The Shamanic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery)

by Kirsten Weiss

  Ash uncoiled from a chair in the other corner of the room. “I’m going to get some coffee. Want any?”

  Sal shook her head, no.

  He shot Riga a look as he passed her. She didn’t try to interpret it.

  “How are you?”

  “The same.” Sal’s eyes were red and puffy.

  “How is she?” Riga asked.

  “The same.”

  From the table beside Zara’s bed, the shaman plucked an antique-looking blue bottle. She handed it to Riga. “See for yourself.”

  Bits of ash and herbs clotted at the bottom. “Is this a seguro? Where did you get it?” A seguro was a prized and private tool, enabling the shaman to interpret illnesses. Only a person of power was allowed to touch it.

  “I got it from the fae. Look.”

  Riga tried to hand it back. “I’m not a healer.”

  “But you can look,” Sal said sharply.

  Riga shook her head, but held the bottle over Zara, relaxing her gaze. At first, she only saw the folds of the sheets, Zara’s frail hand upon the bed. She turned the bottle, and something writhed, coiled behind it, smooth skin patterned with black and yellow diamonds.

  She felt a wave of revulsion, and hastily returned the bottle to the table.

  “A snake,” Riga said. “I saw a snake. A big one.”

  Sal nodded. “A diamondback. It’s the poison. It’s strong, stronger than she is.” The shaman stared at her cousin. “You were right. I shouldn’t have brought them here, shouldn’t have insisted on going through with it.”

  “No. This is the fault of the person who poisoned her.”

  “I’ve been trying to find her, but I can’t cross over,” she said dully. “My energy’s too frayed.”

  Riga dragged Ash’s chair across the linoleum and sat beside Sal. She propped her elbows on her knees, thoughtful. Sal was a good shaman, probably a great one.

  “I can’t find Ankou either,” Sal continued. “But I’ve never needed his help like this before. Maybe I’m not worthy of it.”

  “Or maybe you don’t really need it.”

  Sal’s head turned slowly toward her, as if the movement was painful. “I told you, I can’t do it on my own.”

  “You told me you’re too frazzled to go into a trance right now. That’s different.” Riga edged closer to her. “Once, when I was your student, we journeyed together. Do you remember?”

  “I remember you got distracted by some hot fae in upper—”

  “I’m not talking about upper world,” Riga said, flushing. “You told me it was one of your more vivid journeys, that the two of us together were more than the sum of our parts.”

  Sal’s head sank back against the chair, and she stared at the ceiling tiles. “You think if we try together, I’ll be able to get past the barrier to lower world.”

  “That’s where you find the lost spirits, isn’t it?” Spirits – animal, human, and other – were down below dwellers. And Riga could handle spirits. “Why not try?”

  “Because you’re a magnet for trouble. Because in my state, I’ll be a magnet for trouble. Because I’m not even sure Zara is in lower world.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “I can’t! Aren’t you listening?”

  Riga lost patience. “Can’t? This is your job. So snap out of it, and stop feeling so God-damned sorry for yourself. You’re not even going to try because you’re afraid you may fail? By sitting here refusing to do anything, you will fail. Now get off your ass, and act like a shaman.”

  Sal’s eyes flashed. “Fuck you.”

  “Is that it?”

  “You can be a real bitch, you know that?”

  “And?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Whatever.” Christ, now she was channeling her teenaged niece. “So are we going to go get Zara, or not?”

  Sal breathed heavily, looked away. “Hell.”

  “I’m not journeying that far.”

  Eyes snapping, the shaman thrust a finger at Riga’s chest. “Fine. If you run out on me with some piece of hot faerie tail again, I’m going to whup your ass, which is what I should have done the last time.”

  A smile shadowed Riga’s face.

  “What?” Sal demanded.

  Riga shook her head. The fairy tale joke hadn’t been that funny the first time around.

  “You got headphones?” Sal asked.

  Riga pulled a pair of black ear buds out of her bag. “Noise reducing.”

