by C. E. Murphy
“All right.” Annie’s voice was real loud and clear, a shock after hearing nothin but the wind for so long. She got up, the beanstalk leaf bobbing with her weight, and she flung her arms wide. “Come and get me, you son of a bitch.”
The goddamned sickness, the first dark thing I’d seen up there in the Upper World, came outta nowhere and slammed back into Annie’s chest.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We woke up in the sauna, Annie coughing and unable to get a breath of the hot air. I picked her up and took her out in a couple long steps, crouching outside in the cool air and never letting go while she coughed herself ragged. Hester came out behind us, so worried I could feel it rattling off her. The sky had turned to twilight while we were inside, an’ the last light slipped away before Annie could breathe again. She turned her face against my chest an’ said, real quiet, “If you could come back tomorrow, Miss Jones? I’m very tired now, and I suppose we still have to try to find who set this illness on me.”
“I’ll come around ten,” Hester promised, an’ left without going back through the house. I picked Annie up again and brought her inside, put her on the couch, and went to make tea.
When I came back into the living room she was on her feet, looking out the window at the dark lawn. “Annie? You all right, sweetheart?”
“I spent my adult life watching people deny the truth.” Her reflection was in the windows, faint ‘cause there weren’t many lights on inside. Made her look like a ghost, already fading. I started toward her an’ she shook her head, almost a shiver, like saying stay away. I guessed a fellow could take offense, but I’d been married to the lady a long time. It just meant she was thinking aloud, not hardly talking to me at all, and that if I got too close she’d start feeling self-conscious and clam up. I sat down, listening insteada crowding.
“Mostly about illness, of course,” she said. “Promising themselves or each other that this wasn’t it, this sickness wasn’t going to finish them off. Promising if they got out of there, they would change their lives for the better. A few of them were right, even when they were lying to begin with. They beat the odds, and walked out. Some of them even went on and changed their lives, or other peoples’ lives, for the better. Not many, though. But that isn’t the point.
“The point is I’ve been thinking about that ever since I started feeling poorly. About how people deny the truth that’s in front of them. I suppose I’d seen a lot of it by the time we got married, and by the time I caught the fever I…well, I suppose I believed in what I saw more than in what I thought I knew. And I accepted that. I started believing there was a kind of magic in the world. I never questioned it again, which I suppose made a difference in my life. But now I’m standing here with an illness growing inside me, something that someone apparently chose to plant in me, and I can’t help but wonder, Gary. What would have happened if I had denied it all in the first place? Would this thing not have come into me? If I had refused the world it represents, would it have lost interest? You say your future flashes suggest I’m a target because you love me, but that makes me quite the helpless victim, and I dare anyone to call me that to my face.”
She wasn’t so much talking to herself anymore, which meant I could chuckle without making her lose her head of steam. I didn’t say nothing, though, just laughed and nodded.
Annie nodded once too, kinda sharp and brisk, and kept talking. “I chose this life, Gary. I chose the moments of madness and exhilaration that have come with discovering there are monsters beneath the bed. And if you believe there is something out there, a mastermind or an evil which wishes to destroy you because you in some way bring light into the world, then I cannot believe I’m merely auxiliary to that. I will not believe it. Even if this illness should succeed, if it kills me, it would be unforgivable for you to lay down your sword and give up the fight. So I must believe myself to be a target in my own right.”
She faced me, eyes flashing and color high in her cheeks. “And if I’m worth that much to any agent of darkness, then I am by God going to give it the fight of its life. And the fight of mine.”
Between one breath an’ the next I had her in my arms, spinning her around and kissing her through laughter. “Darlin’, I feel like I oughta be cheering. You shoulda been leading the troops, not patching them up.” I set her down again, trying not to think of how light she’d been in my arms, an’ brushed my thumbs over her cheeks. “And I guess you’re putting me in my place, too, sweetheart. Kinda arrogant of me to figure it was all about me.”
She patted my cheek. “Yes, but very male.”
