Raven Calls

does ‘oh, dear’ mean?” His aura got all trembly and bright, like an engine revving up.

“I think there’s a new sheriff in town. Do you still have the Sight?”

“Nah, it wore off bef— What? What? Oh no. Waitaminnit.” Gary stepped over the puddle of blood and shoved the sword into my hands. “I’m just the sidekick. You’re the boss.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who killed the O’Br—”

He clapped his hand over my mouth. “You’re. The. Boss.” He looked at the rafters and repeated that one more time, even more loudly.

One by one, eleven heads turned my way, gazes fixing on me with far more comprehension and acceptance than they’d shown in looking at Gary. I scowled accusingly at him, but not for very long. These were women scorned, after all. That was how they’d ended up as banshees. Probably leaving a man, any man, even a good man, in charge of them was not the world’s best idea. Maybe even especially a good man, because they’d shred him while he was being decent-hearted. “All right,” I said, resigned. “All right. I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here. Can anybody tell me how to find my mother?”

As one, their attention turned from me to the ruined castle floors. I looked, too, but my mother wasn’t imprisoned within the stone, or any other of the Poe-like dramatics that first leapt to mind. I was about to give them an earful when something moved.

The whole floor started coming alive, swirling, misting, rising up. No, not the floor: the silver-white dust that had recently been Aibhill. I gripped my sword harder and came up with a few choice words for however the hell magic-born beings were germinated. Shoving a blade through anybody should be enough to take them down permanently, although it wasn’t, of course, enough to take me down permanently. That seemed like a bad line of thought to pursue, so I just gritted my teeth and got ready for another damned fight. Gary edged nearer to me, and I wished that Cat hadn’t taken the spear with her when she ran. But then, I’d been supposed to be on her heels, so there’d have been no actual reason for her to leave it behind. Oh, well.

By the time I got through those sets of regrets and repudiations, Aibhill’s mesmerizing gown had come together again. I wanted to stick the sword in her immediately, but there didn’t seem to be any body there, just the amorphous dress. Rebuilding her lovely flesh took longer, and she remained wraithlike—I knew, because I poked her a couple times—until in one last sudden instant she coalesced as a whole, features suddenly back in place, long hair suddenly flowing, white hands reaching out. Only it wasn’t Aibhill.

It was Sheila MacNamarra.

I had promised. I had promised Méabh that if it came to it, I would be the one to finish my mother off. And now Méabh was dead, or mostly dead, and there was nobody on hand to make me keep that promise except myself.

My newly risen mother was as beautiful as Aibhill had been, but dark-haired. Green-eyed. Those things were right; the beauty was not. Mom had been prettier than I was, but not beautiful. That made it easier to breathe, “I don’t freaking think so,” and launch myself at her.

The last thing I expected was a cage of magic bars to slam up around me and hold me in place. I bounced off them, sword clanging, and gaped in astonishment for a second or two. Aibhill had not demonstrated any ability to throw magic around. Then again, Aibhill probably hadn’t been known as the Mage of Ireland while she’d lived. And on the third hand, now I really didn’t understand how creatures of pure magic were birthed, because Mom had been a hundred percent human—well, minus the touch of aos sí blood, apparently—and now she patently was not.

On the fourth hand, I forgot my stupid magic wasn’t working properly and retaliated.

Luckily, for some value of luck, I threw a net rather than trying any internal magics, and the external ones were mostly still working okay. Iron bars may a cage make, but magic nets weren’t particularly stymied by them. My silver-and-blue net whisked through the narrow spaces between her gold-and-red cage and spun large, wrapping her as thoroughly as I’d been trapped. Her concentration broke for an instant and I surged through the dissolving cage bars.

Exasperation flitted across her features. She flung a hand up, palm toward me, and I hit another wall, bouncing onto my butt this time. Mages might be about spells and preparation, but from what I knew of my mother she would have a list of spells as long as her arm prepared. Probably longer. I was going to get knocked around a lot before she worked her way through all of them. Instead of getting up, I tightened my net, and that same mild exasperation showed before concussive power exploded the net all over the place.

I slithered down a distant wall with no real idea of how I’d gotten there. My head hurt. Worse, it rang like Notre Dame’s bells, and the fragments of my magic were raw and sharp-edged as I tried pulling them back together. It felt like someone had gotten right inside my power and set off a grenade.

Which, of course, was basically what had happened. Sheila had, after all, been wrapped up nice and tight in a net of my magic. Moreover, she was my mother. She couldn’t have been much more inside my magic than that, both literally and emotionally. It was just dawning on me that none of this fight was likely to go the way I wanted it to when she spoke. “I’ll scream if I have to, cuisle mo chroí.”

Cushla mahcree. I knew that phrase. Some of my aunts had used it with their children. It meant something like “my heart,” and seemed a little peculiar to add onto the end of a threat.

Because it was a threat. I’d barely stood up to Aibhill’s scream when it had brought my mother’s voice into it. I’d shatter with Sheila’s voice as the lead. So for once in my life I tried to do the smart thing, and didn’t throw another net.

Well, mostly the smart thing, anyway. I did say, “I have to kill you, you know that, right?”

She came down to earth—I’d hardly noticed she’d been floating, but now that I thought about it, Aibhill had been, too—and knelt next to me. I scooted along the wall, trying to get far enough away to avoid sudden evisceration. She started to follow, then put her palms on the floor as if to say, “Look, no danger!” and otherwise held still. “I’m dead already, alanna. There’s nothing left to kill.”

“You’re awfully damned mobile for a dead woman. And I don’t do ghosts, so you’re something else, and that just can’t be good, so I’ve got to finish it. I promised Méabh.”

Disappointment flashed across my mother’s too-pale face. “I did so want to meet her. Joanne, Siobhán, alanna my dear. Would I be speaking to you this way if I belonged to them?”

I dared a glance at the them in question, the banshees who still hung about the rafters, all hungry haunted eyes and silent voices. “Aibhill was very reasonable, too. Right up until she gutted Méabh. So forgive me if I don’t quite trust reasonable and polite.”

“Aibhill,” my mother said softly, “did not have the bond of bone and blood broken before her soul became the Master’s. More, she did not have it done by her daughter, nor with the help of a goddess she had long since loved.”

That whole ritual on the mountaintop seemed very distant just then. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand what she meant, and finally said, “You mean it worked? You’re free?”

“Free to choose, cuisle mo chroí, and I’ve chosen this cloak to wear.”

I couldn’t have heard her correctly. My expression indicated as much, and after a moment she smiled. Not Aibhill’s sweet, syrupy smile, but a smile with points. With fangs. A smile that reminded me how my mother had chosen to die through willpower alone, and therefore a smile that I found peculiarly reassuring. I still had to say it. “Why on God’s little green earth would you do that? This is… I mean, Mom. Doesn’t this kind of cut you out of the circle of life? Of reincarnation? You’ve got to be an old soul, even if I’m not. Why would you do that?”

“There’s not a one of them with power, my girl,” Sheila said as if it explained everything. It didn’t. She pursed her lips to hide another smile and went on. “Aibhill had power in her mortal life, alanna. The magic of her voice, to warn men of their deaths, but the magic to strike vengeance was the Master’s alone. The rest are vassals only, creatures of Aibhill’s making and of his. Without me, they remain his, but I have power, Joanne. I have the strength they do not. I can guide them. I can draw them away from him, and make them what they once were meant to be. Harbingers, not bringers, of death. There’s no harm in knowing death comes,” she added even more quietly. “It gives those that know how to take it a chance to say goodbye.”