  “Good. You’ll need that in this place. Some freaking bell or buzzer is always going off.”

  They pushed the two chairs side by side so they touched, and Sal plugged both sets of headphones into her audio player using an adaptor.

  “You remember how to do this?” Sal rummaged through her red leather purse and pulled out a small tin of mints. Opening it, she extracted a roughly carved figurine of a bear, and an oblong bit of quartz crystal. She placed the bear on the rolling table beside Zara’s bed.

  “I remember,” Riga said

  “And how to call the corners? I don’t like the energy in this room. Ideally, I’d burn some sage to help clear it, or use my rattle, but obviously we can’t do either here.”

  Riga could see the faeries now, glittering at the edge of her vision. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Good. I’ll take north, south, and the center. You take east and west. I’ll start.”

  Sal faced the north side of the room and raised her hands in benediction. “Honor and blessings to the north, the winter place, the element of earth. Demeter, Persephone, the great Mother goddesses, we call on you to bless our circle.” She clapped three times, then nodded to Riga.

  “Honor and blessings to the south, the summer place, element of fire... Kali, Brigitte...” She couldn’t think of any other fire goddesses. “We call on you.” Mimicking Sal, she clapped three times.

  They repeated it for the other directions, Sal finishing in the center.

  “Honor and blessings to the center, the place of mystery, element of spirit. Hecate—”

  At Hecate’s name, Riga felt something like a spark fly through her. That goddess still affected her in a way she didn’t understand.

  Sal clapped three times. “Okay, we’re ready. Let’s do this.”

  Riga sat, hands relaxed on the arms of the chair.

  Sal sank into the chair beside her, one arm touching Riga’s on the chair, the other against Zara’s still form. Lightly, in one hand, she held the crystal.

  “There’s a big pine tree in the hospital parking lot,” Sal said. “You see it when you came in?”

  “Yeah.”

  The pine was monstrous, its roots ripping gashes in the asphalt.

  “Good. Normally my starting point is a Sidhe mound in Wales, but we need a place we’re both familiar with, so we’ll start at the pine, journey down through its root system to the underworld,” Sal said.

  “Got it.” Riga shifted, tried to get comfortable in the hard chair. She found the recline lever, and lowered it. The chair jerked backward, squealing.

  Ash appeared in the door, looked around. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to try another soul retrieval,” Sal said.

  Riga shook her head. “Not try. Do.”

  “Do. See if you can give us some privacy for the next thirty minutes, will you?”

  He nodded, and disappeared out the door, closing it gently behind him.

  “Will thirty minutes be enough?” Riga asked. Things got tricky when two shamans journeyed together. It was easy to run off on tangents, become lost. And the practice was rare.

  “It will have to be. We’ll be lucky if we get that much time before another nurse pops in.”

  Riga closed her eyes, and centered herself, breathing deeply, relaxing her muscles. She inserted the ear buds.

  A steady drum beat throbbed. She took a moment to adjust to it, focusing on the rhythm, a double drum that accelerated her heartbeat while it lulled he
r mind. And then she thought of the tree, the reddish color of its jigsaw bark, the scattering of dried pine needles across the damp ground, the roots flowing through the asphalt. She was there now, could smell the vanilla scent of the sugar pine, feel the cold of the ground. She shrank, saw the world grow larger. A pinecone loomed above her, its thorns grew to spikes big enough to impale her.

  The beat thrummed on.

  Where was Sal?

  She waited a moment, then plunged beneath the earth. Time was short, and perhaps Sal was already below, waiting.

  She slid down a thick root and dropped into a wide passage lit by a sickly, luminous glow. Above her twisted roots, sickly white like worms. A beetle scuttled past, monstrous.

  “Sal?”

  Surely, Sal wouldn’t have gone down the passage without her.

  The drum beat continued, white noise she could almost ignore.

  There was a scuttling sound, and Sal pushed through an earthen wall and into the passage.

  She brushed dirt from her red sweater, looking around. “I thought I’d imagined it.”

