Walking Dead

“Gary picks locks just fine. Maybe he can let us in.”

“I can pick a lock, doll, not break into a state-of-the-art security system. Gary Muldoon.” The last was to Sonata, and was accompanied by a roguish smile that I considered pretty high on the irresistible scale.

Sonata apparently thought so, too. Dimples appeared and she let Gary linger over her hand as she murmured, “Sonata Smith,” in reply. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, ma’am.”

I grinned at my feet. Gary’s Saturday-night date had competition. Once in a while, things went right in the world. I took my smile from them to the road, feeling it fade as minutes ticked by. It was after eight, and while being at the museum instead of at a home with a swimming pool boded well for my long-term survival, I thought our window for finding and breaking the cauldron was shrinking. The deepest part of the night wasn’t all that far away, and it seemed likely that whoever had the cauldron would be calling up its full magic right around midnight. I wanted to find it before that happened.

Sandburg finally pulled in to the parking lot. His aura, still pale, twitched with concern as he got out of his car, but there were no sparks of off-colored resentment dancing from him. Evidently he understood that sometimes people close to a murder case got hauled off for questioning. Me, I wasn’t sure I’d be all that understanding.

In fact, thinking that way made me try to deepen my perception of his aura. I had no idea what a compulsion spell might look like, but logic dictated it had to leave some kind of mark, if it was there.

A glimmer of greenery, pale as anything else I’d seen off Sandburg, washed up around me: just a hint of his garden; of the state of his soul. I held on to it, hardly daring to breathe as I searched for a hint of something wrong within him.

A raging deep river of green, of greed, slammed out of nowhere and dragged me into Sandburg’s depths. Triumph and panic bloomed within me at equal rates: that kind of avarice could push a man to do almost anything—including drown a nosy shaman who went poking around in his soul uninvited. But I only needed to hold on a few seconds, just long enough to see where Sandburg’s hunger brought us.

The river swept me into a library at the edge of a desert: monumental pillars under a hard blue sky. Within seconds it morphed around me, changing from the legendary library at Alexandria to a modern, recognizable Library of Congress. To, I realized with embarrassment, a representation of a repository of all knowledge. Greed wasn’t necessarily for power, and what lay at Sandburg’s core was a desire to know things. With that much passion driving him, I suddenly felt sorry for anybody who tried to trick or ensorcel him into doing something he didn’t know he was doing. I jerked my gaze to the side in a silent apology as Sandburg bounded up the museum steps to join us.

“Have you found something?”

“We need to take another look around the murder scene,” Billy said. “I’m afraid it’s going to seem a little strange. If you could let us in, I’ll explain while the others prepare.”

“A little strange?” Sandburg unlocked the doors and reset the electronics with his pass code. I could See the numbers he’d pressed, and the order in which they’d been chosen, fading from one end of the spectrum to the other. I filed that away under Handy Tricks, though I doubted it was a morally superior use of shamanic magic. “One of my guards is dead, another missing, and Matholwch’s legendary cauldron has been stolen. How much stranger can anything be?”

“We’re going to work under the assumption that the magic of the cauldron is real, and see if we can contact the dead to learn more about it.” Billy spoke so reasonably that Sandburg nodded agreement before he’d fully grasped what had been said.

“We—you—what?”

“Mr. Sandburg, if you don’t mind sitting down with the rest of us, your presence will be extremely calming to Jason Chan’s spirit.” Sonata tucked her arm through Sandburg’s and walked him down the hall. “The familiar is very comforting to the dead, and I would be terribly appreciative of your help in this matter.” She was wearing a white blouse instead of the dead-happy-face T-shirt, which I thought was probably a good choice for out-of-house calls. The blouse went better with her smile and gentle tone. Sandburg found himself agreeing all over again, though I could all but see his mind whirling and trying to make sense of what she was saying.

The cauldron’s black smear had lessened considerably. It was, I thought, partly that I’d shaken off its effects once, and partly that it was losing the connection with the place it had rested. Either way, that had to be a good thing: I couldn’t imagine that with the weight of death pulling at them, any ghost might survive long in its presence. Billy said, “Chan’s gone,” under his breath. “Poor kid went ahead and crossed over.”

“I’m sorry we have to disturb him again.”

Sonata got Sandburg settled down at the farthest point from the cauldron’s empty space. “William, if you’ll stand here…?” She pointed him to a place a few steps to Sandburg’s right, and took up a place opposite Billy on Sandburg’s left. I shuffled over to stand much closer to the cauldron’s dais than I wanted to, and Gary, without being told, stood opposite me, so the five of us made a half circle around the display. “William explained your intentions to me, Joanne. The dead must have a desire to speak with the living for me to bring those who’ve crossed over all the way back to this world. If Jason Chan is reluctant—”

“As long as you can get him as far as the Dead Zone, I can talk to him.” I sat down, folding my legs and plucking at the vest, but decided to leave it on. Easier than arguing with Billy, who gave me a stern look as he, too, sat down. The others did the same—sat, not frowned at me—and Sandburg, looking nervous, followed suit. I felt a surge of sympathy for the mild museum curator. A few months earlier, I’d have felt just as awkward and out of place as he did.

Now, though, I glanced at my friends, then nodded at Gary. “Let’s do this thing.”

The first beat of the drum shattered the cauldron’s remaining death shroud from the air.

CHAPTER 23

Everybody except Gary flinched, though I didn’t know if the shared wince was because the drum was surprisingly loud or if everyone had a sense of the shroud falling. I thought it got distinctly easier to breathe. It was like being in Los Angeles after a rare rainstorm: all of a sudden you couldn’t see the air anymore, and breathing instantly felt less labored.

It was a good sign, anyway. My drum and my magic were all tied up with one another. If the cauldron’s murk could fall under a good thump of healing magic, maybe that meant the universe was on our side. I was all for that.

I was also procrastinating, in that I was allowing myself to be distracted by things that weren’t actually the drum and an inward focus that would send me to the Dead Zone. On the other hand, while we were short on time, we were also trying a séance, and if Sonata could call Jason Chan to us without me tripping the light fantastic, that seemed like a better way to go. My track record for speaking with the dead wasn’t what it could be, and Sonata’s talents actually lay in that direction. I wondered suddenly where Patrick was, and whether it was safe to be conducting a séance without him.

Sonata’s “Weary spirits” rolled through the room and earned another flinch from everybody except Gary, who was evidently completely at one with the drum. I envied him a bit, then tried to tuck away emotion and get ready to slip through the walls of the worlds if Jason didn’t answer Sonata’s call. “I beg forgiveness, spirits, for disturbing you. I come seeking knowledge, not about what lies beyond the veil, but about what has come to pass on this side of it. I have come to a place of sorrow and violence in hopes that one among you may have answers to share with me. Jason Chan,” she said much more quietly. “I know you seek no vengeance, but your fading memories of this world may help us to save another life. Will you speak with me?”

All of us, even Gary, straightened up and peeked around, searching out ghosts. Sandburg looked both poleaxed and fascinated, like he didn’t believe he was participating in a séance and at the same time wanted it to be real with all the strength of a child’s hopeful imagination. Shots of pink zotted off his aura, fireworks-bright, and I had to think that if he was guilty, he wouldn’t be nearly so excited about the prospect of a ghost coming to point a finger at him. Too bad. It would’ve been easy for him to be the killer.