convincing argument. In fact, I sort of wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. Presumably I’d been too hung up with self-loathing and rejection. I bet this approach was much healthier.
Phoebe looked at me a long time, like if she scowled hard enough or long enough, she might worm her way inside my mind and get a better understanding of what’d gone wrong. Finally, though, she shook her head and said, “Yeah, okay, whatever,” and picked up her gear bag. “Are we going to fence, or what?”
I met Billy back at the precinct building, damp with sweat but in a better humor. He said, “I guess it went okay with Pheeb,” and tossed me the keys to an unmarked police cruiser. I wanted to take Petite, but with the cost of gas what it was, driving a police vehicle on police business just made the receipts easier. At least I got to drive. Not that I could remember Billy ever doing the driving since we’d been partnered.
In police academy, they’d impressed on us that there were two kinds of good drivers. One was the kind who followed all the rules, drove the speed limit, never double-parked and always wore their seat belts. I was usually that kind of driver.
But I’d also cut my driver’s teeth on hairpin Appalachian roads with plunging cliffs on one side and sheer rock face on the other. I could jackass Petite around a forty-five-degree turn at speeds way above the limit without losing momentum, and I’d spent my share of time feeling like Wile E. Coyote, dangling in the air over a dark green valley when me and another driver’d met coming opposite directions on a road barely wide enough for one. Dancing a police car through road cones and driving with blown-out tires was nothing.
Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I missed North Carolina and Qualla Boundary. I said, “Huh,” out loud, and Billy looked askance at me. “Nothing. Just an alarming display of internal emotional stability.”
He said, “Good,” dryly. “Sonata gets upset around unstable people, and I’d like her to be able to get these ghosts off me.”
“Sonata? Like the musical piece? Did she name herself? Oh, God. She’s a new-age hippie freak, isn’t she?”
“I swear to God, Joanne, if you can’t behave yourself I’m leaving you in the car.”
Me and Doherty in the driveway, together but separate, leaped to mind. I shut my mouth and drove us to Sonata’s house, up on Capitol Hill. It was one of those gorgeous old Victorians that requires either inheritance or obscene wealth to buy. Being a medium seemed ideal for “just happening” to come into such an inheritance.
The woman who opened the ornately windowed front door was, in fact, a long-haired hippie freak, one in her mid-sixties who’d probably never left the Woodstock era. She wore moccasins, gypsy skirts with beaded belts, and an inordinate number of rings on her thin fingers.
She also wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with a smiley face that had a splash of blood marring its cheerful yellow circle. It wasn’t exactly a hippie vibe. I tried to rearrange my prejudices as she put her fists on her hips and inspected us.
Inspected me, more accurately. Billy obviously already had the all-clear, and I was just as obviously lacking. After a good long examination, she said, “Are you sure this is the one you were talking about, William? She’s got skepticism written all over her.”
I glanced at my hands to check, but they were, thankfully, unmarred by ink. Stranger things had happened. Billy, ruefully, said, “I’m sure. It’s good to see you, Sonny.” He kissed her cheek and she smiled, then offered me a hand.
“All right, come on in, unbeliever. I’m Sonata.”
“I’m Joanne.” I thought “Joanne” had a nicer ring than “unbeliever,” but I wasn’t sure Sonata would call me by it. She nodded and ushered us in.
Victorians were the ultimate houses for séances. Sonny’s was brighter and more airily decorated than I expected, but it still had a sense of somber grandiosity. I hoped she’d bring us to a dark room with the requisite enormous wooden table, and was looking forward to searching it for knockers and strings, but we went into a well-lit, comfortable living room where a young man was drinking a glass of wine.
Disappointment must’ve shown on my face, because Sonata looked amused. “Dark corners and spooky rooms are for charlatans, Joanne. This is Patrick. He’d be my partner in crime, the one dripping cold water down gullible séance attendees’ spines while I asked if they felt the icy touch of the grave, if you’re trying to keep track of how I’d run my scam. Pat, this is Joanne Walker, and you know William.”
