The Walker Papers: Raven Calls Part 10

Mother's bones went at the north compa.s.s point of the circle, for the cold of death. I took the south, figuring the mother-daughter connection made as much of a power channel as could be asked for, and that living flesh and blood versus dead bones made a reasonable warmth of life contrast. I put Meabh in the west, for age represented by the setting sun, and Caitriona in the east for youth. I thought that made a nice channel, too: oldest of the bloodline to youngest. Or at least to the youngest available, since I knew there were younger cousins, never mind my own son, about whom I was trying hard not to think. It was too late, of course. Sheila the banshee knew about him now, and there was a good chance that she'd already pa.s.sed the information on to her new master. But I was going to have to cross that bridge later. I had bones to burn now.

"I know you can call up a power circle, whether you can heal or not," I shouted at Meabh. "I want your help here, okay? I want this circle to belong to both of us."

"What about me?" Caitriona sounded less petulant than I would've in her shoes at her age. In fact, I might even label her tone hopeful, if I was feeling honest. It made me want to give her a meaningful task, whether she had the power or not. After a second I hit on something and answered swiftly enough to seem like I hadn't hesitated at all.

"I want you to concentrate on Sheila. On everything you knew about her. Put that out there, focus it like you could call her up with your imagination. Put energy into it. The circle will pick up on that and your essence and your memories will become part of the power."

"And what will it do?"

"The more people that weave power together the stronger the connection is. I've used other people's energy before, but not for something like this. That's why I want you to think about Sheila. You knew her a lot better than I did. We want to call as much of her spirit here as we can, to give her over to cleansing the mountain and also to breaking the bond between her bones and her soul." I hadn't been previously aware of bonds like that, but then, ghosts weren't my specialty. That was my partner-former partner, which Morrison had probably told him by now, which was going to go down like a lead balloon-my former partner Billy Holliday's forte. I also wasn't absolutely certain my mother qualified as a ghost, but I was pretty sure she fell in the realm of undead, and for all I knew, the undead were deeply tied to their bones.

There was one potential snag in my plan. We might succeed in washing the mountain clean with all the heart and white magic Sheila had to offer, and that might leave nothing but the black-hearted banshee behind. I counted it a risk worth taking. In my judgment, the parts that counted as my mother would have been saved, and the rest, well. Everybody had a dark side, and there was a certain dramatic satisfaction in the idea of lopping the head off that dark side in a very literal fashion.

I decided it probably wasn't necessary to explain the possible flaw in the plan, and instead called Raven to me. It wasn't exactly that I needed his guidance in raising a power circle. More that I was heading into his realm, into the gray territory between life and death, and it was safer to do that with him nearby. He appeared, quarking curiously, and I scratched under his beak as he settled on my shoulder. "We have a big job, Raven. Life and death stuff. I need a circle that runs to the mountain's roots, that's how deep it has to go, and reaches up to where the air's too thin to breathe. Earth and sky. I can be earth, you can be sky, huh?"

He quarked again, this time clearly delighted, and leapt off my shoulder to wheel above our heads, sketching an outline of the circle. For an instant I simply loved the silly animal, loved his enthusiasm and his opinions and his brashness, and I hoped like h.e.l.l he knew that. He zipped around above us, dipping close to Meabh, then zooming around the top half of the circle to come around to Caitriona. I didn't know if either of them could see him, though I saw Caitriona's hair fliff as he caught a wing tip in it. Then he went back to the north again, this time climbing high before he turned his head to give me a birdy black eye in warning.

He dove, and magic fell down in a curtain with him. I squealed, as thoughtlessly delighted as he was, and yelled, "Now, Meabh!" as I pulled magic up from the earth.

Hers came from within, relying on the connection with the world that the aos si shared. It linked Croagh Patrick with Cromm Cruaich, tying the present to the far-distant past, just as Meabh was currently tied. Even Caitriona reacted, throwing forth a burst of energy more solidly formulated than someone without mystical training had any business offering. Her strength and Meabh's shot toward each other, making another link in the past/present rope, and for an instant their colors glimmered harmoniously.

Then my magic and Raven's crashed together, top to bottom, in a blast of gunmetal blue. Meabh and Caitriona's offerings, sandwiched between them, shone brilliantly for an instant, then exploded in rivulets through the ball of magic now encompa.s.sing Croagh Patrick.

