Shaman Read online

  “Was I in any way unclear?” she asked. “Come, Beloved.”

  She turned and walked back toward her room.

  “You can keep him, but I’m not cleaning up after him or taking him for a walk,” Carter said. Samantha heard Abby speaking softly to Jason. She didn’t turn to make sure Sam was following; she already knew that much.

  She waited for him to make it into the closet, then closed the door and took a breath.

  “You forget how different it is to be in a place that smells like you,” she said. “To sleep on sheets that smell like you.”

  He made to sit on the queen-sized bed that took up all of the available floorspace in the room and she held up a hand.

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked. She sat down cross-legged in the middle of the bed and indicated the floor to him.

  “I’m sorry. I… I absolutely can’t stand the idea of you touching my bed.”

  He frowned and opened his mouth, then closed it and shook his head, ashamed.

  “Right now, your skin looks, feels, and smells like a combination of roadkill and rotted fruit,” she said. “In my head.” She paused. “You reek of death.”

  “You kissed me,” he said. She nodded.

  “It’s getting worse.”

  He laid his chin on the bed and she winced, but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. She nodded.

  “What’s done is done. In the morning, I’ll have Carter look at the mark on the back of your neck to see if it means anything specific to him.”

  “Boy, oh, boy,” Sam said. She smiled and lay on her side. Before he had severed their bond and left her, they had gotten a glimpse of a demon who had been trying to possess him, and Samantha raged again that she had never been able to identify him. He was her odds-on favorite for the demon she should be looking for right now.

  “You fought a demon,” he said.

  “I pulverized a demon,” she said, smiling despite herself.

  “And you’re friends with him,” Sam said. She nodded. “And Abby is a real person.” She nodded again. “And the bouncer at the bar was afraid of you.” She waited. “And you wear mesh.”

  He sat up and looked around the room for a moment.

  “A lot of mesh. You have a lot of stuff.”

  She let him think.

  “I’d always pictured you packed up everything you owned and ran away,” he said. “You have a lot of stuff.”

  “It’s safest here,” she said. “Most of this is soul-vested; it would be dangerous for anyone to get it.”

  “I don’t know you,” he said, putting his chin back down on the bed. She put her arm out toward him, wishing she could push his hair back over his ear, but her stomach turned at even the thought of it.

  “You do,” she said. “You just don’t know a lot about me.” She lay her head down, reaching for her pillow and hugging it against her head. “Ask me anything you want. I’ll tell you anything you want.”

  “What’s wrong with me?” he asked.

  “I wish I knew. I’ve never heard the phase ‘demon spit’ before.”

  “Could it be literal?” he asked. She grimaced.

  “I certainly hope not.”

  “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “I’m going to peel it off you. Any means necessary. If Carter hasn’t got any ideas, I’ve got a list of my own.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Abby was a psychic?” Sam asked. “Why did you let us think that you were just crazy?”

  “How would you explain her to Arthur?” Samantha asked.

  “She’s Carter’s psychic.”

  “Who is Carter?”

  “The creep you lived with before.”

  “Ah. That explains everything, thanks,” Samantha said and smiled. “It’s complicated.”

  “And the demon tonight…”

  “Marcus.”

  “Yeah. That’s the power that you were never willing to use, before. That Carter was so angry you weren’t using.”

  “Yes.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Why is it okay, now?”

  She rolled onto her stomach and laughed.

  “It’s New York. There’s so much power here, and so much going on… I’m really not that interesting, when I’m here. Even in the top twenty-five, which I’m probably not any more, there are ten living men in the city who are more powerful than me, and then maybe two thousand demons.”

  “Marcus?”

  “Knew he was going to lose. I’ve beaten him consistently since six months after I died.”

  “Then why does he fight you?”

  “Principle,” Samantha said. “He doesn’t sell to women. So he fights me for his merchandise, even if he always loses, so that he doesn’t have to make an exception.”

  “You’re friends,” Sam said. She hugged her pillow again.

  “Does that bother you?”

  “It’s weird.”

  “I’ve never thought so. And that’s not enlightenment. It’s that, from day one, learning that demons existed, there were always three teams of them. The ones that should be dead, the ones you want to punch, and the ones you drink with.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know how to tell you, without it sounding like I was… I don’t know. The enemy?”

  “The way you dressed tonight,” Sam said. “I thought you were shy.”

  “I didn’t spend any time around normal people until after I died, and it wasn’t much until after I left. With you, I still feel like who I was when I was nineteen, going to college, trying to figure out who my friends were and what I wanted to do with my life. Here…” she paused and rolled over on her back, looking around the room. Three walls of clothing, all of it black. Bookcases of books, weapons, artifacts. Boxes full of things that only she knew. A shrine to the life, and the person, she had left behind. “Here, I’m the young up-and-comer, the next generation of power. Heir apparent to the unwilling leader of the human faction. People, demons are nice to me because they want me to be on their side when they need Carter.” She rolled back over and looked at Sam. “Abby says no to him.” She grinned. “Sometimes with gusto that makes me laugh. But, at least before I left, they came to me because I was the only one who could make him say yes.”

