Spirit Dances

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 3:38 A.M.

I had to move. Fumbling around with my power, trying to find the most tentative, safe way to get Morrison, Tia and me out of there, was no longer an option, not with claws hauling me out of the chamber, out of the Underground, out of every last excuse I’d ever made up. I bent and scooped Tia into a fireman’s carry, not sure how I’d get her through tight tunnels that way but damned certain I was not going to flop her gorgeous naked self over Morrison’s furry back. She bellowed an objection that went abruptly silent when Morrison snapped his teeth half an inch from her nose.

Ravens kept beating at the inside of my head, making my vision flash white and overwhelming, but power called like to like, and we slipped through the circle I’d raised without it objecting. I kept my own shield up, but put Tia down to walk on her own, sandwiched between Morrison in the lead and me behind her. She tried once to bolt, and bounced off the shield so hard I expected to hear a clang. Morrison made a very human sound of amusement as she staggered back into line, and she didn’t try that again. I let the circle fade once we were back in man-made territory, and all three of us stopped, hairs lifting on napes as the walls around us shuddered and rumbled. I felt the cavern—not exactly collapsing. Disappearing. Refilling, like the bits of world that had been taken away were finally returning. I wondered if Thunderbird Falls would still be there when we got out.

Rita waited for us in the stretch of Underground we’d paused in to borrow flashlights and recruit a small homeless army. Relief and joy already permeated her aura, but it redoubled when we appeared, and she dashed forward to hug me, despite my burden and my torn-up clothes. “Detective Holliday brought the guys topside so he could call an ambulance for them. He said he’d wait for you. Thank you, Detective Walker. Thank you so much. You—” Her voice went ragged and her hands fluttered, trying to make up for words that meant too much to speak.

I’d gotten pretty good at nonverbal communication lately, though, and interpreted the fluttering as “You came through for us against the odds.” Trusting that was close enough to right, I pulled a little grin up for her. “You’re welcome. And please, call me Joanne. I should be on a first-name basis with my streetwise eyes, right?”

That wonderful smile of hers lit up again. “Joanne.”

Tia snarled, “Please. Can we just arrest me so I don’t have to listen to this sentimental shit?”

I was happy enough to oblige. Rita led us back to the Persephone gate, more for the company than the necessity, and when we crawled out into a Seattle back lot, Billy was waiting for us. Alone: he had the good sense to be alone, which meant not having to explain the hundred-and-ninety-pound wolf who scrabbled out behind Rita. He put Tia in cuffs, and I went to get Petite while Morrison waited in the alley.

There was something appealing about having a giant silver wolf climb into Petite’s limited back seat and stretch out. Not quite as appealing as a tuxedo-clad Morrison in the front seat would’ve been, but still, somehow it went straight to the emo twelve-year-old girl inside me. “It’s about four in the morning,” I said to his reflection in the rearview mirror. “I don’t really want to wake the dance troupe up. I can bring you home and try shifting you back myself, or we can wait until a more reasonable hour and go see them then. Which do you want to do?”

Improved non-verbal communications or not, I’d clearly offered too many choices to a creature who couldn’t actually talk. Morrison glowered at me in the mirror until I sighed. “Sorry. Home?”

He lay down, which I took as a yes, and drove us to his house, where, with an expression of great regret, Morrison nosed out a spare key—under a rock by the door, yes, but by the back door, and it proved to open a shed in the backyard rather than the house. The house key was in a small nail-filled box in a larger toolbox. I wisely did not say, “Christ, Morrison, any thief would just break a window anyway,” and let us in the back door.

Morrison left me in the kitchen, his toenails clicking until he reached carpeted floors. Nosy and curious, I followed him as far as the living room before realizing he was going to a bedroom. I wobbled in place, curiosity warring with bravery, but being a chickenshit won out. It didn’t matter: a few seconds later he emerged again, dragging a blanket which he managed to fling over himself quite tidily before looking at me with a certain amount of flat expectation.

“Ah. I take it we’re not waiting on the dance troupe, then.”