It sounded like static, like the aurora was supposed to. It felt like laughter, a sheer primal joy in sympathetic magic. This was what wielding vast cosmic power was supposed to feel like: confident, strong, joyous, sharing. I'd thought once I could maybe heal Seattle. Maybe heal the world. All of a sudden I understood I was only part of a huge network of magic users, adepts, connected, whatever they wanted to be called, who could change the world if, and only if, they worked together like we were doing now. This was how my magic was meant to be used: as one of many. Nothing I could do on my own would ever feel so good.

Caitriona yelped, from which I ascertained she could either see or feel the power flowing. Meabh, far more stoic, stood her ground and mostly didn't let a little smile get out of control. I stretched my power toward my mother's bones, searching for the heat I'd once felt while healing. Fire shouldn't be that difficult to call up; it was only a change of state, and shamanism was about change.

A hint of Mother's red-gold power still clung to her bones. I dug into the marrow, reaching for every last whisper of that, ready to burn it out in a glorious, defiant blaze. Raven helped, settling on the bones with clenched claws, like he could snap and shake the last dregs of power from them. Between us, I felt her remaining magic gather, then lift, though neither Raven nor myself did the lifting. I tried to shutter the Sight on more deeply, and caught a glimpse of a much more fragile raven, so old his wings and beak had turned to white. Sheila's raven: I knew it instantly, though I'd never even imagined she had spirit animals. But it made sense. Oh, it made sense, if we were the long-calendar descendants of the Morrigan. Ravens were part of us. They always would be.

And the faded streak that was Mother's spirit raven held the fragments of her power in its claws, wings beating with a desperate, ponderous slowness. Time was so short, so very short, and there was so much to do. I pitched my voice to carry, not wanting to shout within the confines of the power circle. It seemed disrespectful, and if we'd just eked a spirit raven back from beyond to finish this task, the last thing I wanted was to show disrespect. "Give your memories of Sheila everything you've got, Cat. Let's wipe this place clean and give her the send-off she deserves."

Caitriona lowered her chin to her chest, eyes closed in concentration, and all of us held our breath, waiting to see Sheila's ghost break free of the white bones.

A G.o.ddess rose up instead.

Chapter Seventeen.

I had met G.o.ds, demiG.o.ds, semi-G.o.ds or whatever the grandchildren of G.o.ds should be called, archetypes, demons, elves and avatars. There were magnitudes of difference in the power each category blazed with, and I had not one single teeny tiny doubt that I was finally-finally!-in the presence of a genuine G.o.ddess. The utterly irreverent part of me thought it was about d.a.m.ned time. The rest of me tried not to fall down on my knees in gibbering worship.

Cernunnos had that effect on me, too, but their similarities mostly ended there. He was a creature of order, for all that I thought of death and its attending miseries to be chaotic. But he helped maintain the flow of life into death, while she was the chaos of new life. Power boiled off her incandescent skin, curls of magic licking life into existence with each molecule of air they touched. Chance exploded at every instance, random and frantic exploration of mutations pursuing survival. Happenstance and hope guided all the permutations, fractals of magic struggling to create sustainable life in a world already filled with it. My eyes burned from watching her for barely the s.p.a.ce of an indrawn breath. Then I howled and clapped my hands over my face, shutting down the Sight.

It faded slowly instead of its usual on-off switch, the G.o.ddess's afterimage burning my retinas for a shockingly long time. When I finally dared open my eyes again, she was merely unbelievably, inhumanly, immortally beautiful instead of eye-searingly powerful. Like Cernunnos-who had also nearly burned my eyes out when I looked at him with the Sight-her hair was scattered with light, though hers was molten sunlight instead of his starlight. Also like him, her features were chiseled, delicate, remote, flawless: high round cheekbones, large eyes, a small chin, all like she was just verging on womanhood instead of bearing a G.o.dhead.

Unlike Cernunnos, however, she was naked.

I had seen a lot more naked women the past few days than I was accustomed to. I scratched my ear, tried to find somewhere safer to look and discovered Caitriona gaping at either me or our new naked friend. It was hard to tell. I sighed, shrugged my leather coat off and offered it to the G.o.ddess. She took it curiously. After a minute I took it back and put it on her, which earned me a lightning-bolt smile of pure delight. She snuggled into it and I decided not to explain about the dead lambs whose skin it was. "Hi. I'm..." There was really only one name that would do here. "Siobhan. Siobhan Walkingstick. Is there a name we would know you by?"