I snorted an’ caught her hand to kiss her palm. “Mebbe so. You’re right, though, darlin’. Ain’t no way I’d let anything make me back down if something happened to you—which it ain’t gonna—”
Something happened around her eyes, something that told me she thought I wasn’t much of a liar, but she didn’t call me on it, so I kept going. “So I shoulda seen it myself. Maybe I didn’t getcha into this, darlin’. Maybe we got each other into it, but it don’t matter, ‘cause you’re my bright star. Would I were as steadfast as thou art—”
She laughed all of a sudden, bright an’ quick. “Why do you do that, Gary? I’ve known you almost fifty years and you’ve always used the language like you’re a big dumb hunk, and then you forget yourself and quote poetry.”
I said, “Girls like it,” as solemn as I could, and Annie laughed again.
“I know I did. I still do. But I knew your parents, Gary. Neither of them were marble-mouthed, and they both said “isn’t” instead of “ain’t”. I could understand it if they had, but it’s an affectation and it’s gotten more noticeable as you’ve gotten older.”
Still solemn, I said, “You’re only just noticin’ this now? Maybe you’re just gettin’ pickier,” and she gave me a dirty look that I smiled away. “Guess I do it more now ‘cause fares like it. It fits the persona. But I guess I started it way back in college. I learned playing ball that folks underestimate you if they think you ain’t too bright. Gives a guy a chance to learn a lot about what the other team’s thinking and doing, if they don’t worry much about chatting when you’re around. S’pose I got in the habit then and never dropped it, so I gotta pull out the poets once in a while to keep my old grey cells hopping. You want me to give it a rest?”
“Could you?”
“Prob’ly not.”
Annie smiled. “That’s all right. I do like it. And I’ve wondered on and off for years. Decades. But it’s a question—” She swallowed hard. “I suppose it’s one of those things, it’s so silly and not important, and you think you’ll always have time to ask. Now I’m afraid there’s not any time left, so…I asked.”
“We still got all the time in the world, babe.” I curled her close, wishing I could make either one of us believe me. “Silly thing to be sittin’ on for forty years, though. Got anything else that’s been bothering you?”
“I don’t know. Do I want to know the truth about Mary Lou Stravinski?”
A guffaw burst right outta me. “There’s a name I ain’t thought about in a long time. I swear to you, Annie, she fell in that mud puddle just like I said. I never thought she was gonna strip her wet dress off and hand it to me once I put my coat around her, an’ I swear to God she never managed to lay a kiss on me, even if that’s what it looked like when you walked in. I swear I was tryin’ ta get her off me—” I stopped, ‘cause Annie’s eyes were bright and her lips were pressed together like she was trying hard not to laugh. “You know alla this, doncha.”
“Yes, but it’s fun to watch you squirm. I never was really worried about that. You prefer blondes.”
“Gentlemen do. Annie. Annie, what happened back there? Up there. You knocked that crap outta yourself, and then you…” I was pretty damned sure I knew what had happened, and why, and I hated it as much as I loved my girl.
“Took it back in. I told you, Gary. I’m going to give this thing the fight of its life. I can’t do that if it’s o
ut there.” She waved at the windows and meant the whole world beyond ‘em. “Maybe someone did put this sickness in me, but that was on their terms. They’re on mine now.”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes, wishing pressing them shut would make everything she was saying go away. But I reckon I’d known just what she was doing, and there was no way she’d have ever done anything else. She wasn’t gonna let somebody else suffer if she had a chance at defeating something. “You’re about the bravest woman I ever knew, Anne Marie Muldoon.”
“It’s not going to end well, is it,” she said real softly. I opened my eyes again to find her looking sad. “I’m sorry, Gary. I feel much stronger than I did earlier. I can feel the—” The sadness turned into a glower that made me laugh. “I’m telling you whether that woman says I should or not. The first animal was a cheetah, of all things, Gary. A cheetah. That’s absurd. I’m not a cat person.”
“Sweetheart, my spirit animal is a tortoise, so I figure they know better than we do. It ain’t just about whether we got an affinity for ‘em. It’s about what gifts they can bring us.”
