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right. You knew them? Roger and Adina and Sam?”
    I sat again, suddenly weary. “I met them. I met them after they died.” They, as much as Coyote, had set me on a shaman’s path.
    Sonata, who communed with the dead, didn’t even blink at that confession. Instead she said, “A few others left, after the murders. They were afraid, and that fear poisoned their ability to help the city, so maybe it was the right choice. But it left Seattle vulnerable. I thought we would have to simply work it out, that we’d eventually draw new talent back to us. But then I met you.”
    â€œAnd you realized the new talent was here in a shiny incompetent package.”
    Sonata pursed her lips. “I wouldn’t have put it that way. You’re not incompetent, merely…”
    â€œUneducated.” Really, not even I thought I was genuinely incompetent, not anymore. When push came to shove I had so far managed to get the job done, so I probably wasn’t actually incompetent. Inept, inexperienced, ill-equipped, yes, but those all had a little less sting than incompetency. “How can you tell I’m supposed to be the one who steps up? How can you tell I’m worth half a dozen other shamans?”
    â€œYou single-handedly destroyed the black cauldron.”
    I wet my lips and caught Billy’s gaze. “That wasn’t technically me.”
    To my surprise, he shook his head. “Sonata’s right, Joanie.That was pretty close to impossible. The cauldron was hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old, and imbued with enough magic that it essentially had a life of its own. You know what getting near it felt like.”
    I did. It was seductive, calling me home to a promise of rest and peace. Not even gods were immune to its song. But I clung to a stubborn thread of denial. “Billy, I didn’t destroy it. You know that.”
    â€œI know that over the cauldron’s whole history there are stories of people trying to break it. In all that time, you were the only one who pulled all the right elements to her so that it could be shattered. It wasn’t your sacrifice, but I think it was your presence as a nexus that made it possible.”
    I wailed, “But what if I’d moved to Chattanooga?” and they both looked at me before Sonata laughed.
    â€œThen perhaps the cauldron would have gone to Chattanooga. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you start wondering down those lines, Joanne. We can’t know what might have been.”
    I thought of the alternate self whose life I’d seen glimpses of, and clamped my mouth shut on an I can. It hadn’t, after all, been my talent that let me see a dozen different timelines. “Okay. One more stupid question, and then I promise to go…” Save the world seemed a little melodramatic, so I went with “stop the killer,” and added, “somehow,” under my breath.
    Out loud, I said, “Does every city have a group of shamans like Seattle did? People who try to protect the place?”
    â€œMany do. There are…” Sonata sighed and went back to the counter, brewing the tea that had been abandoned. “There are both more and fewer shamans, or adepts of any kind, than there have ever been, Joanne. More, because there are more people than ever before. Fewer, because…”
    â€œBecause there are more people than ever before.” I mooshed a hand over my face. “Five hundred years ago there’d have been a shaman in every tribe, maybe. One person for a few hundred, maybe a few thousand, individuals. Now there’re billions of people, and any given shaman has tens of thousands to tend to. Right?”
    â€œIn essence.”
    I blew a raspberry. “Why aren’t there more…adepts?” I liked that word better than “magic users”, probably because people could be adept at lots of things and I could at least pretend I wasn’t talking about the