Thunderbird Falls
Thunderbird Falls
C.E. Murphy
It's the end of the world… Again.For all the bodies she's encountering, you'd think beat cop Joanne Walker works in Homicide. But no, Joanne's a reluctant shaman who last saved mankind three months ago–surely she deserves more of a break! Yet, incredibly, "Armageddon, Take Two" is mere days away. There's not a minute to waste.Yet when her spirit guide inexplicably disappears, Joanne needs help from other sources. Especially after she accidentally unleashes Lower World demons on Seattle. Damn. With the mother of all showdowns gathering force, it's the worst possible moment for Joanne to realize she should have learned more about controlling her powers. Or to discover she's being lied to…
Praise for
C.E. MURPHY
and her books:
The Walker Papers
Coyote Dreams
“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes will captivate new and old readers alike.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Thunderbird Falls
“Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.”
—Award-winning author Charles de Lint
“The breakneck pace keeps things moving…helping make this one of the most involving and entertaining new supernatural mystery series in an increasingly crowded field.”
—LOCUS
“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.”
—Library Journal
Urban Shaman
“C.E. Murphy has written a spellbinding and enthralling urban fantasy in the tradition of Tanya Huff and Mercedes Lackey.”
—The Best Reviews
“Tightly plotted and nicely paced, Murphy’s latest has a world in which ancient and modern magic fuse almost seamlessly…Fans of urban fantasy are sure to enjoy this first book in what looks to be an exciting new series.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
[nominee for Reviewer’s Choice Best Modern Fantasy]
The Negotiator
Hands of Flame
“Fast-paced action and a twisty-turny plot make for a good read…Fans of the series will be sad to leave Margrit’s world behind, at least for the time being.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
House of Cards
“Violent confrontations add action on top of tense intrigue in this involving, even thrilling, middle book in a divertingly different contemporary fantasy romance series.”
—LOCUS
“The second title in Murphy’s Negotiator series is every bit as interesting and fun as the first. Margrit is a fascinatingly complex heroine who doesn’t shy away from making difficult choices.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Heart of Stone
“[An] exciting series opener…Margrit makes for a deeply compelling heroine as she struggles to sort out the sudden upheaval in her professional and romantic lives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating new series…as usual, Murphy delivers interesting worldbuilding and magical systems, believable and sympathetic characters and a compelling story told at a breakneck pace.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
C.E. Murphy
Thunderbird Falls
BOOK TWO: THE WALKER PAPERS
This one’s for Alex Trebek.
(Really.)
Acknowledgments
Once more, thanks are due to both my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, and my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for making this a better book; and to cover artist Hugh Syme, whose artwork I am still delighted to have my book judged by.
They are further due to Silkie, for research above and beyond the call of duty (especially since there was no call of duty at all!); to Trip, for making me think harder than is my natural inclination; and to Anna, who is responsible for any geography I got right in Seattle.
As for the rest of it, if I started listing my support structure in detail, there wouldn’t be room for the book. Still, to my family, especially Ted and Shaun, who respectively keep me fed and keep the kitchen clean, thank you.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
Thursday, June 16, 6:19 a.m.
Two words I never thought would go together: Joanne Walker and 6:00 a.m.
Never mind that that’s actually four words, five if you spell out ante meridiem. If you’re going to get technical, you’re going to lose all your friends. The point is, it was Oh God Early and I was not only up, but at work. Not even at work. I was volunteering. Volunteering my own precious sleeping time, five hours before I was supposed to be at work. I was so noble I could kill myself.
While I was busy admiring my nobility, a bunch of protesters linked arms and waded toward the police line I was a part of. There were considerably more of them than there were of us—hence me being there at all—and the power of authority as granted to us by the city of Seattle wasn’t pulling a lot of weight with them. They weren’t violent, just determined. I spread my arms wide and leaned into the oncoming mass, blowing a whistle that was more noisome than effective. The protesters stopped close enough that I could count the individual silver hairs on the head of the man in front of me, who stood there, Right In My Personal Space.
People have gotten shot for less.
Not, however, by me, and besides, as one of the city’s finest, I wasn’t in a position to be shooting people just for getting in my personal space. Instead, I took a step forward, trusting my own presence to be enough to cow them. It was; the silver-haired guy in front of me shifted back, making a bow in his line. I pressed my advantage, arms still spread wide, and they all fell back a step.
I let go a sigh of relief that I couldn’t let them see, herding them back several more steps before I let up, and backed up again myself. They watched me, silent, sullen, and short.
I was working on a theory that said all environmentalists were short. I knew it was wrong—Al Gore is a tall man—but it gave me something to do while I played push-me-pull-you with the protesters. Of course, most people are short compared to me: I stood a smidge under six feet in socks, and the sturdy black walking shoes I wore put me an inch over.
Behind me lay the summertime glory of the Seattle Center, where a symposium on global warming was being held. Representatives from every oil company, every car manufacturer, every corporation that had ever been fined for too many dirty emissions being pumped out into the air were gathered there to argue their case against the bleeding-heart liberals who thought a little clean air wasn’t asking too much.
Sarcasm aside, the greenies were losing major ground and had been since the symposium had opened two days earlier. The federal administration favored big money and big companies, and those companies were taking as much advantage as they could.
My own sympathies lay a whole lot more with the protesters and their concerns about details like global warming. It was already in the high seventies and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning, which was just wrong for mid-June.
But it wasn’t my job to have an opinion about who was right and who was wrong. It was my job to keep the several thousand men and women who were gathered at the Center from breaking through and rending the Armani suits from the bodies of the corpulent pigs managing the slaughter.
“Officer?” A woman’s voice, high-pitched with worry, broke me out of my cheerfully spiraling cynicism. I turned toward her, one hand still lifted in warning against the crowd. I suspected a trick: distract the cop for a minute while everybody surges forward, therefore losing the law a few precious feet of land. There were more physical barriers than just the police officers keeping people off the Center grounds—bright orange, cordoned sawhorses surrounded the entire place—but it was its own sort of psychological warfare.
The woman held a pale-cheeked sleeping girl in her arms. “She fainted,” the woman said. Her voice was thready with concern and fear. “Please, I think she needs a doctor.”
Right behind the bottom of my breastbone, centered in the diaphragm, a coil of energy flared up, making a cool fluttering space inside me. It demanded attention, making my hands cramp and my stomach churn. I rubbed my sternum, swallowing back the wave of nausea. I’d gotten good at ignoring that sensation in the past several months, pretending I couldn’t feel it wrapped around my insides, waiting for me to give in and use it again. Having it crop up so sharply made me feel as pale as the girl. My hand, without any conscious order from my brain, reached out to touch her forehead. Her skin was cold and sticky with sweat.
For the first time since I’d nearly burned out in March, I lost the battle with the energy within me. It shot through me, making silver-tinted rainbows beneath my skin, and strained at my fingertips, trying to pass from me into the chilly-skinned child. Had she been an adult, I might have been able to pull back and refuse yet again to acknowledge its existence.
But she was a kid, and whether I wanted the power and responsibility I’d unintentionally taken on, a six-year-old didn’t deserve to suffer for my stubbornness. Silver-sheened magic told me in the most simple, non-medical terms possible, that the girl was suffering from near heatstroke.
To me—a mechanic by trade, even if I was a cop by day—that meant her engine had overheated.
Fixing an overheated engine’s not a hard thing. You pop the hood, pour new water into the radiator and try not to get burned by the steam, then do it again until the radiator’s full and the engine’s cooled down.
Translating that to a child sick with heat was surprisingly easy. The energy inside me boiled with eagerness to flow out of me and into the girl, but I made it drip instead of pour, afraid of what might happen if her system cooled down too rapidly. I could actually envision the steam hissing off her as heat gradually was replaced by my cool silver strength. It seemed a wonder that no one else could see it.
I was glad she was asleep. At her age she probably had very few perceptions about how health and illness worked, but it was a whole lot easier to heal somebody who couldn’t consciously disbelieve that what you were doing was possible.
The bitter truth of the matter was that I had to believe it was possible, too, and I didn’t want to. What I wanted and what was, however, were two very different things. Right through the core of me, I knew that cooling down an overheated little kid was only the bare edge of what I was capable of.
I let my hand fall off the girl’s forehead. There was a little color in her cheeks now, her breathing somehow more steady and less shallow. She was going to be all right, though an IV drip to help get her fluids back up would probably be a good idea. From the outside, it looked as if I’d touched the girl’s forehead as an assessment, then said, “I’ll escort you out.” I was the only one who knew better, and I was grateful for that. Headlines blaring Cop Turns Faith Healer! would not endear me to my boss.
The girl’s mother, bright-eyed with tears, whispered her thanks. I led them through the crowd, radioing for an ambulance as we walked.
Watching them drive away half an hour later, I realized I could breathe more easily than I’d been able to in months. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone again, irritably, and went back to work.
I left at nine, which was cutting it way too close to expect to get back to the university by nine-thirty. The traffic gods smiled on me, though, and I slid my Mustang into a parking spot outside the gym with a whole two minutes to spare.
I have never been what I would call the athletic sort. Not because I’m uncoordinated, but because I was never very good at working with a team in high school. I hadn’t improved at it since then, for that matter. The basketball coach had been endlessly frustrated by me. Alone I could shoot hoops till the cows came home, but put nine other people on a court with me and I got sullen and stupid and couldn’t hold on to the ball.
So fencing, which I’d started shortly after wrassling a banshee to ground, was the first sport I’d ever really pursued. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, even with sweat leaking into my eyes and my own hot breath washing back at me against the mask.
Metal clashed against metal, a twitchy vibration running up my arm, even through the heavy canvas gloves. Block and retreat, block and retreat, lunge and attack. I blinked sweat away as I extended.
My épée scraped along the other blade and slid home, thumping my opponent solidly in the ribs. For a moment we both froze, equally startled. Then through the mesh of her mask, I saw her grin as she came back to a full stand. She pulled the mask off, tucking short damp hair behind her ears, and saluted me. I straightened and yanked my mask off. My shadow splashed against her white tunic, my hair a hedgehog of sagging points.
“We might just make a fencer of you yet, Joanne.”
Panting and grinning, I tucked my mask under my arm, transferring my épée to my left hand, and offered Phoebe my right. She grabbed it in an old-fashioned warrior’s handshake, wrapping her fingers around my forearm, the way she always shook hands. She was small and compact, like a Porsche, and had muscles where I didn’t even have body parts. Most days she made me feel large and lumbering and slow.
Of course, on a bad day, Godzilla could make me feel large and lumbering and slow.
“That’s my plan.” I shook Phoebe’s hand solidly before falling back a step, rubbing a thumb over my sternum. Phoebe’s dark eyebrows knitted. It was very nearly her dark eyebrow knitting, but I was afraid to even think that too loudly, for fear she’d hear me and beat the tar out of me.
“Why do you do that?”
My hand dropped as if weighed down by a concrete brick, and I twisted it behind my back guiltily. “Do what?”
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. Every time somebody makes a point against you and every time a match ends, you rub your breastbone. How come?”
“I had…surgery a while ago.” I took a too-deep breath, trying to will away the sensation of not getting enough air. “I guess it still bothers me.”
“Heart surgery?”
“More like lung.”
Phoebe’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.” I hadn’t snitched since January, when a steely eyed cab driver refused to give me a smoke because his wife of forty-eight years had died of emphysema. I could learn from other people’s lessons. That was what I told myself.
Quitting smoking had nothing to do with the crushing sensation of being unable to breathe from having a sword stuffed through my lung. I told myself that, too. It turned out myself was a skeptical bitch and didn’t believe me. Even so, I tried hard not to think about the truth: that the sword had been wielded by a Celtic god, and in a shadowland between life and death, a Native American trickster called Coyote offered me a choice between the two.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I chose a life and became a shaman. I felt that coil of energy bubble up again inside of me, and squelched it. There was no one around who needed healing right now. Nobody but myself, anyway, and I didn’t deny I had a lot of self-healing to do.
Actually, I denied it all the time. Which was part of why I was learning to fence, instead of sitting somewhere quietly, as Coyote would like me to, focusing on my inner turmoil and getting it all sorted out. Inner turmoil could wait, as far as I was concerned. External turmoil seemed inclined to stick me with pointy things or otherwise try to do me in. Under those circumstances, I figured learning how to parry was a much better use of my time than fussing over things I’d rather let lie.
I rolled my shoulders, pushing the thoughts away. “It wasn’t cancer. Sort of more hereditary. It’s fine now. Just kind of bugs me sometimes. I think it’s mostly mental.” I knew it was mostly mental. I didn’t even have a scar.
“Is that why you started coming here?” she wondered. “A lot of people find martial arts to be a great way to center themselves after they’ve had a life-changing experience.”
I ducked my chin and let out a breathy laugh. “Something like that, yeah. Plus I could use the exercise.”
“I thought cops were supposed to be in good shape.”
I looked back up through my eyebrows. “Don’t know many cops, do you? Speaking of which, I better hit the shower and get to work. Thanks for the lesson, Phoebe.” I headed for the locker room, Phoebe taking the lead and holding the door for me.
“My pleasure. I like beating up on the big girls. Makes me feel all studly.”
“You are all studly. And you’re not that small.”
“Compared to you I am.”
“Compared to me Arnold Schwartznegger is small.”
Phoebe laughed out loud. “You’re not that big.”
I grinned as I struggled out of my tunic. I was pretty sure it had a secret mission in life to strangle me as I undressed. “Nah. I lack the shoulders.” Phoebe turned the showers on, drowning out anything else I might say. Once I got loose of the tunic, I followed her, standing to the side while the pins-and-needles water pelted from cold to too hot.
The beauty of university showers is that they never run out of hot water. I stood there, leaning my forehead against the wall, until my skin turned boiled lobster-red. Phoebe turned her shower off with a squeak of faucets, and in the fashion of community showers everywhere, the water in mine got significantly hotter. Turning it down didn’t help. That was the flip side of never running out of hot water: the only way I’d ever found to keep a public shower from being too hot was to run more than one at a time. “Ow. Turn that back on, would you?”
“Sorry.” The faucets squeaked again and after a few seconds my shower faded back to a bearable heat. Water lapped over the top of my feet, and I pushed away from the wall with another groan, listening to Phoebe slosh to the drying area.
“Thanks.” I reached for my shampoo, scrubbing a palmful through my hair. If I weren’t so fond of standing mindlessly in the hot water, it would only take me about thirty seconds to shower. A minute and a half if I used conditioner, which my hair was too short to bother with except occasionally. But I wasn’t quite late for work, so I luxuriated in the heat. Water crept up around my ankles. “I think the drain’s plugged.”
“Check,” Phoebe said. “I’ll call maintenance if it is.”
“Okay.” I rinsed my hair, turned the water off, and wrapped a towel around myself as I slogged through the shower room in search of the drain.
Two stalls down from me, a naked black girl, her skin ashy blue with death, lay with her hip fitted neatly in the hollow of the drain.
CHAPTER TWO
“Phoebe,” I said, amazed at how calm my voice was, “call the cops.”
“You are the cops,” she said. I could hear the grin in her voice in the suddenly echoing shower room.
“Phoebe!”
“Yow, okay, what’s wrong?” Phoebe didn’t call the cops. She splashed back through the showers, rewetting her feet. “What’s wrong, Joanne?”
“There’s a dead girl in the shower,” I said, still very calmly. “Please go call the police, Phoebe.”
“There’s what?!” Phoebe looked around the edge of the shower stall and went pale under her olive skin. “Oh my God. Oh my God, we have to do something!” She surged forward. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.
“We have to call the cops,” I repeated. “She’s dead, Phoebe. Look at her color. There’s nothing we can do. We shouldn’t touch her.”
“You are the cops!”
“I’m also the one who found the body. Again,” I added in a mutter.
“Again?” Phoebe’s voice rose and broke.
“I found a murder victim in January,” I said. My boss was going find a way to blame me for this. He was convinced I lived out each day with the deliberate intention to piss him off. Some days he was right, but it hadn’t been in my game plan today. I didn’t get up at five in the morning to volunteer at protests with irritating my boss in mind. Rather the opposite, in fact, not that I’d admit that out loud.
I took Phoebe’s other shoulder and steered her away from the body. “Shouldn’t we at least check to make sure she’s dead?” she demanded, voice rising. I exhaled, nice and slow.
“She’s dead, Phoebe. Look, okay.” I let her go and waded to the dead girl. She looked like she’d been posed for a photograph, her back against the tile wall, her bottom leg and arm stretched out long and her top leg folded gracefully forward into the water, bent at the knee. Her head was thrown back, slender neck exposed, as if she were laughing without inhibition. The edge of the drain was just barely visible beneath her hip, all of the drain holes covered. I wondered who would take that kind of picture, then remembered that if nobody else would, the police photographer would have to do the job.
“Christ.” I crouched and pressed two fingers against her neck, below her jaw. She was on the cool side of lukewarm, the skin pliant, and had no pulse. I tried a second time, then a third, shifting my fingers slightly. “She’s dead, Phoebe.” I stood up again, wiping my fingers against my towel. I’d never touched a dead body before. It hadn’t felt like I expected it to. “Go call the cops.”
“What’re you going to do?” Phoebe’s voice trembled as she backed away, water splashing around her ankles.
“I’m going to go get dressed.” I turned to follow Phoebe, who continued to back up, still staring at the dead girl. “Watch where you’re go—”
I lunged, too late. Phoebe’s heel caught the curb of the shower area and her feet slid out from under her, kicking water into my eyes. My fingers closed on empty air as she shrieked and crashed to the tile floor with a painful crack. My own feet slid on the wet tiles and for a moment I thought I’d dive after her. My arms swung wildly and I caught my balance, heaving myself upright with a gasp. Phoebe, her mouth a tight line, stared up at me, then let out an uncharacteristic soprano giggle. I stepped over the curb and offered her a hand up.
“I take it you’re okay, then.”
Phoebe wrapped her fingers around mine in a strong grip and I hauled her to her feet. “No, I’m not okay.” Her voice squeaked as high as her giggle had. “We just found a dead girl in the showers and I think my butt’s going to be bruised for a month.” She giggled again, then set her mouth and pressed her eyes shut, inhaling deeply through her nostrils. “I’m okay,” she said after several seconds. I nodded.
“I’ll call the cops. You get dressed.”
“Okay.” She gave me a pathetically grateful look that I didn’t like from my fencing instructor, and left me alone with the dead girl. I stole a glance at her over my shoulder, feeling power flutter behind my breastbone, urging me to use it.
I could think of one good reason to disregard it. Well, one reason. Good was debatable, especially since even in my own head I heard it as a whine: but I don’t want to be a shaman!
Except, possibly, when it meant I could save little girls from heatstroke. I sighed and went back to the dead woman, kneeling in the cooling water. The bottom edge of my towel drooped into it, sucking up as much as it could, and I debated running to put some clothes on before doing anything else. Only then I’d be soaking up water with my uniform, which, unlike a towel, wasn’t designed for it. It wasn’t like the police would arrive in the thirty seconds I intended to be out.
“Arright,” I muttered. “One healthy little girl for one esoteric death investigation. I guess that’s fair.” Five more minutes before calling the cops wasn’t going to make a difference to the body. “I’m here,” I said out loud, “if you want to talk.”
There was a place between life and death that spirits could linger in, a place that, with all due apology to Mr. King, I’d started calling the Dead Zone. If I could catch this young woman’s spirit there, I might just be able to learn something useful, like how she’d ended up filling a drain at the University of Washington’s gym locker rooms.
Reaching that world was easier with a drum, but somewhere in the shower room a shower leaked, a steady drip-drop of water hitting water. It was a pattern, and that was good enough. I closed my eyes. The sound amplified, deliberate poiks bouncing off the bones behind my ears. I lost count of the drops, and rose out of my body.
I slid through the ceiling, skimming through pipes and wires and insulation that felt laced with asbestos. The sky above the university was so bright it made my eyes ache, and for a few seconds I turned my attention away from the journey for the sake of the view.
The world glittered. White and blue lights zoomed along in tangled blurs, each of them a point of life. Trees glowed in the full bloom of summer and I could see the thin silver rivers of sap running through them to put out leaves that glimmered with hope and brightness. Concrete and asphalt lay like heavy thick blots of paint smeared over the brilliance, but at midmorning, with people out and doing things, those smears of paint had endless sparks of life along them, defying what seemed, at this level, to be a deliberate attempt to wipe out the natural order of the world.
Don’t get me wrong. Not only do I like my indoor plumbing and my Mustang that runs roughshod over those dark blots of freeway, but I also think that a dam built by man is just as natural as a dam built by a beaver. We’re a part of this world, and there’s nothing unnatural about how we choose to modify it. If it weren’t in our nature, we wouldn’t be doing it.
Still, looking down from the astral plane, the way we lay out streets and modify the world to suit ourselves looks pretty awkward compared to the blur of life all around it. Humans like right angles and straight lines. There weren’t many of those outside of man-made objects.
But even overlooking humanity’s additions to the lay of the land, there was something subtly wrong with the patterns of light and life. I’d noticed it months earlier—the last time I’d gone tripping into the astral plane—and it seemed worse now. There was a sick hue to the neon brilliance, like the heat had drawn color out, mixed it with a little death, and injected it back into the world without much regard to where it’d come from. It made my nerves jangle, discomfort pulling at the hairs on my arms until I felt like a porcupine, hunched up and defensive.
The longer I hung there, studying the world through second sight, the worse the colors got. Impatient scarlet bled into the silver lines of life, black tar gooing the edges of what had been pure and blue once upon a time. I had no sense of where the source of the problem was. It felt like it was all around me, and the more I concentrated on it the harder it got to breathe. I finally jerked in a deep breath, clearing a cough from my lungs, and shook off the need to figure out what was wrong. I suspected it had more to do with procrastination than anything else. I’d been warned more than once that my own perceptions could get me in trouble, in the astral plane.
It wasn’t that I was scared. Just wary. Apprehensive. Cautious. Uneasy. And that exhausted my mental thesaurus, which meant I had to stop farting around and go do what I meant to do.
Coyote had told me that traveling in the astral plane wasn’t a matter of distance, but a matter of will. It seemed like distance to me, always different, always changing. Seattle receded below me, darkening and broadening until the Pacific seaboard seemed to be just one burnt-out city, the sparks of life that colored it faded and scattered with distance. Skyscrapers that seemed to defy physics with their height leaped up around me and crumbled again, and the stars were closer.
A tunnel, blocked off by a wall of stone, appeared to my left, and I felt him waiting there. Him, it—whatever. Something was there, and it tugged at me. It laughed every time I forged past it, and every time I did I felt one more spiderweb-thin line binding me to it. The first time I traveled the astral plane I almost went to him, compelled by curiosity and a sense of malicious rightness. The second time, the stone wall was in place, my dead mother’s way of protecting me from whatever lay down that tunnel. This time I knew he was there, and it was easier to ignore him.
Someday I’m not going to be able to.
The tunnel whipped away into a wash of light, the sky bleeding gold and green around me. New skyscrapers blossomed into tall trees, filled with the light of life, but here that light was orange and red, not the blues and white I was used to. I grinned wildly and lifted my hands, encouraging the speed that the world swum around me with.
Under the gold sky, palaces built like where the Taj Mahal’s wealthy older sister grew up. A tiger paced by, sabre-toothed and feral, watching me like I might be a tasty snack. A man’s laughter broke over me, and the world spun into midnight, the sky rich and blue and star-studded. I relaxed, letting myself enjoy the changing vistas, and in the instant I did, the shifting worlds slammed to a stop.
A red man stood in front of me. Genuinely red: the color of bricks, or dark smoked salmon. His eyes were golden and his mouth was angry. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
I gaped at him, breathless. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.”
“That was kind of the idea.”
“Siobhán Walkin—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“Don’t,” I repeated, “call me that. Not here.”
I’d become uncomfortably protective of that name: Siobhán Walkingstick. It was my birth name, the one I’d been saddled with by parents whose cultures clashed just long enough to produce me. My American father’d taken one look at Siobhán and Anglicized it to Joanne. Until I was in my twenties, no one had called me Siobhán except once, in a dream.
The last name, Walkingstick, I’d abandoned on my own when I went to college. I’d wanted to leave my Cherokee heritage behind, defining myself by my own rules. I was Joanne Walker. Siobhán Walkingstick was someone who barely existed.
But whether I liked it or not, that name belonged to the most internal, broken parts of me, and flinging it around astral planescapes made me vulnerable. I had learned to build protective shields around it, the one thing I’d managed to do to Coyote’s satisfaction over the past six months. I saw those shields as being titanium, thin and flexible and virtually unbreakable, an iridescent fortress in my mind. They were meant to protect my innermost self from the bad guys.
So I didn’t like having the two names rolled together in the best of circumstances, and I resented the shit out of having them flung around the astral plane as a form of reprimand by the very same brick-red spirit guide who’d insisted I develop the shields in the first place.
The spirit guide in question flared his nostrils, inclining his head slightly, and inside that motion, shifted. A loll-tongued, golden-eyed coyote sat in front of me, looking as disgruntled about the eyes as the man had.
“Dammit,” I said, “I hate when you do that.”
“This is not about what you hate,” the coyote said, in exactly the same tenor the man owned. His mouth didn’t move, and I was, as ever, uncertain if he was speaking out loud or in my mind. “You haven’t got the skill for this, Joanne.”
I wet my lips. “Looks to me like you’re wrong.”
“Do you really understand what you’re doing?” The coyote’s voice sharpened, making my chin lift and my shoulders go back defensively.
“I’m just trying to see if she can tell me anything about what happened, Coyote.”
“There are more mundane ways to find out. You are a policeman, are you not?”
“I’m a beat cop,” I said through my teeth. “Beat cops don’t get to investigate dead bodies in the women’s shower.”
Coyote cocked his head at me, a steady golden-eyed look that spoke volumes. Then, in case I’d missed the speaking of volumes, he said it out loud, too: “Then maybe you shouldn’t.”
Which comedian was it who said wisdom came from children, especially the mouth part of the face? I felt like he must have when he first thought it: like it would be nice to wrap duct tape around the talking part until nothing more could be said.
Coyote snapped his teeth at me, a coyote laugh. “Wouldn’t work anyway.”
“Oh, shut up.” Yet another incredibly annoying thing: he heard every thought I had, and I heard none of his. “This is supposed to be my dreamscape. Why can’t I hear your thoughts?”
He cocked his head the other way, wrinkles appearing in the brown-yellow fur of his forehead. “First,” he said, “it’s not your dreamscape. Haven’t you learned even that much? The astral plane is a lot bigger than just you or me.”
“I thought it was all basically the same,” I muttered. “How’m I supposed to know?”
“By studying,” Coyote suggested, voice dry with sarcasm. “Or is that asking too much?”
For one brief moment I wondered if it was possible that Coyote might also be my boss, Morrison.
“I’ll have to meet him someday,” Coyote said idly. I winced.
“Sure, he’ll like that a lot. Talking coyotes from the astral plane. That’ll go over well.” Morrison made Scully look like a paragon of belief. Once upon a time, our skepticism for the occult was the only thing we had in common. Then I’d done some unpleasantly weird things, like come back from the dead more or less in front of him, and now the only thing we had in common was neither of us was happy about me being a cop, though our reasons were different. “What was the second thing?” I asked, unwilling to pursue any more thoughts of Morrison.
For a moment Coyote looked blank as a happy puppy. Then he shook himself and stood up to pace, the tip of his tail twitching. “Second, you can’t hear my thoughts because I have shields, and I can hear yours because even after six months of study your shields are rudimentary and poorly crafted.”
“Thank you,” I said, “would you like me to lie down to make it easier to kick me?”
Coyote stopped turning in a circle and flashed, seamlessly, into the man-form. He had perfectly straight black hair that fell down to his hips, gleaming with blue highlights even in the star-studded blackness near the Dead Zone.
