Spiritwalk (13 page)

It was the manitou’s presence that kept him from reaching Nanibush, Migizi realized. He would need a stronger medicine to overcome its influence—a medicine he didn’t have, unless the moon’s light would add enough strength to his call.
Wabigwanigizis
would be her aspect tonight—a moon of blossoms. Not the strongest moon, but strong enough if she would help.

He walked up the slope to the hilltop and sat down cross-legged, his shadow resting beside him, his soul ranging in the shadows of the woods at his back. Birch and pine, maple and cedar. Their sap could already hear the call of Nokomis’s light, edging the eastern horizon, waiting for old man Mishomis to set in the west.

Migizi touched his medicine pouch and closed his eyes. He would try again.

7

Esmeralda waited for Blue in the garage where he kept his motorcycles. She sat on the ’67 Chevy car seat that was bolted to the floor across from his workbench and looked around at the organized mess of tools and machines. She found it odd that Emma would have ended up with a biker, though he had to be more than that if he was also a trusted friend of Jamie’s.

She tried to imagine what he’d look like, talk like, who he was. She pictured the kids in their leathers in London’s East End, then the stereotypical bikers from B-movies, and finally gave up trying. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the car seat and looked for the silences hidden within. Not to dream. Just to be quiet.

She was so successful that when the garage door suddenly opened, she started upright, disoriented. A gust of wind fluttered some litter at her feet, then rose to wind her hair about her neck and face. The roar of the big Harley-Davidson as it entered only served to confuse her more. It was followed by a second machine.

Esmeralda pulled the hair from her face and forced herself to sit quietly. When the two machines were turned off and the garage door had rumbled shut again, she let out a sigh of relief for the blessed silence that followed. She watched the riders as they removed their helmets.

The man had to be Blue. He was big, broad shoulders bulging tightly in a black T-shirt, long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. His features were roughly chiseled. Gold earrings glinted in each earlobe. The woman looked tiny compared to him. She was all in black leather with a cloud of frizzy blond hair and delicate birdlike features. She was the first to notice Esmeralda sitting there watching them.

She touched her companion’s arm. “Blue?”

He turned to look, a frown creasing his face when he saw Esmeralda. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“I could be a friend.”

He balanced his helmet on the seat of his Harley and shook his head. “Friends are people you know. And they don’t show up in your space, hanging around like they owned the place.”

This
was Emma’s lover?

“I’m a friend of Jamie’s,” she said. “An old friend.”

Some of the suspicion left his face. “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

“You never really gave her any time,” his companion told him.

“Sweetness and light here is Judy,” Blue said, motioning to his blond woman with a thumb. “But she’s right. I’ve never had a whole lot of patience and I’m wired a little tight these days, but that’s no excuse. It’s just that people don’t usually come in here. The House knows it’s my...” His voice trailed off. “I guess you haven’t been around for a while, right? It’s just that Jamie—”

“I know what’s happened to him. He told me.”

“He...?”

“He’s the one that said I should wait for you here.”

From the way Tim had acted earlier that day, Esmeralda had already gathered that not too many people were aware of Jamie’s continuing presence in Tamson House. Blue’s confusion now confirmed that.

“I’m here about Emma,” she added. “My name’s Esmeralda.”

“Esmeralda? You’re the one with the poems who sent Emma that warning?”

She nodded.

He looked at her with an expression that she couldn’t read. “Let’s go grab a beer,” he said, “and I’ll fill you in.”

After picking up a six-pack of Millers from the fridge in the Silkwater Kitchen, they went up to the Postman’s Room to talk. Esmeralda and Judy sat in the club chairs, while Blue pulled the swivel chair away from the desk, positioning it so that he could comfortably talk to them and look at Jamie’s screen at the same time.

“After it all went down last year,” he said, “Emma and I ended up together. It wasn’t the quickest romance on record, and not the smoothest at the start, but I’ve screwed up enough relationships in my time. This time I was going to stick it out—it was that important to me, you know?

“Anyway, things were going good, except for one thing—Jamie filled you in on what happened with Glamorgana and everything, right?”

Esmeralda nodded.

