Raven Calls

needed it. Tara went thick and gray around me, its power tainted more strongly than before, but of course it was, if Brigid was dead. If she had been dead for millennia, and I saw no other possible explanation, then Tara had been missing one of its protectors for most of human history.

A spiderweb of blue and black was buried in Brigid’s chest. Deep in it, squeezing her lungs, poisoning her blood: the Morrígan’s magic, killing Brigid instead of me. Sick to my stomach, I knelt beside her.

With the Sight, I saw her heart beat once. A slow painful spasm, but a heartbeat. Panicked relief surged and I put my hand over her heart, healing magic already pouring out.

She caught my wrist. I had no idea where she’d gotten the strength to move, but she caught my wrist and she smiled. Shook her head, and whispered, “Not yet, gwyld. Not yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet? You’re going to die if I don’t act now! Jesus! Gary, talk some sense into this wo—”

Gary wasn’t there.

I forgot about Brigid in an instant, stumbling to my feet to look around. Tara, with the exception of Brigid’s presence and the heavier grayness to its aura, was the same. Quiet with morning, its power running through the land. The Lia Fáil was shrieking again, which I’d barely even noticed. Everything was the same.

But Gary hadn’t been returned to this time and place at the end of our adventure. Hands shaking, I fumbled for the cell phone the precinct had assigned me. I’d quit too abruptly to give it back, and no doubt somebody would be outraged at running up international phone bills on it, but that was a problem for another time. I found Gary’s listing, swore violently as the out-of-country code told me it didn’t know how to call that number and got down on my knees to put my forehead against the grass in supplication toward remembering Ireland’s call code. It popped to mind and I punched it and Gary’s number in, trembling with anticipation. If the gods—and I meant that rather literally—were kind, he’d pick up from somewhere in the west of Ireland, no worse for wear.

He didn’t pick up. After several rings a recorded voice informed me that the number was unavailable. A tiny scared caw broke at the back of my throat and I called again, getting the same message. Then I called Morrison.

He picked up on the second ring, a too-crisp alertness in his voice. “Walker? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Gary. I lost him. Oh, fuck, it’s like three in the morning there. I’m sorry. Shit. I’m sorry, I’ll call back—” Not that I had any more idea what Morrison could do six hours from now than he could do now. He, after all, had the magical aptitude of a turnip. He would not be caught skipping merrily through time, with or without my assistance.

“Joanne. Joanie. What do you mean, you lost him? He caught up with you? Don’t hang up. What’s going on? Are you okay?”

Like Gary, Morrison never called me Joanie. I had to sound even worse than I felt if he’d gone that route. Either that or he was trying to reassure me, but it didn’t work even one little bit at all. “I’m not okay but I’m an idiot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Just—just keep trying to call him? Please? Like every hour? And if you get through have him call me right away?”

Morrison made a sound I was familiar with. Strangled frustration, like his tongue was trying to choke him. “He’s in Ireland with you?”

“He was. Maybe he still is. We went back in time. I came back. He might still be there. Or he might be dead, because he went to fight the Master or the Morrígan and I just don’t know.”

“You went back in time,” Morrison said in a slow deadly voice. I could imagine his expression, his whole posture. He’d be on his feet, because he wasn’t the sort of man who would answer the phone still in bed. He just wasn’t. I had no idea what he wore to bed—it was a subject I had some interest in—but maybe a tank top and cotton pants. Something dignified enough to run outside and chase bad guys in, if necessary. Always be prepared. That was Morrison. And he was dragging a hand over his face now, trying to decide where to start with we went back in time, because face it, that wasn’t the opening gambit you expected your almost-lover to use when she called from the other side of the world. “You went back in time,” he repeated, “and you expect his cell phone to work?”

“Well, no, I just, I mean, I came back and he hasn’t! Shouldn’t he have?”

Morrison, very steadily, said, “Were you together?”

“No! I just said he went to fight the Morrígan!”

“I see.” There was a pause. “The man is seventy-four years old, Joanie. He can take care of himself. If you were—” a great and patient pause filled the line before he went on “—time traveling. If you were time traveling and got separated, then I can’t think of any reason he would necessarily come back to the present at the same time you did.”

“Except I was the focal point, it was my fault, it—!”

“Joanne. Siobhán. Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick.”

I didn’t think anybody had ever said my name like that before. I gulped down a hysterical sob and whispered, “Yeah?”

Morrison, with gentle emphasis, said, “I love you. Now pull yourself together and go find the bad guy,” and hung up.

I stayed kneeling in the grass for a long time, blushing so hard I thought I’d fall over if I got up. Nobody in my adult life had ever said he loved me. Nobody but Gary, who I also loved, but in a whole different way. Morrison’s admonishment was the nicest thing anybody’d ever said to me, and I felt like a teenager, so embarrassed and happy I was in danger of crying. He didn’t just love me. He loved me and expected me to be able to catch the bad guys, even though I’d woken him up in the middle of the night just this side of hysterical.

By God if I wasn’t going to prove him right, too. I’d spent an awful lot of time dedicated to proving Morrison wrong, once upon a time. Proving him right sounded a lot nicer. And besides, it would either get Gary back or exact unholy vengeance on the bitch who’d taken him from me, so proving him right had multiple benefits.

I looked back at the Lia Fáil and at Brigid. Her eyes were closed, her breathing impossibly shallow. She was not going to be of any help, especially if she wouldn’t let me try to heal her. Sighing, I glanced toward the Hall of Kings. It lay off to the right now instead of straight ahead like it had been in Lugh’s time. I remembered the shock of power that had come from it being stationed right at Tara’s center. If worse came to worst, I would dig the damned stone up and put it back where it belonged in order to throw myself back in time so I could find Gary again.

It was a plan. It wasn’t necessarily a good plan, but it was a plan and I was satisfied with it. I crawled back to Brigid and took her hand in mine, whispering, “How about now?”

She said nothing, only slipped deeper into sleep. I didn’t want to go against her wishes by healing her, but I needed some answers, or at least some advice. I whispered, “C’mon, c’mon,” then, hoping one ancient thing might get the attention of another, put Brigid’s hand against the Stone of Destiny, and held it there.

The stone’s screaming leapt from inside my ears to outside them, and a woman appeared in my vision.

I knew her. Fair-haired and fair-skinned, I’d seen her work a magic well beyond any I could have imagined. She was the one who’d—centuries ago—lured the first three werewolves to her power circle and then bound them to the cycle of the moon. It had weakened them beyond measure: they had gone from creatures able to shift and kill at will to the traditional monsters as modern mythology knew them, only able to transform three nights out of the month. One of their descendants had tried very hard to make my magic her own in order to break that spell.

She’d failed, but she had managed to leave the bite in my arm. It flared up again, itching like a son of a bitch, and the fair-haired woman’s spine stiffened as she looked me over. Then her brow furrowed, confusion in gray- green eyes. “Tainted blood. You must be cleansed before you can survive this battle. Find me, daughter. Together we shall prevail.”

“Daughter? Wait! Hey! Wa—arghgl!” It was my turn for the tongue-trying-to- strangle-me sound as for the umpteenth time in recent hours, my mysterious visitor up and vanished. Next time somebody showed up like that I was going to cast a mystical net and hold on until I got some answers.