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“Hey, you’ve got me eating frozen Italian dinners instead of mac and cheese. All your nagging did some good.”
“I don’t nag.”
“You do too. Italian dinners have vegetables in them. I haven’t eaten vegetables without nagging in my whole twenty-seven years.”
“Arright, if you say so, Jo.” He gave me a good-natured grin, like he knew he was humoring me.
Actually, it was true. I’d started eating better—frozen entrees did qualify as better than an endless diet of macaroni and cheese—in part because I wanted to look as good as he did at seventy-three. Hell, I’d be glad to look as good as he did at twenty-eight. “I get off work at seven, barring disaster.”
Gary’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Been any lately?”
I hesitated, then brushed the answer away with a wave of my hand. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Arright.” Gary beamed at me. “Look, I gotta take off, there’s this crazy lady cop who wants to ticket my cab. Call when you’re on the way over. Dinner at seven-thirty.”
“It’s a date,” I repeated. “See you tonight.”
Gary gave me a broad wink and climbed into his cab. I stood on the sidewalk, smiling stupidly as I watched him drive away.
Gary being back in town lifted my spirits despite the oppressive heat. With a dinner date to look forward to, I stopped writing so many tickets and grabbed a doughnut for lunch. I wanted to drop into the astral realm to apologize to Coyote, and a real meal would take too long. Besides, I was on street beat, which I told myself gave me license to eat anything I wanted because I’d walk it off. So far I believed me.
Doughnut in hand, I scurried down to the garage, my favorite place in the station. The smell of gasoline and motor oil soothed the savage beast, or at least the savage Joanne.
Not everyone down there would meet my eye. I still hadn’t gotten used to that, especially from Nick, who’d been my supervisor and a pretty good friend not all that long ago. His greeting was made up of shoving his hands in his pockets and lifting his shoulders as he dropped his chin, turning him into a no-neck wonder. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the wall as I gave him a tentative smile. Tentative didn’t used to be in my vocabulary around the boys in the garage. We’d worked together for three years, and I’d thought I was just one of the guys. But in January I’d invited the Wild Hunt into the garage’s office, and two months later I’d collapsed on the stairs, bleeding from the ears. Since then things had been a little touchy when I came down to visit. I hoped if I just kept it cool everybody would relax again, but so far it hadn’t worked.
Still, hope sprang eternal. I strengthened my smile for Nick and said, “Hi,” as normally as I could. My voice squeaked and broke, which at least made him look at me. I cleared my throat and smiled again, wishing it didn’t feel plastic. “I was wondering if I could hang out in the office for a little bit.”
Nick’s gaze snapped back to the wall and he shrugged his shoulders higher. “Sure. Whatever.”
Not the most ringing endorsement I’d ever heard. Nick stalked off to harass one of the other mechanics, who gave me a wry look and rolled his eyes. It made me feel better, and I said, “Thanks,” to Nick’s retreating back before turning to discover my arch nemesis, Thor the Thunder God, standing about eight inches behind me. Thor—whose real name was something dull like Ed or Eddie or Freddie—had been hired to replace me in the motor pool. He was blond, about six foot five, and had shoulders that Thor himself would envy. I figured him taking my job gave me license to call him whatever I wanted. For some reason he didn’t like it.
We both stepped the same direction, trying to get out of each other’s way. We both hesitated, then lurched the other way. By the third twitch, I was grinning. “Shall we dance?”
He took a deliberately large step backward and gestured me by with a sarcastic flourish. My smile fell away. “Thank you, O Mighty God of Thunder.” I saw his mouth twist as I headed for the office. It was the one place in the station I thought I could slide into the astral realm without the help of a drum. I was comfortable there, and back in January I’d done enough—
This shaman thing was getting to me. I’d almost thought done enough magic there without the idea even making me hitch. I sat down with a shiver and tried to push the thought away. Despite everything, I didn’t like being comfortable enough with the idea that magic was real to just think it casually. Having oatmeal for breakfast was casual. Doing magic was not.
Then, excruciatingly aware of the irony, I relaxed and thought of my garden.
