I probably could, but there was no need to say that to them. Neither was willing to leave my shoulders, but they both hopped on them, evidently happy with the arrangement. My vision finally cleared enough to see, and for a moment I was too astonished to do anything but look.
I was accustomed to the Dead Zone being a black expanse a hairsbreadth smaller than infinity. It was featureless, unnavigable and generally scary in the sense of being implacably large to my infinitesimal smallness, which smallness I had no doubt the Dead Zone could crush like a bug at its faintest whim. It didn’t help that I had occasionally met giant murderous snakes and the occasional ferryman while here, neither of which was reassuring.
Raven’s presence made the whole place just slightly less dreadful. Just slightly, but sometimes that was enough. With him on my shoulder, I got a sense of landscape, though it changed with every breath. With him, I could see the rivers that carried the dead, the reapers that collected souls, takers-of-the-dead from different cultures all over the world. None of them saw each other, all traveling through the same idea—space without ever impinging on one another’s territory. I was the only one who did that.
Viewed with the help of two ravens, the Dead Zone became navigable. More than that: it became a real landscape, a countryside that misted around the edges but no longer stretched over intimidating distances. No longer threatening, though I had no doubt it remained dangerous. But it had a sense of comfort about it now, a sense of recognition of history that my travails from Seattle hadn’t shared. More of a reverence for the dead, less fear and more acceptance, maybe, than I was accustomed to. I still didn’t want to wander the green rolling hills, knowing they only tempered the Dead Zone’s dangers, but at least I wasn’t a mote in a vast nothingness.
I shivered, then exhaled quietly. I had blood ties to the spirit I was looking for this time, and her raven on my shoulder. That ought to help. I hoped. I called up a picture of my mother and said, “You’re not the Master’s yet,” to the darkness. “And God knows you were the most willful woman I’ve ever met, so I’m guessing if you want to you can break away from whatever hold he’s got on you, and come say hi.”
Wings kloked in dismay and I shrugged. “Look, we didn’t get along all that brilliantly, okay? I could be all mushy and squishy and sob story, but I don’t think she’d even know who I was if I did that. I might as well call it like I see it.”
“That,” Sheila MacNamarra said a little wryly, “that you got from me.”
Chapter Nineteen
Someday I was going to be cool enough to not shriek and fall over when things like that happened, but today was not that day. My raven dug his claws in, and Wings flew up into the air to go land on Sheila’s shoulder as I sat up again clutching my heart. She forgot me for an instant and turned her face against Wings’s wing, the small motion replete with joy. They communed a little while, until she finally looked toward me again, the corner of her mouth turning up. “Thank you for bringing him to see me, Siobhán. No,” she added without hesitation. “You didn’t like that. Joanne, then.”
Feeling like I was giving one up for the team, I took a deep breath and said, “Siobhán’s all right. I’ve gotten a little more used to it the past year.”
“Is that so.” I’d almost never seen my mother smile. It warmed her eyes considerably. I thought she was quite pretty in that clear-complexioned Irish way. It was even clearer now that she was dead, her freckles faded from lack of sunlight, so her dark hair was all the more striking around her pale face. I didn’t look like her, but I didn’t not, either. That was a revelation, since I’d thought we didn’t look anything at all alike.
She’d been studying me while I studied her, and broke the silence. “You’ll still prefer Joanne, I think.”
“I will. I mean, I do. Yes. But, y’know, whatever works.”
“The past year, is it? A year since when, Joanne? Since I died?”
“Since you saved my ass from the Blade.” That banshee had had a name. I didn’t know why it rated and the others were just nameless banshees, but probably the opportunity to earn a name was not something I wanted for my mother’s undead soul. “Look, um, I’m not sure I said thanks for that. Or…a lot of things. So let me just get this out of the way, okay? I understand a lot more than I did then, and I’m really sorry I was such a dick. Although to be fair you could’ve at least tried to explain why you’d brought me to America.” That was not exactly high up there in the ranks of graceful apologies. I cringed.
Sheila, however, looked ever so faintly amused. “Would you have listened?”
“No, but it might have seeped through eventually. Once I started learning about all…this.” I gestured to the complete and total emptiness around us, which didn’t really go very far in impressing a this on me.
“It seems to have seeped through anyway.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being funny or superior. My lips peeled back from my teeth in one of those telling microexpressions, and she looked away with a sigh. “A warm and loving family we are not, Siobhán MacNamarra. How bad has it gotten, then, that you come seeking me?”
“Did you know?” My voice broke on the three little words and I cleared my throat, trying to sound stronger. “When you came back from the dead to help me fight the Blade, did you know it was going to put you in thrall to…him?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Joanne,” my mother said crisply, “he’s not Voldemort. You can say his name.”
“I don’t…” I couldn’t get past my mother knowing who Voldemort was. It took a minute to finish the sentence. “I don’t know his name. All I’ve got for him is a title. The Master,” I said in my best portentous voice. “It gets old. So what’s his name?”
Sheila had the grace to look ever so slightly abashed. “I know him by the title, as well. The name itself is a secret well-guarded.”
“What, would the Rumpelstiltskin thing work on him? It didn’t on Rumpelstiltskin.”
“…you met Rumpelstiltskin?”
“A horrible little gnome creature, anyway. Caitríona said he was a frog derek. Something like that. A Red Cap. He was wearing one. Look, that’s not the point. Did you know you were going to end up his slave?”
“Rumpelstiltskin’s?” Sheila asked archly, and Raven, the betraying little bastard, laughed. So did Wings, which made it worse.
Ravens laughing would usually be awesome enough to undermine my irritation, but I wanted to throttle them both. All. Mostly because I had the sudden dismaying suspicion that I did exactly that same kind of verbal game. I put another bullet point on the endless list of things I really needed to change about myself, and grated, “No. The Master’s. I don’t know how long we’ve got here, Mom. Should we really be screwing around with semantics and unclear pronouns?”
Her humor fell away. “I suppose these are bridges that ought to have been crossed while I lived, not now. And I’m not enslaved yet, Joanne. Not yet. You’ve burned my bones, haven’t you? All that’s left is to destroy the banshee queen. I’m too small, too far removed from the Master for him to catch me with his own long fingers. He needs her, and so without her I’m free.”
“The banshee queen.” I pressed my eyes shut. “Great. I’ll get right on that. You’re not answering the question.”
Tension came into Sheila’s presence, and when I opened my eyes she spoke through compressed lips. “Very well. Yes. I knew.”
A double prong of guilt and horror stabbed me in the gut. If my dead mother was reaching out from beyond the grave, I should probably make some effort to meet her halfway and try building a meaningful emotional relationship. But we were on a tight schedule, and really, shock obliterated the guilt pretty fast.