"aine," she said, and it sounded like G.o.dd.a.m.ned silver bells chiming.

It also meant nothing to me. I glanced at Meabh and Caitriona, both of whom looked impressed. I took it as writ that aine was somebody important in Irish cosmology, and smiled at the little G.o.ddess. She was little, now that she wasn't blasting my eyes out: she couldn't have been more than five feet tall. Even Melinda was taller than that.

Melinda, who had a personal relationship with a G.o.ddess. I blurted, "Do you know my friend Melinda?"

aine looked amused. I ducked my head, muttering, "Yeah, right, no reason you'd be her G.o.ddess, right, sorry. Hey. Wait. Did you know my mother?"

Ineffable sorrow came into her eyes. I couldn't tell what color they were. Not white, because that would be creepy, but they shifted from gray to blue to green and back to gray with the pa.s.sing of clouds and the ripple of wind. It made her seem that much more elemental, and she really didn't need any help in that department. I got hold of myself, trying to focus on her expression rather than her inhuman gaze. "You did know her. Is that why you came? We're trying to lay her to rest. If you want to help, we'd be..."

Words sort of didn't encompa.s.s it. I settled on "Grateful," trusting she'd get the idea despite its utter inadequacy, then cleared my throat and tried again. "I can't, um. I can heal and I can fight, but I guess I can't set things on fire with my mind. Would you...do the honors?"

aine pursed her lips and wandered from me to Caitriona, who she studied for a long time before putting her hands on Cat's shoulders and drawing her close to kiss her forehead. An imprint of lips shone there for a moment, and Caitriona looked starstruck as aine wandered away. At Mother's bones, she knelt with an air of regret, and although I couldn't See it, when she lifted her cupped hands, I was sure it was to hold and comfort the ancient spirit raven. She put the raven on her shoulder, then, much more purposefully, went to Meabh, at whom she smiled. Meabh's expression remained solemn, and aine smiled even more broadly, reaching up-way, way up-to pat the warrior queen's cheek before she came back to me.

"You're Brigid's G.o.ddess, aren't you?" I said when she got to me. "The one who elevated her the way the Master elevated the Morrigan. What is he? He must be something more than a G.o.d, because he just about wiped Cernunnos out, and I'd think they'd be on a pretty level playing field if they were both G.o.ds. If you were all G.o.ds. Whatever. So what is he? Is he like Coyote? Big Coyote, I mean, the archetypical Trickster, not my Coyote. Cyrano. My teacher. Is he, like, I don't know, the archetype of death?" G.o.d. I was talking and I couldn't shut up. Still, I really wanted to know what I was up against, and Cernunnos hadn't been inclined to talk about it.

Of course, aine didn't much seem inclined to talk at all, even when I finally managed to shut up. Which lasted only a few seconds, since no answers were forthcoming. "And if he's on a different level from you guys, how come you were able to uplift Brigid the way he did the Morrigan? And why is she the Morrigan instead of just Morrigan? Never mind, that doesn't matter. Or maybe you couldn't. Maybe that's why Brigid needed a link with the time the cauldron was destroyed in order to bind it. Maybe she's not as high on the avatar echelon as the Morrigan is. Oh, G.o.d, please, somebody make me stop talking."

aine laughed. It was like a baby's laughter, a sound I wanted to get her to make again. I didn't, however, want to start babbling again, so I pressed my lips together and smiled hopefully.

Instead of speaking, she turned her palms up and stood there patiently. After a handful of uncertain seconds, I put my palms down, against hers.

The werewolf bite on my forearm turned venomous.

Shining, blistering red-hot pain rocketed through it, so fierce I went dizzy before I could even take a breath. The blast of gorgeous, ice-cool healing power that followed was even more dizzifying. Little Coyote, my Coyote, had healed me of some b.u.mps and bruises once, but it had been nothing like aine's power coursing through me. Her magic was elemental, sensual, s.e.xual, profound. I could bask in it for days, like a lizard under the hot sun. It was absolute rea.s.surance that all would be right with the world, and it was the most comforting, loving embrace I'd ever encountered. It felt like someone giving me a good scrubbing from the DNA on up. I'd just been more or less rewritten from the DNA on up, but that had been a much less pleasant experience.