“Well, what happened was, Emma acted like it never went down. Not any of it. She just couldn’t remember anything about splitting into two different people, about Glamorgana—none of it. It’s like it went right out of her mind. What she remembered was getting messed up by some bikers and me and Judy and Hacker just happened to show up to pull her out. I mean, she sees Taran here around the House—Glamorgana’s bard, right?—and she honestly believes that the first time she met him was here.”

“That kind of thing happens,” Esmeralda said. “It’s a defense mechanism of the mind. When events are too disturbing, or they simply don’t fit into one’s worldview, the mind convinces itself that they never happened.”

Blue nodded. “Yeah, Jamie said something like that. It’s just weird. Because
I
remember. Taran’s living proof that it went down...”

“What about you, Judy?” Esmeralda asked.

Judy shrugged. “I wasn’t there—not for the weird stuff.”

“So what do you make of it?”

“I keep an open mind.”

“It happened,” Blue said flatly.

“I believe you,” Esmeralda said. “In a way, I was there myself.” Judy’s eyebrows lifted questioningly, but Esmeralda simply went on. “What happened after that?”

“Well, I stopped going on about it to her,” Blue said. “I figured, what’s the point? What difference does it make? But then she started getting more withdrawn over the winter. Moody, first. I thought maybe it was cabin fever—Ottawa winters can do that to a person.”

“I remember.”

“But it didn’t go away when the weather warmed up. Got worse, in fact. So then a couple of weeks ago I was supposed to meet her to go to an opening at a gallery—”

Esmeralda didn’t blink at that, but she revised her opinion of him again. There was definitely more to him than the face he presented to most of the world.

“—only she never showed. I tried calling her. No answer. Finally I drove up to her place and found her lying in her bed like she was dead. I didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe she’d OD’d on something, so I brought her into town. I didn’t want to take her to the hospital in Hull—I don’t speak French and I didn’t want to get some kind of runaround. So I brought her to the General and she’s been there ever since.

“The doctors say she’s in a coma, but they don’t know how it came on, they don’t why, and they don’t know when or even if she’s ever going to come out of it.”

“Do you spend a lot of time there?” Esmeralda asked.

“As much as they let me. Judy came by to sit with me tonight—other nights, some of the other guys come by.”

Esmeralda smiled. Judy looked very feminine to her. It was odd considering her as “one of the guys.”

“And how does she seem to you?”

It was Judy who answered. “Lost. You look at her face and you know there’s no one home.”

“It’s starting again, isn’t it?” Blue asked. “The same business as before? Someone’s stolen part of her like Glamorgana did, only this time they took so much that there’s nothing left for her to run on.”

“Not necessarily. I think Judy had the right idea. She’s lost.”

“Lost? Lost where?”

Esmeralda sighed. “I don’t know. But someone’s going to have to go find her.”

No one spoke for long moments. Blue finished off his beer and opened a second. The others were still working on their first.

“Do you know how to do that?” Blue asked finally.

“In theory. I’ll have to make some preparations.”

“Like what? How long will they take? When can we go?”

“Not we—me.”

Blue shook his head. “Not a good idea.”

“Someone has to be here for when she gets back,” Esmeralda said. “Someone she knows well and trusts. Someone that loves her. So it’s either you or me that goes. Do you know what to do?”

“No, but I don’t like the idea of—”

The computer beeped and Blue looked at the screen.

TRUST HER, Jamie said.

Before Jamie could say more, or Blue could argue, the phone rang. Blue scooped up the receiver.

“Yeah, speaking,” he said into the phone. “What’s the big... ?”

Watching him, the two women saw all the blood drain from his face. Around Esmeralda’s feet, a gust of wind stirred.

8

Smoor had the taste of ashes in his mouth as he left the corridor and walked into the private room to stand over the bed. When he used his dead mistress’s spells, they always burned like cold fire in his mind and rose like ashes in his throat. He looked down at the woman, remembering. That night and his pain. The death of his mistress, consumed by her own witchfire. And all that remained, scattered on the grass...

The taste of ashes grew stronger on his tongue.

Leaving the bedside, he went to the window and drew a talon-like fingernail along its edges, peeling back the weather stripping. Once all around, and he pulled the huge window from its frame, not even straining with its weight. He leaned it up against a wall.