The bottom fell out of the world and I slid into a tunnel, twisting and bumping over earthen ridges, fast enough to make my nose tickle from the vibrations. It reminded me of the defensive driving course at the academy, rattling over speed bumps placed too closely together.
The tunnel shot to the left, leveling out and narrowing. I was aware that, like the tunnel, I became smaller and smaller as I scurried along it. In what little studying I’d done, I’d read that shapeshifting inside one’s own psyche was the first step toward a complete and physical shape-change. The book had talked earnestly about transforming into an eagle, a bear, a wolf—the usual World Wildlife Fund Charismatic Megafauna sorts of creatures. Nothing I’d read ever mentioned people turning into badgers or earthworms.
I realized with a dismayed jolt that the tunnel had disappeared entirely and I was grinding my way through the earth blindly, gnawing on dirt to move forward.
Earthworm. I really needed to learn to be careful about what I was thinking in trance states.
Badger, I thought encouragingly, and a few seconds later burst upward through the earth in a flurry of dirt and strong claws. I scrambled out of my tunnel and shook myself all over, bits of grass and soil plopping to the grass around me.
Everyone has an inner landscape, shaped by the events and thoughts that make a life. The first time I’d been in mine, it had been stiff and parched. Now it looked distorted, seen from only several inches above the ground and in faded grayscale. To the right was a thick, shimmering pool of mercury, ripples wobbling over the surface to break against the shore. Behind it was a tall granite-streaked bluff, too high to easily see the top of from a badger’s vantage point. To the left, a lawn manicured so short it was nearly dead spread out, a handful of dark-leafed hedges sprouting up in asture blocks of green. Stone pathways and stone benches made straight lines through the garden.
Possibly, just possibly, I still had some inner-garden nurturing to do.
Immediately behind me, my badger hole folded in on itself and smoothed out again, leaving lawn behind. “Well, that’s something,” I said out loud, as the world around me stained with color. The pool faded from mercury to clear, its earthy bottom refracting brown through reflected gray skies. I rolled onto my back, briefly missing the extraordinary strength of the badger’s legs, and closed my eyes. “Coyote?” I tried to picture him, long-legged and golden-eyed, then laughed silently as the image slid between Coyote-the-man and Coyote-the-coyote. Straight black hair drooped over perked furry ears. He looked like a character from Disney’s Robin Hood gone terribly wrong.
A rustle hissed over the grass like wax paper sliding against itself. I sat up, grinning. “You’re always reading my mind,” I said. “So get a load of how I think of…you?”
A rattlesnake swayed in front of me, black eyes reflecting the sudden paleness of my skin.
A snake in my garden.
For one hysterical moment I looked for an apple tree. Then panic took over and I crab-walked backward, elbows and knees going everywhere. It took another few seconds to make myself stop by asserting enough control to dig my fingers into the earth. “My garden,” I croaked. “You can’t be here.”
The rattler slithered forward a few inches, dry scrape against the short grass. “You can’t be here,” I repeated. It lifted its head and hissed at me, long tongue darting in and out. I shot to my feet, barely keeping myself from leaping to one of the stone benches and screaming like a ’50s housewife. It was my garden. My rules were supposed to apply. I bit the inside of my cheek and closed my eyes, reverting to the car metaphor I was most comfortable with. Rolling up the mental windows and making a shield of glass around myself reminded me of movies where the venomous animal was kept away from the actors by a sheet of glass.
The snake bonked its nose against the glass, striking out and coiling back as I opened my eyes. Its tongue thrust out again, and it reared back, expressionless flat eyes somehow looking offended. I grinned in a breathless combination of triumph and fear, and waggled my fingers at it. “G’bye, then.”
For once I let myself forget the vehicle metaphor, and instead spun glass. Heat poured off my body as I willed it to soften the shield between myself and the snake. I blew air through pursed lips and the glass expanded, spilling clear and delicate over the lawn as I protected my garden. The snake squiggled backward, forced to the edges of the garden.
I nearly had the thing vanquished when it shifted.
It didn’t change like Coyote did, inside a blink. Instead it reared up, making a long slender line of itself, balancing on a single coil of muscle. A hood flared, cobralike, then widened farther, broadening until it became shoulders. The body thickened, arms sprouting and waist narrowing. Hips splayed, legs splitting from the expanding breadth of muscle that had been its body. The coil upon which she had balanced became feet, small and bare. I jerked my eyes up to her face.
