No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,75

sweetheart, you know how it is. Old dogs got a lotta tricks.” I’d used that answer with Jo a bunch of times. Felt strange using it on Annie. “You sit tight. I’ll see if her number’s in the book.” If it wasn’t, I’d been to Sonny’s house, but explaining that one away was more than I wanted to try. Lucky for me, Sonny was listed, and I gave her a call half-expecting to get an answering machine.

Instead she picked up on the second ring, sayin’, “Hello?” in the same dryly competent voice I remembered from her. It kinda threw me, knowing she hadn’t met me yet, and I spent a couple seconds fumbling an’ stuttering. Her voice got amused: “Yes, this is Sonata Smith, and yes, I am a medium. I do communicate with the dead. Don’t worry. I won’t think you’re embarrassing yourself with whatever request it is you have, nor,” an’ she kept the same amused tone but steel slipped into it, “nor will I hesitate to send a haunting your way if this should be another practical joker.”

That bit made me laugh. I cleared my throat, promisin’, “No, no, darlin’, no practical jokes. I ain’t sure you’re the type to really send ghosts after somebody even if it was.”

“Oh, probably not, but you never know.” She sounded less dangerous then, like I’d passed some kinda test. “But how do you know anything about me at all?”

“Got your name from a friend, is all. Look, my name’s Gary, and I’m sorry for callin’ like this, outta the blue, but—”

“But you have someone you’d like to speak with, someone who’s crossed over,” she said gently, like she was takin’ the difficulty of saying it away from me.

I chuckled. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid not. I just thought if you were the real deal you might be able to help me out with somethin’ else. I need—” My heart slipped all of a sudden, missing beats and feeling like it’d fallen a couple miles down my chest. Jo wasn’t ready to heal anybody yet, but she’d said something once about meeting a bunch of dead shamans after her magic had woke up. They’d been Seattle shamans, an’ right now they weren’t dead yet. I didn’t hardly recognize my own voice, it got so tight and twisted with hope. “I’m looking for a shaman, ma’am. Somebody who can read auras and heal folks. My wife’s sick, see.”

Sonny Smith’s voice got even gentler. “I have some people I can introduce you to, but some illnesses can’t be healed, Mr…Gary. Gary,” she said again, like she was fixing it in her mind that I hadn’t said my last name.

I wasn’t gonna, either, ‘cause she was sharp as tacks, and I didn’t want her putting me together with the cabbie driving Joanne Walker around a few years down the road. I reckoned she wouldn’t, ‘cause she hadn’t, but I wasn’t gonna risk it. I already didn’t know why I didn’t remember talking to her, having this conversation, but either I’d been watching some kinda parallel world version of me all these years, or my memory wasn’t half as reliable as I thought it was. I couldn’t figure on the parallel world idea being true, not if I was still the same fella who’d left Joanne a while back and was looking to try an’ save my wife, and as far as I could tell, I was. So I was betting on my memory failing me, and didn’t wanna think about how or why that was gonna happen.

“Gary?” Sonata sounded real sympathetic, like she’d delivered bad news and was expecting me to be reeling from it. “I wish I could say otherwise, but it’s better to have realistic expectations.”

“No, ma’am, it’s fine, I got realistic expectations. I knew a lady shaman once, so I figure my expectations are realistic enough to be worth trying. Thanks for the warning, though. Do you know anybody?”

“I do. Auras as well as healing, you said? I’ll send the strongest aura reader I know.”

“Thanks. We might gotta do some leg work with her, to meet a few people for her to read.”

Sonny’s voice got warm. “I like how you assume it’s a woman.”

“Ain’t it?”

“In fact, it is. If you’ll give me your address, Gary, I’ll see if she’s available this evening.”

I gave her the address and phone number and went back to Annie, who said, “You knew a lady shaman?”

“That old lady up in the painted caves in France seemed like