Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  “What’s next?” Jason asked.

  “I put on my warpaint, then we go.”

  “I’m going with you,” Carson said.

  “No. You aren’t.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “No. Whatever demon is running around in Sam would take one look at you and snap your neck.”

  “Then give me whatever you gave Jason,” Carson said. “I’m helping you get Sam back.”

  She turned and looked at him.

  “I’m pulling that demon out of Sam. Jason’s odds of surviving it are maybe fifty-fifty, but I can’t stop him from coming.”

  “Damn straight,” Jason said. Wait. What did she just say?

  “I can stop you. I’m going to make you into a witch one day. You aren’t going to go be flysplatter for a demonic freight train.”

  “So where are we going?” Jason asked. She paused from washing bowls in the sink.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  She turned back to the sink and continued working with an intensity that Jason thought wasn’t related to how clean the bowls were getting.

  “Has anyone gone looking for him?” Doris asked. “How long ago did he leave?”

  “Twenty minutes, maybe thirty,” Carson said.

  “I’m getting my keys,” Doris said. “Before you guys declare the end of the world, somebody should at least go looking for him.”

  “He’s long gone,” Samantha said. She stacked the bowls and went back to the living room.

  “Prove it,” Doris said. “You’re upset, Honey. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think it is.”

  She left and Jason sat on the couch to watch Samantha pack. No direction meant no moving. It was one of his rules. Going in the wrong direction was worse than doing nothing. Carson sat next to him.

  “I can prove it,” she said, looking up. “I know how to find him.”

  She sprung to her feet, letting her backpack fall sideways behind her as she sprinted upstairs. Jason glanced at Carson, then followed. She was standing in the middle of Sam’s room, looking around wildly.

  “Something he loved,” she said. “Something he never would have left without.”

  “What about me?” Jason asked. She looked at him.

  “Soulvesting in a human is extremely difficult to use. Human. Animate. Inanimate. Non-living. That’s the order of difficulty. I need non-living.”

  “What?”

  “Something he loved, Jason. Tell me what he loved.”

  Jason looked around the room.

  “It’s just stuff.”

  “The books your mom left him. Did he carry anything like that?”

  “They’re all in storage. They’re too dangerous to carry.”

  “He took his shoes and a bunch of his shirts,” she said.

  “So?”

  “I soulvest in my shoes. They get me from place to place and go everywhere with me. They’re important to me.”

  “Are you telling me that Sam loves his shoes?” Jason asked.

  “What would you do if I went and slashed all of your shoes open?” Samantha asked. He shrugged.

  “Get more.”

  “You wouldn’t be upset?”

  “That you made me get new shoes? Sure.”

  “But not about the old shoes?”

  He shrugged again, harder.

  “That’s not normal,” she said. “No, the shoes are obvious. I need something more obscure. Something he wouldn’t have had a chance to remember before he left.”

  Jason frowned, catching a glimpse of the chain around Samantha’s neck.

  “What about something he couldn’t get to?” he asked. She raised her eyebrows.

  “What have you got?”

  “My mom’s wedding ring is in the Cruiser.”

  “That’ll get him, if it doesn’t pull your mom by mistake,” she said.

  “You can do that?” Jason asked.

  “I certainly wouldn’t do it by accident, but some people would,” she said. “How do you feel about your mom’s ring?”

  “I miss my mom,” he said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No. Her ring.”

  “What about it?”

  “How would you feel if you lost it?”

  “I’d feel bad for losing my mom’s ring. Are you going to lose it? Sam would be really angry if you lost it.”

  “You wouldn’t feel like you lost a piece of her?”

  Jason paused.

  “No. I know where all her pieces are.”

  “No worries then. Let’s go.”

  She started to pack Sam’s stuff, and her own. It was maybe a three minute process, during which Jason got his own bag - already packed - and met her downstairs.

  “Let us know as soon as you figure anything out,” Carson said. Jason wouldn’t have given up that easily. He nodded.

  “Take care of your mom.”

  “Yeah.”

  Samantha was already out the door.

  “Good luck,” Carson called from the doorway.

  “Where is it?” Samantha asked, throwing her backpack into the back seat with Sam’s bag and her own.

  “Glove box,” Jason said, going to get in the driver’s seat. She got in and opened the compartment, rooting around in it for a minute.

  “Seriously? The glove box?” she asked. He reached around her, back around the back edge of the plastic top, finding the gap with his fingers where the pieces didn’t fit and pulled the ring from the little pouch taped there. He handed it to Samantha, starting the engine.

  “Point the way,” he said. She looked at the ring closely, then pulled a piece of thread out of her pocket.

  “I assume that’s special string,” Jason said.

  “Angel hair,” she said, tying it to the ring.

  “Which one?”

  “It’s a plant,” she said. “With long fibers.”

  “Oh.”

  She closed her eyes and he sat, watching, for a long time.

  “Your mom loved this ring,” she said. “She’s all over it.”

  “That sounds right.”

  “She loved your dad,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “There,” Samantha said. She dropped the ring and held it at the end of the string.

  “Is this scrying?” he asked. “You’re going to scry for him?”