  “What?” Riga asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

  “The journey is so vivid when we’re together, just like the last time all those years ago. I thought I’d imagined it, remembered it wrong.” She shook herself. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  They ran along the sloping, uneven ground, the light growing the deeper they penetrated until they reached an incline so steep it was nearly vertical. Unhesitating, they jumped, floated down, dandelions on a breeze, landing on rocky soil. Ahead, light streamed through a fissure in the earth. Sal pushed through, and Riga followed, emerging, blinking, on the shore of a wide lake. The sun shone white in the cloud streaked sky, reflected on the lake’s surface, eerily still. A floating dock zigzagged away from them, disappeared in the mountainous horizon. To their right, a path led into a forest, an unnatural mix of pines and tall, ivy covered trees Riga couldn’t identify.

  The drum and the pounding of her heart were one.

  “Which way?” Riga asked, needing to keep moving, to follow the rhythm. There was something uncanny about the place, the gleaming lake, the perfect dock, the sigh of wind in the pines.

  “I don’t know.” Sal put her hands on her wide hips, turning. “This isn’t where I usually come out. This isn’t your place, is it?”

  “I haven’t journeyed in twenty years. I don’t know what my place is.” But the dock tugged at her.

  “The forest is where I usually go,” Sal said.

  And it was Sal’s cousin they were searching for. Sal had a closer connection to Zara; Riga had to trust the shaman’s instincts. Reluctantly, she turned from the lake.

  A raven swept from the trees, snatched at her hair, clawed her scalp. Riga yelped and ducked, flinging her arms up protectively, too late. Something trickled down her ear, and she touched it. Her hand came away stained red.

  The raven settled upon the dock. It tilted its head to the side, peering at her with one beady black eye.

  “Or, we can take the dock.” Sal gestured toward the lake. “I’d hoped to meet bear, but since your spirit animal has shown up first... I guess this is your party.”

  Riga had forgotten – during her early shamanic days, raven had been her spirit guide. How had Sal remembered?

  They walked across the dock. Though it bobbed beneath their weight, it didn’t ripple the water. Riga peered over the side, could see straight to the moss covered stones at the bottom.

  She had no reflection.

  This was the otherworld, she reminded herself; normal rules didn’t apply. Or perhaps she was just as insubstantial in this place as a ghost was in her own world. It was unsettling though, that still lake surface, the sun moving across it – she could see its motion, wondered how long it would take to sink below the mountains.

  The raven circled above them, cawing.

  “We’re running out of time,” Sal said. “Hurry.”

  They ran along the dock and the lake shore changed – from alpine to barren desert to thick jungle. The sun sank behind the mountains, turning the sky the color of a blood orange.

  The dock forked. Raven soared above the left branch, to the shore and into a dense forest.

  Wordlessly, Sal and Riga followed, leaving the dock for dry sand. They raced through a gap in the tree line, and onto a sodden woodland path, pounded beneath canopies of trees with wide, dark leaves. A gibbous moon hung in the reddening sky and then vanished, hidden by the thickening forest.

  Through the trees, something flashed whitely. Riga stumbled to a halt, took two steps back.

  A chill rippled down her spine.

  In a clearing off the path, Zara stood in a white gown streaked with mud. She stared, motionless, contemplating the smooth trunk of a tree.

  “Sal.”

  The shaman turned. “Zara!” She bolted toward her cousin.

  “Wait!” Riga grabbed her arm. A chill swept through the forest, tossing the branches above them. “Let’s go slowly.”

  “We don’t have time.” Sal shook her off, hurrying forward.

  Riga stepped carefully over fallen branches, her booted feet crunching upon dried leaves. The shadows between the trees darkened, grew, and she felt a tremor of recognition. One foot sunk into a muddy puddle, and she pulled free with a sucking sound.

  Sal spoke softly to Zara, running her hands across the woman’s arms.

  Zara swayed, her eyes wide and vacant.

  “This isn’t just her soul fragment,” Sal said. “The poison’s in her here, too. I’ve got to get it out before I can ask her if she wants to return.”