I closed up my thoughts like all the windows rolling up in a car at once, and privately admitted to myself that Coyote was a hell of a lot easier to deal with as a coyote. As a man he was almost too pretty to live, and I mostly wanted to look at him, not listen to him.
“Joanne, you took on a great power when you chose life.”
“If you say, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ so help me God, I’m going to kick you into last week.”
He gave me the same unblinking gaze that the coyote could. “Try it.”
A beat passed in which we neither moved nor spoke, until Coyote dropped his chin, watching me through long dark eyelashes. “You accepted this life months ago, Joanne. Why do you insist on fighting it?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I snapped. “Isn’t that something?”
“Something,” he agreed, but shook his head. “But not enough. Speaking with the dead is a dangerous art, and you’re not even doing that. You’re just opening yourself up and offering yourself as a conduit for anybody who has a piece to speak.”
“Yeah, so?” I admired my mature rebuttal. High school debate teams would weep to have me. “It’s all I know how to do.” Ah, a defensive attack. Good, Joanne, I said to myself, and hoped the windows of my mind were still sealed tight enough that Coyote didn’t hear me. That’ll show him you’re really the It girl. Any moment now legions of cheerleaders would leap out and rah-rah-rah their support of my rapier wit and keen discussion skills.
“That,” Coyote said with more patience and less sharpness than I deserved, “is my point. Has it occurred to you, Joanne, that I’d prefer it if you didn’t get yourself killed out here?”
I blinked, and swallowed.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked, much more softly.
There are questions a girl doesn’t want to answer, and then there are the ones she doesn’t even want to think about. I reached out, around Coyote and beyond him, for the Dead Zone.
The stars shut down and the world went blank.
CHAPTER THREE
In time, stars began winking in and out again, solitary dots of light that made me feel like a single extremely small point on an endless curve of blackness. I was cold beneath my skin, but when I touched my arm, my body temperature seemed normal. I didn’t remember the chill in the Dead Zone before. It was as if it was tainted, too, with the same subtle wrongness that had marred Seattle.
I held my breath and turned, one slow circle, reaching out with my hands and my mind alike. The former felt nothing.
The latter encountered pain.
It rolled through me, a bone-cold ache that settled in my spine at the base of my neck, creating a headache. Ice throbbed into my veins with every heartbeat. My skin was flayed from my flesh and my flesh from my bones, knives thrusting into my kidneys and cutting out my heart. My bones broke, crushed by a weight of regret that lay heavier than the sea. It dragged me down to my knees, too weak from a hundred billion lifetimes of mistakes to bear up any longer.
And rapture shattered through me, turning the ice in my blood to golden heat. I staggered to my feet again, fire in my lungs so pure it seemed I could breathe it. Burning tears scalded my face, tracks following a thin scar to the corner of my mouth. I swallowed them down, not caring that they seared my throat.
Disbelief caught me in the belly, a bowel-twisting moment of realization that culminated in the words, “Oh, shit,” when I knew I couldn’t stop the carcrash-bombexplosionrunawayhorsetrainwreckshipsinking followed by relief and dismay, to put down the burden of a body after secondsminuteshoursdaysyearsdecades-centurieseons of life.
Dimly, I was aware that I was connected, hideously and intimately, to everything that had ever died.
More immediately, I understood that now I was going to die. Again. For good.
Then somebody hit me in the face. New, fresh pain blossomed, shattering all the old. I clapped both hands to my nose, doubling over and shrieking.
Note to self: grabbing a broken nose does not, in any fashion, help. Lightning shot through my head in blinding stabs of agony. I made a retching noise and fell to the ground, knocking my forehead against the featureless planescape. Brightness flashed in my eyes. I closed them, grateful for the ache in my skull that took a little away from the shards of pain in my nose. “Mother of Christ.”
I rolled onto my side, panting, and gingerly put my hand over my nose, envisioning a Mustang with a dented hood as I did so. Undenting it was easy: stick a suction cup over it and ratchet up the pressure until it popped back into place. In my mind’s eye, the dent banged into shape. I opened my eyes, relieved.
Pain slammed through my nose and stabbed me in the pupils. I shot to my feet, clutching my nose more cautiously, and stared accusingly at Coyote.
“This is the realm of the dead, Joanne,” he said with a shrug. He was back in coyote form, his narrow shoulders twitching lankily. “It’s not a place for healing.”
None of the things that came to mind were very ladylike. I managed to hold my tongue, but Coyote tilted his head at me and gave a very human snort of derision. “Nice girls don’t think things like that.”
“Thank you for getting me out of that,” I said without the slightest degree of genuine gratitude. I hadn’t felt even a hint of the healing power that normally boiled behind my breastbone when I envisioned fixing my nose. I should’ve known it hadn’t worked.
“You’re welcome,” Coyote said, not meaning it any more than I had. “Can we go now?”
“No, we’re here. I might as well see if I can find her.”
Coyote sighed, a tremendous puff of air. “All right. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know dogs could look scathing. I thought they were supposed to be all about supportive looks and hopeful puppy eyes. Coyote turned a scathing look on me anyway.
“I’m not,” he said through his teeth, which seemed larger and whiter and much pointier suddenly, “a dog. How do you expect to find someone in the realms of the dead if you don’t even have a name to start with?”
“The others just met me here,” I said uncomfortably. Coyote said something in an Indian language I didn’t know, but I didn’t really need a translation. The tone was enough.
“When you get out of here,” he went on, “if you don’t find a teacher I’m going to…” He snapped his teeth.
“Bite me?” I supplied, as helpfully as I could. He snapped his teeth again.
“The others met you here,” he said, instead of completing the threat, “because you invited them to contact you. They drew you here through their skill. This time you’re on your own.”
“Am not. I have you.”
This time he said, “Ministers and angels of grace defend us,” in English, and shifted back into his human form, stepping forward to put his hands on my shoulders. I blinked. Aside from hitting me in the face a few minutes ago, I couldn’t remember him having touched me before. “Have you no sense of self-preservation at all, Joanne? Are you—” Sudden clarity lit his gold eyes to amber, and his chin came up with evident surprise. “Ah,” he said more quietly, and let me go.
“What? What? Am I what?”
“I think we’d better try to do what you came to do, and get out of here.” He stepped away from me. A strangled sound of frustration erupted from my throat. “This is a dangerous place for you, in more ways than one. Tell me what you know about this girl, and we’ll see if we can find her.”
I told him what I knew: young, black, dead in the shower of the women’s locker room. It was pathetically little, and I began to feel embarrassed. “Focus on her,” Coyote said. “Focus on what she looked like. If we’re lucky she won’t have lost her body sense yet, and we’ll be able to find her that way.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Then we’re going home and you’re going to have to do your research the old-fashioned way. I don’t want you to be here.”
I muttered under my breath as I closed my eyes, constructing an image of the dead girl behind my eyelids. She’d been pretty, with round cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hair was short with kinky curls, a few of them bleached and dyed fire engine-red. She was dark-skinned, even in death, and I tried to imagine away the ashy blue that had tinged full lips and discolored her fingernails.
A chill slid down my back, slow and thick, like cold blood wending its way around my spine. Fine hairs stood up all over me, sweeping in waves until I shivered and shook my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said, eyes still closed. “I can’t do any better.”
Coyote’s voice came from a long way away, echoing as if through a cavernous chamber. “I think you’ve done more than well enough.”
I opened my eyes.
Snakes.
Snakes were everywhere, winding through the empty blackness of the floor like sanguine rivers, curdling in spots and making pools of heart’s-blood red. They wrapped around my ankles and crawled up my thighs, invasive and intimate. One twisted itself around my waist and ribs and lifted its face to mine, a hissing, flickering tongue tasting my breath. Smelling me and seeing me. Fangs curved dangerously past its wide-open lower jaw, drops of venom forming and splashing away. It didn’t blink; I couldn’t. “Coyote?” I could barely hear myself.
“I can’t help you.” He sounded even farther away. I dared to turn my head, the smallest motion I could manage, very aware that doing so exposed my jugular to the snake. It hissed softly, dropping its jaw wider.
Coyote was no longer off to my right. No, he was, just at an impossible distance, a speck of man-shape among the sea of snakes. They roiled and bubbled over one another, making the floor a living thing, and as I watched they began to drip from the emptiness above me.
I was caught in a Salvador Dali painting gone horribly wrong.
I laughed. It reverberated, short and broken, off the nonexistent walls of the Dead Zone. The snake around my middle tightened and hissed, bringing its head closer to my throat. My laughter cut off with a shudder.
Garter snakes, crimson and russet, crept up my body, tangling around my fingers and extending like writhing talons. They nestled through my hair until I could see them wriggling in my line of vision, making me a modern-day Gorgon. “Coyote, what’s happening?” My voice was scared and thin, just the way I hadn’t liked hearing Phoebe sound.
There was no answer from the trickster.
The snake at my waist still watched me. I felt my pulse jumping in my throat like a frightened mouse and ducked my head, trying to hide it from the snake. “What do you want?”
It drew its head back, flaring a hood, and hissed at me. My knees locked up, keeping me from bolting, but I didn’t know if that was good or bad. “What do you want?” I managed a second time. The snake spat, venom flying past my face so close I thought I could feel it burn. Then it twisted its head away from me without releasing its grip around my middle, focused on something I couldn’t see.
The Dead Zone heaved with a bloody mass of bodies, seething and knotted reptiles washing around one another in sea-sickening motion. A wave broke through them, like a submarine cruising just beneath the surface, displacing water without being visible. Then the surface ruptured, spraying frightened, twisting snakes through the air. They wriggled frantically, clutching at unsupportive sky, and collapsed soundlessly back down into the melting mess of serpents.
The thing that looked down at me was not at all like a submarine. Monster leaped to mind, and then a narrower classification: sea serpent. Why I was worried about the very specific kind of monster I was facing was beyond me, but the label hung in my thoughts as the thing reared up above me.
It was massive. It had a weight to it unlike anything I’d seen in the Dead Zone, a heaviness that seemed to bear down like the guilt and pain I’d experienced moments ago. There was no sense of being dead about the serpent. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anything so alive or so filled with purpose. It lived, and it lived to kill.
Its scales were black, fastened together like intricate armor, and gleamed so hard against the darkness of the Dead Zone they hurt to look at. It flared out a ruff, exposing gills that glittered and sparkled with hard edges. Tentacles, like Medusa gone mad, waved around its head. It had no legs, but the word snake fell pitifully short. Ridges crested its back, sharp and deadly. Even in the half-light, it looked as if the spires glistened with poison. It coiled higher, enough strength visible in its body to crush a ship. If this was the kind of thing that had inspired ancient mariners to their warnings of Here Be Dragons, I couldn’t blame them for wanting to avoid the unknown areas of the sea. It opened its mouth to hiss at me.
Its fangs were nearly as long as I was.
I wondered if I would stop feeling right away, or if I’d be alive a while inside the serpent’s maw, feeling the muscle of its throat crush me as it swallowed me down.
The smaller snakes began to drop off me, slithering down my arms and legs again and falling to the floor. I couldn’t blame them: I didn’t want to be facing their lord and master, either. One wriggled under my shirt and down my spine, then panicked, thrashing around, when it met the taut muscle of the snake around my ribs, blocking its passage. The snake around my ribs whipped its head around, pinning my arm against my body as it sank its teeth into the littler one under my shirt. The smaller reptile spasmed, flailing under my shirt in its death throes. Its cold terror seeped in through my skin, leaving me in an icy sweat. I stared up at the monster, feeling the snake die, little and boneless against the small of my back.
The rib-hugging viper began to unwind from me. Above me, the giant serpent swayed and moved closer, snakes below it squirming away from the weight of its huge body.
“Coyote,” I said once more, but this time I knew he wasn’t going to answer. The viper fell away from me. For the second time that morning, my hand reached out without consulting my mind. I caught the creature at the base of the neck, below its jaw, like I’d seen snake handlers do on the Discovery Channel. It hissed and spat and writhed, effectively neutered.
The thing above me went still.
“Oh good.” My voice cracked like a teenage boy’s. “You’re not a cannibal.”
It hissed. I wanted to look down to see if it had tiny impotent arms like a T Rex, waggling angrily at me, but I didn’t dare. Around me, the sea of snakes backed away, making a circle of blackness with the sea serpent at its head. Like their master, the ones closest to me reared up, and unlike the monster creature, swayed menacingly, as if to remind me I wasn’t the one in charge here.
I really didn’t need the reminder.
“So maybe now we make a bargain,” I said. It blinked at me, an action that in another creature might have read as surprise. In the giant serpent, it only served to make me aware that I could see my entire body reflected in the empty blackness. “You let us go,” I said hopefully, “and I’ll let it go.”
“Usssss.” The serpent’s voice was a river of sound, pounding behind my ears.
“Us,” I said again. “Me and Coyote.” Distance and space in the Dead Zone were malleable. I’d learned that the first time I’d visited, though I hadn’t been able to deliberately affect it. Now I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, clung to the idea of Coyote, and told the universe to change.
My feet went out from under me like I’d hit a patch of ice. My gut lurched with panic and I tightened my stranglehold on the snake in my fist. Space contracted into a needle point, then expanded again, snakes slithering down into that point like a sucking drain, and reappearing all around me. The dragon-thing slid with me, and so did the snake I held knotted in my fingers, but all the other snakes were new.
How I recognized one wriggling field of snakes from another, I didn’t know, but there it was.
The sea serpent flicked its tongue, long enough to wrap around me, and at my elbow, Coyote growled, “What,” and in an audible pause I heard him not saying “the hell” before he finished, “do you think you’re doing?”
“Rescuing us,” I said with all the confidence I could muster. My voice didn’t break again, so I counted that as good enough, and brandished my captive snake. “It for us,” I said to the waiting sea serpent. It flickered its tongue again, weaving back and forth to examine me from one side, then the other.
“There isss one of it,” it answered. “There are two of you.”
Crap. I’d been afraid it would notice that. “I don’t suppose you’ll give me time off for good behavior?”
It stared at me, unblinking.
Crap.
“Joanne,” Coyote said, a warning in his voice.
“Then let this one go,” I said, jerking my head at the red man beside me.
“Jo,” Coyote said again. “Don’t.”
The monster flattened its snout, tongue darting out, as if it were flaring its nostrils. “The sssacrifisse is ssweetesst when the victim isss willing.”
“I’m willing.” I waved the smaller snake at it. “This little guy for Coyote, and I’m all yours.”
“Done,” it said.
I released the little snake and shoved Coyote away from me with all my will, like the recoil from a car crash.
For an instant, Coyote resisted. He knew me; he knew that I work through the medium I know best, cars. In fact, he’d taught me to do that. So for a moment, the recoil of that car wreck was met by his own image, the steadfastness of a mountain, absorbing the energy I tried pushing him away with.
Then power surged through me, blood-red and deep and cool, a link from the serpent as it bent its will to the same ends I pursued. There was no metaphor to its desire, only the intent to remove that which it had promised to.
Coyote flickered like the serpent’s tongue, and disappeared.
The viper I’d dropped whipped around and hissed at me, striking forward so quickly I didn’t stand a chance.
The serpent spat, venom splashing over the smaller snake before it completed its attack. It shrieked, a high thin sound, and flipped onto its back, writhing and whining in pain.
“Yeah!” I spat at it, too, to much less effect. “I’m only a meal for the big guy!”
The serpent lifted its head and spread its hood, staring at me. It struck me that gloating was not a snakely trait. I cleared my throat. “Never mind. It’s just, you know, if you’ve got to go out, might as well get taken out by the…never mind.”
It reared up and doubled forward, jaws gaping. As I stared into its descending maw, my last thought was, isn’t there a Shel Silverstein poem appropriate to this situation?
CHAPTER FOUR
A meaty hand, warm and callused, clamped onto my shoulder. My eyes popped open and I looked blankly at the cream-colored tiles above the dead girl. This was not what I imagined the inside of a snake to look like.
“Walker?”
I twisted my head up. The warm hand on my shoulder was attached to the wrist, arm, shoulder, and ultimately, beefy body of my immediate supervisor, Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department, North Precinct.
Morrison always made me think of a superhero starting to go to seed: late thirties, graying hair, sharp blue eyes, a bit too much weight on the bones. I’d never been so glad to see a seedy superhero in my life, and said the first grateful words that came to mind: “This isn’t your jurisdiction.”
“And that sure as hell isn’t your uniform.” Morrison smirked and took his hand off my shoulder.
Goose bumps shot up all over my body and I clutched my arms around my towel. This was not the outfit I’d have chosen to summon the police in. And if I’d been out long enough for the cops to get here, time had gone funny in a way I wasn’t used to. I took refuge in defensiveness, staring up at Morrison. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was on my way into work when the call came across the scanner. I just couldn’t resist the words ‘Officer Joanne Walker’ and ‘10-55’ in the same sentence.”
“Yeah. You might’ve gotten lucky and the dead body might’ve been mine.” If he’d put his hand on my shoulder half a second later, it would’ve been. I didn’t like to think about the implications of that. “What happened?”
“You were in a trance, or something,” Phoebe blurted from somewhere behind Morrison. “I thought you were following me, but you didn’t, so I came back to look and you wouldn’t wake up when I shook you, so I called the cops. You woke up as soon as he touched you.”
I didn’t like to think about the implications of that, either. I climbed to my feet instead. Cold water trailed down my shins in rivulets. Something even colder slid down the back of my towel and hit the water with a plop.
“Jesus Christ! What the hell is that?” Morrison all but levitated away, moving back across the other side of the curb with a smooth bound that did the aging superhero look proud. My neck stiffened, preventing me from looking at what had fallen.
“It’s a snake,” I said in a small voice, then checked to be sure I was right.
Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.
The first time I visited the astral plane, I came home with a leaf that shimmered blue and white in the darkness. I thought that was a much nicer souvenir than a dead albino garter snake.
I crouched and picked it up. “Put that down!” Morrison barked. “It’s part of the crime scene.”
“It is not. It’s contaminating the crime scene.” I scowled at him from my crouch. “Unless you think I did it.”
“Did you?” he snapped.
I groaned. “No.”
“Fine. Then tell me why the hell you’re carrying a snake in your tow—”
Look, in his shoes, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through that sentence, either. Morrison broke off, choked, then guffawed, while I put my elbow on my knee and my forehead against my hand and waited for him to laugh it out. Phoebe, the traitor, giggled, too, although she tried to hide it by clapping both hands over her mouth.
It took a long time for them to stop laughing.
“Get dressed,” Morrison said eventually, still grinning. “That’s no way for the department to be represented when members of other forces are on their way.”
There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound like fishing for a compliment, so I bit my tongue, took my snake, and got dressed.
Answering questions about the body I’d found turned out to be a lot less unpleasant when I was wearing a police officer’s uniform than it had been when I’d been wearing jeans and a sweater. For one thing, the university police didn’t seem to think I’d done it, which was a huge improvement. There was a bit of quel coincidance that a cop had found her, but hey, those things happened. Phoebe and I took turns answering questions, neither of us any more helpful than I’d been with Coyote in the Dead Zone.
The detective in charge, a knockout Southerner named Renfroe, kept saying, “Uh-huh,” and, “Huh,” and scribbling things down, including my phone number. I thought I saw her checking me out as I walked away when we were finally dismissed. I resisted the urge to call back, “It’s a snake in my pocket,” but since not even Morrison had brought up the snake, I wasn’t about to.
Morning sunshine and heat were already swimming up off the pavement as I walked outside, escorted by Morrison. My eyes started watering and I lifted a hand to shade them, squinting down the parking lot for my car, now hidden among dozens of others in the lot. Morrison held the yellow crime scene tape up for me. I ducked under it, half-expecting him to let it fall and entangle me, like we were in grade school. I snorted at myself. As if he read my mind, Morrison snorted louder. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” There. Politeness to a superior officer. Go me.
“No, it just comes naturally to you.”
A higher-ranking officer, anyway.
No, that just wasn’t true. Morrison was a better cop than I was. It went beyond petty and right into sheer stupidity to suggest otherwise. “Is there anything I can say that would convince you I wasn’t trying to be an asshole?” There was another word that should be used somewhere in that sentence. Oh yes: “Captain?”
“‘I quit’ would be right up there at the top of the list,” Morrison said. “You need a ride to the station?”
For a moment I stared at him. Not up at him: we were exactly the same height, and in police-issued street stompers, neither of us had the shoe advantage.
I’d passed the Academy with not-entirely-shameful marks and got a job for the department doing what I was good at: fixing cars. Almost a year ago I’d taken some personal leave that went on too long. I couldn’t blame Morrison for hiring somebody to replace me—well, I could and did, but that wasn’t the point—but as a woman of Native American descent, I looked too good on the roster to fire. So he’d made me a real cop, put me on the street and hoped I’d bolt.
I’d rather have poked my eyes out with a shrimp fork than give him the satisfaction.
My feet toughened up after a few weeks, and I admit a certain vicious pleasure in ticketing SUVs in compact car parking spaces, but I still missed being elbow deep in grease and oil. This was not how my life was supposed to go.
The coroners wheeled the body—Cassandra Tucker, age twenty, a college junior, recently broken up with her boyfriend, mother of a little girl whose name wasn’t written on the back of her photo, and possessor of an illegal photo ID, all of which would have been helpful in the Dead Zone—past us.
Maybe my life wasn’t so bad after all. With that in mind, I pasted on a bright smile for my captain. “No, I’ve got Petite. Want a ride?”
The corners of Morrison’s mouth tightened. My smile got brighter. “I didn’t think so.”
“I want to talk to you in my office when you get to work.”
That put a hitch in my jaunty swagger away. I looked over my shoulder. Morrison’s mouth was still tight. “Yeah, all right, boss,” I said, more subdued, and went to find Petite.
She was the root cause of the trouble between Morrison and me. There are few cars as sweet as a 1969 Mustang, but how any red-blooded American male could mistake one for a 1963 Corvette was beyond my ken. I’d been merciless in teasing him about it.
It turned out mocking a newly promoted captain wasn’t a great idea, especially since it turned out that he was also newly assigned to the precinct I worked in, and therefore my new boss. It wasn’t the best way to start a working relationship, and it had only degenerated from there.
The worst of it was I’d eventually learned that Morrison’s real problem with me was that he thought I was wasting my potential as a mechanic. He might’ve put me on street duty to get me to quit, but it’d backfired. I was bound and determined to prove myself to him now, a stance as contrary as any Irishman could take.
The idea that he’d suspected I’d react that way and had reverse-psychologied me into doing what he wanted didn’t bear thinking about. I pulled out of the parking lot behind him and drove to the station at a sedate pace.
“Where did the snake come from?” The question sounded over the click of the door; I’d already noted with trepidation that the Venetian blinds were lowered over the glass wall that faced the rest of the office. I put my palm against the door frame as if to make sure it was closed, but mostly it was to steady myself before I turned to face Morrison.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I left the door and sat down, rubbing my fingers over the scar on my cheek. Morrison’s eyebrows quirked.
“Try me.” Arizona deserts had nothing on the dry spell in his voice.
“My new boyfriend’s got kind of a kink about snakes,” I said, as straight-faced as I could. I liked that idea better than the truth anyway.
A Colorado thunderstorm swept Arizona dryness from Morrison’s face. “Walker.”
I flinched. Dammit.
“Even,” Morrison said through his teeth, “if I thought the odds of you sharing intimate sexual details with me for any reason was within the realm of possibility, I’ve been here long enough to know that the odds of you having a boyfriend are even less likely—”
I felt heat burning up my jaw and into my cheekbones. “Okay,” I said tightly. “My new girlfr—”
“Walker!”
Apparently I was incapable of getting any from either side of the street. How incredibly depressing. I closed my eyes and slumped in my chair. “I took a quick trip into the astral realm to see if I could find out anything from Cassandra Tucker about who’d killed her. I ran into a bunch of snakes instead. That one came back with me.”
Deadly silence filled the room. I counted to ten, then forced my eyes open. Morrison looked at me, expressionless. I counted to ten a second time, then a third, and he said, “I liked the boyfriend story better. Get back to work.”
I stood up by degrees and nodded, my jaw clenched. “Yes, sir.” I felt like I had an iron pipe rammed up my spine as I turned away. I got the door open half an inch before he said, “Walker.”
I waited.
It was harder for Morrison than me. Silence stretched like hot glass, then shattered: “Did you learn anything?”
That he even asked—well, I said he was a better cop than I was. “No, sir. Sorry.”
A deaf man could’ve heard the relief and vindication in his voice: “Then leave the detecting to the detectives, dammit, and get back to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t a direct disobeyal of orders to drop by Detective Billy Holliday’s desk and hitch myself up onto a corner of it. I was in uniform. The door was mere yards away. Not my fault I got caught up in a bit of conversation.
Morrison wouldn’t have bought it, either, but he was still in his office. Billy frowned up at me, displaying a big hand with his fingers wide-spread. “The truth, now. Do you think the pearlescent polish is a bit much?”
Billy Holliday had been saddled by loving if cruel parents with one of the more unfortunate names a boy could be given. To the best of my ability to tell, part of his retaliation was growing up to be a cross-dresser. He had better dress sense than I did, and over the years the department had gotten used to him showing up at the Policeman’s Ball in drag. Even normally conservative cops could learn to take a lot in stride, although it probably didn’t hurt that his wife made Salma Hayek look like the redheaded stepchild.
He was also, metaphysically speaking, on the far end of the spectrum from Morrison. Where I was a reluctant believer, Billy was a True Believer, and once upon a time I’d ragged him endlessly about that. It wasn’t until my own world turned upside-down that I thought to ask why he was a believer, and I’d seen enough by then to not wholly discount his claim of being able to see ghosts. Especially when he’d reported that the ghost of a dead little girl had claimed I had no past lives to haunt me, and my own spirit guide had independently confirmed it. The entire idea still made me squirm with discomfort, but Billy’d been very generous in not giving me a ration of well-deserved shit over the past few months. There wasn’t much doubt that he was a far better person than I was.
“It’s nice.” I peered at his nails. “Subtle.”
Billy looked smug. “Thought so. Just enough to throw ’em off.”
Curiosity reigned. “Is that why you do it? To throw suspects off?” I’d never nerved myself up to ask before.
“Nah,” Billy said. “But it doesn’t hurt. You’re trying to look winsome, Joanie. What do you need?”
“To work on my winsome look, apparently.” I wrinkled my nose and Billy laughed. “Know anything about the significance of snakes on the astral plane?”
“I love how you do that,” he said, fighting down a grin that threatened to turn into veritable beaming. “All casual-like. Nonchalant. How much does that cost you?”
“I grind my teeth flat and featureless every night while I sleep,” I assured him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t far from true. I’d had to get a mouth guard two months ago. No wonder I couldn’t get a boyfriend. The image of me with a translucent green plastic guard was enough to set me off my feed.
“I weep to hear it,” Billy said, much too cheerfully. “Snakes, huh? Not a whole lot. The old gut,” which, I observed, was distinctly larger than it had been a month ago, “says betrayal, uncertainty, choices lying ahead.”
“Billy,” I said, staring at his belly, “is Melinda pregnant again?”
I never saw anybody blush as hard as Billy did right then, not even myself under Morrison’s gimlet eye. Not that I’d actually seen that.
“Shit,” Billy said with embarrassed enthusiasm, “I’m not supposed to tell anybody for another month. How’d you know?”
I cackled, then straightened up and cleared my throat, trying not to sound self-satisfied. “Sekrit Shamanic Knowledge,” I said, imbuing the words with as many capital letters as I could. Billy squinted at me. I cackled again, clapping a hand over my mouth. “You’ve put on weight,” I said behind my fingers. “Last time she was pregnant you gained forty pounds.”
“I lost it again!”
“How much weight did she gain?”
Billy’s lower lip protruded in a sulk. “About seventeen pounds. I think it’s a Jedi mind trick.”
I grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t tell. And congratulations. I won’t tell. But you might want to stop hitting The Missing O.”
“Snakes,” Billy said grouchily. “Why do you want to know about snakes?”
“I had a weird encounter this morning.”
Billy lit up. “Yeah? We could go over to the O and you could tell me abou—”
Morrison strode out of his office and down the hall. I scrambled to my feet. “No O for you,” I told Billy, “and streetwalking for me.” He made the obligatory snicker and I rolled my eyes. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”
“I’ll try to find out about snakes,” Billy called after me, and I ducked out of the station with Morrison hot on my tail.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morrison didn’t catch up with me. He didn’t have to. I spent the rest of the morning reciting what he would’ve said in my head, anyway. It was a bad sign when I’d bawl myself out and save my boss the trouble. I found myself writing more parking tickets than were strictly necessary. There was a kind of quota about them. Too many meant I was being overzealous, but not enough meant I was slacking. Being the sympathetic sort—at least when it came to cars—I usually erred on the side of slacking, but I was taking a mean vengeance against the universe by overdoing it today. I slapped a ticket on a double-parked cab and stalked by, muttering at the Morrison in my head.
“Lady, I cannot believe you just did that.”
My shoulders rose toward my ears of their own accord and my face wrinkled up until it felt like a raisin around my nose.
“I mean, after all I done for you, you go and write me a ticket? A…Christ, lady! A sixty dollar ticket?”
The raisin of my face started to split with a grin. I peeked over my shoulder. Leaning on the cab I’d just ticketed was the most solid old man I’d ever seen. His massive gray eyebrows were lifted toward an all-white hairline, and even squinting into the sun, his gray eyes were bright as he grinned.
“Gary,” I said, trying not to let my own smile slide into “idiotic.” “I thought you were calling me ‘copper’ these days.”
“I just can’t get the hang of it,” the cabbie admitted. He shoved away from the cab, holding the ticket as if it were something two weeks dead, and arched his bushy eyebrows more sharply. “You ticketed me, Jo. Doncha love me anymore?”
I snatched the ticket and stuffed it in my mouth, chewing. Two gnaws in, the flat gray taste of the paper and the sharp blue of the ink stung my tongue, and my mouth went all Mr. Magoo while I tried to figure out what to do with it now. “I didn’t know you were back,” I croaked, and spat the gooey ticket into my palm. “Don’t try that,” I advised, then grinned stupidly again. “You look good.”
“’Course I do,” Gary said with pleasant arrogance. He still had the build of the linebacker he’d once been, and deep-set Hemingway wrinkles assured the world he knew the score. “How’s my crazy dame?”
“Fine,” I said automatically, considered, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. You look like California was good for you. You’re tanned.”
Gary’s expression closed down, some of the brightness dying from gray eyes. “First time I’d been since Annie died.”
A cord of loss knotted around my heart, for all that I’d never met his wife. Gary’d walked into my life—or I’d climbed into his cab, more accurately—six months ago, the day everything went to hell. Somehow he’d become the most real thing in my life since then. “Was it tough?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. But she woulda hated the thought of me sittin’ around until I was rotted enough to die, so I figured I better get off my duff and go see some of the world again.”
I exhaled a snort. “Gary, I’m going to rot before you do.”
He squinted up at the sky. “In this heat, you’re prob’ly right. If I’d known it was gonna be ninety by noon, I mighta stayed in San Diego. At least the girls there wear bikinis.”
I put on my best indignant look. “Are you cheating on me, Gary? Running around with bikini-clad bimbos?”
“Yeah,” he said, good humor restored. “Blond ones.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” I smiled so I’d fool myself into thinking I wasn’t just a little bit jealous of a seventy-three-year-old’s romantic notions.
“Guess I better invite you over for dinner, then,” Gary said with aplomb.
“It’s a date,” I said instantly. “Wait. You’re not cooking, are you?”
He let out a shout of laughter. “Like you can complain about my cooking. I know what you live on.”
“Hey, you’ve got me eating frozen Italian dinners instead of mac and cheese. All your nagging did some good.”
“I don’t nag.”
“You do too. Italian dinners have vegetables in them. I haven’t eaten vegetables without nagging in my whole twenty-seven years.”
“Arright, if you say so, Jo.” He gave me a good-natured grin, like he knew he was humoring me.
Actually, it was true. I’d started eating better—frozen entrees did qualify as better than an endless diet of macaroni and cheese—in part because I wanted to look as good as he did at seventy-three. Hell, I’d be glad to look as good as he did at twenty-eight. “I get off work at seven, barring disaster.”
Gary’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Been any lately?”
I hesitated, then brushed the answer away with a wave of my hand. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Arright.” Gary beamed at me. “Look, I gotta take off, there’s this crazy lady cop who wants to ticket my cab. Call when you’re on the way over. Dinner at seven-thirty.”
“It’s a date,” I repeated. “See you tonight.”
Gary gave me a broad wink and climbed into his cab. I stood on the sidewalk, smiling stupidly as I watched him drive away.
Gary being back in town lifted my spirits despite the oppressive heat. With a dinner date to look forward to, I stopped writing so many tickets and grabbed a doughnut for lunch. I wanted to drop into the astral realm to apologize to Coyote, and a real meal would take too long. Besides, I was on street beat, which I told myself gave me license to eat anything I wanted because I’d walk it off. So far I believed me.
Doughnut in hand, I scurried down to the garage, my favorite place in the station. The smell of gasoline and motor oil soothed the savage beast, or at least the savage Joanne.
Not everyone down there would meet my eye. I still hadn’t gotten used to that, especially from Nick, who’d been my supervisor and a pretty good friend not all that long ago. His greeting was made up of shoving his hands in his pockets and lifting his shoulders as he dropped his chin, turning him into a no-neck wonder. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the wall as I gave him a tentative smile. Tentative didn’t used to be in my vocabulary around the boys in the garage. We’d worked together for three years, and I’d thought I was just one of the guys. But in January I’d invited the Wild Hunt into the garage’s office, and two months later I’d collapsed on the stairs, bleeding from the ears. Since then things had been a little touchy when I came down to visit. I hoped if I just kept it cool everybody would relax again, but so far it hadn’t worked.
Still, hope sprang eternal. I strengthened my smile for Nick and said, “Hi,” as normally as I could. My voice squeaked and broke, which at least made him look at me. I cleared my throat and smiled again, wishing it didn’t feel plastic. “I was wondering if I could hang out in the office for a little bit.”
Nick’s gaze snapped back to the wall and he shrugged his shoulders higher. “Sure. Whatever.”
Not the most ringing endorsement I’d ever heard. Nick stalked off to harass one of the other mechanics, who gave me a wry look and rolled his eyes. It made me feel better, and I said, “Thanks,” to Nick’s retreating back before turning to discover my arch nemesis, Thor the Thunder God, standing about eight inches behind me. Thor—whose real name was something dull like Ed or Eddie or Freddie—had been hired to replace me in the motor pool. He was blond, about six foot five, and had shoulders that Thor himself would envy. I figured him taking my job gave me license to call him whatever I wanted. For some reason he didn’t like it.
We both stepped the same direction, trying to get out of each other’s way. We both hesitated, then lurched the other way. By the third twitch, I was grinning. “Shall we dance?”
He took a deliberately large step backward and gestured me by with a sarcastic flourish. My smile fell away. “Thank you, O Mighty God of Thunder.” I saw his mouth twist as I headed for the office. It was the one place in the station I thought I could slide into the astral realm without the help of a drum. I was comfortable there, and back in January I’d done enough—
This shaman thing was getting to me. I’d almost thought done enough magic there without the idea even making me hitch. I sat down with a shiver and tried to push the thought away. Despite everything, I didn’t like being comfortable enough with the idea that magic was real to just think it casually. Having oatmeal for breakfast was casual. Doing magic was not.
Then, excruciatingly aware of the irony, I relaxed and thought of my garden.
The bottom fell out of the world and I slid into a tunnel, twisting and bumping over earthen ridges, fast enough to make my nose tickle from the vibrations. It reminded me of the defensive driving course at the academy, rattling over speed bumps placed too closely together.
The tunnel shot to the left, leveling out and narrowing. I was aware that, like the tunnel, I became smaller and smaller as I scurried along it. In what little studying I’d done, I’d read that shapeshifting inside one’s own psyche was the first step toward a complete and physical shape-change. The book had talked earnestly about transforming into an eagle, a bear, a wolf—the usual World Wildlife Fund Charismatic Megafauna sorts of creatures. Nothing I’d read ever mentioned people turning into badgers or earthworms.
I realized with a dismayed jolt that the tunnel had disappeared entirely and I was grinding my way through the earth blindly, gnawing on dirt to move forward.
Earthworm. I really needed to learn to be careful about what I was thinking in trance states.
Badger, I thought encouragingly, and a few seconds later burst upward through the earth in a flurry of dirt and strong claws. I scrambled out of my tunnel and shook myself all over, bits of grass and soil plopping to the grass around me.
Everyone has an inner landscape, shaped by the events and thoughts that make a life. The first time I’d been in mine, it had been stiff and parched. Now it looked distorted, seen from only several inches above the ground and in faded grayscale. To the right was a thick, shimmering pool of mercury, ripples wobbling over the surface to break against the shore. Behind it was a tall granite-streaked bluff, too high to easily see the top of from a badger’s vantage point. To the left, a lawn manicured so short it was nearly dead spread out, a handful of dark-leafed hedges sprouting up in asture blocks of green. Stone pathways and stone benches made straight lines through the garden.
Possibly, just possibly, I still had some inner-garden nurturing to do.
Immediately behind me, my badger hole folded in on itself and smoothed out again, leaving lawn behind. “Well, that’s something,” I said out loud, as the world around me stained with color. The pool faded from mercury to clear, its earthy bottom refracting brown through reflected gray skies. I rolled onto my back, briefly missing the extraordinary strength of the badger’s legs, and closed my eyes. “Coyote?” I tried to picture him, long-legged and golden-eyed, then laughed silently as the image slid between Coyote-the-man and Coyote-the-coyote. Straight black hair drooped over perked furry ears. He looked like a character from Disney’s Robin Hood gone terribly wrong.
A rustle hissed over the grass like wax paper sliding against itself. I sat up, grinning. “You’re always reading my mind,” I said. “So get a load of how I think of…you?”
A rattlesnake swayed in front of me, black eyes reflecting the sudden paleness of my skin.
A snake in my garden.
For one hysterical moment I looked for an apple tree. Then panic took over and I crab-walked backward, elbows and knees going everywhere. It took another few seconds to make myself stop by asserting enough control to dig my fingers into the earth. “My garden,” I croaked. “You can’t be here.”
The rattler slithered forward a few inches, dry scrape against the short grass. “You can’t be here,” I repeated. It lifted its head and hissed at me, long tongue darting in and out. I shot to my feet, barely keeping myself from leaping to one of the stone benches and screaming like a ’50s housewife. It was my garden. My rules were supposed to apply. I bit the inside of my cheek and closed my eyes, reverting to the car metaphor I was most comfortable with. Rolling up the mental windows and making a shield of glass around myself reminded me of movies where the venomous animal was kept away from the actors by a sheet of glass.
The snake bonked its nose against the glass, striking out and coiling back as I opened my eyes. Its tongue thrust out again, and it reared back, expressionless flat eyes somehow looking offended. I grinned in a breathless combination of triumph and fear, and waggled my fingers at it. “G’bye, then.”
For once I let myself forget the vehicle metaphor, and instead spun glass. Heat poured off my body as I willed it to soften the shield between myself and the snake. I blew air through pursed lips and the glass expanded, spilling clear and delicate over the lawn as I protected my garden. The snake squiggled backward, forced to the edges of the garden.
I nearly had the thing vanquished when it shifted.
It didn’t change like Coyote did, inside a blink. Instead it reared up, making a long slender line of itself, balancing on a single coil of muscle. A hood flared, cobralike, then widened farther, broadening until it became shoulders. The body thickened, arms sprouting and waist narrowing. Hips splayed, legs splitting from the expanding breadth of muscle that had been its body. The coil upon which she had balanced became feet, small and bare. I jerked my eyes up to her face.
The rattlesnake’s dead eyes gazed back at me; like Ra, she was human-shaped with a snake’s head, large enough to fit the body. She flicked her tongue at me once more and completed the transformation into a brisk-looking Native American woman whose age I couldn’t judge. Her eyes were still very black, though bright with reflected sunlight. She had salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles around her eyes. Her cheeks were round over a thin mouth that looked like it was used to smiling, but which was at the moment pushed out in a thoughtful moue. “Well, you certainly are a handful.”
“What?”
“You’re a handful,” she repeated. “Sliding around the astral realm, leaving psychic debris all over the place, and with such terrible shields I could walk right in here. I can see what needs to be done. At least you have potential,” she added, shaking her head. “You nearly pushed me out just now.”
I set my teeth and reared my head back, reestablishing the crystalline wall. It glimmered, becoming a solid curve of glass between the snake woman and myself. Her eyebrows—straight and slightly angled, like Spock’s—rose a fraction of an inch, and she took a step back. “You see?” She sounded pleased.
“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
“My name is Judy Morningstar,” she said. “I’m going to be your teacher.”
CHAPTER SIX
“The hell you are.” Guilt mixed with incredulity in my voice. Coyote’d just finished telling me I needed a teacher, and I hated to admit he might be right. “Get out of my head. I’m doing just fine on my own.” Ah, yes. The petulant, spoiled child tone. That always went over well.
Judy sat down with irritating grace, as if she’d had it drilled into her by a dance instructor when she was too small to protest. “You’ve regressed from what your abilities six months ago were,” she disagreed. “Even three months ago. You haven’t accepted your power or the responsibility that comes with it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I stopped Cernunnos, didn’t I? I fought the banshee. That all took power.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded. “In the moment of crisis, you did what had to be done, with the tools at hand. You used enormous power, but without regard for the consequences.”
A thin trickle of apprehension dribbled down my spine. “I was careful. The hospitals and the airport, all the power stayed on so people would be okay.” Chills swept over my arms regardless of the heat, oppressive even here in my own garden. I tried rubbing the goose bumps away without success.
“Consequences aren’t always so easily seen as that, Joanne. You know there’s something wrong, yet you ignore it.”
The discolored streets and life-lights I’d seen with my second sight flashed through my memory, streaky vision of wrongness. “I saw it,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t know what it is, though.”
“It’s you,” Judy said. “The power you used six months ago disrupted weather systems all over the world, and worst of all in Seattle. How long did it take the snow to melt, Joanne?”
Seattle, not notorious for snow, had seen a storm that began the week after I gained shamanic powers and hadn’t stopped worth mentioning until April. When spring hit, it did so overnight, temperatures soaring into the seventies. There’d been flooding for weeks, and since then it’d been drier than bones. I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking my head. Denial: it wasn’t just a river in Egypt. The worst part was the uncomfortable, shoulder-hunching suspicion that she was telling God’s own truth. I knew something was wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find its center. I also hadn’t looked at myself. Dammit.
“You’ve left a mess to clean up, Joanne. You used tremendous power once or twice, and what have you done since then?”
My shoulders hunched again, without my permission. I hated body language. Most of it didn’t pass through my brain for a spot-check on what I wanted to give away.
It wasn’t that I’d done nothing with the gifts that had been catalyzed in me. I’d done detail work, fixing up chips in peoples’ paint, so to speak. My coworker Bruce got a hairline fracture on his ankle and the doctors had been astounded at how quickly he healed. Not quite overnight, but within a few days he was running again, without discomfort. I took a perverse pleasure in smoothing over hangnails and papercuts when I shook hands. One of the books I’d read said those who needed healing had to believe the healing could be done. I’d discovered that for small physical injuries, being unaware that healing was taking place was just about as good.
But none of it was earth-shattering, world-saving stuff, and the truth was, most of it made no long-term difference to the people I’d helped.
My shoulders inched farther toward my ears. “Look, I promise I’ll do better, okay? Go away.”
“I can’t do that, Joanne. I’m committing myself to teaching you, and unlike you, I take that responsibility seriously.”
Anger flared in my belly, sending blood up to stain my cheeks and make my ears hot. “It’s not that I don’t take it seriously. I just never asked for this in the first place—”
“But you accepted it.” There was a note of smugness in her voice, almost as unlikable as my whining. “Do you accept me as your teacher, Joanne Walker?”
I scowled at the pond. Coyote wanted me to have a teacher. “Did Coyote send you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Genuine surprise filled her voice. “You called out for help twice today. Traditionally it takes three cries, but I thought you might not want to wait. You expected someone as powerful as Coyote to send you a teacher?”
My shoulders couldn’t hunch any farther, so I tightened my arms around my ribs. “It seemed likely. Anyway, I didn’t know I was yelling for help.”
Judy pursed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “If you’re on casual terms with Coyote, maybe I misinterpreted your need for help.” She got to her feet as smoothly as she’d sat, bowing her head toward me. “I hope I’ll see you again, Joanne.” She began to fade, again not like Coyote, but as if she were a ghost.
I gritted my teeth and dug my fingers into my ribs. “Wait.”
The fade stopped and she lifted her head again, one eyebrow raised in question. I clenched my jaw a couple of times before asking, “Who are you? I mean, how do I know you’re qualified to teach me? Do you even exist outside here?” I swept the fingers of one hand in a circle, more meaning to encompass the astral realm than my garden.
Judy gave me a very brief, wry smile. “You mean, would I answer if you dropped me an e-mail message? Not usually. I’m terrible about checking it. As for qualified…” She spread her hands and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve practiced magic for most of my existence. We could try a handful of lessons and you could decide if I’m the teacher for you.”
“Most of your existence?” I thought that was a weird word to choose, and it showed in my voice. Judy’s smile went less wry and more open.
“You, of all people, should know that life is too limited a term for those who walk in other realms.”
I remembered, quite vividly, a sour-faced shaman who was irritated at her untimely death because she was young in the practice of shamanism, and others who had been tolerant of her because they had far more experience, even though some of them looked much younger in years. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Yeah. I guess so. All right.” I pressed my lips together and looked at her again. “All right, fine. We’ll see how it goes for, like, three lessons, okay? And then I get to reevaluate.” The crystal wall I’d built had dimmed during our conversation, a physical sign that I was relenting mentally.
Judy smiled and ducked her head in another semibow. “Wonderful. We’ll meet here tomorrow at six to begin.”
“Six? In the morning?”
“The mind is clearer and less burdened after dreaming.”
I groaned. “Okay. Six. God.”
Judy grinned, took one step backward, and disappeared.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I muttered. I wished I thought I’d accomplished ridding myself of her, but it was painfully clear that she’d opted to leave on her own. I curled a lip grouchily and cast out my consciousness, calling for Coyote.
There was no answer.
I opened my eyes again, watching the clock mark away seconds in clicks that hadn’t seemed loud when I went under. I had fifteen seconds of lunch break left, and a sour lump of doughnut in my belly.
The second hand swept to the top. I got to my feet and walked out of the office, saying, “Hey,” unbidden when Thor accidentally met my eyes. He jerked his head in a nod, a startled, “Hey,” following me up the stairs.
Another “Hey,” caught my attention as I headed for the front doors, Billy swinging around a corner to grin beefily down at me. “Joanie. There you are. Snakes are good juju. Thought you’d like to know.”
I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then shook myself. “Could’ve fooled me. What do you mean?”
“Looked ’em up on the Net, but I really should’ve known it before. I mean, think about it. The Hippocratic symbol—”
“—a staff with the snakes twined around it. Duh.”
Billy grinned. “Yep. Duh. So, yeah, basically, good vibes. They’re symbols of healing and renewal and change.”
I thought of Judy, shifting from snake to woman in my garden, and tried to smile. “Great. Good. I could use some.”
Billy’s eyebrows drew down. “You okay, Joanie? You look like you lost your best friend.”
Memory hit me in the sternum, so real and immediate that my breath stopped. I lifted my hand, pressing the heel against my breastbone, trying to clear the tightness. My heart pounded in fast, thick pulses that brought the doughnut back up to the gagging point, making me swallow heavily. Color burned my cheeks, and I resented my fair skin all over again.
“Joanie? Are you okay?” Billy caught my shoulders, concern wrinkling his forehead. My vision was cloudy, a haze settling down between us. For a few seconds all I could do was remember.
I was fifteen and my father and I had been living in North Carolina for over a year, by far the longest time I’d ever lived in one place in my life. I’d never been anywhere long enough to make good friends; that pretty, petite Sara Buchanan had chosen me as a best friend was a source of regular amazement and pleasure to me. But in memory, her eyebrows were drawn down over angry hazel eyes, and the golden-brown skin that I envied so much was suffused with furious red.
She’d said she didn’t like him. I was already terrified by what I’d done in trying to fit in, trying to make a boy like me. I hadn’t meant for things to go as far as they did, and I only wanted someone to tell me it’d be okay. She’d said she didn’t like him, and when I’d whispered that, confused and frightened, she’d barked derisive laughter at me. I lied! God, what was I supposed to say, yeah, I like him? How obvious is that? God, Joanne, don’t you know anything?
“No.” I whispered it now, just like I’d done then. No, I didn’t know anything. I’d grown up solitary enough, with my father rather than girls for company, that I’d honestly had no idea that her hair-tossing denial had been a front.
Tiny black spots of panic swam at the corners of my vision, etching around the memory of Sara until she stood out, full of vibrant color, against an inky background. There was fear in my stomach, more potent than what I’d felt with the boy. The First Boy; even in memory I didn’t let myself think his name. Panic edged through me, so I could feel the flow of blood fluttering through my heart, little missed murmurs that I couldn’t catch my breath to banish. Like the tide coming in, sound thrummed against my eardrums, blocking out Sara’s words, although I could see them in the shape of her mouth.
I’m never speaking to you again.
And she didn’t.
She watched me with cool disdain that turned into hate when I began to show a few months later. The First Boy went back to his mother’s people in Canada, and none of us, not me, not Sara, certainly not the Boy, ever told anyone he was the father. When the twins were born and the little girl died, I tried to ask Sara to speak for her. She looked through me as if I wasn’t there. I’d lost my best friend.
And even now, almost thirteen years later, tears stung my eyes as I shook off Billy’s hands. “I’m all right.”
I didn’t sound all right, my voice thick and stuffy and coming through my nose. I was afraid to blink, for fear those tears would roll down my cheeks. Billy’s whole face turned down like an unhappy Muppet and he put his arm around my shoulders.
“Come on. A cold washcloth will help.” He walked me down the hall, blocking me from the other officers’ view with his body, and ushered me into the men’s bathroom. I let out a stressy little giggle.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a boy’s bathroom before. I thought they were supposed to be all dirty and gross.” The words spilled out in a too-high, too-fast voice, but it was better than bursting into tears. Billy smiled, pulling paper towels out of the dispenser and running water over them.
“Here you go. You really think Morrison’d let us keep the bathroom all dirty and gross?”
I buried my face in the cold towels, pressing the wet paper against my eyes. “No,” I admitted hoarsely. My shoulders dropped as the coolness pulled some of the burning from my eyes and cheeks. I snuffled, lowering the papers to find Billy leaning against a sink, arms folded over his chest as he frowned at me.
“You okay, Joanie? You want to tell me what that was all about?”
I wiped my nose on my wrist and snuffled again, looking away. “I’m just being stupid.” I was suddenly tired, the price of sudden and high emotion. And maybe the price of using a power that I’d been doing my best to ignore for several months. I’d been uncharacteristically emotional the day I became a shaman, too, now that I thought about it. “It’s been one of those days. I’ve been up and down and all over the place.”
“That girl this morning a friend of yours?”
“What?” I looked at him, then dropped my shoulders, relieved for an excuse to hang my behavior on. “No. No. I guess I’m just a little more freaked out about it than I thought.” It was as good an excuse as any.
“Happens to the best of us,” Billy said. “You need a drink.”
My eyes bugged. “I’m on duty.”
“Hot chocolate with mint,” he said, still firmly. “Wash your face again and I’ll buy you one.”
A little bubble of happiness burst through my misery. I shuffled forward to turn the cold water on again, splashing it over my face, and reached blindly for a dry paper towel, which Billy put into my hand. “You’re a good friend,” I said into the towel.
“I just know your comfort food hot buttons,” he said, pleased with himself. “Come on, Joanie. It’ll be okay.”
Billy was right. Just going outside did me some good, even if it was ninety-three degrees and about equal humidity. I felt sorry for the protesters down at the Seattle Center, and wondered how the little girl was doing.
I ended up with an Italian soda, because it was way too warm out for hot chocolate, but the very normal act of getting a drink and getting back on my beat did a lot to restore my equilibrium. I had a tentative teacher, which would make Coyote happy, and snakes were good juju. The Internet said so, and if you couldn’t believe the Internet, who could you believe?
The rest of the day was blessedly normal, except I was so grungy and sticky with sweat by the time work was over I called Gary and told him not to have dinner until eight. He said, “Aw, damn, and me with the microwave heatin’ up already,” which kept a grin on my face until I arrived on his doorstep, newly showered and wearing as little as humanly possible. For me, that meant a strappy tank top with one of those built-in bra thingies and a pair of shorts that I considered to be cut daringly short, although I had nothing on Daisy Duke. Gary arched an eyebrow and gave me a grin that was better than words, even if he was seventy-three years old. I momentarily wished I had long hair so I could fluff it. Then reality kicked in: if I’d had long hair, I’d have cut it off by now in an attempt to cool down, so it didn’t really matter.
The house didn’t smell like he’d been cooking. I kicked my sandals off and padded through the living room into the kitchen, where cold cuts and crackers and fruit and a pasta salad were arranged rather elegantly on a platter. I stole a piece of ham, wrapped it around some cheese, and nibbled. “You do this yourself or you buy it?”
I could all but hear the old man’s offended look as he came in behind me. “Did it myself. Donno about you, but I think it’s too hot to cook or eat hot food. I got salmon in the freezer, but you’re gonna have to wait till the heat breaks.”
I grinned over my shoulder at him and picked up the platter to bring it out to the living room. There were picture windows that went all the way up to a vaulted ceiling overlooking an expansive front yard full of lilacs and other flowering things I couldn’t identify. There was enough actual lawn that the kids next door tended to spill out onto it, having water balloon fights as they hid behind the hedges. Gary and Annie had owned the place since about 1965, though he’d been living in an apartment, having the place modernized and refurbished when I met him. Between that and the endlessly climbing real estate value in Seattle, I couldn’t imagine what the market value of the place was now. Gary could probably retire rich, if he wanted to move out. Or retire.
“Lemonade or water?” Gary asked from the kitchen. My mouth puckered up at the very idea of lemonade, so I requested it happily as I put the food platter on the coffee table. The furniture was leather, but there were hand-sewn quilts thrown over everything, so a person could sit down in the armchair without sticking to it. I did, and Gary came out of the kitchen with a jug, two glasses, and a finger pointed at me accusingly. “Get outta my chair, kid.”
I laughed like a guilty five-year-old and squirmed out of Gary’s chair to kick back on the couch. “I had to try.”
He snorted and sat down, pouring juice into glasses that clinked with just a couple of ice cubes. “You always try. Arright, Jo, so what’s going on now? I go away for a few weeks and miss all the good stuff?”
“Only you would think it’s the good stuff.” I squished farther into the couch and, between bites of crackers and meat, told him about my day. Six months ago Gary’d thought I was a hundred percent insane when I climbed in his cab in search of a woman I’d seen from an airplane. By the end of that same morning I’d come back from the dead and he was determined to stick with me on the logic that I was the most interesting thing that’d happened to him in years. Things I could barely handle, like the very idea of the power that’d awakened inside me, he took in stride, shrugging off improbability with easy axioms about old dogs needing to learn new tricks, or they’d just up and die. By that standard, I suspected I’d been dead for half my life already.