  “Scrying is natural magic, and really unreliable. This is soul-merging. Light magic’s answer to pendulum scrying, but much more potent, because you actually have to know what you’re doing. Be quiet.”

  He watched as the ring spun on the string, then frowned. It had a small circle path it had been following, but it stopped.

  “Where are you?” Samantha asked. The ring swung in a slow steady arc along the length of the string, forward and to the left. Jason stared. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Samantha was watching him.

  “He’s that way.”

  He started the car and backed out of the driveway, the ring traveling like a compass as he turned onto the street.

  “How far?”

  “I don’t know. There are lots of theories on how to read the angle of the soulvested item, but none of them have any good proof. They just get more complicated as they try to explain variation. More angle is more distance. That much, everyone agrees on.”

  “Have you done this before?” Jason asked. She watched the ring twisting at the end of the string, otherwise fixed in front of her.

  “A few times. My instinct says he’s miles from here. You have the bearing?”

  “Yeah. South by southeast,” he said. “There’s nothing there.”

  “There is, eventually, but he could be out in the middle of nowhere, too. This takes a lot of focus. I’m going to let it go. We’ll check again in an hour or so.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” Jason said. She dropped the ring into her hand and nodded.

  “That’s fine. You’ll have to pull over to do it. You don’t want to read a direction while you’re accelerating. You get a bad rea
d.”

  “Let’s just check before I get on the highway, okay? Just to be sure he isn’t still around here.”

  “Okay.” She rubbed the back of her neck. He drove into darkness as the lights in the car shut off, glancing at her in the light of a street lamp once.

  “The screaming,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sam was in pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “That much?”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her forehead and looked at him. “He won’t remember. They never remember the first few minutes, the human or the demon.” She leaned her head against the window. “I’ll be one of the only people in the world to remember what it feels like to become possessed.”

  “That bad?” he asked.

  “It was his pain, not mine. But I’m going to enjoy pulling the demon out of him that much more, whether or not he remembers it. We’ll see how well I keep my temper after that. Tempting to follow it across and cause some more permanent damage.”

  “I vote yes,” he said. She laughed softly.

  “We’ll see if you ever develop a healthy fear of demons, and what you think then,” she said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  <><><>

  They took a state highway south through Missouri, making it as far as Little Rock before Jason had to quit.

  “I just can’t keep my eyes open any more,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You were power-crushed by a demon and had your ribs laid open,” Samantha said. “I’d take over, but I can’t either. We’ll grab a couple of hours of sleep, then we’ll get back on the road.”

  He rubbed his face with both hands.

  “Yeah.”

  “You mind if I sleep in the back?” Samantha asked.

  “Sure.”

  They woke around noon, and Samantha took out the ring. They weren’t headed south any more.

  “Northeast,” Jason said. “And he’s close.”

  “Why do you say that?” Samantha asked.

  “Basic tracking. You can’t get that much of a change in direction unless you’re close.”

  “Unless you can skip the space in the middle. It glitched,” she said. “Sam is further away now.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  <><><>

  They made it as far as Louisville before Sam moved again, late that night.

  “Northwest,” Jason said, tired. “Keep going, or sleep?”

  “Keep going,” Samantha said. “I’ll drive for a while. You sleep.

  <><><>

  She stopped for gas in Chicago, and Sam was due west. A long way west.

  <><><>

  They turned north at Cheyenne, looking for the right way across the rockies. Samantha was guessing Sam was in Seattle.

  <><><>

  In Montana, she checked again as Jason was ready to head west. They went east. She pulled maps looking for the best way to get south.

  <><><>

  North Dakota is a long state.

  <><><>

  In Minneapolis, Samantha frowned. Pulled out Jason’s phone as he drove. Sam was south east again, maybe the east coast at Virginia or one of the Carolinas. Conversation had been sparse. Neither of them had slept enough and they were getting a little short-tempered, but mostly Samantha guessed that Jason’s faith that she would find Sam and save him was waning. It had been most of a week.

  That wasn’t what concerned her, now, though.

  “Ninety-four?” Jason asked, reading road signs in the dusky light.

  She tossed the phone up on the dash.

  “Don’t you have any real maps around here?” she asked.

  “Under your seat,” he said. “Ninety-four?”

  She pulled out the atlas and searched for a US map.

  “That’s my exit, right there,” Jason said. “Where am I going?”

  “Give me a minute,” she said, trying to make shapes in time with the map.

  “You don’t have a minute. Make up your mind.”

  She traced the shape out in the air.

  “I don’t need a freaking Shaman savant. I need a navigator. I’m on the bypass, now.”

  “It goes in a circle,” Samantha said.

  “Right, because who cares if we get any closer to catching up to Sam? It’s not like he’s going to be there when we get there.”

  “No. It’s a circle. He’s guessing, but… A couple hours here, a couple hours there…”

  “Speak English or I’m throwing you out.”

  “Kansas City,” Samantha said. “Go south. Now.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “If we hit Chicago again, we can’t go back there. He’s made a shield against us. We need to go back to Doris’ now.”

  Jason’s foot dropped heavier on the accelerator.