  “Why don’t you hate him?” Sam asked.

  “I love him. It’s five years of history through the worst part of my life. I can’t explain it to you in a few words.”

  “He’s evil.”

  “Certainly.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows at her. She tipped her head toward him.

  “By the correct metrics, you are, too.”

  He looked away.

  “He’s evil, the way Rangers would define evil.”

  She sighed.

  “He’s mean. He isn’t evil. He’s saved more innocent lives than your entire order has in the last hundred years.” He started to argue and she sighed. “I’m not saying it to be petty or mean, or even like it matters. It’s simply fact.”

  “You have no idea how many people we’ve saved,” Sam said. It wasn’t argumentative. Almost a question. She nodded.

  “Abby is powerful. Serious, wicked powerful. If Carter weren’t alive, there would be an ongoing hunt for her to strip her of her protections so that a demon hellside could possess her. The highest of the high-level demons prefer hellside, because they like their power. They like how much control they have over their world. Give any one of them - every one of dozens - a chance to cross by possession through Abby, they’d take it. Because they’d get to be almost exactly as powerful here as they are there, and humans are water balloons compared to demons. They’d wipe out half the planet for fun, then set up a blood sect to entertain themselves at whim for the rest of time. There are a few of us who could make a run at stopping it, certainly not me, maybe the top three alive today would give it a try, but even Carter wouldn’t be guaranteed to win,
going up against that. Him being alive, preventing them from even being willing to go after her… That’s what stops it.” She rolled her head to one side. “I value what you do more than I value what he does, because you do it out of willingness, Jason, out of a sense of duty. Carter does it because if he doesn’t, he’s accountable for failing. He has to. And he hates it. Or he did, at any rate. He’s getting better. Less hates it, more finds it wearying, so he looks for entertainment elsewhere. Like picking on you or making me go out in fishnets to buy eel oil at five in the morning. True story.”

  “So, when we leave, are you hiding any more?” he asked. She shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I’m not going to be as extreme about it as I was. I need to power up. That’s part of the reason I fought Marcus, not that I wouldn’t have anyway. I’m out of practice. I missed words a couple of times, and I never used to do that.”

  Sam folded his arms under his chin and looked at her.

  “I still feel like I don’t even know you,” he said.

  “I think that people are who they are because of what has happened to them, and how they reacted to it. It’s not what they’re like that makes them who they are - it’s that story. So…” Samantha said, crawling into the covers and curling up on her side. “Tell me the important parts of your story, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  <><><>

  Carter opened the door around ten, and Samantha looked up drowsily. She hadn’t quite been asleep, yet, but she was close. She put her finger to her lips, and looked over at Sam, who had just nodded off, then curled tighter into her sheets and fell asleep.

  <><><>

  Abby drove Jason over to Carter’s apartment around lunchtime.

  “I haven’t slept on the couch in a woman’s apartment since I was in high school,” Jason observed, standing behind her in the elevator.

  “I know,” Abby said.

  “You know?” Jason asked. “How long have you been watching us?”

  “Only since Sam met you,” she said. “But past, present, future… They’re all mostly the same thing. If I can remember when I am, I do pretty well.”

  He considered.

  “You like what you see?” he asked. She didn’t turn.

  “Your jokes aren’t as funny when I’ve already heard them,” she said. “If they were ever funny at all.”

  He turned his head sideways to look at her. Even in a big, sweeping skirt, she had a nice figure.

  “I don’t make threats, Jason. I don’t have the skills to follow them up. But I’ve been around Sam enough to know that if she saw you looking at me like that, she would threaten to stab you in the eye.”

  “How did you know what I was doing?” he asked.

  “The elevator door is reflective,” she said. He straightened and looked forward. She met his eyes with a small, amused smile.

  “She talks to you all the time, when we’re out there. We come here, and she hasn’t spoken to you at all,” Jason said.

  “That actually isn’t true,” Abby said. “You just haven’t been around her as much. The fact that I’m here physically doesn’t change anything for her. And we’ll find our time when it comes.”

  The elevator doors opened and Abby stepped out, taking out the key to Carter’s apartment and letting them in. Carter was making himself breakfast.

  “They stayed up talking all night,” he complained. He was still in the suit.

  “Do you sleep in that?” Jason asked. Carter ignored him.

  “I had forgotten how much she talks,” he said.

  “They needed that time,” Abby said.

  “They are like a pair of teenage girls sometimes,” Jason said, going to sit on one of the bar stools in front of the kitchen. Internally, he was relieved that Samantha appeared to have truly gotten Sam back. In the three weeks before she had turned up, he had all but stopped speaking. Abby looked at Jason as if she knew that, knew what he was thinking. She smiled kindly and went to sit on the couch, the only piece of furniture along the long front wall of the apartment.

  “Do you even have a television?” Jason asked, looking around.

  “I don’t spend much time here,” Carter answered.