“You think she’s right?” Gary asked, bushy eyebrows elevated as I finished. “About the heat wave being somethin’ you did?”
“Gary, if I thought I could affect global weather patterns, I would go home and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.” I stared gloomily at the pasta salad, my appetite suddenly gone. Gary noticed and harrumphed.
“So you think she’s right.”
I sighed and sank a few inches farther into the couch. The quilt slid down over my shoulder, blocking most of my view of Gary. I felt like a Kilroy, peeking over it at him. “So what do I do?”
Gary gave me an incredulous look that made me want to pull the quilt all the way up so it covered me entirely. “You fix it, Jo. You go listen to this dame and you learn what you gotta do to fix it.”
I pushed the quilt back up over the arm of the couch and reached for my salad again, picking at it without enthusiasm. “I hate it when you’re right.”
Gary beamed. “You got a lotta hate going on, then, darlin’. No point in bein’ an old dog if you can’t be right.”
A wheeze of a laugh erupted up through my throat, quick jolts that were more like a cough than laughter, but a grin spread across my face. “Yeah, yeah yeah. All right, fine. Be that way. I’ll show you.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.” I got up from the couch, heading for the kitchen again. “I’m going to eat all your ice cream. So there.”
“What makes you think I’ve got any?”
“You’ve always got ice cream.” I pulled open the freezer and took out a carton. “Gary! It’s rocky road. You know I don’t like rocky road!”
I heard him kick the footrest up on his chair, and when I looked over my shoulder he had his arms folded behind his head, expression smug as a cat’s. “Now who showed who? Get me a bowl, wouldya? And if you dump it on my head like you’re thinkin’ about,” he added a minute later as I came out with his bowl of ice cream, “I won’t tell you where that raspberry-chocolate stuff you like is hidden.”
I stopped with the bowl tilted at a precarious angle and stared down at him. He grinned up at me genially. “Youth and good looks are no match for old age and treachery, doll. Who wins?”
“You do, you old goat.”
Gary’s grin expanded exponentially. “Garage freezer.”
I went out, trying not to laugh as I grumbled dire imprecations loudly enough for him to hear me. Gary’s chortles followed me all the way into the garage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Friday, June 17, 5:58 a.m.
6:00 a.m. two mornings in a row was more than any civilized person should have to bear. Or me, for that matter. I sat at the edge of my garden’s pond, not looking behind me. I could feel Judy, ten steps away, standing in the middle of the very short lawn. The grass looked, if anything, worse than it had the day before. Clouds hung thick and low over the cliffs that made up the northern boundary of the garden, full of the promise of rain. I felt like that myself, on the edge of overflowing with tears. It bothered me that I still felt that fragile after spending the evening at Gary’s and eating an entire pint of chocolate-raspberry swirl ice cream.
Judy sat down beside me on the pond shore, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her skin next to mine. I leaned away semiconsciously, the clouds above darkening with displeasure. I might need a teacher, but that didn’t mean she had to come barging into my personal space.
“Where does the power come from?” she asked in a light, lilting tone. It reminded me of my neighbor’s cat, which habitually sat beside the sink and stared at the faucet while she washed dishes. When she turned the water off, he would thrust his head beneath the faucet, as if trying to figure out where the water came from.
“Everywhere,” I said, able to answer Judy, if not the cat. “Every living thing carries power within itself. A shaman is a conduit, a focus, for that power. We can use what’s given to us to affect changes. To heal. That’s what we’re supposed to do, is heal.”
“At least you’ve learned something.” She didn’t sound particularly pleased.
“Go me.” I waved an imaginary flag. Judy’s gaze slid sideways toward me, then away again.
“Asking you what your spirit animals are would be rude,” Judy said. The implication that I should tell her anyway was clear, but instead I scowled at the water and shrugged.
“Haven’t got any.” I glanced at Judy, whose stare all but bore a hole into my head. “What?”
“You have no spirit animals? You’ve never done a quest for one?” Her expression was indecipherable.
“I’ve done a couple. Nothing came to me, or whatever’s supposed to happen.” It irritated me that my halfhearted attempts to summon a spirit animal felt like failures. The truth was I wanted my cake and to eat it, too. I didn’t want to admit any of this shamanic nonsense was real, but I also wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make it so. I was pretty sure I’d thwarted my own questing experiments with the mental equivalent of concrete bunkers of disbelief.
“Is this really so hard for you to resolve?” Judy asked. “You’ve been a part of these other realities. Why do you reject them so fiercely?”
“No sense in being Irish if you can’t be thick,” I muttered. It was a cop-out answer, but it made Judy’s mouth quirk.
“Maybe we can wear some of that thickness away. I can guide your search for spirit animals, if you think it might help.”
I mumbled so incoherently even I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Judy’s smile broadened. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She opened her hands, a skin drum appearing in them. “I’ll drum us under,” she said. “Are you ready?”
It was different.
The drumbeat rang in my blood, tasting like copper. I ran up a mountainside, nimble as a goat, leaping from one stone to another without hesitation or fear. The sky above was pale, washed-out blue, so thin a sparkle of stars shone through it.
To the west I saw a glint in the sky, gold sheering through the paleness like godslight.
The air was rarefied, burning my lungs as I swallowed down deep breaths. I crossed some unseeable barrier as I climbed, and snow began gleaming in cold soft spots around me. I kicked it up in puffs and slid through it as I scrambled higher.
The shadow of a bird passed over me, blue against the snow. I squinted up into the sky, but the bird was gone again.
I couldn’t see or feel Judy anywhere, and wondered if she’d managed to come on this journey with me at all. My hands were hot, excitement pounding through them. I touched the frozen ground as I clambered upward, leaving steaming prints deep in the snow.
A sharp, almost sheer cliff face rose up in front of me. I dug my hands into the snow, pulling myself up, my breath whisked away in little clouds of heat. Ice stung my palms and drops of sweat rolled out of my hair and into my eyes. I lost track of time, inching up the cliff. My arms burned, fingers splaying wide in search of handholds, and then I folded my hand over a distinct edge. Panting with triumph, I swung my leg up and hauled myself onto the top of the mountain. I stayed on my hands and knees, head hanging down while I wheezed, then pushed myself to my feet, bracing myself on my thighs.
There was nothing on the other side of the mountain.
The world fell away, straight and featureless into pale blue sky. Clouds drifted miles below me, and rushing wind made my hair stand up straight from my face. I leaned into it, trusting the strength of the wind to keep me from plummeting off the edge of the world.
About a million miles below me, an eagle, gold as sunrise, rose and fell on the updrafts. I tilted farther into the wind, trying to catch my breath as it was ripped away from me. The eagle shadowed in and out of distant clouds, lighting them from within with its own golden strength. It twisted, playing in the updrafts, then folded its wings and dove out of sight, a predator dropping beyond the edge of the world.
The wind stopped.
I pitched forward with one fruitless flail of my arms. The mountain face zipped past me, streaks of granite dark behind me, miles of sky in front of me. I spread my arms and legs, swallowing against panic and sickness, trying to slow my fall. I couldn’t see land below me, only blue that faded into stars.
Wind slammed into me again, so hard it drove me upward a few feet before I began to fall again. Another updraft tossed me higher, then cut out from under me so fast I screamed, leaving my stomach yards above me. It happened again, then again, buffeting me through the sky like a feather.
I was flying.
A giddy laugh erupted from my throat as I banked into the wind and soared, always losing sky. I rolled onto my back, looking for the top of the mountain, already so far away it seemed to go on forever. I arched my back, spilling upside-down through the sky, eyes closed against the rush of air.
Talons pinched closed around my outstretched arms.
I opened my eyes to the brilliance of the golden eagle’s belly above me. Its belly alone was wider than I was tall, and tilting my head to squint at its length made me feel like a doll in the hands of a child. The wings, stretched to their fullest, were so broad that the tips faded into invisibility from my vantage point, and the feathers looked as if they’d been deliberately crafted of the purest gold. Even its down was etched in distinct soft threads.
Eagle. The thought came to me with embarrassing clarity. Not even I, deliberately unaware of Native American mythology, could fail to recognize the incredible animal that had caught me. Creator, destroyer, all-around magnificent totem creature, so far beyond the ordinary I cringed at myself again. I’d thought a thunderbird was a lousy eagle?
The thunderbird screamed, a high sweet sound that could have been rage or pleasure. Its claws snapped up to its belly, flinging me out of its talons with bone-jarring strength. I flew upwards for a few disconcerting seconds, flipping end over end through the cold sky.
Then its beak crushed my ribs and we fell through the air, the thunderbird tearing me apart and eating me.
The drumbeat was steady and calm. My eyes popped open to a gibbous moon, hanging low and fat in the carmine sky. There were jungles, thick and lush, heavy green vines hanging against black tree trunks, and the air smelled of rich earth and old rot. There was no sign of the mountain or the pale blue sky that went on forever, and certainly no thunderbird. I shook myself, turning and staring around in confusion. I remembered some pain, and more fear, and the blackness that was the inside of the thunderbird’s belly, but—
“How’d I get here?”
Judy stepped up to my side, smiling. “It can be confusing for someone else to lead the spirit journey. You’ll get used to it, and then you’ll learn to do it on your own. As we traveled down I asked for those who were willing to guide you to join us. These are those who have answered my call on your behalf.”
She lifted her right hand. A copperhead snake, eyes bright and black, wound up around her arm and opened his mouth wide to me. “The strengths that snakes have I share with you,” he said. Its s’s were sibilant and hissed, stretched out long enough to make chills rise on my arms.
“Thank you.” I didn’t want a snake guide. My whole feeling about snakes was very mixed, after the encounter in the Dead Zone. I couldn’t think of a polite way to say that, though.
The snake flicked his tongue at me and twisted his way up to Judy’s shoulder, piling himself into tall coils there. As I watched, he changed, head growing rounder, shoulders appearing. Wings sprouted, a chest and spindly legs shaping out of the coils. His darting tongue stretched and became glossy and hard, until a raven perched on Judy’s shoulder, only its bright eyes the same as the snake’s. The raven stretched his throat and cawed, a sound of raucous music, before he cocked his head and stared at me one-eyed. “The strengths that ravens have, I share with you,” he said.
I found myself smiling. “Thank you. You’re beautiful,” I added impulsively. He puffed out his feathers, preening with satisfaction, then leaped off Judy’s shoulder, wings fanning out to encompass the shadows dropped by the enormous moon.
Darkness swept up into him, broadening his chest and lengthening his body. His wings buckled forward, becoming legs, his tail feathers extending into long black hairs. His neck elongated again, face shattering from a bird’s delicacy to the fine weight of a horse’s head. He snapped his tail over his sides as if brushing off a coating of dust, and pranced a time or two with his front feet, before inclining his head. His forelock fell over bright black eyes. Looking for all the world like an impatient kid, he tossed his head before saying, “The strengths that horses have, I share with you.”
“Thank you,” I said a third time, then, searching for some appropriate response, asked, “How can I honor you?”
The horse snorted and stomped his feet again, two solid thumps into the dark ground. From one hoof print, the snake coiled up again, winding itself around the horse’s leg. From the other, the raven exploded forth in a flurry of feathers and cawing, then winged around to settle on the horse’s head, between his ears. “How may I honor you all,” I amended hastily, “for sharing your gifts with me.”
“By heeding the words of your teacher,” the snake suggested.
“By seeking truth.” The raven gave the snake a one-eyed look, then turned it on me. I felt inexplicably guilty. No, not inexplicably: I could explic it perfectly well. I just didn’t like to.
“By accepting.” The horse’s voice had a raw tenor to it that shivered down my spine, making me cold despite the jungle heat. Hairs stood up on my arms, making me shiver a second time. I met the horse’s eyes for a few seconds, feeling exposed and vulnerable under its black gaze.
Months earlier, there’d been a moment of clarity, a moment when I’d understood that as a shaman, I could make a real difference in the world. The confidence had slipped away almost immediately when the conflict with Cernunnos had ended, and I’d let it. The world was simpler without the responsibility I’d taken on, and not believing was easy when there weren’t otherworldly monsters to fight every day. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and struggling to remember the certainty that had filled my bones and my breath for a few hours.
I couldn’t. It was a struggle, like trying to bring a face to mind clearly. Instead of holding it, I could only grasp at the edges, knowing I’d had it and lost it again. Every time I tried, it slipped farther away, until my hands were shaking from a wholly different exertion.
“Can you tell me?” I asked, my voice small as I opened my eyes again. “Can you tell me how many times I’ll have to remind myself, or relearn what I can do, before I believe it without question?”
The raven made a derisive sound, a sort of trill that seemed to come from behind his eyes. “To be without question is to be dead.”
“Thanks,” I said, equilibrium temporarily restored by wryness. “Very reassuring.”
“Every day,” the horse said. “Until the hour comes when your first breath tells you the aches of the world and your first exhalation heals them, every morning you’ll have to fight to believe.” He inclined his head, making the raven grip his forelock and spread his wings to keep from sliding off. “Your nature is not that of an easy believer, but that’s not a flaw. It only means that when you accept the truth—” He snorted, tossing his head with very horselike amusement.
“That wild horses won’t be able to drag me from it?” I asked, smiling a little.
“Even so,” the horse agreed. The raven cawed, clearly irritated at having been outclevered. I looked down at the snake, wound around the horse’s leg, and sighed as I kneeled.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Do you have an answer for me?”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “Ssstudy. Your mind is closed to the possibility that this is real, even when you live it. Ssstudy will help open those doorsss. Then you will not look back, only forward, and you will go with strength. Heed your teacher. Heed your elders. Heed your ssspirits. When faith wavers, look to the things that have crossed over with you.”
An electronic beeping broke through the last of the snake’s words, an ugly counterpoint to the drum that still thumped in the background. “It’s time to go back,” Judy said. “We’ll meet again tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” I said, more to the spirit animals than to the woman who’d brought them to me. “I’ll try to remember what you said and honor your words and advice.”
“Honor your alarm clock,” the raven suggested, and I opened my eyes to find out I was already late for work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’d bite my own tongue off before admitting it to Morrison, but I actually sort of liked being a beat cop. Motor oil was good for the soul and all, but the truth is that as a mechanic I didn’t get out much. The only time I saw a new face was when there was a new hire, and let’s not even talk about the exercise regime I didn’t follow. I’d lost twelve pounds since I’d been stuck on patrol duty, and I felt like She Who Was Not To Be Messed With as a result.
The North Precinct covered a huge area, thirty-two square miles above and around the University of Washington. It ran the gamut of neighborhoods, from very nice to very bad, and I’d walked more of them than I’d ever dreamed possible. I had two favorite beats: the first was through some bad sections of Aurora, which was nobody’s sensible idea of a favorite beat. Still, it passed under the no-longer-guttering streetlight that had started me down the path I was on now. Given my usual bad temper about the whole shamanism business, I wasn’t sure why I was drawn back to the place that kicked it off. Moth to flame, I guessed. Either that or the less flattering “humans are stupid,” but I thought maybe I’d stick with the metaphor.
The other one I liked was University Avenue. I lived on its far north end, and working that beat always seemed like something of a reward, like I was keeping my very own personal neighborhood safe from hooligans.
I imagine every big city has at least one drag strip like the Ave. To my mind, University Bookstore was its linchpin. Spreading out from it on either side were restaurants and storefronts ranging from burger joints to tofu houses and from The Gap to bohemian, incense-filled shops filled with Indian imports. Young people—I observed them that way, like I was hitching along with a walker—spilled out of coffee shops to sit under sun-faded umbrella tables, chatting up every topic from Kant to Britney.
Police patrol was heavy along the Ave, increasing every fall when new students arrived to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Seattle. It used to be that any undercover cop could score the drug of her choice on the Ave. It was a matter of departmental pride that these days it was widely acknowledged that there was too much heat to risk turning a little illegal profit. The Ave was a battle against chaos, and for once, order was winning.
I usually got a friendly nod or two from store owners, particularly the restaurants I frequented. When I’d first begun patrol duty, I’d had to argue extensively with Mrs. Li, owner of my favorite Chinese place, who was convinced that all that walking would wear me away to a stick. She kept trying to give me “a little snack”—usually enough to feed two for a day—on the house, to keep my strength up. I finally convinced her that as a police officer I couldn’t take what she offered without compromising myself, and she retaliated by feeding me twice as much when I came in to the shop off-duty.
I waved at her through the restaurant window and grinned my way up the street. A long-nosed bicycle messenger zipped past me, illegally riding on the sidewalk. I barked, “Hey!” He shot a nasty glance over his shoulder at me and didn’t stop. At the corner, he bounced his bike off the curb and down into the street, careening across the avenue to ride on the correct, if not right, side. Rather than chase him down on foot, I punched 411 on my generally despised department-issued cell phone and got the number for the company he worked for. It took the length of waiting for one stoplight to register a request for disciplinary action. I crossed the street with the rest of the herd cheerfully. If I was lucky, I’d see his bike ahead of me and get to ticket it for vehicular misuse.
It was a sad, sad state when I was glad about carrying a cell phone and considered the opportunity to ticket a bicycle to be good luck.
Bells on a shop door behind me chimed urgently as someone pushed and held it open. “Excuse me. Officer Walker?”
I blinked over my shoulder. A girl of about twenty leaned in the door, vibrating it enough to keep the bells ringing. “Er, yeah? I mean, yes?”
Relief brightened her face. “Oh good. I had a premonition, you see, a dream about you, but I wasn’t sure if Walker was your last name or if it was just that you were a walker.” She gestured at me. “Foot patrol, see?”
I backed up a step and glanced at the name above the shop. It did not, as I half expected it to, say Lunatics “R” Us. Actually, it bore the innocuous name of East Asian Imports, although the girl whose leaning continued to jangle the bells was about as East Asian as Queen Elizabeth. She was blond and on the slightly chunky side of curvy, with brown eyes and a hopeful expression. For an unkind moment I thought of golden retrievers. “What can I do for you, miss?”
“My name’s Faye.” The door bells quivered with excitement. “I need your help.”
Fishwire tightened around my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “My help specifically, or the police in general?” Adrenaline made the tips of my fingers cold and tingly and slid the world into sharper focus. Given Faye’s opening statement about dreams, I wasn’t surprised when she said—
“Yours specifically. See, a friend of mine died yesterday, and I dreamed about you—”
Adrenaline abandoned my fingertips to turn into a festering pit of nausea in my belly. “Who was your friend?”
Tears welled in Faye’s eyes. “Her name was Cassie. Nobody even knows what happened yet.” She narrowly escaped wailing, mouth turned down in misery. “She couldn’t just die like that, could she? She was only twenty, and she couldn’t just die!” The bells shivered and banged and rang. I set my teeth together and stepped forward, not quite touching Faye’s elbow.
“How about if we go inside for a minute?” Because if we didn’t, I was going to shoot the bells right off the door. Faye sniffled miserably and backed into the store. It was poorly lit after the brilliant morning sunshine. I tripped over a solemn wooden monkey carved out of dark wood that sat precariously near the door. It wobbled ponderously. I slapped my hand on its flat head—maybe it was a plant stand—and left it complacently back in its place as I edged farther into the store.
“It’s okay.” Faye snuffled and wiped her hand under her nose, which would have been considerably more endearing if she’d been three. “Everybody does that.”
“Why don’t you move it, then?”
“He likes to be able to see out the door.”
I consider it a matter of great pride that I didn’t abandon the store right there. I paused, gathered up the several things I wanted to say, admired them briefly, then moved on as manfully as I could. “Ms.—” She hadn’t given me her last name. “Faye,” I said somewhat reluctantly, not wanting at all to get personal with the girl. “If you know something about Cassandra Tucker’s death, you should be talking with UW police, not with me.”
Faye’s gaze snapped to me, her big brown eyes seeming much less golden-retriever-like suddenly. “I didn’t mention Cassie’s last name.”
Crap. “No, you didn’t, but police departments do talk to one another.” I really didn’t want to confess to being the one who found her friend’s body. It seemed likely that it would get messy after that, and she was already snorfling all over the place. I made a slow circuit of the store, wedging myself between narrowly placed shelves and trying not to knock any more bric-a-brac over. I wondered if the place was up to fire code.
Faye, evidently mollified, kept pace with me on the other side of the skinny shelving unit. It, like the monkey, was carved of some kind of dark wood, and a price tag was wrapped around one of the supports. I wondered what would happen to all the stuff it held if someone saw fit to buy it. “I dreamed that you could help us,” she said.
“Us?” I picked the lid off a small pot and peered inside. Black enamel paint gleamed at me. Faye looked uncomfortable.
“Me and some friends. Friends of Cassie’s.”
I set the lid back on the pot with a distinctive click, remembered Morrison’s magnificent scowl, and said without a trace of guilt, “Cassandra’s death isn’t my jurisdiction, Faye. I’m very sorry, but my captain would hang me by my toes to dry if I got involved. The best I can do is offer to bring you down to the Udub police so you can talk to them, and I can’t really even do that until my lunch break.” I twisted my arm, peering at my watch, a big black clunker of a thing that no longer told me what time it was in Moscow. “Which is in about three hours. Want me to come back then?” Maybe a little twinge of guilt.
“I dreamed you had darkness wrapped around your heart and that light shone through it so powerfully it cracked and shattered letting goodness into the world and the goodness said to me that your name was Walker and that without you all hope was lost and that I had to wait and watch today so that I could stop you and ask you to help and I didn’t know if I would even know you because all I really saw in the dream was a woman with a walking stick but as soon as I saw you I knew you were the one from the dream because you’re confident and strong and you move like the woman in the dream and anybody with eyes to see can tell that you’ve got power so please won’t you help us?” Faye clutched the corner of the shelves, staring up at me as she dragged in a deep breath. I gaped at her.
Rationally, not one of the things she said should have swayed me. Hell, not all of the things she said should have swayed me, not even with the breathless, desperate delivery. I snapped, “All right,” and shoved my hand through my hair. “Dammit.”
Faye’s eyes widened. Maybe good police officers didn’t say “dammit.” I’d have to check the handbook. Meantime, I said, “Dammit,” again for good measure, and raked my hand through my hair again. “All right, look, Faye. What’s your last name?”
“Kirkland. Why?”
So I can look up your police records. “I like to know people’s names when I agree to get in over my head. Look. I will come talk to you and your friends, all right?” My speech was getting more precise, indicating to me, if not to Faye, who, after all, didn’t know me very well, that I really meant what I was saying. “However, I want you to promise me that if, after speaking with you, I believe that what you have to say might be of use to the university police department, you and your friends will come with me to talk to them. Do we have a deal?” The last words were so clipped that Faye’s eyes widened again.
“Okay. Honest, I don’t think it’ll be any help, but if we are, yes, okay, I promise.” Swear to God, if she’d had a tail she would’ve wagged it. I dropped my chin to my chest.
“All right. All right, fine. Dammit,” I added again for good measure. “Where should I meet you?”
“We’ll be at the reading room for the graduate library on campus at seven tonight. Can you come then?”
I stood up. “I don’t get off work until seven. Is it okay if I’m late?”
Faye nodded, backing up so she could abandon the narrow shelving area for the slightly roomier front counter. “It’ll be fine. Maybe you shouldn’t come in uniform.” She gave me a critical sideways glance that took the wind right out of the She Who Was Not To Be Messed With mindset.
“Maybe I should,” I said. “It might make people more willing to talk to the university police, if I’m not scary.”
Faye eyed me dubiously. “If you think so,” she said with such exaggerated politeness that I knew I’d be succumbing to peer pressure. I closed my eyes momentarily and scolded myself for being a weenie, then put on a fake smile.
“Or not. Okay. I’ll see you tonight, then.”
Faye beamed, tongue lolling out just like a retriever’s. Well, no, but boy, she looked happy. “Thank you, Officer Walker. We’ll see you tonight.”
“It’s Joanne,” I said, resigned, and let myself out to the jangling of bells. Morrison was going to kill me.
CHAPTER NINE
Friday, June 17, 5:15 p.m.
I rapped twice on Morrison’s door frame, cautious taps, and said, “Captain?” before screwing my face up in a wince. Knocking was about the sum total of politeness Morrison could typically expect from me. Bringing his title into the conversation before it even began gave him warning to be wary.
And the look he gave me as he glanced up from paperwork was, indeed, wary. “What do you want?”
I sighed and hunched my way into his office even though there’d been no invitation issued. “I am not investigating Cassandra Tucker’s death,” I offered as my initial foray. Morrison’s eyebrows beetled down. “But I was wondering if we knew anything else about it yet.” I set my teeth together in a grimace and added, “A friend of hers approached me today.”
“Approached you.” Morrison got up from his desk and walked around me, closing the door with a final-sounding click. I watched him over my shoulder as he stood there with his mouth held in a thick purse, then jerked my gaze forward again as he turned back around. “Sit,” he said from behind me, and I did as he went back to his desk. “Approached you,” he repeated.
I sank down into the chair and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, speaking into the cover my palms made. “While I was on patrol. She said…” I trailed off long enough to sigh, then lifted my eyebrows over the protective steepling of my fingers, eyes still closed. “She said she’d had a dream about me and she was waiting for me. She wanted me to meet some of Cassandra’s friends tonight.”
“A dream.” Morrison’s voice sounded exactly like mine would have in his position: exasperated, frustrated, and annoyed. I felt sorry for him. I’d have felt sorry for myself, too, except world-weary resignation seemed to have overcome the self-pity. Morrison dragged in a deep breath and said, “You’re telling me this because…?”
I dropped my fingers to look at him. “Because you told me specifically to stay away from this case, and whether you believe it or not, I’m actually trying to follow orders. Except the case may not want to stay away from me.”
“A case,” Morrison said through his teeth, “is not something that makes choices about who it’s assigned to, Walker.”
“No, sir, not normally.” I’d spent the better part of the day since encountering Faye trying to find a way around having this conversation with Morrison. The only alternatives I could come up with were considerably worse than having it. Somehow the inevitability made me less antagonistic than I usually would have been. “But under the circumstances, I don’t really think it’s coincidence that this girl came to me.”
“Under what circumstances?”
I turned my hands palm-up, a shrug, and said, “Me.”
Tension spilled through Morrison’s expression, aging him years in a few seconds. I looked away, uncomfortable with seeing him look so defeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, but we both knew the growl in his voice was only for show. I pressed my lips together, daring to glance back at him, but only for a moment. He still looked aged and unhappy.
“It means something’s wrong with Cassandra Tucker’s death, sir.” I really didn’t want to say I think magic may have been involved, sir, and I was pretty sure Morrison didn’t want me to say it, either.
He didn’t let the possibility of clarification linger on the air, snapping, “Of course something’s wrong. She was twenty years old and ended up dead in a locker room. There’s nothing right about it.”
“That’s not what I mean, Captain.” I didn’t want to push it any more than that, but I felt like I had to at least say that much. “I’d like your permission to go talk to her friends.”
He gave me a baleful glare. “Are you going to do it anyway?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying to be above-board here, Morrison. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
He sighed explosively. “They’re doing an autopsy. It’s being investigated as a homicide. Right now that’s all I know.” He clenched his jaw, muscle working. “Get back to me if you learn anything.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and got the hell out of his office before we were forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Friday, June 17, 7:25 p.m.
The graduate library’s reading room was dim and dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that the dimness came not from clouds overhead, but from smoky torches that couldn’t possibly meet fire code. I hung in the doorway, squinting into smoke and trying to get the lay of the land before anyone noticed me, but Faye clapped her hands, letting out a squeal of delight. “You came! I knew you’d come! This is Joanne Walker, everyone. She’s the one I dreamed about.” Her voice lowered portentously with the last several words, but I was the only one who seemed to notice.
