For a few seconds I couldn’t see anything except red, and I wasn’t sure if that was the Sight or just my normal vision full of fury. Barb got a hand loose and jabbed her fingers into my eyes. I screamed, as much with anger as pain, and grabbed her wrist again to bite into the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. She shrieked and jerked away, sending us off the chairs and onto the floor, the light dimming. I spat out a mouthful of coppery blood, gagging on the flavor. My vision cleared again, tears streaming, and I snatched her hand out of the air as she drove it toward my eyes again. Her wrists were tiny, and once I had both of them I knotted the fingers of one hand around them, imprisoning her and leaving me with a hand to punch her with.
Triumphant, I reared back on my heels to get my weight behind a hit, and clobbered my head on the table. Stars sparkled in my line of sight and I realized a little too late the reason the lights had dimmed was we’d rolled under the table. Barb pulled her legs up and kicked me in the stomach with both feet, sending me back far enough to smack my head on the table again. I did my best mindless beast roar and flung myself on her, no longer trying to get a hit in. I would just smother her with my superior body weight. And whack her in the eye a few times with my elbow, if I could. For a few seconds we were biting and rolling and scratching and screeching, the indignity of fighting like girls ridiculously clear in my mind. I couldn’t remember getting in such a noisy fight before.
The table crashed over sideways as we rolled into its legs with enough force to knock it down. The smash made us both freeze for an instant, as if we expected a parent to come storming downstairs to find out what was going on.
I recovered first, probably because I had no siblings to wrestle with, and therefore less expectation of getting in trouble for wrecking the house. The table no longer hindering me, I grabbed a fistful of Barb’s shirt and hauled her to her feet so I could hit her. This time I let go when the punch landed and she staggered back into the window.
Which shattered, and she went head over heels through it with a shriek.
I stood there a couple seconds, completely unprepared for that. My first thought, I admit, was,
Barb popped to her feet and hit me in the face with a pair of plastic-wrapped pruning shears.
CHAPTER 27
It had been a while since being hit on the head had knocked me into the realm of Other. Overall, I liked it better when I was sliding in and out of psychic realms on my own cognizance, though I had to say there was something for waking up in my garden without my head hurting. It was a big fat psychological fib, because I knew perfectly well that out there in the real world I was going to need a nose job. Fortunately, my self-perception didn’t include a mashed-in face, and in my garden, imagination trumped reality.
“Joanne.” The thin, weary voice seemed to come from all around me and nowhere at the same time. It made my heart lurch, one part panic at my garden being invaded and two parts hope: I knew that voice. “Jo,” it repeated, and I whispered, “Coyote?”
I could almost sense him. His presence was more a wish than a fact, as if he’d been mixed up with oxygen and smeared liberally through the atmosphere: I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. My heart pounded so hard it made my stomach hurt, and for some reason there was a film over my eyes, blurring my vision. “Coyote?” My hands had gotten all cold and shaky and my cheeks burned hot, until I felt like I might fall apart from conflicting temperatures in such a small space. “Coyote, are you okay? Where are you?”
A breath of a chuckle came through the air, but that was all. No more words, nothing reassuring, no explanation as to how I might go about stopping Barb from sucking my friends’ life forces. “Coyote, I need you.” I sounded young and so tremulous I’d moved beyond pathetic into outright fear.
He didn’t say anything else. The garden seemed to shift and sigh, like it was waiting for something, and I put my face in my hands with a hoarse laugh. “Imagination trumps reality. Please, oh, God, please help me get this right.”
I reached for my power, still whispering pleas into my fingers. It spilled upward, delicate as a filigree net, pouring through me until I could see my garden the way the younger me had, some fifteen years ago. Life infused it, though not as thoroughly as it had then. Here, it simmered below the surface, instead of bursting free and full of laughter. My waterfall, always off to my right, was as I remembered it, sheeting down a wall of granite, rather than thundering so hard and fast it made mist, but at least it held the promise of more. Everything felt that way, as if it waited to come to a boil again. I was absurdly grateful it thought it still could.
I dropped my hands from my face and reached out, casting my net of power as if I would be able to draw Coyote in. It shimmered blue, ocean-colored, and rode the air like feathers on the water. I had no car analogy to suit this, but nets had worked for me in the past, and the one I wove now was so fine it might catch raindrops and cradle them between its threads. I clung to the idea of my spirit guide, trying to gather him in so he could become cohesive and whole again, instead of just a voice in the ether.
A pulse ran through the net, silver power that rippled and overwhelmed the blue that was predominant. It caught me in the belly and pulled me forward with unexpected strength. Panic seized me and I resisted, for which trouble I earned a snort I knew all too well, and a distinct sensation of dismissal.
I couldn’t tell if it was surprise or dismay that caught me out, but it didn’t matter. I faltered for just an instant, a hiccup of concentration lost. Silver swept my net, wrapped around me, and hauled me through space and time like so much flotsam.
Joanne was tall at—more than thirteen, now. I’d had one disastrous flirtation with perms as a teenager, the summer after my freshman year. The ends of her short hair were still curled, so she’d been fifteen for a few months, and if I remembered my own haircuts correctly, that meant in another six or eight weeks she’d be pregnant. My stomach cramped up and I knotted my hands into fists, staring down at the younger me. I was less than two inches taller than she was, and by the end of her sophomore year she’d be able to look me in the eye. Right now, height was the only thing I had on her at all.
I could see the cohesion of her power, riding under her skin and sparking through her aura. The net I’d woven was gone, replaced by a silver cord that thrummed back and forth between us, twisting and writhing in the air like it had life of its own. I wanted to bat at it and make it lie down. Joanne ignored it, looking over me like I made a bad taste in her mouth.
“Jeez,” she said, “you don’t know anything at all. What the hell happened to you?”
“Wow.” I startled out of staring at the cord and stared at Joanne instead. “You really were a little shit, weren’t you? Anybody ever tell you that you catch more flies with honey?” Wow. I wasn’t going to like me at all. From either side of this conversation. Joanne’s eyes narrowed and her sneer settled into place. I wanted to reach across and smack it off her. “I need to talk to Coyote.”
Joanne tossed her head, which would’ve been more effective if her hair was long enough to swish. “Too bad.”
My hands were still fisted at my sides. I took a moment to explain to them that I did not approve of giving my younger self a knuckle sandwich, no matter how much she deserved it, and deliberately unknotted them and put them in my pockets so they couldn’t act on their own.
“Seriously,” she said. “What happened to you? You’re a total mess.”
I actually
“I mean, look at that,” she said, somewhere between admiring and horrified. “You’ve got a bullet hole right through the middle of you. What happened?” A note of urgency threaded through her voice with the third repetition of the question, and to my surprise I felt sorry for her.
“It doesn’t matter, Jo. Just—”
Her hackles went up. “Don’t call me that.”
A muscle cramped in my shoulderblade and I reached around with my left hand to massage it, startled.