He cocked his head, conveying “No shit,” although that wasn’t a phrase I remembered Morrison using. Feeling a bit random, I said, “I need some of your ties,” and went to get a handful, my shyness at entering his bedroom completely evaporated. He didn’t stop me. He just watched, not growing even one whit more incredulous as I made a circle around him with the ties. Dogs did baffled very well, so I translated his unchanging expression as my behavior being par for the course. “Salt would probably make a fine circle barrier, too,” I muttered in unasked-for explanation. “But it’d be a bitch to get out of the carpet, and the ties are invested with a sense of you as a man. Just don’t cross out of the circle, okay?” I stepped within it myself, then lit it up with power: keep-things-in, keep-things-out. “Rattler?”

“She isss busssy today,” my spirit guide responded in amusement. “Sso much help nessssessssary.” He was a thing of light and lines, but Morrison nearly startled out of his skin, suddenly on all fours with snapping teeth bared. I put a hand on his big furry shoulder, less surprised than I should have been that Rattler had appeared visibly to my boss. I’d called him up by name, out loud: that had to signify quite a lot to him, in terms of what I trusted Morrison with.

“It’s been a rough day. I’ll bring you gifts, don’t worry.” Raven liked shiny food. Rattler was more fond of, well. Snake food. Rats and rabbits. I wished he’d develop a taste for Pop-Tarts, but it didn’t seem likely, so the pet store on the Way had been getting my business recently. They had pre-frozen snake food available, and Rattler, thank heavens, didn’t seem to care if it was fresh or frozen. I didn’t quite get how spirit animals managed to eat, or at least partake of, physical food anyway, but the arrangement was satisfactory on all sides, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Either way, Rattler gave a satisfied hiss and wound his barely-corporeal self toward Morrison.

Who sat, ears flat against his head as he gave me a credible wolfy scowl, and then lay down with the air of one who would have words with me when this was over. Well, I needed to have words with him, too, and he probably wouldn’t like them, so that was fine. My stomach jolted, fresh reminder of the insistent tugging within, and I knelt between my boss and my spirit animal, one hand extended toward each.

Even with all the fresh newborn Siobhán Walkingstick power flaring through me, it would have been easier with the dance troupe and their focused, deliberate shifting magic. It wasn’t difficult to envision Morrison as a man—God knew I could call up his image in an instant, usually when I didn’t want to—but pouring him from the wolf mold into the man mold simply took a long time. Rattler’s presence was a calming thrum at the back of my mind, promising that caution was wise and the attempt would be effective for all its ponderousness. Morrison, unaware of that surety, lay there patiently, blue gaze never straying from my face as he slipped toward human. There were a handful of moments when he looked like a Hollywood special effect, flawlessly blurred between man and wolf, before very suddenly he was himself again.

I had never had occasion to greet someone who had spent several hours as a wild animal thanks to my screw-ups. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he got up, remarkably dignified for a man draped in a blanket, and went to find clothes.

Saved from having to address the topic of his shapeshifting, I mumbled, “I need to borrow your phone,” to his retreating back, and did so without actually getting permission. He came back in jeans and a tank top like the one he’d worn in his garden just as I was hanging up. My brain slipped a notch and I stared at him in drawn-out silence, wondering just what that choice of wardrobe meant. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. After a good solid minute of us both just standing there looking at one another, I decided somebody had better say something.

“I need some time off,” was unquestionably the wrong thing to say, but my mouth said it anyway. Morrison’s expression darkened and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What I really mean is—”

“You don’t have any time off, Walker.”

Contrary to the end, I said, “Yeah, I do, a couple weeks. I still get my vacation, don’t I? Even if—”

“Fine. Take it. Get out of my hair.” He brushed by me, scowling, and went into the kitchen, where he began making a pot of coffee. If he was anyone else, I’d say he began slamming things around to make a pot of coffee, actually, but that would be far too emotional and temperamental for my boss.

I stomped after him. “Captain, listen to me. I—”

He growled, “I thought I said you could have your time off. What the hell do you need now?” in a credible wolf imitation.

I stuck my jaw out and stared at the ceiling, willing patience into my voice before I dared look at him again. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone.”