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C.E. Murphy
It's the end of the world… Again.For all the bodies she's encountering, you'd think beat cop Joanne Walker works in Homicide. But no, Joanne's a reluctant shaman who last saved mankind three months ago–surely she deserves more of a break! Yet, incredibly, "Armageddon, Take Two" is mere days away. There's not a minute to waste.Yet when her spirit guide inexplicably disappears, Joanne needs help from other sources. Especially after she accidentally unleashes Lower World demons on Seattle. Damn. With the mother of all showdowns gathering force, it's the worst possible moment for Joanne to realize she should have learned more about controlling her powers. Or to discover she's being lied to…
Praise for
C.E. MURPHY
and her books:
The Walker Papers
Coyote Dreams
“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes will captivate new and old readers alike.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Thunderbird Falls
“Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.”
—Award-winning author Charles de Lint
“The breakneck pace keeps things moving…helping make this one of the most involving and entertaining new supernatural mystery series in an increasingly crowded field.”
—LOCUS
“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.”
—Library Journal
Urban Shaman
“C.E. Murphy has written a spellbinding and enthralling urban fantasy in the tradition of Tanya Huff and Mercedes Lackey.”
—The Best Reviews
“Tightly plotted and nicely paced, Murphy’s latest has a world in which ancient and modern magic fuse almost seamlessly…Fans of urban fantasy are sure to enjoy this first book in what looks to be an exciting new series.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
[nominee for Reviewer’s Choice Best Modern Fantasy]
The Negotiator
Hands of Flame
“Fast-paced action and a twisty-turny plot make for a good read…Fans of the series will be sad to leave Margrit’s world behind, at least for the time being.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
House of Cards
“Violent confrontations add action on top of tense intrigue in this involving, even thrilling, middle book in a divertingly different contemporary fantasy romance series.”
—LOCUS
“The second title in Murphy’s Negotiator series is every bit as interesting and fun as the first. Margrit is a fascinatingly complex heroine who doesn’t shy away from making difficult choices.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Heart of Stone
“[An] exciting series opener…Margrit makes for a deeply compelling heroine as she struggles to sort out the sudden upheaval in her professional and romantic lives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating new series…as usual, Murphy delivers interesting worldbuilding and magical systems, believable and sympathetic characters and a compelling story told at a breakneck pace.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
C.E. Murphy
Thunderbird Falls
BOOK TWO: THE WALKER PAPERS
This one’s for Alex Trebek.
(Really.)
Acknowledgments
Once more, thanks are due to both my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, and my agent, Jennifer Jackson, for making this a better book; and to cover artist Hugh Syme, whose artwork I am still delighted to have my book judged by.
They are further due to Silkie, for research above and beyond the call of duty (especially since there was no call of duty at all!); to Trip, for making me think harder than is my natural inclination; and to Anna, who is responsible for any geography I got right in Seattle.
As for the rest of it, if I started listing my support structure in detail, there wouldn’t be room for the book. Still, to my family, especially Ted and Shaun, who respectively keep me fed and keep the kitchen clean, thank you.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER ONE
Thursday, June 16, 6:19 a.m.
Two words I never thought would go together: Joanne Walker and 6:00 a.m.
Never mind that that’s actually four words, five if you spell out ante meridiem. If you’re going to get technical, you’re going to lose all your friends. The point is, it was Oh God Early and I was not only up, but at work. Not even at work. I was volunteering. Volunteering my own precious sleeping time, five hours before I was supposed to be at work. I was so noble I could kill myself.
While I was busy admiring my nobility, a bunch of protesters linked arms and waded toward the police line I was a part of. There were considerably more of them than there were of us—hence me being there at all—and the power of authority as granted to us by the city of Seattle wasn’t pulling a lot of weight with them. They weren’t violent, just determined. I spread my arms wide and leaned into the oncoming mass, blowing a whistle that was more noisome than effective. The protesters stopped close enough that I could count the individual silver hairs on the head of the man in front of me, who stood there, Right In My Personal Space.
People have gotten shot for less.
Not, however, by me, and besides, as one of the city’s finest, I wasn’t in a position to be shooting people just for getting in my personal space. Instead, I took a step forward, trusting my own presence to be enough to cow them. It was; the silver-haired guy in front of me shifted back, making a bow in his line. I pressed my advantage, arms still spread wide, and they all fell back a step.
I let go a sigh of relief that I couldn’t let them see, herding them back several more steps before I let up, and backed up again myself. They watched me, silent, sullen, and short.
I was working on a theory that said all environmentalists were short. I knew it was wrong—Al Gore is a tall man—but it gave me something to do while I played push-me-pull-you with the protesters. Of course, most people are short compared to me: I stood a smidge under six feet in socks, and the sturdy black walking shoes I wore put me an inch over.
Behind me lay the summertime glory of the Seattle Center, where a symposium on global warming was being held. Representatives from every oil company, every car manufacturer, every corporation that had ever been fined for too many dirty emissions being pumped out into the air were gathered there to argue their case against the bleeding-heart liberals who thought a little clean air wasn’t asking too much.
Sarcasm aside, the greenies were losing major ground and had been since the symposium had opened two days earlier. The federal administration favored big money and big companies, and those companies were taking as much advantage as they could.
My own sympathies lay a whole lot more with the protesters and their concerns about details like global warming. It was already in the high seventies and it wasn’t yet seven in the morning, which was just wrong for mid-June.
But it wasn’t my job to have an opinion about who was right and who was wrong. It was my job to keep the several thousand men and women who were gathered at the Center from breaking through and rending the Armani suits from the bodies of the corpulent pigs managing the slaughter.
“Officer?” A woman’s voice, high-pitched with worry, broke me out of my cheerfully spiraling cynicism. I turned toward her, one hand still lifted in warning against the crowd. I suspected a trick: distract the cop for a minute while everybody surges forward, therefore losing the law a few precious feet of land. There were more physical barriers than just the police officers keeping people off the Center grounds—bright orange, cordoned sawhorses surrounded the entire place—but it was its own sort of psychological warfare.
The woman held a pale-cheeked sleeping girl in her arms. “She fainted,” the woman said. Her voice was thready with concern and fear. “Please, I think she needs a doctor.”
Right behind the bottom of my breastbone, centered in the diaphragm, a coil of energy flared up, making a cool fluttering space inside me. It demanded attention, making my hands cramp and my stomach churn. I rubbed my sternum, swallowing back the wave of nausea. I’d gotten good at ignoring that sensation in the past several months, pretending I couldn’t feel it wrapped around my insides, waiting for me to give in and use it again. Having it crop up so sharply made me feel as pale as the girl. My hand, without any conscious order from my brain, reached out to touch her forehead. Her skin was cold and sticky with sweat.
For the first time since I’d nearly burned out in March, I lost the battle with the energy within me. It shot through me, making silver-tinted rainbows beneath my skin, and strained at my fingertips, trying to pass from me into the chilly-skinned child. Had she been an adult, I might have been able to pull back and refuse yet again to acknowledge its existence.
But she was a kid, and whether I wanted the power and responsibility I’d unintentionally taken on, a six-year-old didn’t deserve to suffer for my stubbornness. Silver-sheened magic told me in the most simple, non-medical terms possible, that the girl was suffering from near heatstroke.
To me—a mechanic by trade, even if I was a cop by day—that meant her engine had overheated.
Fixing an overheated engine’s not a hard thing. You pop the hood, pour new water into the radiator and try not to get burned by the steam, then do it again until the radiator’s full and the engine’s cooled down.
Translating that to a child sick with heat was surprisingly easy. The energy inside me boiled with eagerness to flow out of me and into the girl, but I made it drip instead of pour, afraid of what might happen if her system cooled down too rapidly. I could actually envision the steam hissing off her as heat gradually was replaced by my cool silver strength. It seemed a wonder that no one else could see it.
I was glad she was asleep. At her age she probably had very few perceptions about how health and illness worked, but it was a whole lot easier to heal somebody who couldn’t consciously disbelieve that what you were doing was possible.
The bitter truth of the matter was that I had to believe it was possible, too, and I didn’t want to. What I wanted and what was, however, were two very different things. Right through the core of me, I knew that cooling down an overheated little kid was only the bare edge of what I was capable of.
I let my hand fall off the girl’s forehead. There was a little color in her cheeks now, her breathing somehow more steady and less shallow. She was going to be all right, though an IV drip to help get her fluids back up would probably be a good idea. From the outside, it looked as if I’d touched the girl’s forehead as an assessment, then said, “I’ll escort you out.” I was the only one who knew better, and I was grateful for that. Headlines blaring Cop Turns Faith Healer! would not endear me to my boss.
The girl’s mother, bright-eyed with tears, whispered her thanks. I led them through the crowd, radioing for an ambulance as we walked.
Watching them drive away half an hour later, I realized I could breathe more easily than I’d been able to in months. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone again, irritably, and went back to work.
I left at nine, which was cutting it way too close to expect to get back to the university by nine-thirty. The traffic gods smiled on me, though, and I slid my Mustang into a parking spot outside the gym with a whole two minutes to spare.
I have never been what I would call the athletic sort. Not because I’m uncoordinated, but because I was never very good at working with a team in high school. I hadn’t improved at it since then, for that matter. The basketball coach had been endlessly frustrated by me. Alone I could shoot hoops till the cows came home, but put nine other people on a court with me and I got sullen and stupid and couldn’t hold on to the ball.
So fencing, which I’d started shortly after wrassling a banshee to ground, was the first sport I’d ever really pursued. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, even with sweat leaking into my eyes and my own hot breath washing back at me against the mask.
Metal clashed against metal, a twitchy vibration running up my arm, even through the heavy canvas gloves. Block and retreat, block and retreat, lunge and attack. I blinked sweat away as I extended.
My épée scraped along the other blade and slid home, thumping my opponent solidly in the ribs. For a moment we both froze, equally startled. Then through the mesh of her mask, I saw her grin as she came back to a full stand. She pulled the mask off, tucking short damp hair behind her ears, and saluted me. I straightened and yanked my mask off. My shadow splashed against her white tunic, my hair a hedgehog of sagging points.
“We might just make a fencer of you yet, Joanne.”
Panting and grinning, I tucked my mask under my arm, transferring my épée to my left hand, and offered Phoebe my right. She grabbed it in an old-fashioned warrior’s handshake, wrapping her fingers around my forearm, the way she always shook hands. She was small and compact, like a Porsche, and had muscles where I didn’t even have body parts. Most days she made me feel large and lumbering and slow.
Of course, on a bad day, Godzilla could make me feel large and lumbering and slow.
“That’s my plan.” I shook Phoebe’s hand solidly before falling back a step, rubbing a thumb over my sternum. Phoebe’s dark eyebrows knitted. It was very nearly her dark eyebrow knitting, but I was afraid to even think that too loudly, for fear she’d hear me and beat the tar out of me.
“Why do you do that?”
My hand dropped as if weighed down by a concrete brick, and I twisted it behind my back guiltily. “Do what?”
“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met. Every time somebody makes a point against you and every time a match ends, you rub your breastbone. How come?”
“I had…surgery a while ago.” I took a too-deep breath, trying to will away the sensation of not getting enough air. “I guess it still bothers me.”
“Heart surgery?”
“More like lung.”
Phoebe’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.” I hadn’t snitched since January, when a steely eyed cab driver refused to give me a smoke because his wife of forty-eight years had died of emphysema. I could learn from other people’s lessons. That was what I told myself.
Quitting smoking had nothing to do with the crushing sensation of being unable to breathe from having a sword stuffed through my lung. I told myself that, too. It turned out myself was a skeptical bitch and didn’t believe me. Even so, I tried hard not to think about the truth: that the sword had been wielded by a Celtic god, and in a shadowland between life and death, a Native American trickster called Coyote offered me a choice between the two.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I chose a life and became a shaman. I felt that coil of energy bubble up again inside of me, and squelched it. There was no one around who needed healing right now. Nobody but myself, anyway, and I didn’t deny I had a lot of self-healing to do.
Actually, I denied it all the time. Which was part of why I was learning to fence, instead of sitting somewhere quietly, as Coyote would like me to, focusing on my inner turmoil and getting it all sorted out. Inner turmoil could wait, as far as I was concerned. External turmoil seemed inclined to stick me with pointy things or otherwise try to do me in. Under those circumstances, I figured learning how to parry was a much better use of my time than fussing over things I’d rather let lie.
I rolled my shoulders, pushing the thoughts away. “It wasn’t cancer. Sort of more hereditary. It’s fine now. Just kind of bugs me sometimes. I think it’s mostly mental.” I knew it was mostly mental. I didn’t even have a scar.
“Is that why you started coming here?” she wondered. “A lot of people find martial arts to be a great way to center themselves after they’ve had a life-changing experience.”
I ducked my chin and let out a breathy laugh. “Something like that, yeah. Plus I could use the exercise.”
“I thought cops were supposed to be in good shape.”
I looked back up through my eyebrows. “Don’t know many cops, do you? Speaking of which, I better hit the shower and get to work. Thanks for the lesson, Phoebe.” I headed for the locker room, Phoebe taking the lead and holding the door for me.
“My pleasure. I like beating up on the big girls. Makes me feel all studly.”
“You are all studly. And you’re not that small.”
“Compared to you I am.”
“Compared to me Arnold Schwartznegger is small.”
Phoebe laughed out loud. “You’re not that big.”
I grinned as I struggled out of my tunic. I was pretty sure it had a secret mission in life to strangle me as I undressed. “Nah. I lack the shoulders.” Phoebe turned the showers on, drowning out anything else I might say. Once I got loose of the tunic, I followed her, standing to the side while the pins-and-needles water pelted from cold to too hot.
The beauty of university showers is that they never run out of hot water. I stood there, leaning my forehead against the wall, until my skin turned boiled lobster-red. Phoebe turned her shower off with a squeak of faucets, and in the fashion of community showers everywhere, the water in mine got significantly hotter. Turning it down didn’t help. That was the flip side of never running out of hot water: the only way I’d ever found to keep a public shower from being too hot was to run more than one at a time. “Ow. Turn that back on, would you?”
“Sorry.” The faucets squeaked again and after a few seconds my shower faded back to a bearable heat. Water lapped over the top of my feet, and I pushed away from the wall with another groan, listening to Phoebe slosh to the drying area.
“Thanks.” I reached for my shampoo, scrubbing a palmful through my hair. If I weren’t so fond of standing mindlessly in the hot water, it would only take me about thirty seconds to shower. A minute and a half if I used conditioner, which my hair was too short to bother with except occasionally. But I wasn’t quite late for work, so I luxuriated in the heat. Water crept up around my ankles. “I think the drain’s plugged.”
“Check,” Phoebe said. “I’ll call maintenance if it is.”
“Okay.” I rinsed my hair, turned the water off, and wrapped a towel around myself as I slogged through the shower room in search of the drain.
Two stalls down from me, a naked black girl, her skin ashy blue with death, lay with her hip fitted neatly in the hollow of the drain.
CHAPTER TWO
“Phoebe,” I said, amazed at how calm my voice was, “call the cops.”
“You are the cops,” she said. I could hear the grin in her voice in the suddenly echoing shower room.
“Phoebe!”
“Yow, okay, what’s wrong?” Phoebe didn’t call the cops. She splashed back through the showers, rewetting her feet. “What’s wrong, Joanne?”
“There’s a dead girl in the shower,” I said, still very calmly. “Please go call the police, Phoebe.”
“There’s what?!” Phoebe looked around the edge of the shower stall and went pale under her olive skin. “Oh my God. Oh my God, we have to do something!” She surged forward. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.
“We have to call the cops,” I repeated. “She’s dead, Phoebe. Look at her color. There’s nothing we can do. We shouldn’t touch her.”
“You are the cops!”
“I’m also the one who found the body. Again,” I added in a mutter.
“Again?” Phoebe’s voice rose and broke.
“I found a murder victim in January,” I said. My boss was going find a way to blame me for this. He was convinced I lived out each day with the deliberate intention to piss him off. Some days he was right, but it hadn’t been in my game plan today. I didn’t get up at five in the morning to volunteer at protests with irritating my boss in mind. Rather the opposite, in fact, not that I’d admit that out loud.
I took Phoebe’s other shoulder and steered her away from the body. “Shouldn’t we at least check to make sure she’s dead?” she demanded, voice rising. I exhaled, nice and slow.
“She’s dead, Phoebe. Look, okay.” I let her go and waded to the dead girl. She looked like she’d been posed for a photograph, her back against the tile wall, her bottom leg and arm stretched out long and her top leg folded gracefully forward into the water, bent at the knee. Her head was thrown back, slender neck exposed, as if she were laughing without inhibition. The edge of the drain was just barely visible beneath her hip, all of the drain holes covered. I wondered who would take that kind of picture, then remembered that if nobody else would, the police photographer would have to do the job.
“Christ.” I crouched and pressed two fingers against her neck, below her jaw. She was on the cool side of lukewarm, the skin pliant, and had no pulse. I tried a second time, then a third, shifting my fingers slightly. “She’s dead, Phoebe.” I stood up again, wiping my fingers against my towel. I’d never touched a dead body before. It hadn’t felt like I expected it to. “Go call the cops.”
“What’re you going to do?” Phoebe’s voice trembled as she backed away, water splashing around her ankles.
“I’m going to go get dressed.” I turned to follow Phoebe, who continued to back up, still staring at the dead girl. “Watch where you’re go—”
I lunged, too late. Phoebe’s heel caught the curb of the shower area and her feet slid out from under her, kicking water into my eyes. My fingers closed on empty air as she shrieked and crashed to the tile floor with a painful crack. My own feet slid on the wet tiles and for a moment I thought I’d dive after her. My arms swung wildly and I caught my balance, heaving myself upright with a gasp. Phoebe, her mouth a tight line, stared up at me, then let out an uncharacteristic soprano giggle. I stepped over the curb and offered her a hand up.
“I take it you’re okay, then.”
Phoebe wrapped her fingers around mine in a strong grip and I hauled her to her feet. “No, I’m not okay.” Her voice squeaked as high as her giggle had. “We just found a dead girl in the showers and I think my butt’s going to be bruised for a month.” She giggled again, then set her mouth and pressed her eyes shut, inhaling deeply through her nostrils. “I’m okay,” she said after several seconds. I nodded.
“I’ll call the cops. You get dressed.”
“Okay.” She gave me a pathetically grateful look that I didn’t like from my fencing instructor, and left me alone with the dead girl. I stole a glance at her over my shoulder, feeling power flutter behind my breastbone, urging me to use it.
I could think of one good reason to disregard it. Well, one reason. Good was debatable, especially since even in my own head I heard it as a whine: but I don’t want to be a shaman!
Except, possibly, when it meant I could save little girls from heatstroke. I sighed and went back to the dead woman, kneeling in the cooling water. The bottom edge of my towel drooped into it, sucking up as much as it could, and I debated running to put some clothes on before doing anything else. Only then I’d be soaking up water with my uniform, which, unlike a towel, wasn’t designed for it. It wasn’t like the police would arrive in the thirty seconds I intended to be out.
“Arright,” I muttered. “One healthy little girl for one esoteric death investigation. I guess that’s fair.” Five more minutes before calling the cops wasn’t going to make a difference to the body. “I’m here,” I said out loud, “if you want to talk.”
There was a place between life and death that spirits could linger in, a place that, with all due apology to Mr. King, I’d started calling the Dead Zone. If I could catch this young woman’s spirit there, I might just be able to learn something useful, like how she’d ended up filling a drain at the University of Washington’s gym locker rooms.
Reaching that world was easier with a drum, but somewhere in the shower room a shower leaked, a steady drip-drop of water hitting water. It was a pattern, and that was good enough. I closed my eyes. The sound amplified, deliberate poiks bouncing off the bones behind my ears. I lost count of the drops, and rose out of my body.
I slid through the ceiling, skimming through pipes and wires and insulation that felt laced with asbestos. The sky above the university was so bright it made my eyes ache, and for a few seconds I turned my attention away from the journey for the sake of the view.
The world glittered. White and blue lights zoomed along in tangled blurs, each of them a point of life. Trees glowed in the full bloom of summer and I could see the thin silver rivers of sap running through them to put out leaves that glimmered with hope and brightness. Concrete and asphalt lay like heavy thick blots of paint smeared over the brilliance, but at midmorning, with people out and doing things, those smears of paint had endless sparks of life along them, defying what seemed, at this level, to be a deliberate attempt to wipe out the natural order of the world.
Don’t get me wrong. Not only do I like my indoor plumbing and my Mustang that runs roughshod over those dark blots of freeway, but I also think that a dam built by man is just as natural as a dam built by a beaver. We’re a part of this world, and there’s nothing unnatural about how we choose to modify it. If it weren’t in our nature, we wouldn’t be doing it.
Still, looking down from the astral plane, the way we lay out streets and modify the world to suit ourselves looks pretty awkward compared to the blur of life all around it. Humans like right angles and straight lines. There weren’t many of those outside of man-made objects.
But even overlooking humanity’s additions to the lay of the land, there was something subtly wrong with the patterns of light and life. I’d noticed it months earlier—the last time I’d gone tripping into the astral plane—and it seemed worse now. There was a sick hue to the neon brilliance, like the heat had drawn color out, mixed it with a little death, and injected it back into the world without much regard to where it’d come from. It made my nerves jangle, discomfort pulling at the hairs on my arms until I felt like a porcupine, hunched up and defensive.
The longer I hung there, studying the world through second sight, the worse the colors got. Impatient scarlet bled into the silver lines of life, black tar gooing the edges of what had been pure and blue once upon a time. I had no sense of where the source of the problem was. It felt like it was all around me, and the more I concentrated on it the harder it got to breathe. I finally jerked in a deep breath, clearing a cough from my lungs, and shook off the need to figure out what was wrong. I suspected it had more to do with procrastination than anything else. I’d been warned more than once that my own perceptions could get me in trouble, in the astral plane.
It wasn’t that I was scared. Just wary. Apprehensive. Cautious. Uneasy. And that exhausted my mental thesaurus, which meant I had to stop farting around and go do what I meant to do.
Coyote had told me that traveling in the astral plane wasn’t a matter of distance, but a matter of will. It seemed like distance to me, always different, always changing. Seattle receded below me, darkening and broadening until the Pacific seaboard seemed to be just one burnt-out city, the sparks of life that colored it faded and scattered with distance. Skyscrapers that seemed to defy physics with their height leaped up around me and crumbled again, and the stars were closer.
A tunnel, blocked off by a wall of stone, appeared to my left, and I felt him waiting there. Him, it—whatever. Something was there, and it tugged at me. It laughed every time I forged past it, and every time I did I felt one more spiderweb-thin line binding me to it. The first time I traveled the astral plane I almost went to him, compelled by curiosity and a sense of malicious rightness. The second time, the stone wall was in place, my dead mother’s way of protecting me from whatever lay down that tunnel. This time I knew he was there, and it was easier to ignore him.
Someday I’m not going to be able to.
The tunnel whipped away into a wash of light, the sky bleeding gold and green around me. New skyscrapers blossomed into tall trees, filled with the light of life, but here that light was orange and red, not the blues and white I was used to. I grinned wildly and lifted my hands, encouraging the speed that the world swum around me with.
Under the gold sky, palaces built like where the Taj Mahal’s wealthy older sister grew up. A tiger paced by, sabre-toothed and feral, watching me like I might be a tasty snack. A man’s laughter broke over me, and the world spun into midnight, the sky rich and blue and star-studded. I relaxed, letting myself enjoy the changing vistas, and in the instant I did, the shifting worlds slammed to a stop.
A red man stood in front of me. Genuinely red: the color of bricks, or dark smoked salmon. His eyes were golden and his mouth was angry. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
I gaped at him, breathless. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.”
“That was kind of the idea.”
“Siobhán Walkin—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s your name.”
“Don’t,” I repeated, “call me that. Not here.”
I’d become uncomfortably protective of that name: Siobhán Walkingstick. It was my birth name, the one I’d been saddled with by parents whose cultures clashed just long enough to produce me. My American father’d taken one look at Siobhán and Anglicized it to Joanne. Until I was in my twenties, no one had called me Siobhán except once, in a dream.
The last name, Walkingstick, I’d abandoned on my own when I went to college. I’d wanted to leave my Cherokee heritage behind, defining myself by my own rules. I was Joanne Walker. Siobhán Walkingstick was someone who barely existed.
But whether I liked it or not, that name belonged to the most internal, broken parts of me, and flinging it around astral planescapes made me vulnerable. I had learned to build protective shields around it, the one thing I’d managed to do to Coyote’s satisfaction over the past six months. I saw those shields as being titanium, thin and flexible and virtually unbreakable, an iridescent fortress in my mind. They were meant to protect my innermost self from the bad guys.
So I didn’t like having the two names rolled together in the best of circumstances, and I resented the shit out of having them flung around the astral plane as a form of reprimand by the very same brick-red spirit guide who’d insisted I develop the shields in the first place.
The spirit guide in question flared his nostrils, inclining his head slightly, and inside that motion, shifted. A loll-tongued, golden-eyed coyote sat in front of me, looking as disgruntled about the eyes as the man had.
“Dammit,” I said, “I hate when you do that.”
“This is not about what you hate,” the coyote said, in exactly the same tenor the man owned. His mouth didn’t move, and I was, as ever, uncertain if he was speaking out loud or in my mind. “You haven’t got the skill for this, Joanne.”
I wet my lips. “Looks to me like you’re wrong.”
“Do you really understand what you’re doing?” The coyote’s voice sharpened, making my chin lift and my shoulders go back defensively.
“I’m just trying to see if she can tell me anything about what happened, Coyote.”
“There are more mundane ways to find out. You are a policeman, are you not?”
“I’m a beat cop,” I said through my teeth. “Beat cops don’t get to investigate dead bodies in the women’s shower.”
Coyote cocked his head at me, a steady golden-eyed look that spoke volumes. Then, in case I’d missed the speaking of volumes, he said it out loud, too: “Then maybe you shouldn’t.”
Which comedian was it who said wisdom came from children, especially the mouth part of the face? I felt like he must have when he first thought it: like it would be nice to wrap duct tape around the talking part until nothing more could be said.
Coyote snapped his teeth at me, a coyote laugh. “Wouldn’t work anyway.”
“Oh, shut up.” Yet another incredibly annoying thing: he heard every thought I had, and I heard none of his. “This is supposed to be my dreamscape. Why can’t I hear your thoughts?”
He cocked his head the other way, wrinkles appearing in the brown-yellow fur of his forehead. “First,” he said, “it’s not your dreamscape. Haven’t you learned even that much? The astral plane is a lot bigger than just you or me.”
“I thought it was all basically the same,” I muttered. “How’m I supposed to know?”
“By studying,” Coyote suggested, voice dry with sarcasm. “Or is that asking too much?”
For one brief moment I wondered if it was possible that Coyote might also be my boss, Morrison.
“I’ll have to meet him someday,” Coyote said idly. I winced.
“Sure, he’ll like that a lot. Talking coyotes from the astral plane. That’ll go over well.” Morrison made Scully look like a paragon of belief. Once upon a time, our skepticism for the occult was the only thing we had in common. Then I’d done some unpleasantly weird things, like come back from the dead more or less in front of him, and now the only thing we had in common was neither of us was happy about me being a cop, though our reasons were different. “What was the second thing?” I asked, unwilling to pursue any more thoughts of Morrison.
For a moment Coyote looked blank as a happy puppy. Then he shook himself and stood up to pace, the tip of his tail twitching. “Second, you can’t hear my thoughts because I have shields, and I can hear yours because even after six months of study your shields are rudimentary and poorly crafted.”
“Thank you,” I said, “would you like me to lie down to make it easier to kick me?”
Coyote stopped turning in a circle and flashed, seamlessly, into the man-form. He had perfectly straight black hair that fell down to his hips, gleaming with blue highlights even in the star-studded blackness near the Dead Zone.
I closed up my thoughts like all the windows rolling up in a car at once, and privately admitted to myself that Coyote was a hell of a lot easier to deal with as a coyote. As a man he was almost too pretty to live, and I mostly wanted to look at him, not listen to him.
