Walking Dead

There was something in shamanism called soul retrieval, which was exactly what it sounded like: sometimes people get inexplicably sick and began to fade away. The shamanistic viewpoint on that was their souls somehow become dislodged from their bodies, which then begin to die, as the essential life force is no longer there to vitalize it. Soul retrieval was the moral equivalent of Shamanic Graduate School: it was not the sort of thing the half-trained and emotionally damaged should undertake.

Obviously, I undertook it. I rolled off Billy’s chest bellowing, “CPR! CPR! Morrison, he needs CPR!” which, really, was not the calmest or most awesomely shamanistic way to approach the situation. The truth was, though, I didn’t think I had the stuff to get Billy’s breathing back in line and go chasing after his soul at the same time. I trusted my boss could handle restarting Billy’s heart.

Me, I closed my eyes and ran for the Dead Zone.

I had one advantage. I knew Billy’s soul had gotten lost. I wasn’t working on conjecture. Caroline had wiped out the cauldron, and it could be read one of two ways. One, she’d taken too much of Billy with her. Two, and this was the one I thought more likely, he’d just flat-out refused to let go, and had been ripped away from the life she was trying to give back to him. If there was anything left to her now, she’d be trying to stop him from crossing over. I just needed to get there in time to give her a helping hand.

The Dead Zone refused to let me in.

Intellectually I knew why. I was too agitated, not centered enough, and hadn’t been forcibly thrust into an alternate state of consciousness by, say, being clocked over the head. Shamans, I suspected, were supposed to be patient. Patience was a virtue. I was not especially virtuous. I felt Morrison crash down beside me on the cauldron’s remnants and let go a silent shout at the inside of my head: Morrison was doing his part. I had to do mine so he wouldn’t be disappointed. I had to do whatever it took to find Billy and stitch him back to his body. While I railed at myself, Gary picked me up and moved me from the cauldron, which was no small feat. A moment later I heard a whisper of breath being pressed out of Billy’s lungs, like wings on the wind.

Raven wings had cut the air when I’d last left the Dead Zone.

I dropped my chin to my chest, throat going tight and eyes filling with hot tears. “Raven, Morrigan, Trickster, Maker. You guided me once before. You showed yourself to me when I sought a teacher. I don’t do you the honor I should, I know that, but for what it’s worth, it’s because I’m an idiot, not because I don’t trust you. I just don’t… think about giving thanks and bringing baubles. I’m still not very good at this. I’m taking it more seriously, but I’m still not what anybody’d want me to be.” I opened my eyes, turning a tear-stained face toward the cool distant moon. “I need your help, Raven. Protect my spirit. Protect my soul. Help me find my friend. Please.”

Sleek black feathers enclosed me, and I fell backward into the Dead Zone.

I had never, not once, felt any degree of control in the Dead Zone. Sometimes I could slide from place to place, but mostly if I moved it was through my subconscious getting the better of me. Tackling Jason had been a by-product of my entrance: an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

The raven on my shoulder changed all of that.

I didn’t know if it was because ravens were so strongly associated with death, or if it was that having a spirit guide in a dangerous part of the astral realm genuinely made it safer. Either way, the Dead Zone’s near-infinite curve shrank to a definable space, one that I could look from end to end of. My vision was unusually sharp and clear, letting me see things I’d never seen before. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of ghosts slipped through the emptiness. They were on a journey, and for a brief moment I saw all the paths they took. Thousands upon thousands of them traveled a river; thousands more walked hand in hand with a figure who shifted from the familiar cowled death’s-head to a slender and effete being I thought of instantly as Morpheus. As many again rose upward, soaring to whatever lay beyond, and thousands sank down, all of them crossed the Dead Zone in search of another world.

I could have seen them all, if I’d wanted. Could have looked into their eyes, known them as the people they’d been. My vision was that clear, a raven-sharp consideration of a transition mortal eyes weren’t quite allowed to see. Another time I might want to do that: to sit and consider, to sense fear or hope or a hundred other emotions, but not now. Not with Morrison trying to force breath back into Billy’s body, and his spirit taking one of these innumerable tracks to a new aspect of existence.

