"It was a rough weekend." I couldn’t find anything else to say, except, eventually, "Méabh was trying to help me save my mother. Sheila was being turned into a banshee. I had to…" I made a small, almost helpless gesture. "I had to save her." I wondered if I had. We’d burned her bones and killed the banshee queen, but none of the banshees had come flooding down to thank us for our work and then gone off to that happy banshee heaven in the sky. I had no idea where to look for Sheila MacNamarra anymore.

  "’Scuze me for sayin’ so, but I think we gotta save you. What woulda happened if Horns hadn’t been here, Jo?"

  I shuddered all the way from the bottom of my soul. "We’d all be toast. I was about to hand you over to my—the—Master. He made the werewolves. Méabh bound them to the moon. I figured if I gave you and her up to him, he’d break the binding. It seemed like a good idea at the time." I’d cut holes in jeans and shirts as a small child for that same reason. My father had nearly exploded with frustration over not understanding why I would do such a thing. I’d never been able to get across that it seemed like a good idea at the time was all the reason I could possibly need. It wasn’t a good reason, I was willing to grant that, but it was the only one I had. And handing my best friend over to a murderous dark lord had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Gary was right. We needed to save me. Because Mom, rest her soul or not, was already dead, and could do only a limited amount of harm. I was alive, kicking and infected with a poison that made me think selling my friends to the devil was a good idea. "I don’t even know where to go, Gary. We lost our guide. Aibhill eviscerated him, too. She was the banshee queen." There was so much he’d missed, in such a short time. My head spun as I tried to figure out what was most important. "Taking her out was supposed to free Mom, but…"

  But the banshees had gone silent since Aibhill’s screams had faded. Not that I’d seen my mother among them, but it wasn’t like I’d gotten a really good look at the dozen or so left after Méabh had finished razing her way through them. I’d have thought they’d come down to wreak unholy vengeance on us by now. I got to my feet, looking around the fallen castle first with ordinary sight, and then the Sight.

  Evidently banshees could hide behind a sort of psychic shield, too, because they were clearly visible with the Sight. Eleven of them hung about in the rafters like right-side-up bats, and they were all staring at Gary with consternation. I looked at him, too, but didn’t see anything to worry about. He was just himself, albeit armed with my shiny silver sword.

  The sword with which he’d killed Aibhill. A rock dropped into the pit of my stomach. "Oh, dear."

  "Oh, dear? Oh, dear? Jo, darlin’, you don’t say things like 'oh, dear.’ What the hell does 'oh, dear’ mean?" His aura got all trembly and bright, like an engine revving up.

  "I think there’s a new sheriff in town. Do you still have the Sight?"

  "Nah, it wore off bef— What? What? Oh no. Waitaminnit." Gary stepped over the puddle of blood and shoved the sword into my hands. "I’m just the sidekick. You’re the boss."

  "Yeah, but you’re the one who killed the O’Br⁠—"

  He clapped his hand over my mouth. "You’re. The. Boss." He looked at the rafters and repeated that one more time, even more loudly.

  One by one, eleven heads turned my way, gazes fixing on me with far more comprehension and acceptance than they’d shown in looking at Gary. I scowled accusingly at him, but not for very long. These were women scorned, after all. That was how they’d ended up as banshees. Probably leaving a man, any man, even a good man, in charge of them was not the world’s best idea. Maybe even especially a good man, because they’d shred him while he was being decent-hearted. "All right," I said, resigned. "All right. I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve called you here. Can anybody tell me how to find my mother?"

  As one, their attention turned from me to the ruined castle floors. I looked, too, but my mother wasn’t imprisoned within the stone, or any other of the Poe-like dramatics that first leapt to mind. I was about to give them an earful when something moved.

  The whole floor started coming alive, swirling, misting, rising up. No, not the floor: the silver-white dust that had recently been Aibhill. I gripped my sword harder and came up with a few choice words for however the hell magic-born beings were germinated. Shoving a blade through anybody should be enough to take them down permanently, although it wasn’t, of course, enough to take me down permanently. That seemed like a bad line of thought to pursue, so I just gritted my teeth and got ready for another damned fight. Gary edged nearer to me, and I wished that Cat hadn’t taken the spear with her when she ran. But then, I’d been supposed to be on her heels, so there’d have been no actual reason for her to leave it behind. Oh, well.