“Joanne, you took on a great power when you chose life.”
“If you say, ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’ so help me God, I’m going to kick you into last week.”
He gave me the same unblinking gaze that the coyote could. “Try it.”
A beat passed in which we neither moved nor spoke, until Coyote dropped his chin, watching me through long dark eyelashes. “You accepted this life months ago, Joanne. Why do you insist on fighting it?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I snapped. “Isn’t that something?”
“Something,” he agreed, but shook his head. “But not enough. Speaking with the dead is a dangerous art, and you’re not even doing that. You’re just opening yourself up and offering yourself as a conduit for anybody who has a piece to speak.”
“Yeah, so?” I admired my mature rebuttal. High school debate teams would weep to have me. “It’s all I know how to do.” Ah, a defensive attack. Good, Joanne, I said to myself, and hoped the windows of my mind were still sealed tight enough that Coyote didn’t hear me. That’ll show him you’re really the It girl. Any moment now legions of cheerleaders would leap out and rah-rah-rah their support of my rapier wit and keen discussion skills.
“That,” Coyote said with more patience and less sharpness than I deserved, “is my point. Has it occurred to you, Joanne, that I’d prefer it if you didn’t get yourself killed out here?”
I blinked, and swallowed.
“Why are you so afraid?” he asked, much more softly.
There are questions a girl doesn’t want to answer, and then there are the ones she doesn’t even want to think about. I reached out, around Coyote and beyond him, for the Dead Zone.
The stars shut down and the world went blank.
CHAPTER THREE
In time, stars began winking in and out again, solitary dots of light that made me feel like a single extremely small point on an endless curve of blackness. I was cold beneath my skin, but when I touched my arm, my body temperature seemed normal. I didn’t remember the chill in the Dead Zone before. It was as if it was tainted, too, with the same subtle wrongness that had marred Seattle.
I held my breath and turned, one slow circle, reaching out with my hands and my mind alike. The former felt nothing.
The latter encountered pain.
It rolled through me, a bone-cold ache that settled in my spine at the base of my neck, creating a headache. Ice throbbed into my veins with every heartbeat. My skin was flayed from my flesh and my flesh from my bones, knives thrusting into my kidneys and cutting out my heart. My bones broke, crushed by a weight of regret that lay heavier than the sea. It dragged me down to my knees, too weak from a hundred billion lifetimes of mistakes to bear up any longer.
And rapture shattered through me, turning the ice in my blood to golden heat. I staggered to my feet again, fire in my lungs so pure it seemed I could breathe it. Burning tears scalded my face, tracks following a thin scar to the corner of my mouth. I swallowed them down, not caring that they seared my throat.
Disbelief caught me in the belly, a bowel-twisting moment of realization that culminated in the words, “Oh, shit,” when I knew I couldn’t stop the carcrash-bombexplosionrunawayhorsetrainwreckshipsinking followed by relief and dismay, to put down the burden of a body after secondsminuteshoursdaysyearsdecades-centurieseons of life.
Dimly, I was aware that I was connected, hideously and intimately, to everything that had ever died.
More immediately, I understood that now I was going to die. Again. For good.
Then somebody hit me in the face. New, fresh pain blossomed, shattering all the old. I clapped both hands to my nose, doubling over and shrieking.
Note to self: grabbing a broken nose does not, in any fashion, help. Lightning shot through my head in blinding stabs of agony. I made a retching noise and fell to the ground, knocking my forehead against the featureless planescape. Brightness flashed in my eyes. I closed them, grateful for the ache in my skull that took a little away from the shards of pain in my nose. “Mother of Christ.”
I rolled onto my side, panting, and gingerly put my hand over my nose, envisioning a Mustang with a dented hood as I did so. Undenting it was easy: stick a suction cup over it and ratchet up the pressure until it popped back into place. In my mind’s eye, the dent banged into shape. I opened my eyes, relieved.
Pain slammed through my nose and stabbed me in the pupils. I shot to my feet, clutching my nose more cautiously, and stared accusingly at Coyote.
“This is the realm of the dead, Joanne,” he said with a shrug. He was back in coyote form, his narrow shoulders twitching lankily. “It’s not a place for healing.”
None of the things that came to mind were very ladylike. I managed to hold my tongue, but Coyote tilted his head at me and gave a very human snort of derision. “Nice girls don’t think things like that.”
“Thank you for getting me out of that,” I said without the slightest degree of genuine gratitude. I hadn’t felt even a hint of the healing power that normally boiled behind my breastbone when I envisioned fixing my nose. I should’ve known it hadn’t worked.
“You’re welcome,” Coyote said, not meaning it any more than I had. “Can we go now?”
“No, we’re here. I might as well see if I can find her.”
Coyote sighed, a tremendous puff of air. “All right. What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t know dogs could look scathing. I thought they were supposed to be all about supportive looks and hopeful puppy eyes. Coyote turned a scathing look on me anyway.
“I’m not,” he said through his teeth, which seemed larger and whiter and much pointier suddenly, “a dog. How do you expect to find someone in the realms of the dead if you don’t even have a name to start with?”
“The others just met me here,” I said uncomfortably. Coyote said something in an Indian language I didn’t know, but I didn’t really need a translation. The tone was enough.
“When you get out of here,” he went on, “if you don’t find a teacher I’m going to…” He snapped his teeth.
“Bite me?” I supplied, as helpfully as I could. He snapped his teeth again.
“The others met you here,” he said, instead of completing the threat, “because you invited them to contact you. They drew you here through their skill. This time you’re on your own.”
“Am not. I have you.”
This time he said, “Ministers and angels of grace defend us,” in English, and shifted back into his human form, stepping forward to put his hands on my shoulders. I blinked. Aside from hitting me in the face a few minutes ago, I couldn’t remember him having touched me before. “Have you no sense of self-preservation at all, Joanne? Are you—” Sudden clarity lit his gold eyes to amber, and his chin came up with evident surprise. “Ah,” he said more quietly, and let me go.
“What? What? Am I what?”
“I think we’d better try to do what you came to do, and get out of here.” He stepped away from me. A strangled sound of frustration erupted from my throat. “This is a dangerous place for you, in more ways than one. Tell me what you know about this girl, and we’ll see if we can find her.”
I told him what I knew: young, black, dead in the shower of the women’s locker room. It was pathetically little, and I began to feel embarrassed. “Focus on her,” Coyote said. “Focus on what she looked like. If we’re lucky she won’t have lost her body sense yet, and we’ll be able to find her that way.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Then we’re going home and you’re going to have to do your research the old-fashioned way. I don’t want you to be here.”
I muttered under my breath as I closed my eyes, constructing an image of the dead girl behind my eyelids. She’d been pretty, with round cheekbones and a pointed chin. Her hair was short with kinky curls, a few of them bleached and dyed fire engine-red. She was dark-skinned, even in death, and I tried to imagine away the ashy blue that had tinged full lips and discolored her fingernails.
A chill slid down my back, slow and thick, like cold blood wending its way around my spine. Fine hairs stood up all over me, sweeping in waves until I shivered and shook my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said, eyes still closed. “I can’t do any better.”
Coyote’s voice came from a long way away, echoing as if through a cavernous chamber. “I think you’ve done more than well enough.”
I opened my eyes.
Snakes.
Snakes were everywhere, winding through the empty blackness of the floor like sanguine rivers, curdling in spots and making pools of heart’s-blood red. They wrapped around my ankles and crawled up my thighs, invasive and intimate. One twisted itself around my waist and ribs and lifted its face to mine, a hissing, flickering tongue tasting my breath. Smelling me and seeing me. Fangs curved dangerously past its wide-open lower jaw, drops of venom forming and splashing away. It didn’t blink; I couldn’t. “Coyote?” I could barely hear myself.
“I can’t help you.” He sounded even farther away. I dared to turn my head, the smallest motion I could manage, very aware that doing so exposed my jugular to the snake. It hissed softly, dropping its jaw wider.
Coyote was no longer off to my right. No, he was, just at an impossible distance, a speck of man-shape among the sea of snakes. They roiled and bubbled over one another, making the floor a living thing, and as I watched they began to drip from the emptiness above me.
I was caught in a Salvador Dali painting gone horribly wrong.
I laughed. It reverberated, short and broken, off the nonexistent walls of the Dead Zone. The snake around my middle tightened and hissed, bringing its head closer to my throat. My laughter cut off with a shudder.
Garter snakes, crimson and russet, crept up my body, tangling around my fingers and extending like writhing talons. They nestled through my hair until I could see them wriggling in my line of vision, making me a modern-day Gorgon. “Coyote, what’s happening?” My voice was scared and thin, just the way I hadn’t liked hearing Phoebe sound.
There was no answer from the trickster.
The snake at my waist still watched me. I felt my pulse jumping in my throat like a frightened mouse and ducked my head, trying to hide it from the snake. “What do you want?”
It drew its head back, flaring a hood, and hissed at me. My knees locked up, keeping me from bolting, but I didn’t know if that was good or bad. “What do you want?” I managed a second time. The snake spat, venom flying past my face so close I thought I could feel it burn. Then it twisted its head away from me without releasing its grip around my middle, focused on something I couldn’t see.
The Dead Zone heaved with a bloody mass of bodies, seething and knotted reptiles washing around one another in sea-sickening motion. A wave broke through them, like a submarine cruising just beneath the surface, displacing water without being visible. Then the surface ruptured, spraying frightened, twisting snakes through the air. They wriggled frantically, clutching at unsupportive sky, and collapsed soundlessly back down into the melting mess of serpents.
The thing that looked down at me was not at all like a submarine. Monster leaped to mind, and then a narrower classification: sea serpent. Why I was worried about the very specific kind of monster I was facing was beyond me, but the label hung in my thoughts as the thing reared up above me.
It was massive. It had a weight to it unlike anything I’d seen in the Dead Zone, a heaviness that seemed to bear down like the guilt and pain I’d experienced moments ago. There was no sense of being dead about the serpent. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen anything so alive or so filled with purpose. It lived, and it lived to kill.
Its scales were black, fastened together like intricate armor, and gleamed so hard against the darkness of the Dead Zone they hurt to look at. It flared out a ruff, exposing gills that glittered and sparkled with hard edges. Tentacles, like Medusa gone mad, waved around its head. It had no legs, but the word snake fell pitifully short. Ridges crested its back, sharp and deadly. Even in the half-light, it looked as if the spires glistened with poison. It coiled higher, enough strength visible in its body to crush a ship. If this was the kind of thing that had inspired ancient mariners to their warnings of Here Be Dragons, I couldn’t blame them for wanting to avoid the unknown areas of the sea. It opened its mouth to hiss at me.
Its fangs were nearly as long as I was.
I wondered if I would stop feeling right away, or if I’d be alive a while inside the serpent’s maw, feeling the muscle of its throat crush me as it swallowed me down.
The smaller snakes began to drop off me, slithering down my arms and legs again and falling to the floor. I couldn’t blame them: I didn’t want to be facing their lord and master, either. One wriggled under my shirt and down my spine, then panicked, thrashing around, when it met the taut muscle of the snake around my ribs, blocking its passage. The snake around my ribs whipped its head around, pinning my arm against my body as it sank its teeth into the littler one under my shirt. The smaller reptile spasmed, flailing under my shirt in its death throes. Its cold terror seeped in through my skin, leaving me in an icy sweat. I stared up at the monster, feeling the snake die, little and boneless against the small of my back.
The rib-hugging viper began to unwind from me. Above me, the giant serpent swayed and moved closer, snakes below it squirming away from the weight of its huge body.
“Coyote,” I said once more, but this time I knew he wasn’t going to answer. The viper fell away from me. For the second time that morning, my hand reached out without consulting my mind. I caught the creature at the base of the neck, below its jaw, like I’d seen snake handlers do on the Discovery Channel. It hissed and spat and writhed, effectively neutered.
The thing above me went still.
“Oh good.” My voice cracked like a teenage boy’s. “You’re not a cannibal.”
It hissed. I wanted to look down to see if it had tiny impotent arms like a T Rex, waggling angrily at me, but I didn’t dare. Around me, the sea of snakes backed away, making a circle of blackness with the sea serpent at its head. Like their master, the ones closest to me reared up, and unlike the monster creature, swayed menacingly, as if to remind me I wasn’t the one in charge here.
I really didn’t need the reminder.
“So maybe now we make a bargain,” I said. It blinked at me, an action that in another creature might have read as surprise. In the giant serpent, it only served to make me aware that I could see my entire body reflected in the empty blackness. “You let us go,” I said hopefully, “and I’ll let it go.”
“Usssss.” The serpent’s voice was a river of sound, pounding behind my ears.
“Us,” I said again. “Me and Coyote.” Distance and space in the Dead Zone were malleable. I’d learned that the first time I’d visited, though I hadn’t been able to deliberately affect it. Now I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, clung to the idea of Coyote, and told the universe to change.
My feet went out from under me like I’d hit a patch of ice. My gut lurched with panic and I tightened my stranglehold on the snake in my fist. Space contracted into a needle point, then expanded again, snakes slithering down into that point like a sucking drain, and reappearing all around me. The dragon-thing slid with me, and so did the snake I held knotted in my fingers, but all the other snakes were new.
How I recognized one wriggling field of snakes from another, I didn’t know, but there it was.
The sea serpent flicked its tongue, long enough to wrap around me, and at my elbow, Coyote growled, “What,” and in an audible pause I heard him not saying “the hell” before he finished, “do you think you’re doing?”
“Rescuing us,” I said with all the confidence I could muster. My voice didn’t break again, so I counted that as good enough, and brandished my captive snake. “It for us,” I said to the waiting sea serpent. It flickered its tongue again, weaving back and forth to examine me from one side, then the other.
“There isss one of it,” it answered. “There are two of you.”
Crap. I’d been afraid it would notice that. “I don’t suppose you’ll give me time off for good behavior?”
It stared at me, unblinking.
Crap.
“Joanne,” Coyote said, a warning in his voice.
“Then let this one go,” I said, jerking my head at the red man beside me.
“Jo,” Coyote said again. “Don’t.”
The monster flattened its snout, tongue darting out, as if it were flaring its nostrils. “The sssacrifisse is ssweetesst when the victim isss willing.”
“I’m willing.” I waved the smaller snake at it. “This little guy for Coyote, and I’m all yours.”
“Done,” it said.
I released the little snake and shoved Coyote away from me with all my will, like the recoil from a car crash.
For an instant, Coyote resisted. He knew me; he knew that I work through the medium I know best, cars. In fact, he’d taught me to do that. So for a moment, the recoil of that car wreck was met by his own image, the steadfastness of a mountain, absorbing the energy I tried pushing him away with.
Then power surged through me, blood-red and deep and cool, a link from the serpent as it bent its will to the same ends I pursued. There was no metaphor to its desire, only the intent to remove that which it had promised to.
Coyote flickered like the serpent’s tongue, and disappeared.
The viper I’d dropped whipped around and hissed at me, striking forward so quickly I didn’t stand a chance.
The serpent spat, venom splashing over the smaller snake before it completed its attack. It shrieked, a high thin sound, and flipped onto its back, writhing and whining in pain.
“Yeah!” I spat at it, too, to much less effect. “I’m only a meal for the big guy!”
The serpent lifted its head and spread its hood, staring at me. It struck me that gloating was not a snakely trait. I cleared my throat. “Never mind. It’s just, you know, if you’ve got to go out, might as well get taken out by the…never mind.”
It reared up and doubled forward, jaws gaping. As I stared into its descending maw, my last thought was, isn’t there a Shel Silverstein poem appropriate to this situation?
CHAPTER FOUR
A meaty hand, warm and callused, clamped onto my shoulder. My eyes popped open and I looked blankly at the cream-colored tiles above the dead girl. This was not what I imagined the inside of a snake to look like.
“Walker?”
I twisted my head up. The warm hand on my shoulder was attached to the wrist, arm, shoulder, and ultimately, beefy body of my immediate supervisor, Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department, North Precinct.
Morrison always made me think of a superhero starting to go to seed: late thirties, graying hair, sharp blue eyes, a bit too much weight on the bones. I’d never been so glad to see a seedy superhero in my life, and said the first grateful words that came to mind: “This isn’t your jurisdiction.”
“And that sure as hell isn’t your uniform.” Morrison smirked and took his hand off my shoulder.
Goose bumps shot up all over my body and I clutched my arms around my towel. This was not the outfit I’d have chosen to summon the police in. And if I’d been out long enough for the cops to get here, time had gone funny in a way I wasn’t used to. I took refuge in defensiveness, staring up at Morrison. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I was on my way into work when the call came across the scanner. I just couldn’t resist the words ‘Officer Joanne Walker’ and ‘10-55’ in the same sentence.”
“Yeah. You might’ve gotten lucky and the dead body might’ve been mine.” If he’d put his hand on my shoulder half a second later, it would’ve been. I didn’t like to think about the implications of that. “What happened?”
“You were in a trance, or something,” Phoebe blurted from somewhere behind Morrison. “I thought you were following me, but you didn’t, so I came back to look and you wouldn’t wake up when I shook you, so I called the cops. You woke up as soon as he touched you.”
I didn’t like to think about the implications of that, either. I climbed to my feet instead. Cold water trailed down my shins in rivulets. Something even colder slid down the back of my towel and hit the water with a plop.
“Jesus Christ! What the hell is that?” Morrison all but levitated away, moving back across the other side of the curb with a smooth bound that did the aging superhero look proud. My neck stiffened, preventing me from looking at what had fallen.
“It’s a snake,” I said in a small voice, then checked to be sure I was right.
Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.
The first time I visited the astral plane, I came home with a leaf that shimmered blue and white in the darkness. I thought that was a much nicer souvenir than a dead albino garter snake.
I crouched and picked it up. “Put that down!” Morrison barked. “It’s part of the crime scene.”
“It is not. It’s contaminating the crime scene.” I scowled at him from my crouch. “Unless you think I did it.”
“Did you?” he snapped.
I groaned. “No.”
“Fine. Then tell me why the hell you’re carrying a snake in your tow—”
Look, in his shoes, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through that sentence, either. Morrison broke off, choked, then guffawed, while I put my elbow on my knee and my forehead against my hand and waited for him to laugh it out. Phoebe, the traitor, giggled, too, although she tried to hide it by clapping both hands over her mouth.
It took a long time for them to stop laughing.
“Get dressed,” Morrison said eventually, still grinning. “That’s no way for the department to be represented when members of other forces are on their way.”
There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound like fishing for a compliment, so I bit my tongue, took my snake, and got dressed.
Answering questions about the body I’d found turned out to be a lot less unpleasant when I was wearing a police officer’s uniform than it had been when I’d been wearing jeans and a sweater. For one thing, the university police didn’t seem to think I’d done it, which was a huge improvement. There was a bit of quel coincidance that a cop had found her, but hey, those things happened. Phoebe and I took turns answering questions, neither of us any more helpful than I’d been with Coyote in the Dead Zone.
The detective in charge, a knockout Southerner named Renfroe, kept saying, “Uh-huh,” and, “Huh,” and scribbling things down, including my phone number. I thought I saw her checking me out as I walked away when we were finally dismissed. I resisted the urge to call back, “It’s a snake in my pocket,” but since not even Morrison had brought up the snake, I wasn’t about to.
Morning sunshine and heat were already swimming up off the pavement as I walked outside, escorted by Morrison. My eyes started watering and I lifted a hand to shade them, squinting down the parking lot for my car, now hidden among dozens of others in the lot. Morrison held the yellow crime scene tape up for me. I ducked under it, half-expecting him to let it fall and entangle me, like we were in grade school. I snorted at myself. As if he read my mind, Morrison snorted louder. “You’re welcome.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” There. Politeness to a superior officer. Go me.
“No, it just comes naturally to you.”
A higher-ranking officer, anyway.
No, that just wasn’t true. Morrison was a better cop than I was. It went beyond petty and right into sheer stupidity to suggest otherwise. “Is there anything I can say that would convince you I wasn’t trying to be an asshole?” There was another word that should be used somewhere in that sentence. Oh yes: “Captain?”
“‘I quit’ would be right up there at the top of the list,” Morrison said. “You need a ride to the station?”
For a moment I stared at him. Not up at him: we were exactly the same height, and in police-issued street stompers, neither of us had the shoe advantage.
I’d passed the Academy with not-entirely-shameful marks and got a job for the department doing what I was good at: fixing cars. Almost a year ago I’d taken some personal leave that went on too long. I couldn’t blame Morrison for hiring somebody to replace me—well, I could and did, but that wasn’t the point—but as a woman of Native American descent, I looked too good on the roster to fire. So he’d made me a real cop, put me on the street and hoped I’d bolt.
I’d rather have poked my eyes out with a shrimp fork than give him the satisfaction.
My feet toughened up after a few weeks, and I admit a certain vicious pleasure in ticketing SUVs in compact car parking spaces, but I still missed being elbow deep in grease and oil. This was not how my life was supposed to go.
The coroners wheeled the body—Cassandra Tucker, age twenty, a college junior, recently broken up with her boyfriend, mother of a little girl whose name wasn’t written on the back of her photo, and possessor of an illegal photo ID, all of which would have been helpful in the Dead Zone—past us.
Maybe my life wasn’t so bad after all. With that in mind, I pasted on a bright smile for my captain. “No, I’ve got Petite. Want a ride?”
The corners of Morrison’s mouth tightened. My smile got brighter. “I didn’t think so.”
“I want to talk to you in my office when you get to work.”
That put a hitch in my jaunty swagger away. I looked over my shoulder. Morrison’s mouth was still tight. “Yeah, all right, boss,” I said, more subdued, and went to find Petite.
She was the root cause of the trouble between Morrison and me. There are few cars as sweet as a 1969 Mustang, but how any red-blooded American male could mistake one for a 1963 Corvette was beyond my ken. I’d been merciless in teasing him about it.
It turned out mocking a newly promoted captain wasn’t a great idea, especially since it turned out that he was also newly assigned to the precinct I worked in, and therefore my new boss. It wasn’t the best way to start a working relationship, and it had only degenerated from there.
The worst of it was I’d eventually learned that Morrison’s real problem with me was that he thought I was wasting my potential as a mechanic. He might’ve put me on street duty to get me to quit, but it’d backfired. I was bound and determined to prove myself to him now, a stance as contrary as any Irishman could take.
The idea that he’d suspected I’d react that way and had reverse-psychologied me into doing what he wanted didn’t bear thinking about. I pulled out of the parking lot behind him and drove to the station at a sedate pace.
“Where did the snake come from?” The question sounded over the click of the door; I’d already noted with trepidation that the Venetian blinds were lowered over the glass wall that faced the rest of the office. I put my palm against the door frame as if to make sure it was closed, but mostly it was to steady myself before I turned to face Morrison.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” I left the door and sat down, rubbing my fingers over the scar on my cheek. Morrison’s eyebrows quirked.
“Try me.” Arizona deserts had nothing on the dry spell in his voice.
“My new boyfriend’s got kind of a kink about snakes,” I said, as straight-faced as I could. I liked that idea better than the truth anyway.
A Colorado thunderstorm swept Arizona dryness from Morrison’s face. “Walker.”
I flinched. Dammit.
“Even,” Morrison said through his teeth, “if I thought the odds of you sharing intimate sexual details with me for any reason was within the realm of possibility, I’ve been here long enough to know that the odds of you having a boyfriend are even less likely—”
I felt heat burning up my jaw and into my cheekbones. “Okay,” I said tightly. “My new girlfr—”
“Walker!”
Apparently I was incapable of getting any from either side of the street. How incredibly depressing. I closed my eyes and slumped in my chair. “I took a quick trip into the astral realm to see if I could find out anything from Cassandra Tucker about who’d killed her. I ran into a bunch of snakes instead. That one came back with me.”
Deadly silence filled the room. I counted to ten, then forced my eyes open. Morrison looked at me, expressionless. I counted to ten a second time, then a third, and he said, “I liked the boyfriend story better. Get back to work.”
I stood up by degrees and nodded, my jaw clenched. “Yes, sir.” I felt like I had an iron pipe rammed up my spine as I turned away. I got the door open half an inch before he said, “Walker.”
I waited.
It was harder for Morrison than me. Silence stretched like hot glass, then shattered: “Did you learn anything?”
That he even asked—well, I said he was a better cop than I was. “No, sir. Sorry.”
A deaf man could’ve heard the relief and vindication in his voice: “Then leave the detecting to the detectives, dammit, and get back to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t a direct disobeyal of orders to drop by Detective Billy Holliday’s desk and hitch myself up onto a corner of it. I was in uniform. The door was mere yards away. Not my fault I got caught up in a bit of conversation.
Morrison wouldn’t have bought it, either, but he was still in his office. Billy frowned up at me, displaying a big hand with his fingers wide-spread. “The truth, now. Do you think the pearlescent polish is a bit much?”
Billy Holliday had been saddled by loving if cruel parents with one of the more unfortunate names a boy could be given. To the best of my ability to tell, part of his retaliation was growing up to be a cross-dresser. He had better dress sense than I did, and over the years the department had gotten used to him showing up at the Policeman’s Ball in drag. Even normally conservative cops could learn to take a lot in stride, although it probably didn’t hurt that his wife made Salma Hayek look like the redheaded stepchild.
He was also, metaphysically speaking, on the far end of the spectrum from Morrison. Where I was a reluctant believer, Billy was a True Believer, and once upon a time I’d ragged him endlessly about that. It wasn’t until my own world turned upside-down that I thought to ask why he was a believer, and I’d seen enough by then to not wholly discount his claim of being able to see ghosts. Especially when he’d reported that the ghost of a dead little girl had claimed I had no past lives to haunt me, and my own spirit guide had independently confirmed it. The entire idea still made me squirm with discomfort, but Billy’d been very generous in not giving me a ration of well-deserved shit over the past few months. There wasn’t much doubt that he was a far better person than I was.
“It’s nice.” I peered at his nails. “Subtle.”
Billy looked smug. “Thought so. Just enough to throw ’em off.”
Curiosity reigned. “Is that why you do it? To throw suspects off?” I’d never nerved myself up to ask before.
“Nah,” Billy said. “But it doesn’t hurt. You’re trying to look winsome, Joanie. What do you need?”
“To work on my winsome look, apparently.” I wrinkled my nose and Billy laughed. “Know anything about the significance of snakes on the astral plane?”
“I love how you do that,” he said, fighting down a grin that threatened to turn into veritable beaming. “All casual-like. Nonchalant. How much does that cost you?”
“I grind my teeth flat and featureless every night while I sleep,” I assured him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t far from true. I’d had to get a mouth guard two months ago. No wonder I couldn’t get a boyfriend. The image of me with a translucent green plastic guard was enough to set me off my feed.
“I weep to hear it,” Billy said, much too cheerfully. “Snakes, huh? Not a whole lot. The old gut,” which, I observed, was distinctly larger than it had been a month ago, “says betrayal, uncertainty, choices lying ahead.”
“Billy,” I said, staring at his belly, “is Melinda pregnant again?”
I never saw anybody blush as hard as Billy did right then, not even myself under Morrison’s gimlet eye. Not that I’d actually seen that.
“Shit,” Billy said with embarrassed enthusiasm, “I’m not supposed to tell anybody for another month. How’d you know?”
I cackled, then straightened up and cleared my throat, trying not to sound self-satisfied. “Sekrit Shamanic Knowledge,” I said, imbuing the words with as many capital letters as I could. Billy squinted at me. I cackled again, clapping a hand over my mouth. “You’ve put on weight,” I said behind my fingers. “Last time she was pregnant you gained forty pounds.”
“I lost it again!”
“How much weight did she gain?”
Billy’s lower lip protruded in a sulk. “About seventeen pounds. I think it’s a Jedi mind trick.”
I grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “I won’t tell. And congratulations. I won’t tell. But you might want to stop hitting The Missing O.”
“Snakes,” Billy said grouchily. “Why do you want to know about snakes?”