Somethin’ happened in her eyes, a real seriousness all mixed up with curiosity and maybe a bit more understanding than I wanted to see from her. “Your spirit animal. I didn’t know you had one.”
I tried not to grit my teeth, feelin like I’d blown it. “It shows up a long time from now.”
That understanding in her eyes ran deeper. She tilted her head, studying me like I was some kinda new thing before sayin, real careful, “’Future flashes.’”
“Yeah, darlin’.” My heartbeat was going crazy an’ I was getting hot beneath the collar. I didn’t know how, but I was sure she’d figured out the truth somehow. Intuition, or me being a real bad liar, or something, but I’d let too much slip and she knew. But I couldn’t ask ‘cause if it was my imagination running wild and she didn’t know, then asking would mean the jig was up too. I was starting to blush, and I hadn’t done that in thirty years.
The corner of her mouth turned up just a little. “All right, dear. If you say so. Now, what was I saying. Oh, the cheetah. A cheetah, for heaven’s sake. It’s something a seventeen-year-old girl would want, not a seventy year old lady. The other was—”
“A stag. I kinda saw that one, darlin’. Got a glimpse, anyway.”
“Positively ridiculous,” she said. “Virile and masculine. Why on earth would creatures like that want me?”
I had a hard time pulling my eyebrows outta my hairline. Annie laughed, blushed, and laughed again. “That’s very flattering, but really, Gary, I am seventy years old.”
“Don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. ‘sides, it all kinda fits together. You saw that picture your pa painted of Cernunnos, the horns on him and all. I don’t figure it’s a coincidence a stag came your way, is what I’m saying. You’re feeling stronger, that’s what matters, right?”
“Strong enough to take the fight to this enemy.” The color in her cheeks wasn’t from blushing anymore. It was the fire of battle getting ready to meet. “Gary, I can’t just let it go out into the world, or the Upper World, wherever you want to say, and let other people be hurt by it. But if I’m strong enough to hold on a while, maybe we’ll win something. Maybe if I can hold this evil inside of me just a little longer than it expects, maybe it’ll mean I take one wrong thing out of the world when I go. That’s worth dying for, Gary. If I’m going to die anyway, I want to make it worth something.”
“You ain’t gonna—”
“Everybody does, sweetheart. Whether it’s tomorrow because of this sickness or thirty years from now from old age, everybody dies. I don’t want to leave you, but if I have to, I’m going to take as much darkness out of the world as I can when I go.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I didn’t try. There was no arguing with the woman at the best of times, an’ this was that, and the worst too. We shut ourselves in together, whispering like kids ‘til way too late in the night, telling secrets about power animals and spirit journeys and doing our best to take ourselves there without anybody helping. I didn’t know what time we fell asleep, but we didn’t wake up until Hester knocked on the door a couple minutes after ten the next morning.
Pretty sure she thought we were too old for the state of dishevelment we came to the door in, but her sour face getting even sourer made me and Annie both laugh. I cooked everybody breakfast while Annie got herself put together.
We spent the whole day doing the rounds, everything Annie usually did. Hester’s eyes went as gold as Jo’s did when she turned on the mojo, which kinda surprised me. I’d figured everybody would have their own color, maybe something to do with their auras, though Jo’s aura wasn’t gold at all, which shot that idea fulla holes. I chuckled at myself, making both women look at me, but I shrugged it off. Explaining any more about future memories was more than I wanted to try.
All three of us got tense when we dropped into the yoga studio, figuring a spiritual center was the most likely place for a magic user, even a dark one, to hole up. Annie introduced Hester around to the teachers, an’ one by one they came up clean, even the new one we’d been laying our bets on. It was coming on toward night again by then, and stronger or not, Annie was wrung out. Hester had to come home with us, ‘cause she’d left her car there, but the drive back was full of her tension and apologies she wasn’t making out loud. Annie finally reached between the front seats and patted Hes’s knee. “It’s not your fault, Miss Jones. Maybe this is a natural illness after all.”