  “Ask her?”

  “It’s still her decision. I can’t force her. But I can help heal her,” she said grimly.

  The flesh on the back of Riga’s neck prickled. Something was out there. She felt it, watching.

  The forest was utterly still, the drum an insistent beat that drove her blood. She clenched her fists, straining in the darkness to hear, to see.

  A wheel squeaked.

  Riga’s head whipped toward the sound. Three pairs of white eyes glowed in the shadows between the trees.

  “What was that?” Sal said.

  Riga stepped back, toward the shaman. “We’re not alone. Hurry.”

  Sal sang, a low, monotonous chant. She ran her hands along Zara’s arms, her gaze darting about the clearing.

  Riga took another step back, and her boot sank ankle deep in mud. She cursed, struggled to pull it out.

  The eyes brightened, drew closer, and the lumpen silhouettes of the children drifted from the forest, solidified, took form. The temperature in the clearing dropped.

  Zara moaned.

  “Is she coming out of it?” Riga’s breath frosted the air.

  “No, she’s getting worse. What’s happening?”

  “It’s those things I told you about that came with Ankou.” Ice crystals formed on the mud. She yanked her foot free.

  Sal spared them a glance, paling. “Get rid of them.”

  Riga summoned energy from above and below.

  Nothing.

  She took a breath, pushed her senses outward and felt... Nothing. She cursed beneath her breath. Of course she felt nothing, this was the otherworld, it was all magic, and in it, hers was lost. Her magic might have helped get her there, but she had even less control of it here than in ordinary reality.

  “I’ll try to draw them away from you,” Riga said. “If the drumbeat changes... I’ll meet you up there.”

  Zara swayed.

  Sal made a wild grab, caught her as she slumped to the ground.

  Zara’s mouth opened wide and her head dropped back, her eyes rolling in their sockets. Sal reached down her cousin’s throat. The shadows crept closer.

  “Now, Riga!”

  Riga charged through the clearing, branches snapping, and leapt onto the path toward the lake. She looked behind her, and stumbled to a halt, panting. The strange children were nowhere to be seen. And the
n she felt a chill, saw a shadow streak through the dark forest towards her. She turned and ran, her footsteps pounding in time to the drum, but the shadows were closing. She tried to run faster, but the drumbeat slowed her, forced her pace to match its own rhythm. Her legs shook, her movements rough, jerky.

  She burst through the trees, and onto the lakeshore. The moon shone dully upon the black water in a sky devoid of stars.

  The dock was gone.

  Riga stopped, dazed, then picked a direction at random and ran along the shore, its loose sand hampering her movements. She’d fallen into a nightmare, her limbs unresponsive, something dark and cold and unyielding in pursuit. Moonlight flattened the boulders and trees, as if she was trapped in a charcoal drawing. Cold tendrils reached for her.

  The drumbeat changed, accelerated, and she charged away. But the dock was gone, she didn’t know where she’d come from. She was hopelessly lost.

  Help me.

  A shadow blotted out the moon, swooped from the sky.

  She cried in alarm, crouched down.

  Raven swept her up, swung her, helpless, over the lake. His talons dug through her clothes, pierced her shoulder blades. Through the pain, she remembered.

  To become a shaman is not without pain.

  The moon’s reflection tracked her across the lake. A black path zigzagged below – the dock? Had Sal found it?

  The silhouette of the forest reared up before her, and the raven released her. She plummeted to the earth, landed softly upon the sand. The drumbeat increased, warning, and she scrambled forward, through the gap in the earth.

  She ran.

  Chapter 26

  Riga’s body jerked, and she sat forward in the hospital chair.

  Sal bent over Zara, chanting. The shaman cupped her hands to her mouth and pressed them to the crown of Zara’s head, then exhaled, a short, violent breath.

  The shaman straightened, stepped back. “We found her. We found her, Riga.”

  Zara stirred, sighed.

  “She’s going to be all right.” Sal burst into tears.

  Ash burst into the room, glared at Riga. “What’s wrong? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything!”