“I had a weird encounter this morning.”
Billy lit up. “Yeah? We could go over to the O and you could tell me abou—”
Morrison strode out of his office and down the hall. I scrambled to my feet. “No O for you,” I told Billy, “and streetwalking for me.” He made the obligatory snicker and I rolled my eyes. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”
“I’ll try to find out about snakes,” Billy called after me, and I ducked out of the station with Morrison hot on my tail.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morrison didn’t catch up with me. He didn’t have to. I spent the rest of the morning reciting what he would’ve said in my head, anyway. It was a bad sign when I’d bawl myself out and save my boss the trouble. I found myself writing more parking tickets than were strictly necessary. There was a kind of quota about them. Too many meant I was being overzealous, but not enough meant I was slacking. Being the sympathetic sort—at least when it came to cars—I usually erred on the side of slacking, but I was taking a mean vengeance against the universe by overdoing it today. I slapped a ticket on a double-parked cab and stalked by, muttering at the Morrison in my head.
“Lady, I cannot believe you just did that.”
My shoulders rose toward my ears of their own accord and my face wrinkled up until it felt like a raisin around my nose.
“I mean, after all I done for you, you go and write me a ticket? A…Christ, lady! A sixty dollar ticket?”
The raisin of my face started to split with a grin. I peeked over my shoulder. Leaning on the cab I’d just ticketed was the most solid old man I’d ever seen. His massive gray eyebrows were lifted toward an all-white hairline, and even squinting into the sun, his gray eyes were bright as he grinned.
“Gary,” I said, trying not to let my own smile slide into “idiotic.” “I thought you were calling me ‘copper’ these days.”
“I just can’t get the hang of it,” the cabbie admitted. He shoved away from the cab, holding the ticket as if it were something two weeks dead, and arched his bushy eyebrows more sharply. “You ticketed me, Jo. Doncha love me anymore?”
I snatched the ticket and stuffed it in my mouth, chewing. Two gnaws in, the flat gray taste of the paper and the sharp blue of the ink stung my tongue, and my mouth went all Mr. Magoo while I tried to figure out what to do with it now. “I didn’t know you were back,” I croaked, and spat the gooey ticket into my palm. “Don’t try that,” I advised, then grinned stupidly again. “You look good.”
“’Course I do,” Gary said with pleasant arrogance. He still had the build of the linebacker he’d once been, and deep-set Hemingway wrinkles assured the world he knew the score. “How’s my crazy dame?”
“Fine,” I said automatically, considered, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. You look like California was good for you. You’re tanned.”
Gary’s expression closed down, some of the brightness dying from gray eyes. “First time I’d been since Annie died.”
A cord of loss knotted around my heart, for all that I’d never met his wife. Gary’d walked into my life—or I’d climbed into his cab, more accurately—six months ago, the day everything went to hell. Somehow he’d become the most real thing in my life since then. “Was it tough?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. But she woulda hated the thought of me sittin’ around until I was rotted enough to die, so I figured I better get off my duff and go see some of the world again.”
I exhaled a snort. “Gary, I’m going to rot before you do.”
He squinted up at the sky. “In this heat, you’re prob’ly right. If I’d known it was gonna be ninety by noon, I mighta stayed in San Diego. At least the girls there wear bikinis.”
I put on my best indignant look. “Are you cheating on me, Gary? Running around with bikini-clad bimbos?”
“Yeah,” he said, good humor restored. “Blond ones.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” I smiled so I’d fool myself into thinking I wasn’t just a little bit jealous of a seventy-three-year-old’s romantic notions.
“Guess I better invite you over for dinner, then,” Gary said with aplomb.
“It’s a date,” I said instantly. “Wait. You’re not cooking, are you?”
He let out a shout of laughter. “Like you can complain about my cooking. I know what you live on.”
“Hey, you’ve got me eating frozen Italian dinners instead of mac and cheese. All your nagging did some good.”
“I don’t nag.”
“You do too. Italian dinners have vegetables in them. I haven’t eaten vegetables without nagging in my whole twenty-seven years.”
“Arright, if you say so, Jo.” He gave me a good-natured grin, like he knew he was humoring me.
Actually, it was true. I’d started eating better—frozen entrees did qualify as better than an endless diet of macaroni and cheese—in part because I wanted to look as good as he did at seventy-three. Hell, I’d be glad to look as good as he did at twenty-eight. “I get off work at seven, barring disaster.”
Gary’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Been any lately?”
I hesitated, then brushed the answer away with a wave of my hand. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”
“Arright.” Gary beamed at me. “Look, I gotta take off, there’s this crazy lady cop who wants to ticket my cab. Call when you’re on the way over. Dinner at seven-thirty.”
“It’s a date,” I repeated. “See you tonight.”
Gary gave me a broad wink and climbed into his cab. I stood on the sidewalk, smiling stupidly as I watched him drive away.
Gary being back in town lifted my spirits despite the oppressive heat. With a dinner date to look forward to, I stopped writing so many tickets and grabbed a doughnut for lunch. I wanted to drop into the astral realm to apologize to Coyote, and a real meal would take too long. Besides, I was on street beat, which I told myself gave me license to eat anything I wanted because I’d walk it off. So far I believed me.
Doughnut in hand, I scurried down to the garage, my favorite place in the station. The smell of gasoline and motor oil soothed the savage beast, or at least the savage Joanne.
Not everyone down there would meet my eye. I still hadn’t gotten used to that, especially from Nick, who’d been my supervisor and a pretty good friend not all that long ago. His greeting was made up of shoving his hands in his pockets and lifting his shoulders as he dropped his chin, turning him into a no-neck wonder. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the wall as I gave him a tentative smile. Tentative didn’t used to be in my vocabulary around the boys in the garage. We’d worked together for three years, and I’d thought I was just one of the guys. But in January I’d invited the Wild Hunt into the garage’s office, and two months later I’d collapsed on the stairs, bleeding from the ears. Since then things had been a little touchy when I came down to visit. I hoped if I just kept it cool everybody would relax again, but so far it hadn’t worked.
Still, hope sprang eternal. I strengthened my smile for Nick and said, “Hi,” as normally as I could. My voice squeaked and broke, which at least made him look at me. I cleared my throat and smiled again, wishing it didn’t feel plastic. “I was wondering if I could hang out in the office for a little bit.”
Nick’s gaze snapped back to the wall and he shrugged his shoulders higher. “Sure. Whatever.”
Not the most ringing endorsement I’d ever heard. Nick stalked off to harass one of the other mechanics, who gave me a wry look and rolled his eyes. It made me feel better, and I said, “Thanks,” to Nick’s retreating back before turning to discover my arch nemesis, Thor the Thunder God, standing about eight inches behind me. Thor—whose real name was something dull like Ed or Eddie or Freddie—had been hired to replace me in the motor pool. He was blond, about six foot five, and had shoulders that Thor himself would envy. I figured him taking my job gave me license to call him whatever I wanted. For some reason he didn’t like it.
We both stepped the same direction, trying to get out of each other’s way. We both hesitated, then lurched the other way. By the third twitch, I was grinning. “Shall we dance?”
He took a deliberately large step backward and gestured me by with a sarcastic flourish. My smile fell away. “Thank you, O Mighty God of Thunder.” I saw his mouth twist as I headed for the office. It was the one place in the station I thought I could slide into the astral realm without the help of a drum. I was comfortable there, and back in January I’d done enough—
This shaman thing was getting to me. I’d almost thought done enough magic there without the idea even making me hitch. I sat down with a shiver and tried to push the thought away. Despite everything, I didn’t like being comfortable enough with the idea that magic was real to just think it casually. Having oatmeal for breakfast was casual. Doing magic was not.
Then, excruciatingly aware of the irony, I relaxed and thought of my garden.
The bottom fell out of the world and I slid into a tunnel, twisting and bumping over earthen ridges, fast enough to make my nose tickle from the vibrations. It reminded me of the defensive driving course at the academy, rattling over speed bumps placed too closely together.
The tunnel shot to the left, leveling out and narrowing. I was aware that, like the tunnel, I became smaller and smaller as I scurried along it. In what little studying I’d done, I’d read that shapeshifting inside one’s own psyche was the first step toward a complete and physical shape-change. The book had talked earnestly about transforming into an eagle, a bear, a wolf—the usual World Wildlife Fund Charismatic Megafauna sorts of creatures. Nothing I’d read ever mentioned people turning into badgers or earthworms.
I realized with a dismayed jolt that the tunnel had disappeared entirely and I was grinding my way through the earth blindly, gnawing on dirt to move forward.
Earthworm. I really needed to learn to be careful about what I was thinking in trance states.
Badger, I thought encouragingly, and a few seconds later burst upward through the earth in a flurry of dirt and strong claws. I scrambled out of my tunnel and shook myself all over, bits of grass and soil plopping to the grass around me.
Everyone has an inner landscape, shaped by the events and thoughts that make a life. The first time I’d been in mine, it had been stiff and parched. Now it looked distorted, seen from only several inches above the ground and in faded grayscale. To the right was a thick, shimmering pool of mercury, ripples wobbling over the surface to break against the shore. Behind it was a tall granite-streaked bluff, too high to easily see the top of from a badger’s vantage point. To the left, a lawn manicured so short it was nearly dead spread out, a handful of dark-leafed hedges sprouting up in asture blocks of green. Stone pathways and stone benches made straight lines through the garden.
Possibly, just possibly, I still had some inner-garden nurturing to do.
Immediately behind me, my badger hole folded in on itself and smoothed out again, leaving lawn behind. “Well, that’s something,” I said out loud, as the world around me stained with color. The pool faded from mercury to clear, its earthy bottom refracting brown through reflected gray skies. I rolled onto my back, briefly missing the extraordinary strength of the badger’s legs, and closed my eyes. “Coyote?” I tried to picture him, long-legged and golden-eyed, then laughed silently as the image slid between Coyote-the-man and Coyote-the-coyote. Straight black hair drooped over perked furry ears. He looked like a character from Disney’s Robin Hood gone terribly wrong.
A rustle hissed over the grass like wax paper sliding against itself. I sat up, grinning. “You’re always reading my mind,” I said. “So get a load of how I think of…you?”
A rattlesnake swayed in front of me, black eyes reflecting the sudden paleness of my skin.
A snake in my garden.
For one hysterical moment I looked for an apple tree. Then panic took over and I crab-walked backward, elbows and knees going everywhere. It took another few seconds to make myself stop by asserting enough control to dig my fingers into the earth. “My garden,” I croaked. “You can’t be here.”
The rattler slithered forward a few inches, dry scrape against the short grass. “You can’t be here,” I repeated. It lifted its head and hissed at me, long tongue darting in and out. I shot to my feet, barely keeping myself from leaping to one of the stone benches and screaming like a ’50s housewife. It was my garden. My rules were supposed to apply. I bit the inside of my cheek and closed my eyes, reverting to the car metaphor I was most comfortable with. Rolling up the mental windows and making a shield of glass around myself reminded me of movies where the venomous animal was kept away from the actors by a sheet of glass.
The snake bonked its nose against the glass, striking out and coiling back as I opened my eyes. Its tongue thrust out again, and it reared back, expressionless flat eyes somehow looking offended. I grinned in a breathless combination of triumph and fear, and waggled my fingers at it. “G’bye, then.”
For once I let myself forget the vehicle metaphor, and instead spun glass. Heat poured off my body as I willed it to soften the shield between myself and the snake. I blew air through pursed lips and the glass expanded, spilling clear and delicate over the lawn as I protected my garden. The snake squiggled backward, forced to the edges of the garden.
I nearly had the thing vanquished when it shifted.
It didn’t change like Coyote did, inside a blink. Instead it reared up, making a long slender line of itself, balancing on a single coil of muscle. A hood flared, cobralike, then widened farther, broadening until it became shoulders. The body thickened, arms sprouting and waist narrowing. Hips splayed, legs splitting from the expanding breadth of muscle that had been its body. The coil upon which she had balanced became feet, small and bare. I jerked my eyes up to her face.
The rattlesnake’s dead eyes gazed back at me; like Ra, she was human-shaped with a snake’s head, large enough to fit the body. She flicked her tongue at me once more and completed the transformation into a brisk-looking Native American woman whose age I couldn’t judge. Her eyes were still very black, though bright with reflected sunlight. She had salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles around her eyes. Her cheeks were round over a thin mouth that looked like it was used to smiling, but which was at the moment pushed out in a thoughtful moue. “Well, you certainly are a handful.”
“What?”
“You’re a handful,” she repeated. “Sliding around the astral realm, leaving psychic debris all over the place, and with such terrible shields I could walk right in here. I can see what needs to be done. At least you have potential,” she added, shaking her head. “You nearly pushed me out just now.”
I set my teeth and reared my head back, reestablishing the crystalline wall. It glimmered, becoming a solid curve of glass between the snake woman and myself. Her eyebrows—straight and slightly angled, like Spock’s—rose a fraction of an inch, and she took a step back. “You see?” She sounded pleased.
“Who are you? And what are you doing here?”
“My name is Judy Morningstar,” she said. “I’m going to be your teacher.”
CHAPTER SIX
“The hell you are.” Guilt mixed with incredulity in my voice. Coyote’d just finished telling me I needed a teacher, and I hated to admit he might be right. “Get out of my head. I’m doing just fine on my own.” Ah, yes. The petulant, spoiled child tone. That always went over well.
Judy sat down with irritating grace, as if she’d had it drilled into her by a dance instructor when she was too small to protest. “You’ve regressed from what your abilities six months ago were,” she disagreed. “Even three months ago. You haven’t accepted your power or the responsibility that comes with it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I stopped Cernunnos, didn’t I? I fought the banshee. That all took power.”
“Oh yes.” She nodded. “In the moment of crisis, you did what had to be done, with the tools at hand. You used enormous power, but without regard for the consequences.”
A thin trickle of apprehension dribbled down my spine. “I was careful. The hospitals and the airport, all the power stayed on so people would be okay.” Chills swept over my arms regardless of the heat, oppressive even here in my own garden. I tried rubbing the goose bumps away without success.
“Consequences aren’t always so easily seen as that, Joanne. You know there’s something wrong, yet you ignore it.”
The discolored streets and life-lights I’d seen with my second sight flashed through my memory, streaky vision of wrongness. “I saw it,” I said reluctantly. “I don’t know what it is, though.”
“It’s you,” Judy said. “The power you used six months ago disrupted weather systems all over the world, and worst of all in Seattle. How long did it take the snow to melt, Joanne?”
Seattle, not notorious for snow, had seen a storm that began the week after I gained shamanic powers and hadn’t stopped worth mentioning until April. When spring hit, it did so overnight, temperatures soaring into the seventies. There’d been flooding for weeks, and since then it’d been drier than bones. I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking my head. Denial: it wasn’t just a river in Egypt. The worst part was the uncomfortable, shoulder-hunching suspicion that she was telling God’s own truth. I knew something was wrong, and I hadn’t been able to find its center. I also hadn’t looked at myself. Dammit.
“You’ve left a mess to clean up, Joanne. You used tremendous power once or twice, and what have you done since then?”
My shoulders hunched again, without my permission. I hated body language. Most of it didn’t pass through my brain for a spot-check on what I wanted to give away.
It wasn’t that I’d done nothing with the gifts that had been catalyzed in me. I’d done detail work, fixing up chips in peoples’ paint, so to speak. My coworker Bruce got a hairline fracture on his ankle and the doctors had been astounded at how quickly he healed. Not quite overnight, but within a few days he was running again, without discomfort. I took a perverse pleasure in smoothing over hangnails and papercuts when I shook hands. One of the books I’d read said those who needed healing had to believe the healing could be done. I’d discovered that for small physical injuries, being unaware that healing was taking place was just about as good.
But none of it was earth-shattering, world-saving stuff, and the truth was, most of it made no long-term difference to the people I’d helped.
My shoulders inched farther toward my ears. “Look, I promise I’ll do better, okay? Go away.”
“I can’t do that, Joanne. I’m committing myself to teaching you, and unlike you, I take that responsibility seriously.”
Anger flared in my belly, sending blood up to stain my cheeks and make my ears hot. “It’s not that I don’t take it seriously. I just never asked for this in the first place—”
“But you accepted it.” There was a note of smugness in her voice, almost as unlikable as my whining. “Do you accept me as your teacher, Joanne Walker?”
I scowled at the pond. Coyote wanted me to have a teacher. “Did Coyote send you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Genuine surprise filled her voice. “You called out for help twice today. Traditionally it takes three cries, but I thought you might not want to wait. You expected someone as powerful as Coyote to send you a teacher?”
My shoulders couldn’t hunch any farther, so I tightened my arms around my ribs. “It seemed likely. Anyway, I didn’t know I was yelling for help.”
Judy pursed her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “If you’re on casual terms with Coyote, maybe I misinterpreted your need for help.” She got to her feet as smoothly as she’d sat, bowing her head toward me. “I hope I’ll see you again, Joanne.” She began to fade, again not like Coyote, but as if she were a ghost.
I gritted my teeth and dug my fingers into my ribs. “Wait.”
The fade stopped and she lifted her head again, one eyebrow raised in question. I clenched my jaw a couple of times before asking, “Who are you? I mean, how do I know you’re qualified to teach me? Do you even exist outside here?” I swept the fingers of one hand in a circle, more meaning to encompass the astral realm than my garden.
Judy gave me a very brief, wry smile. “You mean, would I answer if you dropped me an e-mail message? Not usually. I’m terrible about checking it. As for qualified…” She spread her hands and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve practiced magic for most of my existence. We could try a handful of lessons and you could decide if I’m the teacher for you.”
“Most of your existence?” I thought that was a weird word to choose, and it showed in my voice. Judy’s smile went less wry and more open.
“You, of all people, should know that life is too limited a term for those who walk in other realms.”
I remembered, quite vividly, a sour-faced shaman who was irritated at her untimely death because she was young in the practice of shamanism, and others who had been tolerant of her because they had far more experience, even though some of them looked much younger in years. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Yeah. I guess so. All right.” I pressed my lips together and looked at her again. “All right, fine. We’ll see how it goes for, like, three lessons, okay? And then I get to reevaluate.” The crystal wall I’d built had dimmed during our conversation, a physical sign that I was relenting mentally.
Judy smiled and ducked her head in another semibow. “Wonderful. We’ll meet here tomorrow at six to begin.”
“Six? In the morning?”
“The mind is clearer and less burdened after dreaming.”
I groaned. “Okay. Six. God.”
Judy grinned, took one step backward, and disappeared.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” I muttered. I wished I thought I’d accomplished ridding myself of her, but it was painfully clear that she’d opted to leave on her own. I curled a lip grouchily and cast out my consciousness, calling for Coyote.
There was no answer.
I opened my eyes again, watching the clock mark away seconds in clicks that hadn’t seemed loud when I went under. I had fifteen seconds of lunch break left, and a sour lump of doughnut in my belly.
The second hand swept to the top. I got to my feet and walked out of the office, saying, “Hey,” unbidden when Thor accidentally met my eyes. He jerked his head in a nod, a startled, “Hey,” following me up the stairs.
Another “Hey,” caught my attention as I headed for the front doors, Billy swinging around a corner to grin beefily down at me. “Joanie. There you are. Snakes are good juju. Thought you’d like to know.”
I stared at him for a couple of seconds, then shook myself. “Could’ve fooled me. What do you mean?”
“Looked ’em up on the Net, but I really should’ve known it before. I mean, think about it. The Hippocratic symbol—”
“—a staff with the snakes twined around it. Duh.”
Billy grinned. “Yep. Duh. So, yeah, basically, good vibes. They’re symbols of healing and renewal and change.”
I thought of Judy, shifting from snake to woman in my garden, and tried to smile. “Great. Good. I could use some.”
Billy’s eyebrows drew down. “You okay, Joanie? You look like you lost your best friend.”
Memory hit me in the sternum, so real and immediate that my breath stopped. I lifted my hand, pressing the heel against my breastbone, trying to clear the tightness. My heart pounded in fast, thick pulses that brought the doughnut back up to the gagging point, making me swallow heavily. Color burned my cheeks, and I resented my fair skin all over again.
“Joanie? Are you okay?” Billy caught my shoulders, concern wrinkling his forehead. My vision was cloudy, a haze settling down between us. For a few seconds all I could do was remember.
I was fifteen and my father and I had been living in North Carolina for over a year, by far the longest time I’d ever lived in one place in my life. I’d never been anywhere long enough to make good friends; that pretty, petite Sara Buchanan had chosen me as a best friend was a source of regular amazement and pleasure to me. But in memory, her eyebrows were drawn down over angry hazel eyes, and the golden-brown skin that I envied so much was suffused with furious red.
She’d said she didn’t like him. I was already terrified by what I’d done in trying to fit in, trying to make a boy like me. I hadn’t meant for things to go as far as they did, and I only wanted someone to tell me it’d be okay. She’d said she didn’t like him, and when I’d whispered that, confused and frightened, she’d barked derisive laughter at me. I lied! God, what was I supposed to say, yeah, I like him? How obvious is that? God, Joanne, don’t you know anything?
“No.” I whispered it now, just like I’d done then. No, I didn’t know anything. I’d grown up solitary enough, with my father rather than girls for company, that I’d honestly had no idea that her hair-tossing denial had been a front.
Tiny black spots of panic swam at the corners of my vision, etching around the memory of Sara until she stood out, full of vibrant color, against an inky background. There was fear in my stomach, more potent than what I’d felt with the boy. The First Boy; even in memory I didn’t let myself think his name. Panic edged through me, so I could feel the flow of blood fluttering through my heart, little missed murmurs that I couldn’t catch my breath to banish. Like the tide coming in, sound thrummed against my eardrums, blocking out Sara’s words, although I could see them in the shape of her mouth.
I’m never speaking to you again.
And she didn’t.
She watched me with cool disdain that turned into hate when I began to show a few months later. The First Boy went back to his mother’s people in Canada, and none of us, not me, not Sara, certainly not the Boy, ever told anyone he was the father. When the twins were born and the little girl died, I tried to ask Sara to speak for her. She looked through me as if I wasn’t there. I’d lost my best friend.
And even now, almost thirteen years later, tears stung my eyes as I shook off Billy’s hands. “I’m all right.”
I didn’t sound all right, my voice thick and stuffy and coming through my nose. I was afraid to blink, for fear those tears would roll down my cheeks. Billy’s whole face turned down like an unhappy Muppet and he put his arm around my shoulders.
“Come on. A cold washcloth will help.” He walked me down the hall, blocking me from the other officers’ view with his body, and ushered me into the men’s bathroom. I let out a stressy little giggle.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a boy’s bathroom before. I thought they were supposed to be all dirty and gross.” The words spilled out in a too-high, too-fast voice, but it was better than bursting into tears. Billy smiled, pulling paper towels out of the dispenser and running water over them.
“Here you go. You really think Morrison’d let us keep the bathroom all dirty and gross?”
I buried my face in the cold towels, pressing the wet paper against my eyes. “No,” I admitted hoarsely. My shoulders dropped as the coolness pulled some of the burning from my eyes and cheeks. I snuffled, lowering the papers to find Billy leaning against a sink, arms folded over his chest as he frowned at me.
“You okay, Joanie? You want to tell me what that was all about?”
I wiped my nose on my wrist and snuffled again, looking away. “I’m just being stupid.” I was suddenly tired, the price of sudden and high emotion. And maybe the price of using a power that I’d been doing my best to ignore for several months. I’d been uncharacteristically emotional the day I became a shaman, too, now that I thought about it. “It’s been one of those days. I’ve been up and down and all over the place.”
“That girl this morning a friend of yours?”
“What?” I looked at him, then dropped my shoulders, relieved for an excuse to hang my behavior on. “No. No. I guess I’m just a little more freaked out about it than I thought.” It was as good an excuse as any.
“Happens to the best of us,” Billy said. “You need a drink.”
My eyes bugged. “I’m on duty.”
“Hot chocolate with mint,” he said, still firmly. “Wash your face again and I’ll buy you one.”
A little bubble of happiness burst through my misery. I shuffled forward to turn the cold water on again, splashing it over my face, and reached blindly for a dry paper towel, which Billy put into my hand. “You’re a good friend,” I said into the towel.
“I just know your comfort food hot buttons,” he said, pleased with himself. “Come on, Joanie. It’ll be okay.”
Billy was right. Just going outside did me some good, even if it was ninety-three degrees and about equal humidity. I felt sorry for the protesters down at the Seattle Center, and wondered how the little girl was doing.
I ended up with an Italian soda, because it was way too warm out for hot chocolate, but the very normal act of getting a drink and getting back on my beat did a lot to restore my equilibrium. I had a tentative teacher, which would make Coyote happy, and snakes were good juju. The Internet said so, and if you couldn’t believe the Internet, who could you believe?
The rest of the day was blessedly normal, except I was so grungy and sticky with sweat by the time work was over I called Gary and told him not to have dinner until eight. He said, “Aw, damn, and me with the microwave heatin’ up already,” which kept a grin on my face until I arrived on his doorstep, newly showered and wearing as little as humanly possible. For me, that meant a strappy tank top with one of those built-in bra thingies and a pair of shorts that I considered to be cut daringly short, although I had nothing on Daisy Duke. Gary arched an eyebrow and gave me a grin that was better than words, even if he was seventy-three years old. I momentarily wished I had long hair so I could fluff it. Then reality kicked in: if I’d had long hair, I’d have cut it off by now in an attempt to cool down, so it didn’t really matter.
The house didn’t smell like he’d been cooking. I kicked my sandals off and padded through the living room into the kitchen, where cold cuts and crackers and fruit and a pasta salad were arranged rather elegantly on a platter. I stole a piece of ham, wrapped it around some cheese, and nibbled. “You do this yourself or you buy it?”
I could all but hear the old man’s offended look as he came in behind me. “Did it myself. Donno about you, but I think it’s too hot to cook or eat hot food. I got salmon in the freezer, but you’re gonna have to wait till the heat breaks.”
I grinned over my shoulder at him and picked up the platter to bring it out to the living room. There were picture windows that went all the way up to a vaulted ceiling overlooking an expansive front yard full of lilacs and other flowering things I couldn’t identify. There was enough actual lawn that the kids next door tended to spill out onto it, having water balloon fights as they hid behind the hedges. Gary and Annie had owned the place since about 1965, though he’d been living in an apartment, having the place modernized and refurbished when I met him. Between that and the endlessly climbing real estate value in Seattle, I couldn’t imagine what the market value of the place was now. Gary could probably retire rich, if he wanted to move out. Or retire.
“Lemonade or water?” Gary asked from the kitchen. My mouth puckered up at the very idea of lemonade, so I requested it happily as I put the food platter on the coffee table. The furniture was leather, but there were hand-sewn quilts thrown over everything, so a person could sit down in the armchair without sticking to it. I did, and Gary came out of the kitchen with a jug, two glasses, and a finger pointed at me accusingly. “Get outta my chair, kid.”
I laughed like a guilty five-year-old and squirmed out of Gary’s chair to kick back on the couch. “I had to try.”
He snorted and sat down, pouring juice into glasses that clinked with just a couple of ice cubes. “You always try. Arright, Jo, so what’s going on now? I go away for a few weeks and miss all the good stuff?”
“Only you would think it’s the good stuff.” I squished farther into the couch and, between bites of crackers and meat, told him about my day. Six months ago Gary’d thought I was a hundred percent insane when I climbed in his cab in search of a woman I’d seen from an airplane. By the end of that same morning I’d come back from the dead and he was determined to stick with me on the logic that I was the most interesting thing that’d happened to him in years. Things I could barely handle, like the very idea of the power that’d awakened inside me, he took in stride, shrugging off improbability with easy axioms about old dogs needing to learn new tricks, or they’d just up and die. By that standard, I suspected I’d been dead for half my life already.