The rattlesnake’s dead eyes gazed back at me; like Ra, she was human-shaped with a snake’s head, large enough to fit the body. She flicked her tongue at me once more and completed the transformation into a brisk-looking Native American woman whose age I couldn’t judge. Her eyes were still very black, though bright with reflected sunlight. She had salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles around her eyes. Her cheeks were round over a thin mouth that looked like it was used to smiling, but which was at the moment pushed out in a thoughtful moue. “Well, you certainly are a handful.”
“What?”
“You’re a handful,” she repeated. “Sliding around the astral realm, leaving psychic debris all over the place, and with such terrible shields I could walk right in here. I can see what needs to be done. At least you have potential,” she added, shaking her head. “You nearly pushed me out just now.”
I set my teeth and reared my head back, reestablishing the crystalline wall. It glimmered, becoming a solid curve of glass between the snake woman and myself. Her eyebrows—straight and slightly angled, like Spock’s—rose a fraction of an inch, and she took a step back. “You see?” She sounded pleased.
“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
“My name is Judy Morningstar,” she said. “I’m going to be your teacher.”
CHAPTER SIX
“The hell you are.” Guilt mixed with incredulity in my voice. Coyote’d just finished telling me I needed a teacher, and I hated to admit he might be right. “Get out of my head. I’m doing just fine on my own.” Ah, yes. The petulant, spoiled child tone. That always went over well.
Judy sat down with irritating grace, as if she’d had it drilled into her by a dance instructor when she was too small to protest. “You’ve regressed from what your abilities six months ago were,” she disagreed. “Even three months ago. You haven’t accepted your power or the responsibility that comes with it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I stopped Cernunnos, didn’t I? I fought the banshee. That all took power.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded. “In the moment of crisis, you did what had to be done, with the tools at hand. You used enormous power, but without regard for the consequences.”
A thin trickle of apprehension dribbled down my spine. “I was careful. The hospitals and the airport, all the power stayed on so people would be okay.” Chills swept over my arms regardless of the heat, oppressive even here in my own garden. I tried rubbing the goose bumps away without success.
“Consequences aren’t always so easily seen as that, Joanne. You know there’s something wrong, yet you ignore it.”
The discolored streets and life-lights I’d seen with my second sight flashed through my memory, streaky vision of wrongness. “I saw it,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t know what it is, though.”
“It’s you,” Judy said. “The power you used six months ago disrupted weather systems all over the world, and worst of all in Seattle. How long did it take the snow to melt, Joanne?”
Seattle, not notorious for snow, had seen a storm that began the week after I gained shamanic powers and hadn’t stopped worth mentioning until April. When spring hit, it did so overnight, temperatures soaring into the seventies. There’d been flooding for weeks, and since then it’d been drier than bones. I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking my head. Denial: it wasn’t just a river in Egypt. The worst part was the uncomfortable, shoulder-hunching suspicion that she was telling God’s own truth. I knew something was wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find its center. I also hadn’t looked at myself. Dammit.
“You’ve left a mess to clean up, Joanne. You used tremendous power once or twice, and what have you done since then?”
My shoulders hunched again, without my permission. I hated body language. Most of it didn’t pass through my brain for a spot-check on what I wanted to give away.
It wasn’t that I’d done nothing with the gifts that had been catalyzed in me. I’d done detail work, fixing up chips in peoples’ paint, so to speak. My coworker Bruce got a hairline fracture on his ankle and the doctors had been astounded at how quickly he healed. Not quite overnight, but within a few days he was running again, without discomfort. I took a perverse pleasure in smoothing over hangnails and papercuts when I shook hands. One of the books I’d read said those who needed healing had to believe the healing could be done. I’d discovered that for small physical injuries, being unaware that healing was taking place was just about as good.
But none of it was earth-shattering, world-saving stuff, and the truth was, most of it made no long-term difference to the people I’d helped.
My shoulders inched farther toward my ears. “Look, I promise I’ll do better, okay? Go away.”