  “He never goes out,” Abby said.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” Carter asked. Abby sighed and Jason looked back at her over his shoulder. Her eyes were glazed.

  “Better,” Carter said under his breath. “I suppose you want coffee?”

  “You have whiskey?”

  “There’s a man after my own heart,” Carter said, smirking and pulling a bottle out of a cabinet. “Drinks because he thinks he’s seen the worst the world has to offer.”

  “And what do you do?” Jason asked, holding out a coffee mug for Carter to fill. Carter smiled.

  “I torment people for my own amusement. Better for my liver.”

  Jason held up the mug.

  “Cheers, then.”

  Carter watched him drink with a spreading sardonic smile, then went back to his eggs. The door to Samantha’s room opened and Samantha emerged, dressed in jeans and multiple layers of shirt.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “I didn’t expect you up for, what, at least another twelve hours,” Carter said. Samantha stared at him for a moment, then went and got a carton of milk out of the refrigerator. She smelled it and turned her head away.

  “Still haven’t gotten the hang of shopping then, have you?”

  “No, too important,” he said. “Need to find another pointless teenage girl to do it.”

  “Go for one with dead parents,” she answered. “They have fewer places to run away to.”

  He nodded.

  “Pro tip.”

  She closed her eyes and snorted.

  “Where’s Sam?” Jason asked.

  “Still sleeping,” Samantha said.

  “She made him sleep on the floor,” Carter said conversationally.

  “You what?” Jason asked. Samantha glared at Carter, then looked at Jason and shrugged.

  “I can’t touch him. I can’t stand the idea of him touching my stuff. It’s gross.”

  “So you made him sleep on the floor?”

  “I was going to have him sleep on the couch, but we talked all night and he just fell asleep there.”

  “Gee thanks, send him to my couch, instead,” Carter said.

  “What’s wrong with him doesn’t bother you,” Samantha said. Carter shook his head.

  “No. I just don’t want him on my couch.”

  He turned his head to look at her evenly.

  “You’re a tool,” she said. Jason frowned, surprised, and Carter caught it.

  “Oh, yes. She has exactly three words that she uses to describe me that she does not use, otherwise, because they’re naughty.” He flipped his eggs and looked back up, smiling. “Prick, tool, bastard. It’s funny, because I know she loves to curse.” He looked at her, lifting his head up in mock-pride. “Long, eloquent strings of obscenities, punctuated occasionally by normal words.”

  Jason turned to look at her, and she shrugged.

  “It’s colloquial. And pretty much unavoidable, too.”

  “Oh, but you bask in it. You make profanity an artform.”

  Jason spun on the stool to face her.

  “What is he talking about?”

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “Hellspeak. Fifty percent of the language is profanity. They have some words where they only have one word in standard language, and three or four obscenities. There’s a curse word that means grizzly bear.”

  “I would translate what she said to Marcus last night, for the sake of example, but the old curses really don’t translate at all.”

  Jason jerked his head back.

  “Really?”

  She shrugged.

  “When in Rome.”

  There was a groan from the next room.

  �
�The beast stirs…” Carter murmured.

  “Be nice,” Samantha said. Carter dumped his eggs onto a plate and looked up.

  “Pass.”

  Sam stumbled into view.

  “Why are we up already?” he asked.

  “Because you guys are going to get lunch and Carter and I are going to talk, and then when you get back, we’re going out to finish my list and we’re leaving.”

  Carter looked up, but didn’t comment.

  “I don’t like you just excusing us like children, while the grown ups talk,” Jason said. Carter frowned at him.

  “In what way is that not the case?” he asked. “If I could find a better grown up than her, I’d talk to him instead.”

  “Please, Jason,” she said. “Abby, I need you.”

  Abby woke from her trance and stood.

  “Let’s get lunch, guys,” she said. She looked at Jason and smiled a thin, sympathetic smile. “They need time, too.”

  “Did you find the thing?” Carter asked.

  “Not yet,” Abby said.

  “Slacker.”

  “We’ll be back in an hour.”

  Jason considered standing his ground, but Carter and Samantha were staring at each other now, and he realized that not only did he not want to be here for this, but he hadn’t eaten yet today.

  “Wait,” Samantha said. “Sam, show him your mark.”

  Sam stifled mid-yawn and turned, pulling his hair up and off of his neck. Carter grimaced.

  “Couldn’t even finish my breakfast. Fine.”

  He walked over and looked at the tattoo on Sam’s neck, then shrugged.

  “All right.”

  “And the knees,” Samantha said. Sam rolled up his jeans and Carter, rolling his eyes, squatted to look at them.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Okay,” Samantha said. “See you in an hour.”

  <><><>

  Carter went back to his breakfast.

  “Interesting pair,” he said as Samantha settled herself on a bar stool.

  “Don’t start,” she said.

  “No, the marks on his knees. Elevation sect, if I’m not mistaken.”

  She leaned on the counter and nodded.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “The neck is derived from old Latch, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”