No Dominion (The Walker Papers: A Garrison Report) (23 page)

“Yeah,” I said, and for the first time in my life, deliberately lied to the woman I loved. “You’re gonna be fine, sweetheart. This stupid thing is just gonna turn out to be another scare, like all the other crap that’s almost gotten us through the years. An’ that’s what it
is
, Annie.” I wasn’t lying, now, and that helped sell the part that was a lie. “It ain’t sickness, not the way the doctors can recognize. I guess we always knew there were monsters out there. This one’s just comin’ at you the best way it knows how.”

“We’ve met monsters,” Annie whispered. “They’re not subtle, Gary. Why is this one? Hiding itself in sickness instead of fighting red in tooth and claw?”

“Ain’t the first time it’s tried sickness against you, sweetheart.”

“Maybe not, but even the fever was carried by a monster. We saw it. We fought it. How can this have come from nowhere?”

I sat up straighter, still holding her but with my heart pickin’ up speed. “I reckon it couldn’t have. This things come on fast, sweetheart. Who’s new in your life the last couple months?”

“For Heaven’s sake, Garrison Muldoon,” she said, prim as a school teacher, “you sound like you’re asking if I’m having an affair. There was a new optometrist for my annual eye examination, two new booths at the farmers’ market, a new gardener for our yard and a new yoga teacher at the studio. And I’m sure I speak to a dozen or so strangers every day, including that young doctor today. You can’t possibly imagine—” She got breathless instead of indignant and collapsed against me, coughing until tears stained my shirt. Finally, a whole lot more softly, she finished, “You can’t imagine we can sort through every person I’ve met in the last two months to determine who may be hiding a demon inside. And why me, if this Joanne Walker is a friend of
yours
? Maybe I should be asking you if you’re having an affair.”

I chuckled. “I wasn’t askin’ you that to begin with, an’ from what I’m seeing of the future, the girl is too tall an’ too young for me anyway. I got what I want right here. Always have. And the reason why you is simple, sweetheart. Real evil don’t bother going after us. It goes after the folks we love.”

“How do we fight it?”

I wasted half a breath wishing I still had Jo’s magic Sight, then let it go. “We start by assuming it ain’t any of the grocery store checkers or the guy who pumps your gas, or any of the other folks you only have a passing acquaintance with. How much time you been spending at the farmers’ market and talkin’ to the new gardener? You go to yoga all the time.”

Annie’s laugh wheezed in her chest. “You could make an argument for the new teacher being evil, I suppose. She’s very young and very flexible. None of the old ladies like her.”

“Sure, doll, but do you?”

She laughed again, stronger this time, and coughed because of it. “I’m an old lady too, but you still know how to charm a girl. Yoga’s a spiritual practice as much as exercise, Gary. Surely a practitioner couldn’t be evil…?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart. Seems to me everybody’s got potential to go bad. Being spiritual don’t always mean being good.”

“Then I suppose we should…what does one say? ‘Hello, Darina, class on Wednesday was excellent and it’s lovely to see you again, by the way, have you put a killing hex on me?’”

“No, we gotta—” I spent another half a breath wishing on Joanne’s magic, then let the rest of that breath out and risked playing heavy on future memories. “We gotta find somebody who can tell by looking at ‘em. There’s a lady here in Seattle, a woman whose name I heard a while back. Sonata Smith. She’s a medium, but she’s got connections. Maybe she’ll know somebody who can help us.”

It was true, kinda. Me and Jo had met Sonny maybe six months ago, from the direction I was coming from. It was more like four years from now in the direction Annie was looking at it, but I figured if there was ever a time to play fast and loose with the truth, it was now. Annie didn’t need to know just how much future-flashing I was talking about, and we’d use up all the time she had left if I had to explain it all anyway.

“Don’t we know anyone? I know it’s been a long time, but…”

“But you don’t like presuming on strangers. I know, darlin’, but I don’t figure we do. Closest we ever came to belonging to some kinda magic underground was New Orleans, I reckon, don’t you?”