Or it had been up until aine's power slammed into the magic that actually was trying to rewrite me from the DNA on up, because then things got down to some serious pain. Intellectually I knew there'd probably been barely a second between the first intense burst of agony from the bite when aine touched me, the cushioning effect of her magic rushing through me and the infection's response, but the moment of respite had seemed wonderfully drawn-out.

At least, it seemed drawn-out in comparison to the railroad spikes now being driven through my arm. I pried one eye open to make sure that wasn't really happening. It wasn't. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes again and tried not to snivel.

My own power had been going great guns holding the infection in place. I kind of thought aine's should just smack it aside like a pesky bug, but I could feel her crashing against it, waves against the sh.o.r.e, neither giving way to the other. I didn't dare trigger the Sight, not with a G.o.ddess using her power full tilt. I'd go blind, or possibly burn my brain out. Neither would be any fun. So I just held on, teeth gritted against relentless surges of magic battling it out under my skin, until aine suddenly released me and stepped back.

The bite still hurt like blue blazes, and I didn't really need to look to know it wasn't one bit more healed than it had been. I looked anyway.

It wasn't one bit more healed than it had been. Some of the inflammation that had erupted when aine touched me was already fading, but the bite itself was just as dark, infected and nasty as it had been since I'd received it. All I could think was, holy c.r.a.p, the Master was powerful. Or the werewolves were powerful. Somebody, anyway, was powerful, because if a G.o.ddess was stymied by the shapechanging magic running through my bloodstream, then I was infected with something so absurdly far out of my league I didn't even know where to begin. I'd thought Meabh had had power in spades when I'd seen her bind the werewolves to the lunar cycle. But she'd just told me that had taken a lifetime of preparation, so while it had been an astounding performance, it didn't seem to be something she was in a position to repeat.

I took a moment-just a moment-to really hate being the go-to girl who could pull out the repeat performances, and then I got over myself, because aine looked genuinely dismayed that my arm still shone with red, superheated infection. Offhand, I guessed she'd never run into something she couldn't heal, either. That was considerably more of a come-uppance for a G.o.ddess than it was for snot-nosed little me. "It's okay. I'm gonna figure it out. And I know it means I bear his mark and all, but don't let that stop you from helping my mother, okay? Please? I'll bow out of the circle if I need to, so there's no taint, but man, she really doesn't deserve this."

aine got an expression I suspected had crossed my own face more than once in the past several months. Petulance was not an emotion I would typically expect to ascribe to a G.o.ddess, but if there was a better word for the pouty lower lip, the set jaw and the slightly drawn-down eyebrows, I didn't know what it was. She did something peculiar: scooped her hands at her shoulder, then spread them palms-down over mine in a kind of splashing, throwaway gesture, then whipped away from me. Dramatically, with all that white leather swooping around, even if the coat was much too large for her-and raised her hands like the world's tiniest conductor calling an orchestra to attention.

I'd regret for the rest of my life that I only dared see, and not See, what she did next.

There was a fair amount of magic already flying around the mountaintop. Meabh and I had plenty of power to unleash individually, and together it made for an impressive show, especially when Raven was throwing his whole black-winged little soul into helping out. Sight or no Sight, I heard him shrieking in utter delight, and bet a bird's-eye view of aine's antics was a delight to see.

I felt her bring my power into line with hers while at the same time excising my heart. Excising the part of me closest to the werewolf bite, and, to be fair, probably the least important part of my power in terms of saving my mother went. I had barely known the woman. I hadn't much liked her, much less loved her. I had learned enough now to regret all three of those things, but it was a little late now. So my intellectual good intent went into aine's weaving, if not my heart-wrenching loss and sorrow, and I was okay with that.

I felt her gathering up Meabh's magic, too, both the connection to the earth that the aos sis' long lives offered, and, as I'd thought was important, the connection of past and present. Not that a G.o.ddess didn't encompa.s.s all that time frame herself, but despite aine coming to lend a hand, this was still a working of power of and for mortals. Meabh might barely qualify as mortal, but elves could and did die, so in my book, that counted.