“Help me find Billy?”

My raven companion leaped off my shoulder and winged its way through the starless void. The half shadows of passing mortality faded with its departure, leaving me alone in a zone grown smaller but no less mysterious.

What felt like a heartbeat later, but had to have been longer, given the distance the raven had traveled, it let forth an excited caw and spun around on a wingtip. I took a single step and joined it, trying not to gape at the space I’d crossed. It settled down on my shoulder again, and clarity washed over my vision again.

Billy rode on the river, one of many in a long flat boat poled by a man with coins for eyes. I caught his shoulders—Billy’s, not the boatman’s—and he turned an uninterested gaze on me. I swallowed, suddenly nervous. The raven dug its claws into my shoulder reassuringly, making me wince. “Ow. Hey. Hey, Billy. It’s me, Joanie. Joanne,” I corrected myself, then wrinkled my face and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

“It’s me, Joanne, except you kind of deserve better than that, don’t you. My name’s Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, and you’re my partner in defeating crime, and I’m hoping you don’t really want to take this path just yet.”

He stayed still, not responding. I sat back, lower lip in my teeth. “Come on, Billy. I can take you home. If you think this might not be your time, c’mon and listen to me. We’ll get through this. Caroline didn’t finally let go just to have you join her right away. You must know that.”

His pupils dilated at his sister’s name. Relieved laughter gasped through me. “Yeah. You remember Caro, Billy. She’s been watching out for you all this time. You know what she’s done to protect you. You know she didn’t do it just so you could give up and die. Come on. Come home with me, Billy. You need to get back to Melinda and the kids. Remember them? Robert and Clara and Jackie and Eric? The new one on the way? You remember.”

His gaze got clearer with every name. The raven’s claws tightened again and it plucked a strand of my hair out, making me yelp. The sharp sound got an uncertain laugh from my partner, whose eyebrows drew down after a few seconds. “Joanie? Is that a raven on your shoulder?”

“Yeah,” I said, back in the real world. Billy dragged in a sharp breath all on his own, sending Morrison and Gary back a few feet in relief and surprise. “Yeah,” I said again. “It is. Welcome back to the world of the living, Detective Holliday. I think I’m gonna have to do a spirit quest for you, man. Find some kind of totem animal willing to keep you out of trouble when you’re hanging around me.”

Billy closed his eyes and lay there for a minute, looking and sounding like all he was doing was practicing breathing. Then he said, “That sounds like a good idea. Shouldn’t I be dead?” in a very calm voice.

I knew that voice. It was the one I used when I was trying really hard not to panic. “Not for lack of trying on your part. I took it up with the management.” I put my hand over his heart, calling a whisper of healing magic to make certain of its steadiness. It felt tired, which I could certainly appreciate, but his aura was strong enough, and I slipped a bit of magic under his skin, hoping it would help.

His breathing got easier and he lay there another minute, staring at the sky. For a scene as chaotic as Redding’s backyard had been a few minutes earlier, it was incredibly quiet now. The moonlight and water were peaceable, and not even Morrison had anything to say. Finally Billy said, “Thanks.” Three sets of hands reached out to help him as he sat up. He said, “Thanks,” again, and we all flinched back about five feet when his cell phone rang.

“It’s five minutes past twelve,” I said in astonishment. “Who’s calling you?”

He found his phone, paled in its blue screenlight, said, “Mel,” and answered with a hurried “Mel? Is everything—What? Right now? Oh, hell. No, I’m—No, Mel, this isn’t a good—”

“Holliday,” Morrison said in disbelief. “If that’s your wife telling you she’s giving birth, you had better not be about to tell her this isn’t a good time.”

Billy’s mouth snapped shut. His gaze shifted from me to Morrison to Gary, then back to the captain, and he cleared his throat. “Call an ambulance. I’ll meet you at the hospital. I love you, Melinda.” He hung up with a look of tortured apology that Morrison made another disbelieving sound at.

“Go. For God’s sake, Holliday, go. Your wife is giving birth. If you’re strong enough, get out of here. We can wrap this up without you.”