  By the time I got through those sets of regrets and repudiations, Aibhill’s mesmerizing gown had come together again. I wanted to stick the sword in her immediately, but there didn’t seem to be any body there, just the amorphous dress. Rebuilding her lovely flesh took longer, and she remained wraithlike—I knew, because I poked her a couple times—until in one last sudden instant she coalesced as a whole, features suddenly back in place, long hair suddenly flowing, white hands reaching out. Only it wasn’t Aibhill.

  It was Sheila MacNamarra.

  I had promised. I had promised Méabh that if it came to it, I would be the one to finish my mother off. And now Méabh was dead, or mostly dead, and there was nobody on hand to make me keep that promise except myself.

  My newly risen mother was as beautiful as Aibhill had been, but dark-haired. Green-eyed. Those things were right; the beauty was not. Mom had been prettier than I was, but not beautiful. That made it easier to breathe, "I don’t freaking think so," and launch myself at her.

  The last thing I expected was a cage of magic bars to slam up around me and hold me in place. I bounced off them, sword clanging, and gaped in astonishment for a second or two. Aibhill had not demonstrated any ability to throw magic around. Then again, Aibhill probably hadn’t been known as the Mage of Ireland while she’d lived. And on the third hand, now I really didn’t understand how creatures of pure magic were birthed, because Mom had been a hundred percent human—well, minus the touch of aos sí blood, apparently—and now she patently was not.

  On the fourth hand, I forgot my stupid magic wasn’t working properly and retaliated.

  Luckily, for some value of luck, I threw a net rather than trying any internal magics, and the external ones were mostly still working okay. Iron bars may a cage make, but magic nets weren’t particularly stymied by them. My silver-and-blue net whisked through the narrow spaces between her gold-and-red cage and spun large, wrapping her as thoroughly as I’d been trapped. Her concentration broke for an instant and I surged through the dissolving cage bars.

  Exasperation flitted across her features. She flung a hand up, palm toward me, and I hit another wall, bouncing onto my butt this time. Mages might be about spells and preparation, but from what I knew of my mother she would have a list of spells as long as her arm prepared. Probably longer. I was going to get knocked around a lot before she worked her way through all of them. Instead of getting up, I tightened my net, and that same mild exasperation showed before concussive power exploded the net all over the place.

  I slithered down a distant wall with no real idea of how I’d gotten there. My head hurt. Worse, it rang like Notre Dame’s bells, and the fragments of my magic were raw and sharp-edged as I tried pulling them back together. It felt like someone had gotten right inside my power and set off a grenade.

  Which, of course, was basically what had happened. Sheila had, after all, been wrapped up nice and tight in a net of my magic. Moreover, she was my mother. She couldn’t have been much more inside my magic than that, both literally and emotionally. It was just dawning on me that none of this fight was likely to go the way I wanted it to when she spoke. "I’ll scream if I have to, cuisle mo chroí."

  Cushla mahcree. I knew that phrase. Some of my aunts had used it with their children. It meant something like "my heart," and seemed a little peculiar to add onto the end of a threat.

  Because it was a threat. I’d barely stood up to Aibhill’s scream when it had brought my mother’s voice into it. I’d shatter with Sheila’s voice as the lead. So for once in my life I tried to do the smart thing, and didn’t throw another net.

  Well, mostly the smart thing, anyway. I did say, "I have to kill you, you know that, right?"

  She came down to earth—I’d hardly noticed she’d been floating, but now that I thought about it, Aibhill had been, too—and knelt next to me. I scooted along the wall, trying to get far enough away to avoid sudden evisceration. She started to follow, then put her palms on the floor as if to say, "Look, no danger!" and otherwise held still. "I’m dead already, alanna. There’s nothing left to kill."

  "You’re awfully damned mobile for a dead woman. And I don’t do ghosts, so you’re something else, and that just can’t be good, so I’ve got to finish it. I promised Méabh."

