"I can call the munin. These chaotic flashes are what happens when you have a munin that hunts you, and that you do not want to embrace."
"How did you know it was chaotic?" I asked.
"I caught a glimpse or two of what you saw. The merest touch," she said.
"Why don't you feel awful?" I asked.
"I did not struggle. If you simply allow the munin to ride you, it passes much more quickly and relatively painlessly."
I half-laughed at her. "That sounds like the old advice of lie back, close your eyes, and it'll be over soon."
She turned her head to one side, long hair sliding over her shoulders like a pale ghost. "Embracing the munin can be pleasant or unpleasant, but this munin hunts you, Anita. Most of the time, a munin that tries to bond with a pack member does so out of love or shared sorrow."
I just looked at her. "It isn't love that motivates this one."
"No," she said, "I felt both the strength of her personality and her hatred of you. She chases you out of spite."
I shook my head. "Not just spite. What little is left of her enjoys the game. She's having a really good time when I channel her."
Marianne nodded. "Yes. But if you would embrace her instead of fighting, you could pick and choose among the memories. Strong ones will come easiest, but you could control more of what comes and how strongly it comes. If you would truly channel her, as you put it, then the images would be less like a movie and more ... like wearing a glove."
"Except that I'm the glove," I said, "and her personality overwhelms mine. No thanks."
"If you continue to fight this munin, it will get worse. If you will cease struggling and meet her even partway, the munin will lose some of its strength. Some feed off of love. This one feeds off of fear and hatred. Was this the old lupa? The one you killed?"
"Yeah," I said.
Marianne shivered. "I never met Raina, but even that small touch of her makes me glad she's dead. She was evil."
"She didn't see herself that way," I said. "She saw herself as more neutral than evil." I said it like I knew, and I did know. I knew because I'd worn her essence like a dress more than once.
"Very few people see their own actions as truly evil," Marianne said. "It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not."
Jason raised his hand. "Evil."
Cherry echoed him. "Evil."
Nathaniel and Zane and even Jamil, raised their hands.
I raised my hand, too. "It's unanimous," I said.
Marianne laughed, and again, it was a sound equally at home in the kitchen or the bedroom. How she managed to be both wholesome and suggestive in the same breath puzzled me. Of course, a lot of things puzzled me about Marianne.
"We'll be late," Roland said. His voice was deeper than I thought it would be, low and careful, almost too old for his body. He looked peaceful enough, but I could look at him with things other than my eyes. You couldn't see it, but you could feel it. He was a mass of nervous energy. It danced along his skin, breathing out into the dark like an invisible cloud, hot, almost touchable, like steam.
"I know, Roland," she said. "I know."
"We could carry them," Jamil said.
A thrill of power flowed through the trees. It caught at my heart as if some invisible hand had touched me.
"We must go," Roland said.
"What is your problem?" I asked.
Roland looked at me with eyes that were a nice, solid darkness. "You are," he said. He spoke in a low voice, and it sounded like a threat.
Jamil moved between us so that my view of Roland was almost completely blocked, and I assumed, his view of me.