For a minute she didn’t look sick anymore, her whole face lighting up with a smile. “Well, if you hadn’t played that jazz riff—”

“How many times I gotta tell you, I was just tryin’ ta make that raven sing, is all. How was I s’posed ta know it was gonna open up a door to somewhere else?”

Annie kissed me like she always did when that jazz riff came up, murmuring, “
Open here I flung the shutter
, Gary. Of course it opened a door.”

“Hrmph.” I tugged her close again to talk against her hair. “Point is, sweetheart, maybe we came close down there in the South, but up here we’ve never been part of that scene. We only ever dealt with what came our way. Never went looking for any of it, like some folks do. So I think we gotta ask for help this time. Lemme give this Smith lady a call, see if she can send somebody around who can read auras.”

“Auras?”

“Souls. Everybody’s soul’s got energy, doll, doncha figure? Good energy, bad energy, and there’s folks out there who can tell which is which.”

Annie got a funny little frown, her eyebrows wrinkling together as she looked at me. “Where did you pick up on something like that, Gary?”

“Aww, sweetheart, you know how it is. Old dogs got a lotta tricks.” I’d used that answer with Jo a bunch of times. Felt strange using it on Annie. “You sit tight. I’ll see if her number’s in the book.” If it wasn’t, I’d been to Sonny’s house, but explaining that one away was more than I wanted to try. Lucky for me, Sonny was listed, and I gave her a call half-expecting to get an answering machine.

Instead she picked up on the second ring, sayin’, “Hello?” in the same dryly competent voice I remembered from her. It kinda threw me, knowing she hadn’t met me yet, and I spent a couple seconds fumbling an’ stuttering. Her voice got amused: “Yes, this is Sonata Smith, and yes, I am a medium. I do communicate with the dead. Don’t worry. I won’t think you’re embarrassing yourself with whatever request it is you have, nor,” an’ she kept the same amused tone but steel slipped into it, “nor will I hesitate to send a haunting your way if this should be another practical joker.”

That bit made me laugh. I cleared my throat, promisin’, “No, no, darlin’, no practical jokes. I ain’t sure you’re the type to really send ghosts after somebody even if it was.”

“Oh, probably not, but you never know.” She sounded less dangerous then, like I’d passed some kinda test. “But how do you know anything about me at all?”

“Got your name from a friend, is all. Look, my name’s Gary, and I’m sorry for callin’ like this, outta the blue, but—”

“But you have someone you’d like to speak with, someone who’s crossed over,” she said gently, like she was takin’ the difficulty of saying it away from me.

I chuckled. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid not. I just thought if you were the real deal you might be able to help me out with somethin’ else. I need—” My heart slipped all of a sudden, missing beats and feeling like it’d fallen a couple miles down my chest. Jo wasn’t ready to heal anybody yet, but she’d said something once about meeting a bunch of dead shamans after her magic had woke up. They’d been Seattle shamans, an’ right now they weren’t dead yet. I didn’t hardly recognize my own voice, it got so tight and twisted with hope. “I’m looking for a shaman, ma’am. Somebody who can read auras and heal folks. My wife’s sick, see.”

Sonny Smith’s voice got even gentler. “I have some people I can introduce you to, but some illnesses can’t be healed, Mr…Gary. Gary,” she said again, like she was fixing it in her mind that I hadn’t said my last name.

I wasn’t gonna, either, ‘cause she was sharp as tacks, and I didn’t want her putting me together with the cabbie driving Joanne Walker around a few years down the road. I reckoned she wouldn’t, ‘cause she hadn’t, but I wasn’t gonna risk it. I already didn’t know why I didn’t remember talking to her, having this conversation, but either I’d been watching some kinda parallel world version of me all these years, or my memory wasn’t half as reliable as I thought it was. I couldn’t figure on the parallel world idea being true, not if I was still the same fella who’d left Joanne a while back and was looking to try an’ save my wife, and as far as I could tell, I was. So I was betting on my memory failing me, and didn’t wanna think about how or why that was gonna happen.

“Gary?” Sonata sounded real sympathetic, like she’d delivered bad news and was expecting me to be reeling from it. “I wish I could say otherwise, but it’s better to have realistic expectations.”