  “That’s where he’s going, isn’t he?”

  “He was just trying to get us out of the way. If we finish the symbol and then go back to Kansas City, everything I put on for protection gets stripped.”

  “Clever. So we beat him there?”

  “We beat him there.”

  <><><>

  “Can he tell where you are?” Jason asked softly as they sat parked across the street from Doris’ house, as far from a streetlight as Jason had been able to get.

  “I don’t think so. I can’t say for sure.”

  “So this could be a trap.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where is he?”

  Samantha pulled out the ring.

  “Still in Virginia.”

  “What’s in Virginia?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I suspect you’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue with you,” Jason said. “Shall we go in?”

  “We go in armed. Doris and Carson are human. Don’t trust anyone else in there.”

  “Doris is going to kill us.”

  “Why?”

  “I assume we’re not going to knock.”

  <><><>

  Jason made quick work of the lock on the front door, and he heard the sharp noise behind him as Lahn cut the air in Samantha’s hand. He glanced, catching the erratic reflections of moonlight off of the irregular blade. Samantha was alert, but she wasn’t focused on anything specific. He opened the door and let them in, drawing his gun. She went into the front room while he stood in the hall, then came back and followed him to the living room and then the kitchen. Nothing moved. They went back to the stairs, creeping up them as quietly as they could. Jason realized for the first time that Samantha wasn’t carrying her backpack. Just her and Lahn and whatever weapons she had hidden in her clothing. Odd.

  He searched Sam’s room quickly, then, as he was started into his room, there was an ominous click.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “Turn,” Doris said. He put his hands up slowly and turned, keeping the gun on his far side.

  “It’s us,” Samantha said. Carson came out of the bathroom and put his gun down.

  “Why are you here with no warning?” Doris asked. “You know I shoot first. Arthur is turning in his grave right now that you’re still alive.”

  “I know,” Jason said. “I’m sorry. You guys are okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?”

  There was a sigh from down the hallway.

  “Because they knew I was coming,” Sam said.

  <><><>

  Doris flew backwards into her room and the door slammed, then Carson disappeared into the bathroom and the door slammed after him.

  “Hi, guys,” Sam said.

  “Hi, Carly,” Samantha said. “You want to go downstairs and talk, or you want to pick up where we left off last time?”

  “You were sandbagging,” Sam said.

  “Talk then,” Samantha said. “I don’t like hallways. You understand.”

  Sam yawned.

  “I’ve got all the time in the world, dear.”

&nbs
p; Jason stared at Sam. Like when Samantha had possessed him, there was something odd about him. Something visibly un-Sam. Sam’s mouth spread into a smile, one Jason recognized well, and Jason was too slow to step out of the way when Sam grabbed his throat.

  “What should I do with the pointless one?” Sam asked. “You lied to me about how much you care about him.”

  “Of course I did. It doesn’t count with a demon. I get out of practice, otherwise,” Samantha said. Sam grinned, eyes wild. “Bring him. It’ll be more fun if he watches.”

  Sam picked Jason up and held him over his head by the neck. Jason felt his eyes bug out and fought to keep his tongue in his mouth. He kicked at Sam, but Sam pushed his ankles away as if Jason were merely a toddler throwing a tantrum.

  “Oh, come on, you can’t tell me that killing him like that would be more fun,” Samantha called from the stairway. Sam’s eyes narrowed and his tongue played along his teeth.

  “I like to watch them squirm.”

  “How about better light, then?” Samantha asked.

  Carson was throwing himself against the bathroom door. Doris shot hers.

  “Such a ruckus,” Sam said, tossing Jason aside.

  “Come along, Carly,” Samantha called from the bottom of the stairs. “We have things to discuss, you and I.”

  Sam made a shooing motion at Jason, and Jason hurried down the stairs after Samantha. His side was on fire, and he had a hard time not limping a bit sideways. Samantha had stopped putting the glue on his side a couple days ago, but the wound was still sensitive, and he had gone shoulder-first into the wall. Samantha had turned the lights on and was standing in the middle of the living room. Sam stood in the doorway and made a sweeping motion with his arm that knocked Jason into another wall. This time he stuck. The same immense force that had kept him pinned while Samantha had fought Brandt help him firm now, like laying under a piano. Or a pile of bricks. Samantha grinned.

  “Oh, don’t lie to me, now, Sam,” Sam said. “I know your game. Put away your little sword.”

  “You remember this?” Samantha asked coyly. “Brandt was impressed, too.”

  “Brandt and I had a falling out. I’m only here to make your life miserable. And take your psychic for a spin. He’s actually pretty impressive. I’ve had quite a lot of fun with him.”

  Lahn disappeared back into the sheath Samantha wore under her shirt, and she grinned.

  “Oh, I imagine.”

  They circled each other.

  “I’m going to rip you bone from bone while Sam watches. He is awake, by the way. Then I’m going to do the same thing to the pointless one over there. Or maybe I’ll leave you alive to watch while he dies, then drink your blood. Or… The ones upstairs. I’m going to break you into little pieces and leave you alive while I drain the lot of them. So many options.”