I struck the best heroic pose I could manage, chin up, arms akimbo, gaze bright on the horizon. Aidan laughed, but I’d bought the coat in part because it really did make me feel like a hero, like I was wearing a white hat that proclaimed me as one of the good guys. It was a nice feeling, and I wasn’t too concerned with the thought that it also made me a target. I’d done a fine job of becoming a target without the coat’s assistance, so I figured I might as well enjoy it if I could.
When I shook off my silly pose, Ada and Morrison had moved away, leaving Aidan still grinning at me without noticing we’d been given some space. I flicked a fingertip at his white hair. “If this stays like that, you won’t need a white coat to look like a good guy.”
He rolled his eyes scornfully. “You don’t watch enough movies. Anybody with totally white hair is always the bad guy.”
“Oh. Jeez, you’re right. Okay, you’re just going to have to buck the trend. Look, Aidan, I’m sorry I’ve got to go. I really did want to hang around a few days.”
His mouth twisted, disappointment not quite strong enough to make him defensive. We weren’t that close, which was okay, and besides, he got to the crux of the matter, focusing on what was important. “Is it a shaman thing? Is that why you’ve gotta go?”
“Yeah. My best friend’s wife is sick, really sick, and...” I swallowed, because I didn’t at all want to pursue my thoughts to their logical end. “And I have to try to help.”
“We can’t always.” The kid was solemn enough to be five times his actual age. “You know that, right? Not everything can be healed.”
“But sometimes they can be fought,” I said quietly. “Sometimes putting up the fight is what matters. But I guess you know that. Especially after the last couple days.”
Aidan shifted uncomfortably. “You did most of the fighting. I just...was awful.”
“You were possessed, and you didn’t give in to it, Aidan. That’s what matters. You held out so I could fight for you.”
“A lot of people still got hurt.”
“Yeah, and I know it’s not going to be easy for you to accept that none of that was your fault. You and I were both targets, and the thing that came after us loves collateral damage.”
“How’re we supposed to make that better?”
I looked west, like I could see all the way to Seattle. “That’s what I’m going home to do, kiddo. I’m gonna make it better. I’m going to finish it.”
Chapter Two
Morrison spent most of the drive to Atlanta on his cell phone, dealing with airlines and last-minute ticket-changing fees. I listened with half an ear, but concentrated on driving. Food had restored me quite a bit, but I really didn’t have any business being behind a wheel. The only reason I was driving was I would’ve been worse at dealing with airline bureaucracy. It was bad enough listening to Morrison’s half of the conversation, full of, “Is that the best you can do?” and, “What about business class?” and, “I’ll talk with another airline,” which he did—several times—before he finally hung up the phone with a snap. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Morrison, the list of things I don’t like right now starts in Seattle, goes to Ireland, stops by Cherokee County and then swings back to the Pacific Northwest, so you don’t really have to try to soften the blow, okay?”
He chuckled, which was probably more than I deserved, given my tone, which I’d been trying to modulate toward rue instead of snarling and had only half succeeded. “All right. Everything direct to Seattle is booked up until the evening flights.”
“What? Why?”
“Kids going home from spring break.”
I had a brief moment of loathing for spring break. “So we fly indirect.”
“Which won’t get us there any faster, but will leave us exhausted. When was the last time you slept, Walker?”
I had no idea. “I have no idea. Two days ago? Maybe three.”
“You need rest.”
“You can’t possibly be suggesting I take a nap while Gary’s wife is back from the dead and dying.”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. How much good are you going to be to Muldoon if you’re half-conscious and snarling?”
That was as low a blow as Daddy-ing my father had been, but it was also very effective. I tightened my hands around the wheel, pressed my lips thin and, after a minute, nodded. “Fine. So, what, we crash out on the airport floor for a couple hours before catching a flight back home?”
“You sound like a college student. No, Walker, we rent a hotel room for a few hours so you can get some actual rest.”
“Morrison, I don’t know if I’ll even be able to sleep. There’s no point in sitting around a hotel room for hours—”
“Joanne, she’s on life support and there are doctors taking care of her. You may have a great gift, but even it’s going to burn out if you don’t take care of yourself. We’ll still be there before midnight. It’ll be all right.”
I slid a glance at him. He must really mean it, if he was using my first name. Truth was, Morrison looked tired, too. He hadn’t had much more sleep than I had. I bit my lower lip and looked back at the road, but nodded. “Okay. All right. Fine.” Right on cue my jaw opened in a yawn big enough to set my eyes watering.
Morrison, manfully, didn’t laugh at me. We drove in silence for a minute or two, me yawning repeatedly, before he distracted me from the yawns by bringing up a topic I didn’t want to think about. “The Raven Mocker got away, Walker.”
My hands tightened involuntarily on the steering wheel. “I know.”
There was no way to pretend otherwise. The creature I’d come to North Carolina to hunt, a Cherokee legend called Raven Mocker, had possessed a human body and escaped in the last minutes of our fight. By some accounts Raven Mocker was a fallen angel, but not exactly the Western sense of an angel. More of a sky spirit, a creature from what I knew as the Upper World, a plane of ephemeral beings. In Cherokee legend it wasn’t so much a messenger from God as a guide that had itself gotten lost. It didn’t matter. Fallen angels were, by anybody’s mythology, bad, and this one survived by sucking the life and soul out of living bodies, then taking the bodies as hosts. And we’d lost it. It had disappeared into the woods, fled to the west while we were picking up the pieces of the chaos it had caused.
Under those circumstances, Annie Muldoon’s reappearance, alive and more or less well, did not bode well. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Gary.”
“We’ve got until tonight to think about that.”
Until tonight wasn’t enough. Despite my protests, I slept like the dead in the hotel room and stumbled through airport security like a zombie, which was a phrase I should be careful with, all things considered. I managed to get on the plane with my drum, which I wasn’t about to relegate to checked luggage and which didn’t technically fit in the carry-on bin above my head, but the flight attendants seemed to be studiously Not Noticing it. I was pretty certain my subconscious was running a “these are not the droids you’re looking for” kind of thing on them, and while part of me thought my subconscious probably shouldn’t be allowed to do magic without me, the rest of me was just basically glad it was doing so.
I stared out the window the whole flight home, unable to sleep and without much to say. My heart twisted when we flew over the Mississippi, New Orleans a distant smear on the horizon. There had been a brief moment this morning, as we’d talked about driving home, when I’d imagined visiting the bayou with Morrison. For all the traveling Dad and I had done when I was a kid, we’d never hit the Big Easy, and going with Morrison had sounded wonderful. My heart thumped offbeat again and I put my fist over it, trying to breathe.