I knew without having to See that Caitriona lent the heart I lacked. I wanted very badly to view the conjuring she'd dreamed up of who and what my mother had been, but even if this succeeded and we broke the bond of bones and spirit, we still had to hunt down Sheila-the-banshee and rescue her, whatever that took. I couldn't afford to be blinded or burned out no matter how much I wanted to See what was going on. It was a crying shame, because Cat had loved my mother, and it would've been nice to see the woman through those eyes. Still, I felt the surge of emotion build up and become part of aine's working, and that was something.

Then, unexpectedly, I felt one more addition to the circle. aine reached back to all the days my mother had spent on Croagh Patrick working toward healing it, and wrenched all those years of power forward. I knew that was what she was doing: I had mucked with time enough myself, both today and over the past year, to recognize the sensation. Two things became obvious. One, the mountain was so parched because aine had pulled forty or fifty years of magic away from it so it could be invested here, today, all at once. Yet another closed time loop. I hated them, but they were probably better than open ones.

Two-not that I hadn't already known this, but still-my mother's willpower was staggering. Literally. I staggered as aine yanked all that magic forward, its weight pressing down on me as heavily as if Mother was there herself, guiding a lifetime's worth of power into a healing ritual meant to change the landscape forever. No adept would stand to have her home overlooked by a shadowed magic, not if she could help it, and my mom could by G.o.d help it.

It no longer mattered that I wasn't using the Sight. As occasionally happened, the power had taken on real-world visibility, white magic sheeting down around us in waves of extraordinary beauty. I bet half of Ireland could see the mountaintop glowing, and I started thinking we'd better get the show on the road before people came bounding up to find out what was going on. Not that right now I could have the slightest effect on whether the show got on the road or not, so I decided I'd better stand back and enjoy it.

I could almost see my mother stepping through the curtains of magic. Kneeling here and there-always somewhere different-to invest the mountain with magic. Covering so much ground over the decades, so many times a year, that she became multiples of herself, crouched side by side by side, until she had knelt and touched virtually the whole of the mountaintop. There were s.p.a.ces between handprints-finger-width s.p.a.ces-but they touched the curve of a different year's thumb or hand, heel or fingertips, so there was a continuous net of power built up, glimmering with her distinctive magic. It sank into the earth in her time, and burst upward in mine.

aine caught all that magic, more focused will than I thought any human could handle at once, and gave it right back to the Reek. She pushed it down, deeper and deeper, until it went below the mountain's foot. Until it rooted out the blood that had once stained the holy place, and scrubbed it clean.

Pure triumph erupted from the cool green earth as the last of ancient blood faded away. Everywhere for miles, tens of miles, flared with joy. With life exultant, with the thrill of victory after so many eons of defeat. Hot tears sliced trails down my cheeks, and I didn't even have much of a horse in this race, not as far as an abiding love of the countryside went. But this, once more, was what I could be good for: making things a little better. At the end of the day I wasn't sure anything else really mattered.

aine gave a happy trill, bringing all the newly awakened power to high alert. It wanted to dance for her, wanted to celebrate its survival, and if there was anything more suited to the tiny G.o.ddess than that jubilant emotion, I couldn't imagine what it was. She brought her hands together, heels touching and fingertips dancing like flames.

Every ounce of celebratory power in the West shot to her, and, guided by her desire, became the fire that burned my mother's bones.

It took no time at all for them to become dust. aine, with an air of total satisfaction, discarded my leather coat, did a twelve-step dance-I counted-around it, then gave me a blinding smile and disappeared.

This once I didn't hold it against the disappearee. I was okay with G.o.ds doing things like that. Disappearing mysteriously should, in fact, be high up in a G.o.d's repertoire. Besides, I was too agape to be upset. aine had taken the power circle down with her when she went, and I sat with a thump, gawking across its remnants at my mother's smoldering remains.

"What... I mean, what the... Who's aine? Really, seriously, did you see that?" Of course they had. They'd been right there, just like me. They'd been right there while a G.o.ddess dropped by to immolate a dead woman's bones and sink so much fresh life magic into a mountaintop I was expecting it to spontaneously erupt in flowers. Or possibly in song. Or both. At any moment Julie Andrews would appear, and it would all be over. I wondered if I would rate that kind of exit performance when it was my turn to go.

