C.E. Murphy - Urban Shaman

“Thirty-nine,” he said, in tandem with Marie. Her eyebrows went up while my jaw went down. Gary looked smug. After a few seconds she shook her head and went on.

“It’s hard,” she said carefully, “to immerse yourself in a study, in mythology and belief, without beginning to understand that even if you don’t believe it, that someone did, and that it has, or had, power. I don’t consider myself particularly susceptible to bullshit.”

Looking at her, I could believe it. She had to have heard every line in the book, by now. It would take genuine effort to remain gullible, and she didn’t seem gullible. She finally lifted her orange juice and drank half of it.

“Certain legends had more power for me than others. They were easier to believe. They tended down Celtic lines—my mom says it’s blood showing through. But the Morrigan, the Hunt, banshees, cross-comparisons of those legends to other cultures were more fascinating to me than most other things. A while ago a gloomy friend of mine pointed out that they weren’t just Celtic legends. They were all Celtic legends that had to do with death or violence.”

She took a deep breath, looking up at us with those very blue eyes. “Right after that I started to be able to sense who was about to die.”

Silence held, stretched, and broke as my voice shot up two octaves. “You’re a fucking banshee?” The tired blonde behind the counter looked our way again, then shifted her shoulders and turned away, uninterested. Marie’s thin straight eyebrows lifted a little.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about those legends?”

“I just got off the plane from a funeral in Ireland.”

Understanding and curiosity came into Marie’s eyes. “Whose funeral?” she asked.

“My moth—what does that have to do with anything?”

“I was curious. You don’t have the sense of someone close to you having died.”

“We weren’t close,” I said shortly. This was the second time this morning I’d said something about my family. I was breaking all sorts of rules for me. I really needed sleep. The waitress came by and slid Gary’s breakfast in front of him. Three eggs, fried, over a slab of steak, three huge pancakes, hash browns, bacon, sausage and a side of toast. I got full just looking at it. Gary didn’t pick up his fork, and after a couple seconds I frowned at him.

The big guy was actually pale, gray eyes wide under the bushy eyebrows. He stared at Marie like she’d turned from a golden retriever puppy into a king cobra. I did a double-take from him to her and back again, wondering what was wrong. “Gary?”

“Don’t worry,” Marie said, very softly. “I don’t see anything about you.”

Gary focused on his plate abruptly, cutting a huge bite of steak and eggs to stuff into his mouth. His eyebrows charged up his forehead defiantly, like he expected Marie to make an addendum to her comment. Her mouth twitched in a smile, but she didn’t say anything else.

“Does being a banshee have anything to do with why what’s-his-face wants you?” I reached over and snitched a piece of bacon off Gary’s plate. He noticed, but didn’t stop me.

“Cernunnos. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Because, what, the Hunt isn’t scary enough without you?” I heard myself capitalize the word, and wondered why I’d done it.

“I haven’t had a conversation with him about it,” she said. “I don’t really know what he wants me for.”

“So how do you know he wants you?”

“Having a pack of ghost dogs and rooks and a herd of men on horseback chase you down the street gives a girl a pretty good idea that she’s wanted for something,” Marie said acerbically.

I had the grace to look embarrassed. “Okay, it was a stupid question.”

“Couldn’t it have been vampires?” Gary asked wistfully around a mouthful of hash browns. “Vampires are at least kinda sexy. What’s sexy about packs of dogs and birds? No such thing as rooks around here anyway.”

“They come with Cernunnos.” Marie kept saying these things like they were obvious.

“Marie, what are you?” I asked. She shrank back, looking surprisingly guilty. “Banshees are fairies,” I said. “Please don’t tell me you’re a fairy.”

“Not much of one, anyway,” she said to her orange juice, “or I wouldn’t be able to hide on holy ground, or use that knife.” She nodded at the butterfly knife I’d set on the table at my elbow. I picked it up without opening it and looked at her curiously. “Iron,” she said, “steel.”

“What about it?”

Have you ever had someone look at you like you were a particularly slow child? That’s the look Marie gave me. Come to think of it, Captain Steve had given me that same look earlier. I was beginning to think I should be offended. Marie interrupted before I got up the energy. “You really don’t know anything about the mystical, do you?”

“Why should I?”

“I thought Indians knew that kinda stuff,” Gary put in. I looked at him incredulously. He shrugged. “Well, you got all them powwows and stuff. What were you doing during the powwows?”

“Reading books on evolution,” I said through my teeth. Apparently that tone was scarier than the one I’d employed earlier, because Gary closed his mouth around another forkful of food with an audible smack. “That’s like saying all big guys are stupid, or all blondes are dumb, or—”

Gary pushed his food into one cheek, squirrel-like, and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. It was a joke, Jo. Jeez.”

“Perpetuating stereotypes through joking isn’t funny.”

“I’m sorry.” Gary sounded like he meant it. I frowned at him, then sighed and put my face in my hands.

“Forg— fuck that hurts!” I jerked my hand away from my cheek, expecting to see fresh new blood on my palm. I was spared that, at least. This was not my morning.

“The Celtic fair folk aren’t supposed to be able to bear the touch of iron,” Marie explained, once more interrupting my downward spiral of misery before it began. “Not even their gods. And I don’t know what I am, not in the way you’re asking the question. I’m an anthropologist with an unusual skill.”

“Skill? Like you learned it deliberately?”

Marie shrugged. “Talent, skill. I hesitate to call it a gift.” She caught Gary’s eye, and flashed a quick smile. “Although I could make a killing in insurance,” she said quickly. He snapped his mouth shut around another bite of food, beaten to the punch. I grinned. It made my cheek hurt. “In any other aspect,” Marie said, “I’m ordinary.”

“You are not,” I said, “ordinary.” My voice came out about six notes lower than normal. I felt color rush to my cheeks, which made the cut throb furiously. Marie’s mouth quirked in a crooked little smile. I bet even a smirk would look good on her.

“Thank you,” she said, easily enough to make my blush fade. I could feel Gary looking at me. I very carefully didn’t look at him.

“You’re welcome.” I lifted my hands to my temples and held my head. My shoulders ached. I needed a hot shower, a massage from a tall bronze guy named Rafael and about sixteen weeks of sleep. “All right, look. Let me take you at face value.”

Marie pulled a wry little moue, and Gary let out a deep chuckle. I felt a little smile creep over my face and split my cheek open again. I was going to bleed all day long. How fun. “Let me take your story at face value,” I amended. Marie laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was about eight when I figured out being taken at face value meant people were going to let me get by on my looks. If I’d had a different family I’d never have learned to think at all. Why would I need to?” The way she said it made me think she’d used her looks just as much as she’d used her brain to get where she was in life. There are beautiful people who know they’re beautiful, and use it like a weapon. I got the impression Marie used it as a tool. I couldn’t blame her.