visions, when I’d tried searching pulling Billy and then Mel out of sleep, when I’d drawn this demon toward Gary, finally resolved into something recognizable. I’d known the form without recognizing it; butterflies weren’t something that I thought of as malicious, and the familiarity of form had simply slipped by me.
Little Coyote’s hair, strung out through the sky like a spiderweb, was caught by indigo and violet spots, watching us. If I took my gaze away from the darkness and concentrated on Coyote, I could see the ripple of life that went through the watching eyes, like endless wings fluttering in a breeze I couldn’t feel. Under different circumstances, the living night might have been overwhelmingly beautiful, traces of green and blue so dark they could hardly be seen washing through the empty spaces of sky. Instead, the feeling of being examined sent a stab of fear directly through the center of my power, beneath my breastbone. It hurt in an almost familiar way, like the cold of a silver blade being slammed through my chest.
For a painful, unfunny moment, laughter bubbled up through that familiarity. Karmically speaking, it was probably less like having a sword shoved through me than a butterfly collector’s pin. I focused hard on Coyote, afraid if I let that idea get too far out of hand I’d see a giant needle piercing me through. To my relief, I didn’t see any such thing in Coyote’s starry self, just an outline of sorrow and regret written in the stars. He’d told me to stay out of the ether. Just then it struck me that he might’ve had a good reason for doing that. I could feel amber hardening around me, sticking me in place, and behind my breastbone, the slow build of panicked power. My only thought was to release it like a grenade, a concussive explosion that might shatter the golden warmth that held us, but there were a number of problems with that plan.
First, I didn’t know if my power could even be used that way. I remembered, as if through someone else’s mind, an already-dead shaman telling me there was more than one path to be had, and that some shamans chose the warrior’s path. The implication had been that that was the road I was expected to travel, and I could make an argument for it with my experiences thus far. Whether that meant I could go commando on a sleepy butterfly monster’s ass was not a question I’d thought to cover in Shamanism 101.
Second, and somewhat more important, I had a sinking feeling that if I went the blow shit up route, Coyote and I would get blown up, too. That was the problem with grenades. They weren’t picky about who they exploded. Coyote and I both knew how to shield ourselves, but me going kerblewy struck me as the psychic equivalent of friendly fire. It didn’t really matter how friendly the fire was if it went off on your side of the barricade. I’d needed answers, but coming to Coyote to find them might very well have killed both of us, and now I didn’t know how to get out of it.
We stared at each other across what felt like an impossible distance, the space between stars, and Coyote inclined his head, slow movement in the amber.
It looked horribly like a goodbye.
CHAPTER 19
I came awake with my heart sick in my throat and my ears ringing. My vision had streaks of golden stars in it, the aftermath of a rupture of power that looked like something I would do accidentally, not something my irritable guide would do deliberately. The butterfly darkness had swept over him so quickly it’d seemed to devour him, one moment his lanky form and starlit eyes saying goodbye and the next all the sarcasm and smart-mouthing drowned in blackness. My eyes burned and my chest hurt, like I was waiting for tears.
“Jo?” Gary crouched in front of me, a big mass of man that I could only see as an abstract shape, my gaze still focused on things that had happened in other worlds. “Jo,” he said again, more urgently, then took a big breath and blew it in my face as if I were a baby screaming the last air from her lungs.
It worked just as effectively, too, making me drag in a sharp, startled breath and blink, which went a long way toward relieving the pain in both my lungs and eyes. It did nothing for the sickness in my heart, though, and the second breath I took exited again as a shuddered, “Oh, God.”
“What happened, Jo?” Gary’s bushy eyebrows were drawn in concern and he had both hands on my shoulders, grip tight enough to hold me up. I diverted my gaze to him, still staring almost sightlessly, then leaned forward to wrap my arms around him and knot my hands in his shirt. I was afraid I might collapse if I let go. “Joanie? What the hell’s goin’ on, sweetheart?”
“I think Coyote just committed suicide to keep me safe.” My belly knotted as I spoke and I lurched to my feet, scrambling for the bathroom. A minute later I wasn’t sure if I was grateful to Gary or not, as it was largely his fault I had nothing in my stomach to heave up. I tried, anyway, stomach twisting and clenching as tears fell from my eyes. Gary followed me into the bathroom and crouched beside me again, waiting until I fell back against the bathtub before speaking.
“What happened, Jo?”
I wiped my hand over my mouth, shaking my head as tears rolled down my cheeks, my eyes still wide and aching. “I think it ate him. The bad thing. He let go this huge burst of power, and he was so tired before, Gary.” I stared at the old man without quite seeing him, my whole body shaking with chills.
“He’s a spirit guide, Jo. You think somebody like that can even get killed?” It was a genuine question, one I had no answer to. All I could do was shake my head.
“It felt like me, Gary. It felt like me fucking something up. I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like when a spirit uses his power, but this felt like me telling the city to hit me with its best shot. It was everything. And the butterfly thing just…ate him. It jumped on him and just let me go.” My stomach roiled again, but there’d been nothing for it to evict the first time. “I think he’s dead. And it’s my fault.”
“Joanie…”
I had to be a mess if Gary kept calling me Joanie. I shook my head, still staring through him as I whispered, “I’m not taking blame where it doesn’t belong, Gary. He didn’t want me out there and I ignored him. That thing had me trapped and he chose to let it eat him instead of letting it take me.”
“Chose to, Jo,” Gary said quietly. “You keep tellin’ me that’s what shamanism’s all about. Makin’ choices.”
I finally focused on him again, feeling bleakness carving itself into my face. “That doesn’t make it any less my fault.” There were so many recriminations to heap on my own head I could’ve stayed there for the rest of my life, paralyzed and shriveled by guilt and misery. I reached out to fumble the toilet lever down, washing away the spatters of bile I’d choked up, then used the bowl and the tub to push myself upward.
“Where’re you goin’?”
“I don’t know.” I sounded like someone’d flattened me with a rolling pin and stabbed holes in what remained, to make sure I’d never rise properly again. “I’ve got to get somewhere I can think. I’ll call you, Gary. I’ll call in a while. I’m sorry.”
I stumbled out of the apartment and down to my car. A minute later she pulled out into five o’clock traffic, me feeling like she was steering herself.
Pretty much the last place I expected her to go was Thunderbird Falls.
I had to park along the road near Matthews Beach Park, as the parking lot itself was still a hopscotch of fallen land and broken pavement. There were boards up over the deeper and wider crevasses, and the yellow danger tape spread everywhere was torn and cut away, left to rustle in the evening breeze. I made my way through the mess left of the lot, watching my feet instead of the passersby. There were more of them than I expected, given the area had been cordoned off two weeks ago and was still supposed to be unused. No one in the neighborhood seemed to be taking that seriously, voices raised in good nature and kids running about, leaping over the cuts in the earth as if they didn’t exist. Evidence of the earthquake that had torn Lake Washington’s western side was everywhere, and people were just going about their lives without concern despite that. It was as if the magic that had been thrust into Seattle’s atmosphere a few weeks earlier had sluffed off, putting everything back to normal. If someone had not just died for me, I might have taken comfort in feeling I wasn’t making irrevocable changes to strangers’ lives.
Instead, I felt like something worse than panic had taken hold inside me. It felt cold and resolute, the feeling of despair tangled with destiny. Coyote’d died for me. Colin and Faye had died because of me. I would be God damned if I was going to lose anybody else on my watch. I wished my newfound resolution felt good, but it only felt like somebody’d sealed over my emotions with lead piping and was waiting for my body to realize my soul was
