C.E. Murphy - Shaman Rises

Under those circumstances, Annie Muldoon’s reappearance, alive and more or less well, did not bode well. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Gary.”

“We’ve got until tonight to think about that.”

* * *

Until tonight wasn’t enough. Despite my protests, I slept like the dead in the hotel room and stumbled through airport security like a zombie, which was a phrase I should be careful with, all things considered. I managed to get on the plane with my drum, which I wasn’t about to relegate to checked luggage and which didn’t technically fit in the carry-on bin above my head, but the flight attendants seemed to be studiously Not Noticing it. I was pretty certain my subconscious was running a “these are not the droids you’re looking for” kind of thing on them, and while part of me thought my subconscious probably shouldn’t be allowed to do magic without me, the rest of me was just basically glad it was doing so.

I stared out the window the whole flight home, unable to sleep and without much to say. My heart twisted when we flew over the Mississippi, New Orleans a distant smear on the horizon. There had been a brief moment this morning, as we’d talked about driving home, when I’d imagined visiting the bayou with Morrison. For all the traveling Dad and I had done when I was a kid, we’d never hit the Big Easy, and going with Morrison had sounded wonderful. My heart thumped offbeat again and I put my fist over it, trying to breathe.

I closed my fingers on something in my coat’s inside chest pocket. I hadn’t even known it had an inside chest pocket. I took the thing out, eyebrows elevated. It looked like a sharpened hair stick of pale wood, which I decided for no particular reason must be ash, its end tipped in silver. First I was astonished it had made it through security, and then I wasn’t. Ash and silver had enough known magical qualities that even I was aware of them, and I doubted any kind of security could stop magic that really wanted to get on an airplane. I wondered if Caitríona had slipped it into my coat back in Ireland and I’d just never noticed. Except the coat had been balled up repeatedly over the past few days, so I thought I’d have noticed. I squinted down at the distant bayou again, feeling vaguely as though I’d missed something.

Morrison eyed the hair stick, then me, dubiously. “Going to grow your hair out, Walker?”

“Not in this lifetime, but it’s pretty, isn’t it?” I tucked the stick back in my pocket for safekeeping, and pressed my forehead against the window, watching New Orleans fade in the distance.

When I moved again, a faint circle of sweat and grease was left on the window. I stared at it, then snorted. It seemed like about a million years since I’d last done that, but it had only been fifteen months.

“What?” Morrison sounded concerned.

I slipped my hand into his, not sure which of us I intended to reassure. “This all started flying back home to Seattle. I feel like I’m coming full circle.”

“You’re better prepared for it now.”

“Am I?” I’d been running nonstop for two weeks, ever since a dance performance had caused me to accidentally turn Morrison into a wolf. And that had been the least of it. I’d also quit my job, stopped a sacrifice, gotten bitten by a werewolf, been to Ireland, made amends with my dead mother, defeated an avatar of evil, flown to North Carolina, reconciled with my estranged father, met the son I’d given up for adoption, and released an evil angel into the world. Furthermore, I could count the number of meals and hours of sleep I’d had in that time, which was never a good sign.

Morrison spoke with simple confidence. “You are.”

I looked at him, at his clear blue eyes and serious face, at the tiredness in his own expression and the strength of conviction that was such a great part of his appeal. There were deeper lines than usual around his mouth. I suddenly wanted them to go away, so I leaned over and kissed him.

His surprised smile gave me the boost I needed as much as his certainty did. I mashed my face against his shoulder, feeling better. “I need a vacation.”

“You can have one when this is over.”

“You think we’ll be alive to vacate when it’s over?”

“I do.” Again, his confidence was unwavering.

I smiled into his shoulder again. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

We rented a car at Sea-Tac. Morrison gave me a hairy eyeball for that and suggested the taxi ranks, but I wasn’t about to climb into another taxi like I’d done with Gary a year ago. I had visions of dragging some other unsuspecting driver into my unrelentingly weird life, and that would be just too much. Renting the car didn’t take long, but it still took longer than I wanted it to. I glanced at the clock as we pulled out into what passed for late-night traffic in Seattle. Dad was probably somewhere around Saint Louis by now, if he was burying Petite’s needle. I wished we could do the same, but it took almost an hour to get to Seattle’s General Hospital. I took my drum and went into the too-familiar, loathed, sharp-antiseptic-scented building.

For the first time since I could remember, it didn’t give me a visceral twist of pain and a seizure of sneezes. I’d been braced against both, and stumbled at not encountering them. Morrison put a hand under my elbow and I gave him a half-surprised smile. Maybe a lot more than I had realized had healed while I was in North Carolina. It was easier to see the scars now, easier to admit my hatred of hospitals came from Aidan’s sister dying in one so soon after her birth. Easier, now that I knew she lived on in her own way, in Aidan’s powerful two-spirited soul.

“You all right, Walker?”

“Better than I have any right to be.” Feeling stronger than I should, I led Morrison up to Annie’s room, where every hope I had of telling Gary that his wife was probably a simulacrum embodying evil died on my lips.

Annie Muldoon’s aura burned raging, brilliant green around a fist of darkness that throbbed and strained with her every heartbeat. I Saw it without even trying, without triggering the shamanic Sight I would normally use to diagnose a patient with. Gary, ashen and old, got up from Annie’s bedside and hugged me until I couldn’t breathe. His aura wasn’t visible: the Sight was registering extraordinary power, like the occasions when my own magic took on a visible component. I hugged him back and mumbled a promise about everything being okay, then stole a glance at Morrison.

His aura wasn’t visible, either, but thunderclouds in blue eyes offered an opinion on me promising things were going to be okay. Not for the first time, I wished my cosmic power set came with telepathy, because I wanted to say, “Well, I have to at least try!” but I could hardly say it out loud with Gary right there. Besides, I’d said it about every seven minutes on the flight, or it had felt like it, anyway. I did have to try, and I would have even if Annie’s aura had been a mire of black pitch and oil slicks.

But it wasn’t. The green was vibrant, and I knew that color. I knew it down to the depths of my soul. The creature who wore that color within himself had wormed his way in, way deep inside me, and he had no intention of leaving. I would know his mark anywhere. It was Cernunnos’s color, blazing green that threatened to burn my eyes, my mind, away if I looked at him unguarded for too long. Cernunnos had been there when Annie died, in the memories Gary had recovered.

I set Gary back a few inches, my hands on his shoulders, and met his eyes. “Tell me again, Gary. Tell me exactly what happened when she died. All of it. She had two spirit animals with her, a cheetah and a stag—” Embarrassment caught me and I blushed so hard I couldn’t speak for a few seconds. Of course Cernunnos had been in attendance, if a stag, of all creatures, had come to her. Cernunnos wasn’t the horned god for nothing: every year he grew a crown of antlers, becoming more and more of the stag, before shedding them again and regaining something approaching humanity. In the parlance of my teenage years, d’oh.