Seemed like about forever before Annie let go a real soft long breath and whispered somethin’ I couldn’t quite hear. Then she turned her cheek against my chest. “How interesting. You should try this sometime, Gary. Something actually came to me. A—”
“Don’t tell us,” Hester barked. She was flushed, prolly from the heat, but she was kinda agitated, too. “A spirit guide’s choice is a private matter.”
Annie lifted her head and gave Hes a hairy eyeball, but didn’t say anything else. I didn’t figure I’d want Hes knowin’ what my spirit animals were, either, even if she was helping out. “You all right to try this healing thing, then, Miz Jones?”
She nodded, but she was paying attention to Annie, not me. “I need you to understand that a shamanic healing is most effective when the person seeking healing is receptive. Without your belief, there’s very little, perhaps nothing, that I can do.”
Annie gave her a hard look. “That certainly puts the onus on the patient. Does it help you sleep at night?”
Hester’s pink cheeks went pale and I tried to pick up my flapping jaw, not remembering the last time I’d heard Annie being that sharp, though I got where it was coming from. She’d spent a lotta years as a nurse, and always said a good attitude helped, but for her, medicine worked whether the patient believed in penicillin or not. I could see how the idea of laying it all on the patient would bug her right down to her bones. She started looking like she mighta regretted saying that, but she not like she wasn’t gonna back down on having said it.
It took a long damned minute for Hes to find her voice. “Shamanic healing doesn’t have to be at odds with modern medicine. I would encourage you and anyone else to also pursue conventional treatment. But if you’re willing accept your own role in the healing process, shamanic magic may be able to help.”
Annie’s cheeks were pink too, like she’d helped herself to the color that’d drained outta Hes. She was as embarrassed as I’d ever seen her, an’ murmured, “Of course I’m willing to accept it.”
Hes nodded, so I guessed they’d sorted it out in the way women do when they ain’t gonna say what they really mean. “I’ve had a glimpse of the illness within you. We’ve done a spirit quest. I think we may need to do a spirit journey, now. If we leave this plane, the illness inside you may manifest itself separately, which would allow us to fight it in physical form and drive it away. Does that make sense?”
“Not really, but I’m not sure that matters. Will it make sense as it happens?”
“It should. I’ll bring you to the Lower World—”
“No.” That was me, surprisin’ all of us. Hes straightened up, looking like she was ready to give me a tongue-lashing, but I shook my head and kept talking. “Take her to the Upper World instead, all right? I ain’t sure this thing can’t just walk in and out on whatever levels it wants to, but I know the deeper you go the closer you’re getting to its home territory. Reach for the sky, darling. Don’t dig down deep. All right?”
Hes looked uncertain. “The Upper World’s spirits are more capricious. Trying to draw this illness out for a battle there may let it escape and do harm elsewhere, if we fail.”
“You can’t—” I shut up before I finished asking, ‘cause I already knew the answer. Jo threw magic nets around all over the place, all the time, but I’d seen her and her pal Coyote fighting together once, and it had mostly been on Jo’s shoulders. Coyote was a full-out shaman, one who wasn’t walkin’ the warrior path that Joanne was on. He could manage some shields, but twisting magic into other shapes and catching things in it was outta his league. And Hes here couldn’t even shield somebody else, so there was no chance she was gonna pull out a gimmick like Jo mighta. “I’d say it’s worth risking.”
“And do I get a say in this?” Annie sounded stronger, like her spirit animal was already doing some good. “What kind of harm could it do, Miss Jones?”
“I don’t know. It’s a strong darkness, though. Right now it’s focused on you, but if it’s freed to pursue weakness in others, it could reach hundreds or even thousands.”
“Then there’s no choice at all. My health isn’t worth hundreds of others.”
“Annie—”
“Gary. Miss Jones, if we try to examine this…darkness…in the Lower World, can you contain it?”
“It’s more likely. I can reinforce our power circle there, which adds layers of protection.”
“Annie.”
“Gary. No. I have not spent a lifetime nursing others simply to choose the good of the one in my last days.”
“Dammit, Annie!”
“Garrison Matthew Muldoon.” Annie sat up, cheeks pink and eyes flashing hot. She threw her blanket off an’ got up like she was gonna stare me down. “If I am dying I am by God going to do it on my terms, and you’re going to accept that.”
“On a cold day in Hell, sweetheart.” I stayed sitting, ‘cause I was about a foot taller’n her and didn’t need to stand to be damned near eye level to her. ‘sides, the sauna already wasn’t big enough for three anyway, if two of ‘em were having a fight. “If you’re dying, I’m raging every step of the way.”
Annie spat, “Though wise men at their end know dark is right,” and I stood up after all an’ said, “Do not go gentle, Annie. You wanna try the Lower World journey first, fine, we do that, I ain’t arguing. And I know you’d never forgive yourself, or me, if we did something that got other people hurt or sick, so all right, maybe we don’t try the Upper World journey. But I’m never giving up, you hear me? Though lovers be lost, Annie. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
All the fight went outta her and she put her hand against my chest. “No, Gary. You won’t. Some things we can’t change. Death does have dominion, in the end.”
“Maybe death does, sweetheart, but evil don’t, and this thing that’s coming at us is evil. I ain’t lying down for it.”
“Even if something truly terrible happens because we fight?”
“Awful things happen all the time, Annie. How’re we s’posed to know if our fight makes ‘em happen? How’re—” Somethin’ sick and cold rose up in me fast, making ice sweat stand out on my skin even though it was a hundred and five degrees in there.
There was something God-awful brewing just a couple weeks from now, something so bad it was gonna rock the whole world. I’d watched it on TV the way most folks had, and I remembered thinkin’ at least Annie ain’t here to see it. She’d died three days before, on our wedding anniversary, and even through the pain of losin’ her, it had hit me like a wall.
Feeling hollow and not talking to Annie or Hester at all, I said, “It happened anyway,” like somebody else might be listening. I sure as hell hadn’t saved her, and it had happened anyway. That had to mean it wasn’t black magic getting into souls just soon enough to make a few crazies fly airplanes into buildings. It couldn’t be something we’d done, even if I did somehow save her, ‘cause that kinda thing took time and planning.
‘cept I was standing there outta time myself, carrying memories of the future and not remembering a whole lotta mojo that had spilled through the whole of my life. Something had gone wrong, something had changed in my life, to make me forget all of this, when the whole idea of Horns dropping me in was to try making one big change at the last minute.
An’ I knew from experience, from watching and working with Joanne, that you only got one shot at changing a big event. Time mostly wanted to go the way it already had gone.