“Sure. Nice to meet you, Joanne.” Patrick was a little older than me and had the unaffected good looks of a California surfer boy. My opinion of what constituted a medium shifted rapidly. Not only did Sonata wear inappropriate T-shirts, but she apparently had a hot young thing to keep her company. Maybe growing up to be a hippie freak wouldn’t be so bad.
The hippie freak gave me another amused smile. “I’ll be turning the lights down. Spirits are more comfortable in dim lighting. But if what William says is true, you won’t need light to see if what I do is real or not.”
My ears got hot. “I don’t know. Billy’s aura doesn’t change when he talks to ghosts, and I can’t normally see them myself.” I didn’t like that I could see these ones. It suggested the cauldron—if that was the root cause—had some kind of back door into my own magic, and I had no idea how to face or even find it. “For all I know, the Sight won’t show me anything with you.”
Sonny tilted her head, interest piqued. “I have to go into a trance to speak with the spirits. That may be different enough to trigger your ability to detect magic.” She turned a knob on the wall as she spoke, and the lights dimmed.
I yawned. Unless absolute catastrophe struck, I was going home and going to bed after this. Billy looked as if he was having similar thoughts. Sonata sat down cross-legged on a cushion, hands palms upward on her thighs, thumb and middle fingertips curved in loose circles to touch. Patrick knelt just behind her, close enough to touch, and bowed his head like a guardian angel.
The Sight winked on, lending a surreal depth to the room and making Sonata flare with yellow and red as bright as the face on her T-shirt. I wondered if she knew her aura tended toward those colors, or if it was a sort of cheery coincidence. Patrick, in comparison, glowed serene white, a bastion of calm. Sonata closed her eyes, slowing her breathing.
I turned the Sight on Billy, checking his aura and his general sense of well-being. His gray ghost cloak moved away as I watched, gathering itself in the middle of the room and quivering. For incorporeal spirits, it sure looked like they were jittery with excitement. A few tendrils still led back to Billy, as if the ghosts were anchored there, but it was clearly Sonata they were interested in now. All except one: it hung back, staying with him, and when I turned my gaze away, it teased me with the faintest shape of a child, pigtailed and open faced. She disappeared again when I looked back, and I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I was losing my mind.
Sonata said, “Restless spirits,” in a vibrating deep tone completely unlike the voice she’d spoken in earlier. The ghosts snapped to attention, and so did the hairs on my arms. Even Billy jumped a bit, but Patrick remained calm and utterly steady. Presumably he’d heard the voice before, and had been expecting it. “You are welcome in my home from this moment until I bid you leave. If you would speak with us, you will agree that my voice and the words
I thought only poltergeists had the corner on making noise and pushing things over. The cyclone of ghosts spun around, then darted to the room’s hearth. I heard nothing, and shot a glance at Billy, who shrugged one shoulder. Sonata, though, opened her eyes and focused on the gathering of ghosts with a satisfied nod. “We’re agreed.” Then dismay contorted her face and she breathed, “Oh.”
Billy and I both tensed, trying to anticipate disaster. Sonata sat silent, looking at the blur of ghosts with sorrow deepening the lines in her face. I wished, briefly, that I could see what she did, and was equally glad I couldn’t.
“They’re children,” she finally said. “So many of them are children. A girl in a pinafore, two boys in diapers, an older boy who threatens me with a slingshot, and one who’s just on the childhood side of being a woman. She has the most rage in her, and anchors the others.” Sonata put out a hand, an inviting gesture, and the cloud of ghosts swirled around it. She rocked back, letting go a soft sigh, and spoke again in a voice much lighter than her own: “My name is Matilda Whitehead. I will not go back into the dark.”
I nearly bit my tongue in half as Sonata’s colors bleached, then tinged an off-shade of green. Another face faded into existence over Sonata’s, outlined in lime and making her hard to look at. I cut off a combination of a yell and a question with a strangled noise, and Billy gave me a quick look that both appreciated and approved of my