Returning to the bedside, he wet a finger on his tongue, then drew symbols on the woman’s face, the saliva glistening like phosphorescence where it lay on her skin. Peeling back the sheets, he drew more symbols on the palms of her hands, her belly and the soles of her feet. Not until they were dry, still shimmering, but with a hard cold light now, did he remove her from the IV and monitoring equipment.

By the time a nurse arrived in the room, summoned by a flashing light at her station once the monitors were disconnected, he had already crawled crablike down the side of the building, the woman hoisted under one arm, and disappeared into the woods that bordered the hospital’s grounds. He waited, hidden in the trees, until there was a lull in the traffic on Smyth Road, then loaded his burden into the back of a stolen Buick Skylark and got behind the wheel. The Buick’s plates had been exchanged earlier in the evening with those from another car in a shopping-center parking lot.

“Spells will keep you alive,” he told his unconscious captive, looking over the seat at where she lay sprawled in the back. “But not for long.” He grinned as he turned frontward and started up the Buick. “Long’s not needed anymore—not for you, my pretty thing.”

The Autumn Heart was his.

9

Blue hung up the phone with a numb expression, missing the cradle and fumbling the receiver until he got it set properly in place. Then he just stared blankly at a spot equidistant between the two women.

“What is it, Blue?” Judy asked.

Esmeralda didn’t speak. The wind had spoken to her. She already knew.

“It’s Emma,” he said slowly. “She’s gone. Either she just... just got up and walked away, or somebody’s kidnapped her.” He sat for another couple of moments, a lost look in his eyes, then shook himself like a big dog and rose from his seat. “I gotta go find her.”

“Blue,” Esmeralda said quietly, but it was enough to stop him in his tracks. He turned slowly to look at her. “Where will you look?” she asked.

“Christ, I don’t know. I’ll start at the hospital, then work it out from there.”

Judy set her beer aside and rose as well. “I’ll get hold of Hacker and some of the other guys.”

“Wait a moment,” Esmeralda said. Again her quiet voice stopped movement. “Where will you look?” she repeated.

Blue blinked for a moment, then frowned at her. “I told you, I don’t
know
. But I’m not just going to sit around here and—”

Esmeralda held up a hand. Winds stirred briefly about her, tousling her hair. Judy’s eyes widened.

“Think for a moment,” Esmeralda said. “Who could have taken her? For what purpose?”

“If I knew that—”

“She’s right,” Judy said. “If we can figure that out, we cut out a lot of running around.”

Blue looked from her to Esmeralda, then slowly made his way back to his seat. “Okay,” he said. “I’m thinking. You got any bright ideas?”

Esmeralda forgave his brusque manner. She was beginning to get a measure of him. It was worry that was shortening his temper.

“I could track her,” she said, “but I’m attuned to her spirit, not her body, so any farseeing I might do would be of no help in this aspect of our present situation.”

The computer beeped, and they turned to look at Jamie’s screen. Words darted across its green background.

LOGIC DICTATES THAT THIS IS CONNECTED TO HER EARLIER TROUBLES, they read.

“They’re both dead,” Blue said. “Chance and the witch. I
saw
them die.”

AND THE WITCH’S CREATURES?

Understanding sparked across Blue’s features, waking a grim darkness. “Jesus! Those things. They just ran off.”

EXACTLY, Jamie said. NOBODY SAW THEM DIE.

“But what the hell would they want with Emma?”

In the ensuing silence, Esmeralda’s quiet voice seemed loud.

“Vengeance?” she asked.

Blue’s gaze locked on her own; then he nodded. “It’s got to be them that grabbed her,” he said. “And I know where we can start looking for them—Lac la Pêche, where Chance and his witch bought it.”

He rose again, Judy following. This time no one called out to stop him, but he paused at the door.

“You coming?” he asked Esmeralda.

She shook her head. “There’s another part of her that’s still lost that I’m better equipped to look for. Godspeed.”

She could see both of them remembering the wind rising up about her, a wind that had only touched her.

Blue nodded. “You, too,” he said, and then they were gone.