ground, kicking up sprays of snow as I tromped through the park, a few steps ahead of Billy.
I could feel Billy walking behind me on a more than physical level. In January I’d asked people to offer up their energy to help me net a god. Billy was getting ready to do that again, coiling his own essence into a ball that he’d be able to share with me when I needed it. Not, I thought, unlike what I’d done for my mother, in the memory/dream connection that morning. I blurted, “Sheila didn’t defeat that thing by herself,” filling up the silence of the snow-covered field with my voice. “I was there.”
“Of course you were there.” Billy sounded confused. “She was pregnant with you.”
“No, I mean, I was there…twice.” Such a gift I had for explanation. “He was kicking her ass. I threw her some power. It went right through…me…into her.”
“You boosted your fetal self so your mom could draw enough power to defeat the Blade?”
Billy made it sound so succinct and sensible that I had to look over my shoulder at him to see if he was kidding. He wasn’t. I nodded. “Yeah. And then he noticed me, the adult me, and came after me, which distracted him enough that Sheila could…get him.” I didn’t really know what she’d done, besides stab a sword of light through his spinal cord. Maybe that was enough to set your average evil minion back thirty years.
“So,” Billy said, “when you’ve got this time-travel thing down pat, you want to slip back to about, oh, ’85 and tell me to invest in Microsoft?”
I laughed. “Only if you promise to share the proceeds with me.” I hunched my shoulders, trying to rid myself of the itchy sensation between the shoulder blades. My interference with Sheila’s confrontation twenty-seven years ago felt important. I just wasn’t sure why.
I bounced off a wall that wasn’t there and crashed back into Billy’s chest. He oofed, catching me, then frowned down at me. “Joanie?”
“I have no fucking clue.” I put my hand out and encountered resistance. I prodded, then stepped forward and leaned into it, feeling like a mime. Billy fought a grin and completely lost the battle.
“Gonna grow up to be Marcel Marceau?”
“I sure as hell hope not. Can you, um…?”
Billy, showing a remarkable ability to understand Jo-speak, edged around me and walked through the wall I’d hit. He turned, eyebrows lifted.
“Shit,” I said in my best thoughtful tone. And, “What the fuck.” Apparently crashing into invisible walls brought out the naughty words in me. Curious, I pulled my glove off and put my hand against it directly.
A dangerous burst of dull red flashed around the entire baseball diamond, so quickly it was gone almost before I registered it. A tingle of malicious familiarity made the nerve in my elbow ache.
Morrison was right. The Blade had found a way to recognize me.
“Joanie?” Billy stepped back through the barrier as if it wasn’t there. I leaned harder on it, prodding at it with my hands and trying to do the same with my mind. It failed miserably. I did not think of my mind as a poking instrument. There was no scalpellike wit here, no sharp-as-a-knife insights. Nor could I come up with a car analogy that would let me slide through the wall. Cars and walls, in my experience, smashed together, not phased through one another. Not that I’d ever smashed up a car myself. Petite was the only vehicle I’d ever owned and I’d have killed myself before running her into anything.
“Joanie?” Billy asked again. I took my hand off the wall, my nerve quieting as soon as I broke the contact.
“I can’t get through.” Obviously. “He put up some kind of firewall.”
“A firewall.”
“Yeah, you know. To keep unfriendlies out of your computer network?”
“I know what a firewall is, Joanie. I’m just questioning your usage. How come it let me through, if it’s a firewall?”
I lifted my eyebrows at him. “It doesn’t recognize you as an unfriendly. It’s programmed for me.” It was a
“Right. So can you still do the thing you were going to do?”
I pursed my lips and looked through the invisible barrier. “One way to find out.” The core of power in me was waking up, the wall providing some kind of challenge it felt ready to stand up to. I was pretty sure it was a false high, but I was willing to take it.
“Last time I did this,” I said, more to myself than Billy, “it didn’t actually do a damned bit of good.”
“You’re older, wiser, and stronger now.” There was an unexpected resonance to Billy’s voice, a depth of faith that I knew full well I didn’t deserve. Still, it made me straighten my shoulders and drag in a deep breath of cold air. I closed my eyes momentarily, feeling the steam from my breath beading into water on my eyelashes.
When I opened them again, I wasn’t quite in my own body anymore. The core of silver-blue energy was alive inside me, pushing me out as though there wasn’t enough room for the two of us in this town. For a moment I felt like I was being given a gift I didn’t really deserve: I hadn’t done any of the training Coyote thought I should, and I wasn’t sure I ought to be able to slip out of my body so easily.
The flip side to that, equally frightening, was that if I could do it without any training, then maybe he was right, and it really was something I should be doing with my life. I didn’t like that possibility any better at all.
Right in front of me, the Blade’s firewall glimmered dark red, like blood seeping out from the heart of the world. It cut off my ability to see anything inside it with more than ordinary eyes. I turned my head very slowly, unsure if my body was doing the same thing, but afraid to move too quickly for fear of jarring myself out of the double vision. Beyond the firewall, the world was full of neon colors, pulses of life that looked like a kid with fingerpaints had gone wild. Billy was just to my right, a swirling ball of orange and fuchsia energy held in his hands. I whispered, “Thanks,” and though I was pretty sure I hadn’t said it out loud, he crooked a grin and nodded his head once in acknowledgment. I reached out for his colors, calling them to me as politely as I could. They leaped out of his hands, whirling together like agitated kittens, and spun into the silver and blue core of me.
I felt, instantly, a dozen times stronger. My mind cleared, focus spilling through my limbs as if the blood had just remembered that it was supposed to be running. I didn’t expect the sudden boost in clarity. It suggested my power really hadn’t recovered from the run-in with the Blade that morning. Or almost thirty years ago. Whichever. The point was, if Billy’s energy was bringing the world into that much sharper relief, I was even more tapped than I’d thought.
Buoyed by his dancing fuchsia and brilliant orange, I spread my hands, sending tentacles of power darting over the Blade’s shield. Silver slithered over red, trailing my and Billy’s colors like banners, testing and tracing the barrier. I went up, not around, looking for weak points that would allow me to hack into the system.
Giggling while out of body was an interesting experience. It felt like champagne bubbles in my nose and fingertips, little sparkles of glee that didn’t require containment.
As if in response to my laughter, the red wall faltered.
My giggles cut off as I jumped to take advantage of the weakness, a thin spot in the barrier that began to strengthen again even as I slid threads of power into it. I envisioned taloned nails that could grasp and tear more efficiently than my own, and worried at the spot like a determined rodent. I found myself grinning again, wondering what Coyote would think of me throwing over the car analogy in favor of using psychic rats to claw my way through a magical firewall. Even as I grinned, a silver tendril punched its way through the wall. Other colors, Billy’s and mine both, leaped to the spot, squirming through and braiding together to strengthen each other without ever blending or losing any of their own distinctive coherence.
My hands lifted of their own accord, making claws that wrenched apart from one another, as though prying open a bear trap. The wall above me groaned and then tore, great jagged chunks ripping free with the same metal-on-metal shrieks I’d encountered that morning.
I was abruptly very cold, sweat standing out on my face and beading into my eyes. A dispassionate part of my mind suggested