Caitriona stalked over and hit my shoulder with a solid fist, which put paid to any self-aggrandizing ideas of shuffling off my mortal coil. I clutched my shoulder in astonished injury as she yelled, "'Can't set things on fire with me mind?' Jaysus, the lip on ye! Can't set-!" She stalked off again, but only as far as Meabh, to whom she also said, "Can't set things on fire with her mind so! Sure and it's a pity, isn't it? It's every day I get up and say to meself, no, not today, Cat, today ye can't set things on fire with yer mind, but tomorrow so, tomorrow will be grand and you'll just set things on fire with your mind."

The chapel roof exploded into flames.

Chapter Eighteen.

I burst out laughing. I just couldn't help it. I'd had enough. More than enough, and the flames dancing merrily over the chapel roof were the final straw. Although setting things on fire with my mind was not in my skill set, I was surprisingly confident of being able to douse them, and extended shields over the chapel. If I could keep scythes and avalanches and psychic attacks out with my shields, I saw no reason why I couldn't keep oxygen out, too, and within moments the fire sputtered out under the increasing pressure of silver-blue magic. There wasn't even any damage to the roof, possibly thanks to my hastiness, but more, I thought, thanks to the magical nature of the flames. They had been set with the power of the mind. Probably that kind of fire didn't really need fuel at all, but it did need concentration, and Caitriona's was gone all to h.e.l.l and back.

When I turned away from the chapel, Meabh was staring accusingly at Caitriona, who was in turn staring at me accusingly. "Oh, no," I said. "That was you, sister, not me."

"What?"

"But she hasn't the power!"

My eyebrows shot up. "Maybe she hadn't the power, but I'd say she's got it now. aine kissed her, remember?"

"It doesn't work that way!"

My eyebrows remained elevated. They felt like they might never come down, in fact. "Doesn't it? Because as far as I knew, I didn't have the power, either, not until Cernunnos skewered me. I'm kinda thinking close encounters with the deitific kind trigger all sorts of interesting responses in-" and I dropped my voice dramatically "-the granddaughters of Meabh."

Meabh looked like she would set my head on fire if it was within the power of her mind to do so. "There are rituals, Granddaughter. There are slow awakenings. There are-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Sweat lodges and spirit danc-"

I was vaguely aware Caitriona had been saying, "Sorry, what?" and "Sorry?" and "Excuse me," in increasingly voluble tones, but she broke into my litany with a roared, "What do you mean, that was me?" that stopped Meabh and me from snapping at one another's heels I peeked over my shoulder to make sure the chapel wasn't on fire again, then smiled brightly at Caitriona. "I mean I can't set things on fire with my mind, and I'm guessing Meabh can't, either, which leaves you, who was concentrating very hard on the idea of setting things on fire with your mind when the chapel went up. Wow. That's a totally offensive power."

Offense was the right word, all right. Caitriona balled her fist again and came at me. To her huge outrage, I caught the punch in my palm effortlessly. I was a lot bigger than she was, and it was a lousy attack. The verbal one was clearer, if not necessarily more heartfelt. "What do you mean, an offensive power? Sure and you're the one trucking with a dead woman's bones, there's nothing more offensive than that!"

"No, no." I leaned into Cat's fist, holding her in place. "Not offensive bad. Offensive like offense, defense. It's a power you can bring to the attack." She relaxed a little, suddenly less, well, offended. "Which I'm guessing means whatever you are in the cosmic scheme of things, it's not a shaman. Maybe more like Meabh here. She doesn't heal. She just brings the fight to the bad guys."

"I wield shamanic power," Meabh said stiffly.

I wrinkled my nose. "I don't think you do. You wield magic, absolutely, and it's a magic that can shape bodies, but I'm not sure it's shamanic. Healing's a big part of shamanism. You're more of a..." My hand fluttered away from holding Caitriona's fist, waving in the air as if searching for words to pluck from it. I had firsthand experience with sorcerers. They were basically evil shamans. Meabh wasn't one of those. And witches needed a coven and a deity to guide them, so she wasn't a witch, either. I'd never met a wizard, but that had too many fantasy novel connotations for me. I finally settled on, "Mage!" and felt pretty good about it.