“No. I’ve taken a lot of people to the Lower World to battle their sicknesses, Mrs. Muldoon. No natural illness looks or fights like that.” Hester’s eyes were glowing gold again, like anger was turning them hot. “Shamanism says everything, even illness, has a spirit, and everything with a spirit wants to live, but this is more than that. It doesn’t just want to live. It wants to kill.”
I was watching her in the rear-view mirror, an’ saw her realize she’d said too much. Annie went pale and turned back around to look out the side window, and Hester’s mouth got thin and grim. She was already staring ahead like the Devil himself was waiting at home when we turned up the drive, but she flinched and grabbed the back of my seat as I parked the Chevy. “Who’s here?”
I squinted at her in the mirror. “Nobody, far as I know. Why?”
Annie said, “Probably Myles,” at the same time, adding, “The gardener,” when me and Hester both looked at her. “You haven’t met him yet,” she told me. “He replaced Beth a few weeks ago. I did tell you that.”
“Yeah, I remember. You said he was one of the new folks—” The air got a whole lot colder, raising hairs on my arms. “Hes?”
“It’s like looking into a plague of locusts.” She wasn’t looking at either of us, but at our yard, somewhere past the curve that put the far side outta view. “His aura is overwhelmed with darkness. I can’t See the colors it might once have been. He’s embraced something that lends him power, but at the cost of…of everything he is.” Hester Jones hadn’t been uncertain for even half a heartbeat since we’d met her, but she sounded like the core of her world had been shaken. “I’ve never seen anything…I didn’t even imagine anyone could do that.”
“I—” I shut up on sayin I seen it before. I had, except not for a few years yet. Joanne had gone up against a sorcerer early on, and we’d both seen how he could get into the hearts and souls of people looking for power. Or, hell, even just looking for a way to survive. I reckoned all of that kinda power backtracked eventually to the same source, to the guy we kept calling the Master.
“It’s sorcery,” I said instead, which made Annie gimme another one of those you know too much looks, but she didn’t call me on it. I didn’t figure she was ever gonna.
“Sorcery—” Hester took a deep breath, trying to contain herself. “In shamanic studies, a sorcerer is a shaman who has embraced darkness. Sorcerers can do terrible things. Skinwalk. Steal someone’s will. Cast curses and—”
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br /> “And cause sickness instead of healing it.” I’d been on the receiving end of that, though it’d been a corrupted witch, not a sorcerer, who’d magicked me into a heart attack. “Lissen to me, Hester. Most sorcerers are gonna be at least a couple steps removed from the heart o’darkness—”
Annie, beneath her breath, muttered, “The only thing was for it to come to and wait for the turn of the tide,” an’ I smirked but kept going. “This fella, there’s a good chance he’s sold himself higher up the river. Ain’t nobody gonna think less of you if you walk away right now, and the truth is, sweetheart, that might be smart. The boss man in this mess, he holds a grudge, and I hate to…”
Way too late, it finally clicked. Hester Jones. Name seemed kinda familiar, yeah, because she’d been one of a half-dozen murders a few years from now. Right at the same time I’d met Jo, in fact, when a demi-god was taking his daddy issues out on the magic users in Seattle. Far as I knew, Herne hadn’t been aligned with the Master, but he’d gone a long way down a road to Hell, and not much of it had been paved with good intentions. When a guy is that far off the path of righteousness, it probably ain’t that hard for a worse bad guy to draw his eyes to a few particular sacrificial lambs.
An’ here I was, pulling Hester neck-deep into a fight a lot bigger an’ uglier than she was counting on. An’ here I was knowing it was already too late, if this was all cause and effect, ‘cause whether I liked it or not, she was gonna die messy in just a couple more years. “Dammit.”
I coulda been talking the wind for all she cared. Her back was up, eyes flashing, and for a minute I liked her, sour grapes and all. “Sorcery is an abomination. It’s a corruption of everything I’ve ever studied. It’s very…chivalrous,” she said, like it was a bad word, “of you to try to save me trouble, but this isn’t an encounter I could ever walk away from.”
“Are you on the warrior’s path, doll?”