Walking Dead

It didn’t matter. Patrick was making sound for me, a low steady murmur: “In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”

Matilda arched under his hand and gave what, under normal circumstances, I would call an unholy shriek. Right now that was too accurate, and therefore seemed inappropriate. I Saw magic release from each of the child-size ghosts, and it snapped back to me with the sting of giant rubber-band guns misfiring.

Patrick’s voice rose, and then rose again, rolling over the little girl’s swearing and bellowing with infinite compassion and inexorable resolve. She bucked and twisted, and while my Latin wasn’t exactly fluent, even I could recognize that I was witnessing—hell, participating in—an exorcism in God’s name. Billy’d told me to get a priest if he was possessed. I hadn’t believed he’d really meant it until right now.

I guessed Patrick wasn’t a boytoy after all.

The children winked out, leaving cold spaces where their ghosts had been. Not the coolness of dead flesh, but the absolute nothingness I’d encountered in the Dead Zone, which was so remote from the rest of the astral planes I didn’t know if there was anything on its other side.

If there was, I didn’t think they’d passed through to it.

Matilda tore away from Sonata’s body, her aura losing the healthy color it’d stolen from me and turning discolored green again. It stretched and thinned like a snot toy flung against the wall, distorting her features until she became something alien and terrible. Her fingers turned to claws, tearing at Sonata’s flesh, and finally, howling wordlessly, she boiled out of Sonata’s body. Sonata collapsed into Patrick’s arms, the spirit quite literally no longer moving her.

The last parts of Matilda dove forward, dissipating into me.

I dove after her.

A song ran through my head: Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. I spun after Matilda without a hint of control and even less idea where we were going. If we were going anywhere: I had no sense of the dead girl’s ghost, no feeling of her presence. For all I knew, she’d launched herself at me to give me a scare, and for all I could tell, that was all that had happened.

I broke through into the cold bleak space of the Dead Zone, and hung in its infinity with every cell in my body straining to hear or see or feel an intruder. What I got, in spades, was nothing. No ghosts. No vengeance. No giant snakes or dead shamans or spirit guides, though I’d have taken the first several gladly if I could have the last one back.

This place has much in common with dreams, Coyote’d told me. I hung on a few long seconds, forgetting about Matilda and just wishing, wishing, that my friend and mentor might step through the nothingness and snap his teeth at me one more time.

After what felt like forever and still no time at all, I let go, fleeing the Dead Zone and retreating to the garden at the center of my soul.

The door to the desert was closed tight, key still in place under a lump of moss. Aware I was probably risking too much, I put the key in the lock and turned it, opening the door to a sandblast of wind that came scraping down the crater my door made the inverse apex of. Magic waited at the ready, the ridiculous Trans Am all but making tire treads in the earthy floor. But no one came screaming through the door, not from either side, and I locked it again before studying my garden.

I usually looked at it with pretty normal eyes, not calling up the Sight. This time, though, I was searching for intruders, and for once in my life, put everything into it. I could taste the waterfall with my skin, hear the recovering soil with my gaze. It flowed through me, filtered by my blood and magic, and I encountered impurities by the dozens. By the thousands, but even so, I recognized them as my own. Such overblown pride, hiding uncertainty, and the same with arrogance and smart-ass commentary. Shining confidence in a few places, strong enough to become a different kind of arrogance; those were my mechanics skills, or, of all things, the ability to deconstruct a poem. There were a hundred cracks in my armor—flaws in the windshield, when I turned my metaphor to vehicular terms—but they were mine, and not streaked with Matilda’s vitriolic hate.

Glad no one could see me, I folded my hands over my heart and knelt there at the southern end of my garden, hidden by mist, and called up the tiniest shield of magic possible, just a spark of blue-and-silver light starting in the core of me. It expanded with every heartbeat, slow deliberate press outward, until my arms were spread and the magic kept thrumming to greater and greater dimensions. I didn’t know how long it took, encompassing the whole of my garden with that new shield, but in time I felt the new one touch the old. A thrill shot back from the melding shields, zapping into my fingertips and squirreling through my body with a joie de vivre of its own. I looked up and silver-blue shimmered overhead, shields melding like a sunset of negative colors. I thought—I hoped—nothing alien could have remained within me, not when I’d begun a new shield from something so small and close, and strengthened the old with it.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have Sonata and Billy check me out. I stepped back into the real world.

Patrick had knelt, Sonata still cradled in his arms. My hands were fisted, something I only noticed because my nails cut into my palms. I needed to trim them. My fingernails, not my palms. I put my hands together in front of my stomach and uncurled the left with the still-knotted right hand, then made myself unfold the right fingers with my left. “What happened?”

Patrick’s aura remained serene, but tempered itself toward gold, as if that was the color of his sorrow. “They’ve been destroyed completely. It’s the worst fate I can imagine for a human soul.”

“Worse than being angry ghosts for a hundred years?” My hands were cold. I was abruptly aware of how tired I was, though Patrick had done the heavy lifting in the last few minutes.

“Worse than that,” he agreed quietly. “They might have found redemption, at the end, and instead chose a darker path.”

“You think there’s such a thing as redemption?” I wasn’t sure I wanted an answer, though I didn’t know what I was afraid of if he gave one. I did want an answer to, “What are you, anyway?”

“I do.” Patrick was maybe the steadiest soul I’d ever laid eyes on. His voice didn’t hold the richness that made some actors compelling, but his calm conviction had the same effect on me. I could listen to him read a phone book, as long as he did so with the resolution that he spoke with now. “I believe the worlds beyond ours are complex, and that we have almost no idea how we mortals interact with them. But I also believe the soul continues on, and that where spirit remains, hope resides.”

Then he shrugged, becoming a little more ordinary again, and said, “I suppose I’m a theologian. I went to seminary, but I was never comfortable with some of the strictures, so I left and studied comparative religion at university instead. My mother and Sonata were great friends. I’ve been coming by for years when she does a séance, in case something goes wrong.”

“Has it ever gone wrong before?”

“This is the second time.” Patrick spread his fingers over Sonata’s hair, and I finally shook myself loose from my physical stupor and came to kneel next to her. “The second I’ve been present for, at least. She’s been doing this longer than I’ve been alive. Is she all right?”

Actually, aurawise, she looked fine. Tired: the yellows and reds weren’t as bright, but they didn’t look sickly, and Matilda’s ghostly green had faded entirely. “She’s just sleeping. Billy, am I clear to…?” I glanced his way, studying his aura for shadows and finding none.

“Sonny could tell you better than I can.” Billy frowned at the sleeping medium. “I think they’re gone.”

I nodded, turning back to Sonata. Light and warmth balled in my hand, healing magic at its most simple and comforting. It dropped into Sonata’s chest, and though her breathing hadn’t been strained, it eased a little. She turned her face against Patrick’s chest and settled in, like a child seeking protection. His aura flared, white going hard and bright. The Sight winked off, sparing me a headache. “She’ll be fine. Give her a few minutes and you can wake her up.”

“Thank you.” It was effectively a dismissal. I got to my feet and went back to Billy, whose frown had deepened.

“I thought you couldn’t see them.”

“I can’t. Usually. I think it’s the cauldron.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and wished I was wearing my glasses so I could take them off and clean them; anything that would give me something to do while I tried to sort my thoughts into language. “I think Matilda might have tried jumping into me. I didn’t see her go through the Dead Zone, and I cleaned my garden as best I could and can’t see her, but…”