Or I did until I remembered that was exactly the word a Seattle speaker-with-the-dead had used to describe my mother. Sheila MacNamarra, the Irish mage, she'd said. Which meant your average mage, if there was such a thing, should be able to heal, since my mother apparently had been able to. Either that or magery came with different skill sets depending on the adept, which seemed fairly likely.

I was going to write the G.o.dd.a.m.ned handbook, is what I was going to do. As soon as I was done hunting down a banshee and finding Gary and right after I'd gone home to tie Morrison to a bed for a week and then taken up jogging with any energy I happened to have left over. I didn't have a job to go to anymore, after all. No doubt I could write a bestselling shamanic handbook in my suddenly copious free time and live off the riches from that.

Meabh and Caitriona, who were not, thankfully, privy to that whole line of thought, had equal looks of satisfaction. Apparently being mages sounded cool. I kind of thought it did, too, and momentarily tried it on for size. Joanne Walker, Mage For Hire. Siobhan Walkingstick, Magistrate. Not that I was certain magistrate could be used that way, but on the other hand, who was going to stop me?

I was, really. I'd kind of gotten used to the idea of being a shaman. Maybe if Sheila had raised me, I'd have come up in the idea of being a mage, but I'd had more exposure to my Cherokee side, and the magic had shaped itself in the idea of shamanism. Perhaps an unnaturally broad spectrum of shamanism, but still, that was the t.i.tle I was comfortable with. Caitriona could be a mage. The mage, presumably. The Irish Mage. I felt guilty. That was a h.e.l.l of a burden to plant on a nineteen-year-old.

"Am I really like you so? Like Auntie Sheila?" Cat didn't sound burdened. She sounded breathless. Hopeful. Excited. All the things I'd been, now that I reached back for it, when Coyote had approached my thirteen-year-old self in dreams and had started to teach me to be a shaman. Maybe it wasn't so bad after all.

Meabh, grumpily, said, "No," at the same time I said, "Yeah, I think so." We eyed each other, my expression falling into a frown. "What's your problem, Granny? I'd think you'd be pleased."

She looked as though she'd like to throttle us both. "The power doesn't come on ye in a burst. It's grown up into, day by day, bit by bit. It's madness to be drowned in it all at once."

I could hardly argue the latter point, but the former was manifestly untrue. I started to protest, trailed off before I got going, then tried again, with something totally different than I'd expected to say. "You're aos si, Meabh. We're human. It might work differently for you. You're connected to the world in a way I've never seen. If that all came up and smacked a person at once, yeah, it'd be madness, but I think maybe we mere mortals don't have quite as much oomph to take under our wings."

Meabh's jaw worked. She clearly wanted to be annoyed, but I was honestly a bit agog at the aos si connection to the world, and it had come through in my voice. It's hard to be irritated with someone who's all impressed by you. "Well," she finally said, somewhere between grudging and exasperated, "what are we to do with her, then? Sure and we can't leave a newly awakened power to fumble along on her own."

"Sure and we won't," I said cheerfully. "She's coming with us. I dunno where we're going, but it can't hurt to have new phenomenal cosmic power tagging along."

Caitriona squeaked, "Really?" and I started to nod before she finished with, "Phenomenal cosmic power? Am I that grand?"

I said, "Time will tell," in my very best intonation of wisdom voice, but Cat didn't look impressed. Kids these days, I tell ya. "If you're really going to step into Sheila's shoes, you've probably got some fairly significant power. But it may take a while to access it all. Meabh's right. These things usually do come up in bits and pieces, through lots of training, rather than being all Hammer time."

She stared at me, a firm reminder that people born a decade later than I'd been were not versed in the same popular lingo. "Never mind. Just try not to set anything else on fire, okay?"

"I wouldn't know how to." Her eyes, though, were big and interested, and I caught her eyeing the chapel again.

"Don't even think about it. I need to do some important stuff." I really wished I'd had specifics to put in there, but I was coming up short on them. "I wish Billy was here. Or Sonata. A medium, anyway. I don't know how to tell if Mother's spirit has been...loosened."

"Can ye not tell?" Meabh asked incredulously. "With all the power here, can ye not tell?"

"Speaking with the dead is way out of my skill set. Cat, did you feel anything from Sheila during that whole..." I waved my hand. "Thing?"