“I don’t know Marie,” the quiet one said impatiently. “Find him, Siobhan Walkingstick. His power and his pain will bleed off him. Find the scent of it and follow him back.”
“But who is he?” My voice sounded very thin and distant, even to myself. The tug was a steady pull now, and the stars were streaking by me, disappearing as I faded away.
“I don’t know. But he controls the—”
I took a sharp breath, woke up and rolled over. Something crunched in my palm. I opened my hand and blinked through the dimness at the shimmering leaf there. After a few moments I sighed quietly and went back to sleep, cradling the leaf carefully. It was seven-thirty and I’d woken up to a still-dark sky before I remembered that it was January and there were no leaves on anything but the evergreens.
CHAPTER 10
I don’t go to confession. For one, I’m not Catholic. For two, the whole idea of being absolved of your sins by telling a priest about them has always struck me as a little strange, probably because I’m not Catholic.
On the other hand, a priest isn’t allowed to call up die loony bin and have you committed after you tell him all your crazy little stories, and he’s a whole lot less expensive than a shrink.
St. James Cathedral in downtown Seattle was the only Catholic church I knew of for certain. I parked in one of the lots at the corner of 9th and Columbia, having made it from the University District in thirty-seven minutes. On a weekday morning, that was a record-breaker. Finding a parking spot put it off the charts.
St. James didn’t exactly look like it was imported wholesale from Europe, but it had all the impressive dignity a cathedral ought to. Buff-colored brick and two very tall bell towers defined the place; that, and a sixty-foot arched entryway. I felt properly awed as I went inside, cradling my shimmering leaf in my palm. I kept expecting it to disappear and leave lines of fairy dust on my hand.
I edged around the pews and up to a confessional booth, sliding inside. The leaf gleamed slightly.
There was a thump in the other half of the confessional, and a gusty sigh.
“Ever had one of those days?” the priest asked. “Where you’re doubting everything?”
I’d never done this before, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to be his line. I’d been sort of looking forward to the bit where I said, “Forgive-me-father-for-I-have-sinned,” and he’d ruined the pattern already.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I like my job. But don’t you ever get up and wonder if you’ve made the right decisions? Wonder if you’ve really got a calling, or if it’s just all some sort of infinitesimally large joke? Catholics don’t mind the ancient-earth theories so much. I can see that God might call a billion years a day. Life is complicated like that. It’s just that every once in a while something happens that really shakes the hell, excuse my French, out of my faith.”
I blurted, “What happened?” He flashed me a sad little smile through the lattice.
“You haven’t seen the news yet, have you? There was a massacre this morning at one of the high schools. Four children were killed. The really sick thing is that it was some lunatic with a knife. Not a gun. He went and tore every single one of their hearts out, all those innocent souls. How could God let that happen?”
“They didn’t catch him?”
The priest let out a bitter laugh. “How do you
“No one saw anything?” Had I done this? Was it vengeance for knifing Cernunnos yesterday? I closed my eyes. How long did it take for a god to heal? What possible purpose was there in the deaths of four kids? Did it give him strength? Hester said power didn’t work that way.
“No.” I spoke aloud, my eyes popping open.
“No,” the priest agreed angrily. “No one saw. So what’s the point?” I saw the shadow of him move, leaning forward to put his face in his hands. “If God can let this happen, how can I have faith in Him?”
I stood up slowly. The priest turned his head and watched me rise. His eyes were brown and his face unlined, in the unobtrusive confessional light. He couldn’t have been much older than I was. “Don’t worry, Father.” I took a deep breath. “If God can let this happen, then he can put people on Earth who can stop it, too.”
“But where are they?” he asked softly. I lifted my hand and pressed my palm against the lattice. The leaf crunched quietly and shattered in a tiny splash of light.
“I’m right here.”
He reached up and pressed his hand opposite mine, separated by a few centimeters of wood. He was quiet so long I thought he might laugh at my arrogance. But then he smiled, the kind of smile a priest ought to have, gentle and compassionate and full of serene confidence that there’s a better place than this world. “Go with God.”
He left me standing alone in the confessional, a fading imprint of leaf dust glittering on my palm.
“They were shamans.” Out of everyone I knew, Billy Holliday was the only person I would dare say that to. Billy was as enthusiastic as Mulder, a true believer in the things that went bump in the night. New people on staff always gave him shit about it—God knows I had—but it invariably faded into being one of those accepted quirks that make people interesting. Billy had more than his fair share of those quirks, but for the moment I was more or less grateful there was somebody I could talk to without Morrison throwing me in a nuthouse.
I plunked the files Ray lent me on Billy’s desk, doing my best to look triumphant and in control. Billy blinked up at me, eyebrows climbing up his forehead like caterpillars.
“Where’d you get those?” he asked first, to his credit for keeping the security of the department, and, “Who were?” second.
“I found them in a garbage can.”
He eyed the stack of paperwork. “You’re an officer, you know? Not a detective.”
“I’ve been with the department more than three years. I’m up for detective.” I widened my eyes. Billy snorted.
“Yeah, right. Who were shamans? Are you supposed to be here?”
“I dunno,” I admitted, glancing in the general direction of Morrison’s office. “He didn’t tell me what shift I was on. I think he expected me to quit.”
“Have you ever quit anything in your whole life?”
“Not much. Shift change is at eleven, right? It’s ten-thirty. I can be all perky and on time. Listen to me, Billy. These five murders in the past couple weeks, they were all shamans.” I pushed my fingertip against the files. My knuckle turned white.
“How do you know that, Joanne?”
I straightened up, squared my shoulders and said, firmly, “I met them dream-walking.”
Well. It was supposed to be firm. It was really more of an embarrassed whisper. Billy held my gaze for longer than the priest had, until I twisted my shoulders uncomfortably and glanced away. “Look,” I said very quietly.
“No,” he said, “I believe you.”
Despite his rep, I was taken aback. “You do?”
He stood up. “Let’s get some coffee. Down the street.”
That was the usual cue for the good cop to leave the room while the bad cop terrorized the witness. I didn’t usually think of Billy as the bad cop sort, but I sucked my lower lip into my mouth nervously and stuffed my hands in my pockets as I followed him out the door. On the street, he said, “You’re about the most rational person I know.”
I drew on what little dignity I had left. “Thank you.”
“I like you and respect you even though you’ve been laughing up your sleeve at me for years.”
I winced. “I gave up laughing ages ago, Billy. I just…”
“Think I’m nuts.”
I winced again. “In a good way. Look, I mean…” I sighed. “I mean, why
