Urban Shaman

“Somehow. Shit. So he couldn’t let Cernunnos replace that Rider with Marie, because he’d lose whatever advantage he’s trying for. But what’s he—”

I remembered his expression as I’d twisted out of his illusion, the glee wiped out by shock and horror as he drove his blade into his king. The same disbelief had been there when Richard had seen him hanged, not just on the face of the long-remembered man on the rope, but in the eyes of the one who’d stood behind me as he watched his own memory play out again.

The same expression had been there when Henrietta Potter had broken the circle of bodies, too. Betrayal, every time, that something could have gone so terribly wrong. I rather imagined my own expression had been similar when Cernunnos stuffed his sword into me up to the hilt, and hell, I’d meant for that to happen. Still, I hadn’t thought it would hurt quite that badly. I’d be very happy to never hurt that much again.

Well, shit, Joanne. I opened my palm, exposing the tooth I held to the air. He doesn’t want to hurt anymore. He thinks if he controls—if he leads—the Hunt, he’ll be invulnerable.

The thought resonated, like a violin string, shivering through my body and out into the city. With my eyes closed I could see it stretch, vibrations shaking the air like it was water. It dove and twisted through the gray Seattle morning until I saw a startled pair of unearthly green eyes lift, then flinch away.

My eyes popped open. Start with one true thing. I forgot who’d said it, but it was how he always began his writing, with one true thing. I’d hit on one true thing about Herne. I closed my eyes and reached for that resonance again, confident. It lay there, just below the surface of my mind, stretched taut across the city toward Herne. All I needed was to follow it to him.

Unlike trying to stretch through time, thought and action were one. I leaped forward psychically, careening through Seattle as I followed the thread back to Herne. Pure delight and pride splashed through me, making me feel bright as a beacon. I had finally figured out how to do something right!

And then I ran up against a wall of pure granite. I bounced off so hard I recoiled back into my body and slumped into the windshield. Something dripped onto my mouth. I wiped the back of my hand across my nose and it came away smeared with blood.

My ears rang like I’d been at a concert for three hours, and my head pounded.

“Jesus, lady, you okay?” Manny the construction worker stood a few yards away from his building, a sledgehammer in one hand and a look of consternation on his face.

“Yeah,” I croaked. My bottom lip was cut, too. I touched it gingerly with the back of my hand and winced.

“Looked like somebody hit you in the face with one of these, man, only I didn’t see nobody.” Manny hefted the hammer. I coughed and touched my lip again.

“Yeah, feels like it too.” I licked at the blood and slid off the hood to see if my rental car had any tissues. It didn’t. I swore, before remembering my new little trick. What did a bloody nose count as? Touchup on the paint? I closed my eyes and fell inside myself for a few seconds, deliberately reaching for the bubble of energy beneath my sternum. It responded, sending a thrill of glee through me. I laid my paint job analogy over the power, guiding it through the steps of “repainting.” Primer, then the expensive glossy paint applied with an airbrush.

I sneezed explosively, my body reacting to the idea a little more thoroughly than I wanted: I wasn’t wearing a protective mask, and I felt like I’d just breathed in fine paint particles. Sneezing through a banged-up nose is not to be recommended. After a few seconds the throbbing went away and I prodded gingerly at my nose and lip, testing to see if the paint job had taken. The energy coil inside me settled down, as if satisfied. All but a thread of it, at least: I could still feel the faint link to Herne, stretching right from the center of me.

My face didn’t hurt anymore. I sighed in relief and let my shoulders slump.

“You some kinda bruja, lady?” Manny stared at me, slapping the hammer nervously into one hand.

I touched my bottom lip again and found half a grin for him. “Yeah. Yeah, Manny, I’m some kinda bruja. A, um, bruja de la luz, if there is a such thing. Don’t worry. I won’t put a curse on you.”

“That’s good. I never did no bruja no harm. You be careful, bruja. There’s nasty things out there.” He nodded, eyes dark and serious, then turned and went back to his work. My smile got a little bigger.

“Thanks.” I slid off the hood and climbed into the driver’s seat, sitting sideways with my feet on the ground. It crossed my mind again that I was way out of my league, but by now the thought was almost reassuring. At least some things weren’t changing.

I’d found Herne, that much was clear. The pulsing line of truth was still pulled tight between us, disappearing into his granite defenses. If I was going to follow the line back to him, I’d have to be a little more subtle. I touched my mouth one more time and chuckled. Morrison would attest to me never having learned subtle. It appeared I was going to have to cope with a whole series of disconcerting changes to my lifestyle.

Much more cautiously, I closed my eyes and grasped onto the shimmering line that ran toward Herne. The world dimmed, like low thunderclouds had just rolled in. I opened my eyes to discover the same effect. For a moment I was tangled up in uncertainty about whether I’d opened my real eyes or my astral eyes, and that all led to wondering if I was a man dreaming he was a butterfly. The world brightened again, as if irritated with me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. The clouds rolled back in with a decided aura of “hmph.”

My body stayed put, but my sense of self left it to stand in front of the rented Ford. Off to the left, Manny kept up his interminable bitching, but he glowed with contentment as he swung his hammer into the brick. For a few seconds I could see his family as clearly as if they stood around him, four-year-old twin girls and a chubby little boy barely old enough to walk, and a slender woman with a fond smile. He was planning to go home and tell them about the bruja he saw, who didn’t curse him, and that was almost as good as a blessing.

It didn’t seem very likely I was ever going to be the sort of person to go around bestowing blessings, but I made a note to send one Manny’s way if I ever felt like the time was appropriate for me to do it. At the least, I could think good thoughts for him, though it seemed to me that he had the good thoughts department covered.

I looked away from Manny and toward the city. Seattle spread out before me like a computer simulation, buildings reduced to their infrastructures, thin lines against the sky that let me see through one into the next, on out to the water. The people were blurs of color, shaming the rainbow, with disproportionately high incidences of reds and oranges. I wondered what the colors meant, but they weren’t what I was looking for. I was looking for a part of the city that I couldn’t see.

And to the southeast, there was an area that was blocked. Not by the granite wall that I expected, but by the solidity of buildings. Bricks were as opaque as mist, and colors drained away from people until they were dull facsimiles of the rest of the city. No matter which direction I approached it from, the half-solid mist remained, too thick to be seen through, but not quite as solid as reality. I could feel Herne’s presence behind the mist, his will drawing a line that he wouldn’t let me cross or look through.

I let myself fade back into my body and sat blinking thoughtfully at the asphalt. I was heading to that part of the city for lunch anyway. Maybe I could narrow down Herne’s location by getting inside the parameters he’d delineated. To continue to protect himself, he’d have to blur smaller and smaller regions, until I could pinpoint him. Pleased with myself, I dragged my legs inside the car and left early for my lunch date.

CHAPTER 22

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. I was early enough and late enough, an hour in either direction, to miss both commute and lunch traffic, but the lack of cars on the road didn’t help pierce the veil of obscurity that Herne had flung up around himself. Instead of the field narrowing down, everything that I looked at with my second sight was hazy and thick, just as it had been from a distance. It was like being in San Francisco on a really foggy morning.

It took twenty minutes to find a parking place, so I ended up at the restaurant only half an hour early. I left