“I can’t do that, Joanne. I’m committing myself to teaching you, and unlike you, I take that responsibility seriously.”
Anger flared in my belly, sending blood up to stain my cheeks and make my ears hot. “It’s not that I don’t take it seriously. I just never asked for this in the first place—”
“But you accepted it.” There was a note of smugness in her voice, almost as unlikable as my whining. “Do you accept me as your teacher, Joanne Walker?”
I scowled at the pond. Coyote wanted me to have a teacher. “Did Coyote send you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Genuine surprise filled her voice. “You called out for help twice today. Traditionally it takes three cries, but I thought you might not want to wait. You expected someone as powerful as Coyote to send you a teacher?”
My shoulders couldn’t hunch any farther, so I tightened my arms around my ribs. “It seemed likely. Anyway, I didn’t know I was yelling for help.”
Judy pursed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “If you’re on casual terms with Coyote, maybe I misinterpreted your need for help.” She got to her feet as smoothly as she’d sat, bowing her head toward me. “I hope I’ll see you again, Joanne.” She began to fade, again not like Coyote, but as if she were a ghost.
I gritted my teeth and dug my fingers into my ribs. “Wait.”
The fade stopped and she lifted her head again, one eyebrow raised in question. I clenched my jaw a couple of times before asking, “Who are you? I mean, how do I know you’re qualified to teach me? Do you even exist outside here?” I swept the fingers of one hand in a circle, more meaning to encompass the astral realm than my garden.
Judy gave me a very brief, wry smile. “You mean, would I answer if you dropped me an e-mail message? Not usually. I’m terrible about checking it. As for qualified…” She spread her hands and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve practiced magic for most of my existence. We could try a handful of lessons and you could decide if I’m the teacher for you.”
“Most of your existence?” I thought that was a weird word to choose, and it showed in my voice. Judy’s smile went less wry and more open.
“You, of all people, should know that life is too limited a term for those who walk in other realms.”
I remembered, quite vividly, a sour-faced shaman who was irritated at her untimely death because she was young in the practice of shamanism, and others who had been tolerant of her because they had far more experience, even though some of them looked much younger in years. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Yeah. I guess so. All right.” I pressed my lips together and looked at her again. “All right, fine. We’ll see how it goes for, like, three lessons, okay? And then I get to reevaluate.” The crystal wall I’d built had dimmed during our conversation, a physical sign that I was relenting mentally.
Judy smiled and ducked her head in another semibow. “Wonderful. We’ll meet here tomorrow at six to begin.”
“Six? In the morning?”
“The mind is clearer and less burdened after dreaming.”
I groaned. “Okay. Six. God.”
Judy grinned, took one step backward, and disappeared.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I muttered. I wished I thought I’d accomplished ridding myself of her, but it was painfully clear that she’d opted to leave on her own. I curled a lip grouchily and cast out my consciousness, calling for Coyote.
There was no answer.
I opened my eyes again, watching the clock mark away seconds in clicks that hadn’t seemed loud when I went under. I had fifteen seconds of lunch break left, and a sour lump of doughnut in my belly.
The second hand swept to the top. I got to my feet and walked out of the office, saying, “Hey,” unbidden when Thor accidentally met my eyes. He jerked his head in a nod, a startled, “Hey,” following me up the stairs.
Another “Hey,” caught my attention as I headed for the front doors, Billy swinging around a corner to grin beefily down at me. “Joanie. There you are. Snakes are good juju. Thought you’d like to know.”
I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then shook myself. “Could’ve fooled me. What do you mean?”
“Looked ’em up on the Net, but I really should’ve known it before. I mean, think about it. The Hippocratic symbol—”
“—a staff with the snakes twined around it. Duh.”
Billy grinned. “Yep. Duh. So, yeah, basically, good vibes. They’re symbols of healing and renewal and change.”
I thought of Judy, shifting from snake to woman in my garden, and tried to smile. “Great. Good. I could use some.”
Billy’s eyebrows drew down. “You okay, Joanie? You look like you lost your best friend.”