“No, ma’am, it’s fine, I got realistic expectations. I knew a lady shaman once, so I figure my expectations are realistic enough to be worth trying. Thanks for the warning, though. Do you know anybody?”

“I do. Auras as well as healing, you said? I’ll send the strongest aura reader I know.”

“Thanks. We might gotta do some leg work with her, to meet a few people for her to read.”

Sonny’s voice got warm. “I like how you assume it’s a woman.”

“Ain’t it?”

“In fact, it is. If you’ll give me your address, Gary, I’ll see if she’s available this evening.”

I gave her the address and phone number and went back to Annie, who said, “You knew a lady shaman?”

“That old lady up in the painted caves in France seemed like a shaman to me, doll.” Still true, even if it wasn’t who I really meant. Explaining Jo kept right on being too hard, especially when I was saying I knew a shaman, past tense, when I shoulda been using words that meant future memories.

Annie’s nose wrinkled, remembering more than just the cave paintings we’d gone to visit thirty years earlier. “She seemed in need of a bath, to me.”

“I reckon I would too if I’d been living up there with the cave paintings since they were made. Doesn’t matter, though, does it? As long as somebody comes along. Miz Smith said she’d send somebody.”

“I think I should rest before her friend arrives,” Annie said quietly. “I don’t suppose it really matters, Gary, if it’s a typical illness or someone attacking me somehow. I’m still sick, and it’s been a long day.”

“All right, sweetheart. You want to go lie down in the bedroom our out here on the couch?”

She smiled. “The couch is fine. The sunshine will keep me warm. You can go tidy up the kitchen for me.”

“There ain’t no universe in which you left it a mess.” I got a blanket an’ tucked it over her when she lay down, then trucked into the kitchen. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink, which was Annie’s idea of a mess. I cleaned up and dug through the freezer to find somethin’ to cook for dinner, muttering about slim pickings. By my reckoning it’d been too long since I’d cooked for my girl, and I wanted to do it right. I checked on Annie, who was sleeping, and slipped off down to the store to get a chicken for roasting. Nothin’ fancy, but comforting all the same.

When I got back there was somebody walking up the drive, a tall thin woman with iron-colored hair and a long nose. She looked maybe twenty years younger than me. I parked and got out sayin’, “If you’re selling religion, I ain’t buying.”

She stopped where she was, ‘bout thirty feet away. She was carrying a round leather bag with something light enough to bounce against her hip in it, and was wearing a grey hand-knit cardigan that came down to about her knees. “I’m not selling anything. My name is Hester Jones. Did you call Sonata Smith earlier this afternoon?”

“Oh, hell. I did, yeah. I’m Gary. Sorry for being rude. Thanks for comin’ over, Miz Jones.”

“Hester will do.” She had just about the sourest voice I’d ever heard, like nothing on this earth was gonna meet with her approval. She finished comin’ up the drive, gave me and my chicken a good hard look, then flicked a sharp eyebrow up. “I’d like to meet the patient.”

“She was sleeping when I left her—”

“That’s fine. If she can stay that way it may help. We’re trained to resist shamanic power, Mr…” Like Sonny, she realized I hadn’t given her a last name, and shrugged. “Shamanic magic requires belief on the part of the patient as well as the shaman. Sleeping minds are more malleable. If it’s a minor illness—”

“It ain’t.”

Something in my voice stopped her dead. After a couple seconds she started up again, following me, but her own voice got more sour-apples. From what she was saying, I thought she was trying to be gentle, but she had the bedside manner of a shark. Just as well Annie was gentle enough for two of most anybody. “I don’t want you to raise your hopes too high. Most people only call in shamanic practitioners in desperation—”

“I’m desperate but it ain’t because I don’t believe. It’s cause I do. A good friend of mine was a shaman, a powerful one. I know what kinda things she could do, and I’m hoping you can do somethin’ similar. My wife, she don’t just need healing. She needs shielding, and we gotta find out who did this to her, too.”

Hester Jones stopped again, this time just outside my front door, an’ touched my arm, which I didn’t figure was somethin’ she was comfortable with. “I may be able to help her find a spirit guide, which is as much ‘shielding’ as I can do. I don’t even understand what else you might mean by that.”