“You think she’s right?” Gary asked, bushy eyebrows elevated as I finished. “About the heat wave being somethin’ you did?”
“Gary, if I thought I could affect global weather patterns, I would go home and hide under the bed for the rest of my life.” I stared gloomily at the pasta salad, my appetite suddenly gone. Gary noticed and harrumphed.
“So you think she’s right.”
I sighed and sank a few inches farther into the couch. The quilt slid down over my shoulder, blocking most of my view of Gary. I felt like a Kilroy, peeking over it at him. “So what do I do?”
Gary gave me an incredulous look that made me want to pull the quilt all the way up so it covered me entirely. “You fix it, Jo. You go listen to this dame and you learn what you gotta do to fix it.”
I pushed the quilt back up over the arm of the couch and reached for my salad again, picking at it without enthusiasm. “I hate it when you’re right.”
Gary beamed. “You got a lotta hate going on, then, darlin’. No point in bein’ an old dog if you can’t be right.”
A wheeze of a laugh erupted up through my throat, quick jolts that were more like a cough than laughter, but a grin spread across my face. “Yeah, yeah yeah. All right, fine. Be that way. I’ll show you.”
“You will?”
“Yeah.” I got up from the couch, heading for the kitchen again. “I’m going to eat all your ice cream. So there.”
“What makes you think I’ve got any?”
“You’ve always got ice cream.” I pulled open the freezer and took out a carton. “Gary! It’s rocky road. You know I don’t like rocky road!”
I heard him kick the footrest up on his chair, and when I looked over my shoulder he had his arms folded behind his head, expression smug as a cat’s. “Now who showed who? Get me a bowl, wouldya? And if you dump it on my head like you’re thinkin’ about,” he added a minute later as I came out with his bowl of ice cream, “I won’t tell you where that raspberry-chocolate stuff you like is hidden.”
I stopped with the bowl tilted at a precarious angle and stared down at him. He grinned up at me genially. “Youth and good looks are no match for old age and treachery, doll. Who wins?”
“You do, you old goat.”
Gary’s grin expanded exponentially. “Garage freezer.”
I went out, trying not to laugh as I grumbled dire imprecations loudly enough for him to hear me. Gary’s chortles followed me all the way into the garage.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Friday, June 17, 5:58 a.m.
6:00 a.m. two mornings in a row was more than any civilized person should have to bear. Or me, for that matter. I sat at the edge of my garden’s pond, not looking behind me. I could feel Judy, ten steps away, standing in the middle of the very short lawn. The grass looked, if anything, worse than it had the day before. Clouds hung thick and low over the cliffs that made up the northern boundary of the garden, full of the promise of rain. I felt like that myself, on the edge of overflowing with tears. It bothered me that I still felt that fragile after spending the evening at Gary’s and eating an entire pint of chocolate-raspberry swirl ice cream.
Judy sat down beside me on the pond shore, close enough that I could feel the warmth of her skin next to mine. I leaned away semiconsciously, the clouds above darkening with displeasure. I might need a teacher, but that didn’t mean she had to come barging into my personal space.
“Where does the power come from?” she asked in a light, lilting tone. It reminded me of my neighbor’s cat, which habitually sat beside the sink and stared at the faucet while she washed dishes. When she turned the water off, he would thrust his head beneath the faucet, as if trying to figure out where the water came from.
“Everywhere,” I said, able to answer Judy, if not the cat. “Every living thing carries power within itself. A shaman is a conduit, a focus, for that power. We can use what’s given to us to affect changes. To heal. That’s what we’re supposed to do, is heal.”
“At least you’ve learned something.” She didn’t sound particularly pleased.
“Go me.” I waved an imaginary flag. Judy’s gaze slid sideways toward me, then away again.
“Asking you what your spirit animals are would be rude,” Judy said. The implication that I should tell her anyway was clear, but instead I scowled at the water and shrugged.
“Haven’t got any.” I glanced at Judy, whose stare all but bore a hole into my head. “What?”
“You have no spirit animals? You’ve never done a quest for one?” Her expression was indecipherable.
“I’ve done a couple. Nothing came to me, or whatever’s supposed to happen.” It irritated me that my halfhearted attempts to summon a spirit animal felt like failures. The truth was I wanted my cake and to eat it, too. I didn’t want to admit any of this shamanic nonsense was real, but I also wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make it so. I was pretty sure I’d thwarted my own questing experiments with the mental equivalent of concrete bunkers of disbelief.
“Is this really so hard for you to resolve?” Judy asked. “You’ve been a part of these other realities. Why do you reject them so fiercely?”
“No sense in being Irish if you can’t be thick,” I muttered. It was a cop-out answer, but it made Judy’s mouth quirk.
“Maybe we can wear some of that thickness away. I can guide your search for spirit animals, if you think it might help.”
I mumbled so incoherently even I didn’t know what I was trying to say. Judy’s smile broadened. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She opened her hands, a skin drum appearing in them. “I’ll drum us under,” she said. “Are you ready?”
It was different.
The drumbeat rang in my blood, tasting like copper. I ran up a mountainside, nimble as a goat, leaping from one stone to another without hesitation or fear. The sky above was pale, washed-out blue, so thin a sparkle of stars shone through it.
To the west I saw a glint in the sky, gold sheering through the paleness like godslight.
The air was rarefied, burning my lungs as I swallowed down deep breaths. I crossed some unseeable barrier as I climbed, and snow began gleaming in cold soft spots around me. I kicked it up in puffs and slid through it as I scrambled higher.
The shadow of a bird passed over me, blue against the snow. I squinted up into the sky, but the bird was gone again.
I couldn’t see or feel Judy anywhere, and wondered if she’d managed to come on this journey with me at all. My hands were hot, excitement pounding through them. I touched the frozen ground as I clambered upward, leaving steaming prints deep in the snow.
A sharp, almost sheer cliff face rose up in front of me. I dug my hands into the snow, pulling myself up, my breath whisked away in little clouds of heat. Ice stung my palms and drops of sweat rolled out of my hair and into my eyes. I lost track of time, inching up the cliff. My arms burned, fingers splaying wide in search of handholds, and then I folded my hand over a distinct edge. Panting with triumph, I swung my leg up and hauled myself onto the top of the mountain. I stayed on my hands and knees, head hanging down while I wheezed, then pushed myself to my feet, bracing myself on my thighs.
There was nothing on the other side of the mountain.
The world fell away, straight and featureless into pale blue sky. Clouds drifted miles below me, and rushing wind made my hair stand up straight from my face. I leaned into it, trusting the strength of the wind to keep me from plummeting off the edge of the world.
About a million miles below me, an eagle, gold as sunrise, rose and fell on the updrafts. I tilted farther into the wind, trying to catch my breath as it was ripped away from me. The eagle shadowed in and out of distant clouds, lighting them from within with its own golden strength. It twisted, playing in the updrafts, then folded its wings and dove out of sight, a predator dropping beyond the edge of the world.
The wind stopped.
I pitched forward with one fruitless flail of my arms. The mountain face zipped past me, streaks of granite dark behind me, miles of sky in front of me. I spread my arms and legs, swallowing against panic and sickness, trying to slow my fall. I couldn’t see land below me, only blue that faded into stars.
Wind slammed into me again, so hard it drove me upward a few feet before I began to fall again. Another updraft tossed me higher, then cut out from under me so fast I screamed, leaving my stomach yards above me. It happened again, then again, buffeting me through the sky like a feather.
I was flying.
A giddy laugh erupted from my throat as I banked into the wind and soared, always losing sky. I rolled onto my back, looking for the top of the mountain, already so far away it seemed to go on forever. I arched my back, spilling upside-down through the sky, eyes closed against the rush of air.
Talons pinched closed around my outstretched arms.
I opened my eyes to the brilliance of the golden eagle’s belly above me. Its belly alone was wider than I was tall, and tilting my head to squint at its length made me feel like a doll in the hands of a child. The wings, stretched to their fullest, were so broad that the tips faded into invisibility from my vantage point, and the feathers looked as if they’d been deliberately crafted of the purest gold. Even its down was etched in distinct soft threads.
Eagle. The thought came to me with embarrassing clarity. Not even I, deliberately unaware of Native American mythology, could fail to recognize the incredible animal that had caught me. Creator, destroyer, all-around magnificent totem creature, so far beyond the ordinary I cringed at myself again. I’d thought a thunderbird was a lousy eagle?
The thunderbird screamed, a high sweet sound that could have been rage or pleasure. Its claws snapped up to its belly, flinging me out of its talons with bone-jarring strength. I flew upwards for a few disconcerting seconds, flipping end over end through the cold sky.
Then its beak crushed my ribs and we fell through the air, the thunderbird tearing me apart and eating me.
The drumbeat was steady and calm. My eyes popped open to a gibbous moon, hanging low and fat in the carmine sky. There were jungles, thick and lush, heavy green vines hanging against black tree trunks, and the air smelled of rich earth and old rot. There was no sign of the mountain or the pale blue sky that went on forever, and certainly no thunderbird. I shook myself, turning and staring around in confusion. I remembered some pain, and more fear, and the blackness that was the inside of the thunderbird’s belly, but—
“How’d I get here?”
Judy stepped up to my side, smiling. “It can be confusing for someone else to lead the spirit journey. You’ll get used to it, and then you’ll learn to do it on your own. As we traveled down I asked for those who were willing to guide you to join us. These are those who have answered my call on your behalf.”
She lifted her right hand. A copperhead snake, eyes bright and black, wound up around her arm and opened his mouth wide to me. “The strengths that snakes have I share with you,” he said. Its s’s were sibilant and hissed, stretched out long enough to make chills rise on my arms.
“Thank you.” I didn’t want a snake guide. My whole feeling about snakes was very mixed, after the encounter in the Dead Zone. I couldn’t think of a polite way to say that, though.
The snake flicked his tongue at me and twisted his way up to Judy’s shoulder, piling himself into tall coils there. As I watched, he changed, head growing rounder, shoulders appearing. Wings sprouted, a chest and spindly legs shaping out of the coils. His darting tongue stretched and became glossy and hard, until a raven perched on Judy’s shoulder, only its bright eyes the same as the snake’s. The raven stretched his throat and cawed, a sound of raucous music, before he cocked his head and stared at me one-eyed. “The strengths that ravens have, I share with you,” he said.
I found myself smiling. “Thank you. You’re beautiful,” I added impulsively. He puffed out his feathers, preening with satisfaction, then leaped off Judy’s shoulder, wings fanning out to encompass the shadows dropped by the enormous moon.
Darkness swept up into him, broadening his chest and lengthening his body. His wings buckled forward, becoming legs, his tail feathers extending into long black hairs. His neck elongated again, face shattering from a bird’s delicacy to the fine weight of a horse’s head. He snapped his tail over his sides as if brushing off a coating of dust, and pranced a time or two with his front feet, before inclining his head. His forelock fell over bright black eyes. Looking for all the world like an impatient kid, he tossed his head before saying, “The strengths that horses have, I share with you.”
“Thank you,” I said a third time, then, searching for some appropriate response, asked, “How can I honor you?”
The horse snorted and stomped his feet again, two solid thumps into the dark ground. From one hoof print, the snake coiled up again, winding itself around the horse’s leg. From the other, the raven exploded forth in a flurry of feathers and cawing, then winged around to settle on the horse’s head, between his ears. “How may I honor you all,” I amended hastily, “for sharing your gifts with me.”
“By heeding the words of your teacher,” the snake suggested.
“By seeking truth.” The raven gave the snake a one-eyed look, then turned it on me. I felt inexplicably guilty. No, not inexplicably: I could explic it perfectly well. I just didn’t like to.
“By accepting.” The horse’s voice had a raw tenor to it that shivered down my spine, making me cold despite the jungle heat. Hairs stood up on my arms, making me shiver a second time. I met the horse’s eyes for a few seconds, feeling exposed and vulnerable under its black gaze.
Months earlier, there’d been a moment of clarity, a moment when I’d understood that as a shaman, I could make a real difference in the world. The confidence had slipped away almost immediately when the conflict with Cernunnos had ended, and I’d let it. The world was simpler without the responsibility I’d taken on, and not believing was easy when there weren’t otherworldly monsters to fight every day. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and struggling to remember the certainty that had filled my bones and my breath for a few hours.
I couldn’t. It was a struggle, like trying to bring a face to mind clearly. Instead of holding it, I could only grasp at the edges, knowing I’d had it and lost it again. Every time I tried, it slipped farther away, until my hands were shaking from a wholly different exertion.
“Can you tell me?” I asked, my voice small as I opened my eyes again. “Can you tell me how many times I’ll have to remind myself, or relearn what I can do, before I believe it without question?”
The raven made a derisive sound, a sort of trill that seemed to come from behind his eyes. “To be without question is to be dead.”
“Thanks,” I said, equilibrium temporarily restored by wryness. “Very reassuring.”
“Every day,” the horse said. “Until the hour comes when your first breath tells you the aches of the world and your first exhalation heals them, every morning you’ll have to fight to believe.” He inclined his head, making the raven grip his forelock and spread his wings to keep from sliding off. “Your nature is not that of an easy believer, but that’s not a flaw. It only means that when you accept the truth—” He snorted, tossing his head with very horselike amusement.
“That wild horses won’t be able to drag me from it?” I asked, smiling a little.
“Even so,” the horse agreed. The raven cawed, clearly irritated at having been outclevered. I looked down at the snake, wound around the horse’s leg, and sighed as I kneeled.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Do you have an answer for me?”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “Ssstudy. Your mind is closed to the possibility that this is real, even when you live it. Ssstudy will help open those doorsss. Then you will not look back, only forward, and you will go with strength. Heed your teacher. Heed your elders. Heed your ssspirits. When faith wavers, look to the things that have crossed over with you.”
An electronic beeping broke through the last of the snake’s words, an ugly counterpoint to the drum that still thumped in the background. “It’s time to go back,” Judy said. “We’ll meet again tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” I said, more to the spirit animals than to the woman who’d brought them to me. “I’ll try to remember what you said and honor your words and advice.”
“Honor your alarm clock,” the raven suggested, and I opened my eyes to find out I was already late for work.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I’d bite my own tongue off before admitting it to Morrison, but I actually sort of liked being a beat cop. Motor oil was good for the soul and all, but the truth is that as a mechanic I didn’t get out much. The only time I saw a new face was when there was a new hire, and let’s not even talk about the exercise regime I didn’t follow. I’d lost twelve pounds since I’d been stuck on patrol duty, and I felt like She Who Was Not To Be Messed With as a result.
The North Precinct covered a huge area, thirty-two square miles above and around the University of Washington. It ran the gamut of neighborhoods, from very nice to very bad, and I’d walked more of them than I’d ever dreamed possible. I had two favorite beats: the first was through some bad sections of Aurora, which was nobody’s sensible idea of a favorite beat. Still, it passed under the no-longer-guttering streetlight that had started me down the path I was on now. Given my usual bad temper about the whole shamanism business, I wasn’t sure why I was drawn back to the place that kicked it off. Moth to flame, I guessed. Either that or the less flattering “humans are stupid,” but I thought maybe I’d stick with the metaphor.
The other one I liked was University Avenue. I lived on its far north end, and working that beat always seemed like something of a reward, like I was keeping my very own personal neighborhood safe from hooligans.
I imagine every big city has at least one drag strip like the Ave. To my mind, University Bookstore was its linchpin. Spreading out from it on either side were restaurants and storefronts ranging from burger joints to tofu houses and from The Gap to bohemian, incense-filled shops filled with Indian imports. Young people—I observed them that way, like I was hitching along with a walker—spilled out of coffee shops to sit under sun-faded umbrella tables, chatting up every topic from Kant to Britney.
Police patrol was heavy along the Ave, increasing every fall when new students arrived to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Seattle. It used to be that any undercover cop could score the drug of her choice on the Ave. It was a matter of departmental pride that these days it was widely acknowledged that there was too much heat to risk turning a little illegal profit. The Ave was a battle against chaos, and for once, order was winning.
I usually got a friendly nod or two from store owners, particularly the restaurants I frequented. When I’d first begun patrol duty, I’d had to argue extensively with Mrs. Li, owner of my favorite Chinese place, who was convinced that all that walking would wear me away to a stick. She kept trying to give me “a little snack”—usually enough to feed two for a day—on the house, to keep my strength up. I finally convinced her that as a police officer I couldn’t take what she offered without compromising myself, and she retaliated by feeding me twice as much when I came in to the shop off-duty.
I waved at her through the restaurant window and grinned my way up the street. A long-nosed bicycle messenger zipped past me, illegally riding on the sidewalk. I barked, “Hey!” He shot a nasty glance over his shoulder at me and didn’t stop. At the corner, he bounced his bike off the curb and down into the street, careening across the avenue to ride on the correct, if not right, side. Rather than chase him down on foot, I punched 411 on my generally despised department-issued cell phone and got the number for the company he worked for. It took the length of waiting for one stoplight to register a request for disciplinary action. I crossed the street with the rest of the herd cheerfully. If I was lucky, I’d see his bike ahead of me and get to ticket it for vehicular misuse.
It was a sad, sad state when I was glad about carrying a cell phone and considered the opportunity to ticket a bicycle to be good luck.
Bells on a shop door behind me chimed urgently as someone pushed and held it open. “Excuse me. Officer Walker?”
I blinked over my shoulder. A girl of about twenty leaned in the door, vibrating it enough to keep the bells ringing. “Er, yeah? I mean, yes?”
Relief brightened her face. “Oh good. I had a premonition, you see, a dream about you, but I wasn’t sure if Walker was your last name or if it was just that you were a walker.” She gestured at me. “Foot patrol, see?”
I backed up a step and glanced at the name above the shop. It did not, as I half expected it to, say Lunatics “R” Us. Actually, it bore the innocuous name of East Asian Imports, although the girl whose leaning continued to jangle the bells was about as East Asian as Queen Elizabeth. She was blond and on the slightly chunky side of curvy, with brown eyes and a hopeful expression. For an unkind moment I thought of golden retrievers. “What can I do for you, miss?”
“My name’s Faye.” The door bells quivered with excitement. “I need your help.”
Fishwire tightened around my chest, making it difficult to breathe. “My help specifically, or the police in general?” Adrenaline made the tips of my fingers cold and tingly and slid the world into sharper focus. Given Faye’s opening statement about dreams, I wasn’t surprised when she said—
“Yours specifically. See, a friend of mine died yesterday, and I dreamed about you—”
Adrenaline abandoned my fingertips to turn into a festering pit of nausea in my belly. “Who was your friend?”
Tears welled in Faye’s eyes. “Her name was Cassie. Nobody even knows what happened yet.” She narrowly escaped wailing, mouth turned down in misery. “She couldn’t just die like that, could she? She was only twenty, and she couldn’t just die!” The bells shivered and banged and rang. I set my teeth together and stepped forward, not quite touching Faye’s elbow.
“How about if we go inside for a minute?” Because if we didn’t, I was going to shoot the bells right off the door. Faye sniffled miserably and backed into the store. It was poorly lit after the brilliant morning sunshine. I tripped over a solemn wooden monkey carved out of dark wood that sat precariously near the door. It wobbled ponderously. I slapped my hand on its flat head—maybe it was a plant stand—and left it complacently back in its place as I edged farther into the store.
“It’s okay.” Faye snuffled and wiped her hand under her nose, which would have been considerably more endearing if she’d been three. “Everybody does that.”
“Why don’t you move it, then?”
“He likes to be able to see out the door.”
I consider it a matter of great pride that I didn’t abandon the store right there. I paused, gathered up the several things I wanted to say, admired them briefly, then moved on as manfully as I could. “Ms.—” She hadn’t given me her last name. “Faye,” I said somewhat reluctantly, not wanting at all to get personal with the girl. “If you know something about Cassandra Tucker’s death, you should be talking with UW police, not with me.”
Faye’s gaze snapped to me, her big brown eyes seeming much less golden-retriever-like suddenly. “I didn’t mention Cassie’s last name.”
Crap. “No, you didn’t, but police departments do talk to one another.” I really didn’t want to confess to being the one who found her friend’s body. It seemed likely that it would get messy after that, and she was already snorfling all over the place. I made a slow circuit of the store, wedging myself between narrowly placed shelves and trying not to knock any more bric-a-brac over. I wondered if the place was up to fire code.
Faye, evidently mollified, kept pace with me on the other side of the skinny shelving unit. It, like the monkey, was carved of some kind of dark wood, and a price tag was wrapped around one of the supports. I wondered what would happen to all the stuff it held if someone saw fit to buy it. “I dreamed that you could help us,” she said.
“Us?” I picked the lid off a small pot and peered inside. Black enamel paint gleamed at me. Faye looked uncomfortable.
“Me and some friends. Friends of Cassie’s.”
I set the lid back on the pot with a distinctive click, remembered Morrison’s magnificent scowl, and said without a trace of guilt, “Cassandra’s death isn’t my jurisdiction, Faye. I’m very sorry, but my captain would hang me by my toes to dry if I got involved. The best I can do is offer to bring you down to the Udub police so you can talk to them, and I can’t really even do that until my lunch break.” I twisted my arm, peering at my watch, a big black clunker of a thing that no longer told me what time it was in Moscow. “Which is in about three hours. Want me to come back then?” Maybe a little twinge of guilt.
“I dreamed you had darkness wrapped around your heart and that light shone through it so powerfully it cracked and shattered letting goodness into the world and the goodness said to me that your name was Walker and that without you all hope was lost and that I had to wait and watch today so that I could stop you and ask you to help and I didn’t know if I would even know you because all I really saw in the dream was a woman with a walking stick but as soon as I saw you I knew you were the one from the dream because you’re confident and strong and you move like the woman in the dream and anybody with eyes to see can tell that you’ve got power so please won’t you help us?” Faye clutched the corner of the shelves, staring up at me as she dragged in a deep breath. I gaped at her.
Rationally, not one of the things she said should have swayed me. Hell, not all of the things she said should have swayed me, not even with the breathless, desperate delivery. I snapped, “All right,” and shoved my hand through my hair. “Dammit.”
Faye’s eyes widened. Maybe good police officers didn’t say “dammit.” I’d have to check the handbook. Meantime, I said, “Dammit,” again for good measure, and raked my hand through my hair again. “All right, look, Faye. What’s your last name?”
“Kirkland. Why?”
So I can look up your police records. “I like to know people’s names when I agree to get in over my head. Look. I will come talk to you and your friends, all right?” My speech was getting more precise, indicating to me, if not to Faye, who, after all, didn’t know me very well, that I really meant what I was saying. “However, I want you to promise me that if, after speaking with you, I believe that what you have to say might be of use to the university police department, you and your friends will come with me to talk to them. Do we have a deal?” The last words were so clipped that Faye’s eyes widened again.
“Okay. Honest, I don’t think it’ll be any help, but if we are, yes, okay, I promise.” Swear to God, if she’d had a tail she would’ve wagged it. I dropped my chin to my chest.
“All right. All right, fine. Dammit,” I added again for good measure. “Where should I meet you?”
“We’ll be at the reading room for the graduate library on campus at seven tonight. Can you come then?”
I stood up. “I don’t get off work until seven. Is it okay if I’m late?”
Faye nodded, backing up so she could abandon the narrow shelving area for the slightly roomier front counter. “It’ll be fine. Maybe you shouldn’t come in uniform.” She gave me a critical sideways glance that took the wind right out of the She Who Was Not To Be Messed With mindset.
“Maybe I should,” I said. “It might make people more willing to talk to the university police, if I’m not scary.”
Faye eyed me dubiously. “If you think so,” she said with such exaggerated politeness that I knew I’d be succumbing to peer pressure. I closed my eyes momentarily and scolded myself for being a weenie, then put on a fake smile.
“Or not. Okay. I’ll see you tonight, then.”
Faye beamed, tongue lolling out just like a retriever’s. Well, no, but boy, she looked happy. “Thank you, Officer Walker. We’ll see you tonight.”
“It’s Joanne,” I said, resigned, and let myself out to the jangling of bells. Morrison was going to kill me.
CHAPTER NINE
Friday, June 17, 5:15 p.m.
I rapped twice on Morrison’s door frame, cautious taps, and said, “Captain?” before screwing my face up in a wince. Knocking was about the sum total of politeness Morrison could typically expect from me. Bringing his title into the conversation before it even began gave him warning to be wary.
And the look he gave me as he glanced up from paperwork was, indeed, wary. “What do you want?”
I sighed and hunched my way into his office even though there’d been no invitation issued. “I am not investigating Cassandra Tucker’s death,” I offered as my initial foray. Morrison’s eyebrows beetled down. “But I was wondering if we knew anything else about it yet.” I set my teeth together in a grimace and added, “A friend of hers approached me today.”
“Approached you.” Morrison got up from his desk and walked around me, closing the door with a final-sounding click. I watched him over my shoulder as he stood there with his mouth held in a thick purse, then jerked my gaze forward again as he turned back around. “Sit,” he said from behind me, and I did as he went back to his desk. “Approached you,” he repeated.
I sank down into the chair and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, speaking into the cover my palms made. “While I was on patrol. She said…” I trailed off long enough to sigh, then lifted my eyebrows over the protective steepling of my fingers, eyes still closed. “She said she’d had a dream about me and she was waiting for me. She wanted me to meet some of Cassandra’s friends tonight.”
“A dream.” Morrison’s voice sounded exactly like mine would have in his position: exasperated, frustrated, and annoyed. I felt sorry for him. I’d have felt sorry for myself, too, except world-weary resignation seemed to have overcome the self-pity. Morrison dragged in a deep breath and said, “You’re telling me this because…?”
I dropped my fingers to look at him. “Because you told me specifically to stay away from this case, and whether you believe it or not, I’m actually trying to follow orders. Except the case may not want to stay away from me.”
“A case,” Morrison said through his teeth, “is not something that makes choices about who it’s assigned to, Walker.”
“No, sir, not normally.” I’d spent the better part of the day since encountering Faye trying to find a way around having this conversation with Morrison. The only alternatives I could come up with were considerably worse than having it. Somehow the inevitability made me less antagonistic than I usually would have been. “But under the circumstances, I don’t really think it’s coincidence that this girl came to me.”
“Under what circumstances?”
I turned my hands palm-up, a shrug, and said, “Me.”
Tension spilled through Morrison’s expression, aging him years in a few seconds. I looked away, uncomfortable with seeing him look so defeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, but we both knew the growl in his voice was only for show. I pressed my lips together, daring to glance back at him, but only for a moment. He still looked aged and unhappy.
“It means something’s wrong with Cassandra Tucker’s death, sir.” I really didn’t want to say I think magic may have been involved, sir, and I was pretty sure Morrison didn’t want me to say it, either.
He didn’t let the possibility of clarification linger on the air, snapping, “Of course something’s wrong. She was twenty years old and ended up dead in a locker room. There’s nothing right about it.”
“That’s not what I mean, Captain.” I didn’t want to push it any more than that, but I felt like I had to at least say that much. “I’d like your permission to go talk to her friends.”
He gave me a baleful glare. “Are you going to do it anyway?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying to be above-board here, Morrison. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
He sighed explosively. “They’re doing an autopsy. It’s being investigated as a homicide. Right now that’s all I know.” He clenched his jaw, muscle working. “Get back to me if you learn anything.”
I said, “Yes, sir,” and got the hell out of his office before we were forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Friday, June 17, 7:25 p.m.
The graduate library’s reading room was dim and dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that the dimness came not from clouds overhead, but from smoky torches that couldn’t possibly meet fire code. I hung in the doorway, squinting into smoke and trying to get the lay of the land before anyone noticed me, but Faye clapped her hands, letting out a squeal of delight. “You came! I knew you’d come! This is Joanne Walker, everyone. She’s the one I dreamed about.” Her voice lowered portentously with the last several words, but I was the only one who seemed to notice.
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C.E. Murphy
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Эзотерика, оккультизм
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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