Memory hit me in the sternum, so real and immediate that my breath stopped. I lifted my hand, pressing the heel against my breastbone, trying to clear the tightness. My heart pounded in fast, thick pulses that brought the doughnut back up to the gagging point, making me swallow heavily. Color burned my cheeks, and I resented my fair skin all over again.
“Joanie? Are you okay?” Billy caught my shoulders, concern wrinkling his forehead. My vision was cloudy, a haze settling down between us. For a few seconds all I could do was remember.
I was fifteen and my father and I had been living in North Carolina for over a year, by far the longest time I’d ever lived in one place in my life. I’d never been anywhere long enough to make good friends; that pretty, petite Sara Buchanan had chosen me as a best friend was a source of regular amazement and pleasure to me. But in memory, her eyebrows were drawn down over angry hazel eyes, and the golden-brown skin that I envied so much was suffused with furious red.
She’d said she didn’t like him. I was already terrified by what I’d done in trying to fit in, trying to make a boy like me. I hadn’t meant for things to go as far as they did, and I only wanted someone to tell me it’d be okay. She’d said she didn’t like him, and when I’d whispered that, confused and frightened, she’d barked derisive laughter at me. I lied! God, what was I supposed to say, yeah, I like him? How obvious is that? God, Joanne, don’t you know anything?
“No.” I whispered it now, just like I’d done then. No, I didn’t know anything. I’d grown up solitary enough, with my father rather than girls for company, that I’d honestly had no idea that her hair-tossing denial had been a front.
Tiny black spots of panic swam at the corners of my vision, etching around the memory of Sara until she stood out, full of vibrant color, against an inky background. There was fear in my stomach, more potent than what I’d felt with the boy. The First Boy; even in memory I didn’t let myself think his name. Panic edged through me, so I could feel the flow of blood fluttering through my heart, little missed murmurs that I couldn’t catch my breath to banish. Like the tide coming in, sound thrummed against my eardrums, blocking out Sara’s words, although I could see them in the shape of her mouth.
I’m never speaking to you again.
And she didn’t.
She watched me with cool disdain that turned into hate when I began to show a few months later. The First Boy went back to his mother’s people in Canada, and none of us, not me, not Sara, certainly not the Boy, ever told anyone he was the father. When the twins were born and the little girl died, I tried to ask Sara to speak for her. She looked through me as if I wasn’t there. I’d lost my best friend.
And even now, almost thirteen years later, tears stung my eyes as I shook off Billy’s hands. “I’m all right.”
I didn’t sound all right, my voice thick and stuffy and coming through my nose. I was afraid to blink, for fear those tears would roll down my cheeks. Billy’s whole face turned down like an unhappy Muppet and he put his arm around my shoulders.
“Come on. A cold washcloth will help.” He walked me down the hall, blocking me from the other officers’ view with his body, and ushered me into the men’s bathroom. I let out a stressy little giggle.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a boy’s bathroom before. I thought they were supposed to be all dirty and gross.” The words spilled out in a too-high, too-fast voice, but it was better than bursting into tears. Billy smiled, pulling paper towels out of the dispenser and running water over them.
“Here you go. You really think Morrison’d let us keep the bathroom all dirty and gross?”
I buried my face in the cold towels, pressing the wet paper against my eyes. “No,” I admitted hoarsely. My shoulders dropped as the coolness pulled some of the burning from my eyes and cheeks. I snuffled, lowering the papers to find Billy leaning against a sink, arms folded over his chest as he frowned at me.
“You okay, Joanie? You want to tell me what that was all about?”
I wiped my nose on my wrist and snuffled again, looking away. “I’m just being stupid.” I was suddenly tired, the price of sudden and high emotion. And maybe the price of using a power that I’d been doing my best to ignore for several months. I’d been uncharacteristically emotional the day I became a shaman, too, now that I thought about it. “It’s been one of those days. I’ve been up and down and all over the place.”
“That girl this morning a friend of yours?”
“What?” I looked at him, then dropped my shoulders, relieved for an excuse to hang my behavior on. “No. No. I guess I’m just a little more freaked out about it than I thought.” It was as good an excuse as any.
“Happens to the best of us,” Billy said. “You need a drink.”
My eyes bugged. “I’m on duty.”