  Disappointment flashed across my mother’s too-pale face. "I did so want to meet her. Joanne, Siobhán, alanna my dear. Would I be speaking to you this way if I belonged to them?"

  I dared a glance at the them in question, the banshees who still hung about the rafters, all hungry haunted eyes and silent voices. "Aibhill was very reasonable, too. Right up until she gutted Méabh. So forgive me if I don’t quite trust reasonable and polite."

  "Aibhill," my mother said softly, "did not have the bond of bone and blood broken before her soul became the Master’s. More, she did not have it done by her daughter, nor with the help of a goddess she had long since loved."

  That whole ritual on the mountaintop seemed very distant just then. I looked at her for a long time, trying to understand what she meant, and finally said, "You mean it worked? You’re free?"

  "Free to choose, cuisle mo chroí, and I’ve chosen this cloak to wear."

  I couldn’t have heard her correctly. My expression indicated as much, and after a moment she smiled. Not Aibhill’s sweet, syrupy smile, but a smile with points. With fangs. A smile that reminded me how my mother had chosen to die through willpower alone, and therefore a smile that I found peculiarly reassuring. I still had to say it. "Why on God’s little green earth would you do that? This is… I mean, Mom. Doesn’t this kind of cut you out of the circle of life? Of reincarnation? You’ve got to be an old soul, even if I’m not. Why would you do that?"

  "There’s not a one of them with power, my girl," Sheila said as if it explained everything. It didn’t. She pursed her lips to hide another smile and went on. "Aibhill had power in her mortal life, alanna. The magic of her voice, to warn men of their deaths, but the magic to strike vengeance was the Master’s alone. The rest are vassals only, creatures of Aibhill’s making and of his. Without me, they remain his, but I have power, Joanne. I have the strength they do not. I can guide them. I can draw them away from him, and make them what they once were meant to be. Harbingers, not bringers, of death. There’s no harm in knowing death comes," she added even more quietly. "It gives those that know how to take it a chance to say goodbye."

  There were worlds of meaning in that, things we really probably should discuss, but sitting on the floor of a ruined castle in the Irish version of the Lower World, with banshees and my best friend overlooking us, was not the time or place to discuss them. I pulled my scattered brain cells together and said, "You’ve done an end-route," blankly. "You pulled a Hail Mary on the big bad. Jesus, Mom, that could have gone all wrong."

  She smiled again. "I trusted you."

  "Me?" Man, and I thought I wasn’t too bright sometimes.

  "That you would find your magic. That you would come back to Ireland to take up the mantle I discarded too early. That you would stop the ritual from being completed, and that I would be free to make the choices I had to make."

  My throat was dry. "You took a hell of a risk."

  "But I was right." Sheila MacNamarra stood and offered me a hand. "Now, my daughter, shall we end this fight we began together eight and twenty years ago?"

  Chapter 29

  "Eight and twenty, Mom? Really?" Still, I got up and offered her my hand. Right hand. The left continued to be a dead weight. Sheila frowned and instead of taking the one I offered, reached for the useless other. I pulled about half an inch away, realized there was nowhere to hide and slumped as she caught the bitten flesh in her hands.

  Her eyebrows drew down. "What’s this magic you’re working, my heart?"

  "Magic I’m wo— I’m not working any magic! I got bit by a damned werewolf a couple days ago!"

  She gave me a puzzled look. "So?"

  "So my magic’s screwed up because I’m trying to keep from going all furry!"

  Silence met my outburst. After a long moment, my mother said, as gently as she could, "Sure and you don’t think a bite transforms you into a werewolf, do you, cuisle mo chroí?"

  "Of course it does. Everybody knows tha…" I swallowed. "Everybody knows that."

  The queen of the banshees looked like she was trying not to laugh. "You’ve watched too many movies, Joanne. Where does magic come from?"

  "Within." I actually knew that one, and as soon as I said it started to feel uncomfortable. "I mean… Well, yeah. It comes from within."

  "And so how," she wondered, "could a bite, an external wound, change you from one thing to another?"

