet the farm on. I needed to find the cauldron and destroy it. I couldn’t think of anything else—short of me going around and stabbing every dead man walking in Seattle—that would tear their unlife away from them. I’d do it if I had to, but breaking the source of their magic would be more efficient. “You know what I still don’t get?”

“Legions of faithful fallin’ at your feet?” Gary gave me a bright grin when I dredged up a glower for him. I’d never seen a man his age with such nice white teeth. They had to be false, but I couldn’t imagine how to ask that politely.

“That either,” I admitted, “but I was thinking about the cauldron. That thing is death on wheels, and I don’t get why it hasn’t done this everywhere it’s been. Or, rather—” I flapped a hand “—I don’t get why whoever warded it so it wouldn’t do this hasn’t just come and fixed the wards.”

“I like how you say that. Warded it. Like it’s normal.” The funny thing was, I thought Gary actually did like how I said it. I think he considered it a good sign that I was talking about warding and magic spells like they were part of my everyday life. After all, they were.

I turned my gaze back on the city, looking for any trails the cauldron might have left now that its murk was largely drowned. There was nothing: the pools of black mist had gathered together, dissolving any trail even before the blessed water’d fallen on them. “I wonder if that kind of thing is in my repertoire. I can shield myself. I can even shield other people, at least for a while. I wonder if I can make a shield against a death cauldron leaking all over a city.”

“Reckon you’ll get a chance to find out.” Headlights swung into the parking lot as Gary spoke. We both got to our feet, waving a greeting to Billy, then Sonata, as they got out of Billy’s patrol car.

Billy muttered, “I don’t even want to know how fast you drove to get here before us. Sandburg’s on his way with the keys.”

“Gary picks locks just fine. Maybe he can let us in.”

“I can pick a lock, doll, not break into a state-of-the-art security system. Gary Muldoon.” The last was to Sonata, and was accompanied by a roguish smile that I considered pretty high on the irresistible scale.

Sonata apparently thought so, too. Dimples appeared and she let Gary linger over her hand as she murmured, “Sonata Smith,” in reply. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

I grinned at my feet. Gary’s Saturday-night date had competition. Once in a while, things went right in the world. I took my smile from them to the road, feeling it fade as minutes ticked by. It was after eight, and while being at the museum instead of at a home with a swimming pool boded well for my long-term survival, I thought our window for finding and breaking the cauldron was shrinking. The deepest part of the night wasn’t all that far away, and it seemed likely that whoever had the cauldron would be calling up its full magic right around midnight. I wanted to find it before that happened.

Sandburg finally pulled in to the parking lot. His aura, still pale, twitched with concern as he got out of his car, but there were no sparks of off-colored resentment dancing from him. Evidently he understood that sometimes people close to a murder case got hauled off for questioning. Me, I wasn’t sure I’d be all that understanding.

In fact, thinking that way made me try to deepen my perception of his aura. I had no idea what a compulsion spell might look like, but logic dictated it had to leave some kind of mark, if it was there.

A glimmer of greenery, pale as anything else I’d seen off Sandburg, washed up around me: just a hint of his garden; of the state of his soul. I held on to it, hardly daring to breathe as I searched for a hint of something wrong within him.

A raging deep river of green, of greed, slammed out of nowhere and dragged me into Sandburg’s depths. Triumph and panic bloomed within me at equal rates: that kind of avarice could push a man to do almost anything—including drown a nosy shaman who went poking around in his soul uninvited. But I only needed to hold on a few seconds, just long enough to see where Sandburg’s hunger brought us.

The river swept me into a library at the edge of a desert: monumental pillars under a hard blue sky. Within seconds it morphed around me, changing from the legendary library at Alexandria to a modern, recognizable Library of Congress. To, I realized with embarrassment, a representation of a repository of all knowledge. Greed wasn’t necessarily for power, and what lay at Sandburg’s core was a desire to know things. With that much passion driving him, I suddenly felt sorry for anybody who tried to trick or ensorcel him into doing something he didn’t know he was doing. I jerked my gaze to the side in a silent apology as Sandburg bounded up the museum steps to join us.

“Have you found something?”

“We need to take another look around the murder scene,” Billy said. “I’m afraid it’s going to seem a little strange. If you could let us in, I’ll explain while the others prepare.”

“A little strange?” Sandburg unlocked the doors and reset the electronics with his pass code. I could See the numbers he’d pressed, and the order in which they’d been chosen, fading from one end of the spectrum to the other. I filed that away under Handy Tricks, though I doubted it was a morally superior use of shamanic magic. “One of my guards is dead, another missing, and Matholwch’s legendary cauldron has been stolen. How much stranger can anything be?”

“We’re going to work under the assumption that the magic of the cauldron is real, and see if we can contact the dead to learn more about it.” Billy spoke so reasonably that Sandburg nodded agreement before he’d fully grasped what had been said.

“We—you—what?”

“Mr. Sandburg, if you don’t mind sitting down with the rest of us, your presence will be extremely calming to Jason Chan’s spirit.” Sonata tucked her arm through Sandburg’s and walked him down the hall. “The familiar is very comforting to the dead, and I would be terribly appreciative of your help in this matter.” She was wearing a white blouse instead of the dead-happy-face T-shirt, which I thought was probably a good choice for out-of-house calls. The blouse went better with her smile and gentle tone. Sandburg found himself agreeing all over again, though I could all but see his mind whirling and trying to make sense of what she was saying.