  My face heated up and I grabbed my arm defensively. A wave of pain washed over me, which helped my righteousness as I snapped, "It’s an infection. It gets into the blood. That’s the whole idea of how werewolves work."

  "Magic is bloodlines, my girl. It can’t be forced on you from without. At most it can suggest, but the mind must be willing."

  "Bullshit. I turned Morrison into a wolf last week. You can’t tell me he was willing for that to happen."

  Gary cleared his throat. "Didn’t you say that whole spirit dance thing was softenin’ people up for transformation, Jo?"

  I gave him a gimlet stare. "Yeah. Spiritual transformation, though, not physical."

  He shrugged one big shoulder. "Maybe, but you can’t tell me Mike ain’t willin’ to take on you and your magic, sweetheart."

  My jaw worked. Gary widened his eyes in an approximation of innocence. I spluttered, then muttered, "Okay, fine, you may have a point. But it’s not like I’m lining up to turn into a werewolf!"

  "You have the shifting power within you," Sheila said, and my stomach turned to lead. "If the thought is buried in your mind, Joanne, that this is what happens, then the magic within you may well grasp the magic without and bend toward its will. The wolf blood is borne from mother to daughter, but if an adept embraces the change, why should the blood not accept her?"

  "So you’re saying I’m turning myself into a werewolf?"

  Way at the back of my mind, that obnoxious little voice I hadn’t heard for a while said, "Ding!"

  Its long silence did not make its return any more welcome. It was the voice of reason, the one I’d only started noticing around the time my shamanic gifts woke up. I hadn’t thought about it, but if I had, I’d have thought I’d incorporated the voice of reason into my everyday thoughts, thus muffling its irritating commentary. Apparently I hadn’t quite managed it.

  If I was my own worst enemy, that explained why Áine had failed in cleansing the werewolf venom out of me. It also explained why Rattler had come closer to succeeding, but had still ultimately failed. I stared at my enflamed arm like I could set it on fire with the power of my mind, then despite myself, grinned. Good thing Caitríona had gone home, or she’d no doubt be glad to do it for me.

  Humor faded, though, leaving me staring at my arm. "Can you heal it, Mom? Caitríona said you used to give them magic Band-Aids."

  She shook her head as I glanced up. "Mage I may be, but healing lies within the realm of the living, alanna. It’s your own self who’ll have to do the job."

  I’d been afraid she would say that. "You realize this is not a good time. I mean, we’re hanging out in the Irish underworld, which the Master has corrupted half of, we’ve killed one of his dragons and his head banshee, and the new banshee boss in town is the twentieth-century version of his arch-enemy. And you think I should go have a nice communion with myself and get the werewolf bite all sorted out now?"

  My mother, who had no particular right to use a Mother Knows Best expression on me, assumed one. "Do you think going into battle against the Master with his poison running in your veins is wise?"

  It was just not fair that she actually did know best. I’d gotten this far with the infection—it had even been helpful in some ways—but I didn’t really like to think about just how badly I might get twisted around if he could use the bite against me.

  What I did like to think about was how much my odds of survival improved with Sheila MacNamarra on my side. I’d sworn up and down I’d take it to the mat this time if I had to, and I meant it. I was almost looking forward to it. The Master and I had had a date looming for over a year now and I’d grown eager to get it over with. And Mom had held him off more than once in the past, so maybe between the two of us we actually had a shot at⁠—

  —well. Who was I kidding. We weren’t going to eliminate death and illness and horror. But maybe we could haul it back in line to some degree. Push for a world where as much money was spent on peace efforts year in and year out as was spent on war efforts. Fully funded schools while the Air Force held a bake sale to build their next bomber. That kind of thing. If we could drive the Master far enough underground, I could easily spend the rest of my life working to clean up the mess he’d made of the European Lower Worlds, and that could be considered a life well spent. I had other things I was planning to spend my life well doing, too—like one Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department—but that wasn’t at the top of my priorities just now. I said, "Okay," mostly to myself, then arched my eyebrows at Gary and Sheila. "Don’t do anything fun while I’m gone, okay?"

 

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