His nostrils flared. I mashed my lips together, glaring as he snapped, “Your mother dying again?”

I was going to kill him. That was new. Usually I figured he was going to kill me. I snapped, “No, but maybe she’s sending me messages from beyond the veil. You know. The usual,” right back.

Flippancy was the wrong approach. Morrison started yelling. Overall, he probably had every right to: he’d had something of a bad night, and it could all be laid at my feet. I, however, just kept talking beneath the shouting. It wasn’t that I had any expectation that he’d hear me. It just helped me not listen, which I didn’t want to do. Eventually my explanation ran out, but Morrison’s head of steam didn’t.

I sighed and said, “Captain,” to no avail. After a few more seconds, I tried, “Boss?” but that went over like a raindrop in a thunderstorm, too, so I moved on to, “Morrison!”

It was like talking into outer space. His outrage swallowed anything I had to say, but if I waited for him to wind down on his own, I’d still be there an hour after I was supposed to be at the airport. I put my shoulders back, drew a deep breath and bellowed, “Michael!”

The silence that followed was so complete the coffee pot’s sudden burble sounded like a jet engine exploding. Morrison gaped, florid color fading.

“What do you suppose we would do,” I said conversationally, “if we ever had sex? I mean, what would we call each other? Captain and Walker? Morrison and Detective? Or would we just find excuses to not call each other anything?”

Morrison’s eyes bugged. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to shut up or if I was enjoying the left field my brain had gone out to. I hadn’t been previously aware that I’d spent subconscious time on this subject, but given the way I was running off at the mouth, it seemed I had. “It’s not that Michael isn’t a nice name,” I went on blithely. “It’s just that you look like you’re having an apoplectic fit at being called by it, and I can only remember you calling me by my given name once.”

“Siobhán.”

The world went out from under my feet. When you live in the altered state of reality I’d gotten used to, that sort of phrase was dangerous to use, because it could be literally true. In this case, I was pretty sure it wasn’t, but it sure felt like it. My knees went weak, my vision tunneled, and I felt all floaty, like Wile E. Coyote right before he noticed the road had been painted over thin air. I had to try twice to wet my lips, because someone’d taken sandpaper to my throat. “…I meant Joanne.”

A very faint light of triumph glittered in Morrison’s eyes, and the brief smile he offered made my stomach turn into a round stone of alarm before it sank toward my still-floaty feet. I could feel the color Morrison had lost starting to flood my own face, and now I wished very much that I’d shut up a long time ago. Possibly years ago. Morrison left the counter to come stand toe to toe with me. I had shoes on and he was in stocking feet, so I had a slight height advantage, but I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Morrison didn’t appear to be having that problem. I thought it was probably a bad sign for the home team that the competition was still breathing when all signs pointed toward me being dead. On the other hand, dead had to be better than standing there in Morrison’s kitchen working up to enough heat for self-immolation.

“Overlooking,” Morrison said from about three inches away, and so quietly a fly on the wall wouldn’t be able to hear a thing, “the sheer inappropriateness of this conversation, I try to leave work at work as much as possible. I prefer to be called Michael in bed. Was there another point to this discussion, Detective Walker?”

I couldn’t blush any harder, but there was one worse thing I could do. My eyes betrayed me, filling with stinging tears. I told myself it was embarrassment, which was true, and that it wasn’t gut-wrenching disappointment at the rebuke ending in my formal title instead of my name, which was so patently untrue I didn’t think anybody in the entire universe would believe it. I rolled my jaw forward until the joint hurt, trying to counter emotional pain with the much, much less agonizing sensation of physical pain, and averted my gaze.

That was a mistake. Moving my eyes made the tears spill over. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood instead of letting myself lift a hand to wipe them away. Maybe Morrison wouldn’t notice, if I didn’t draw attention to them. Maybe a meteor would smash through the ceiling and end my humiliation, too. I wasn’t counting on either.

My throat was so tight that the words I forced out actually hurt, thin scrapings in the air. “I’m sure there’s paperwork I could fill out for a sabbatical or a leave of absence, but any way you look at it I effectively took one of those eighteen months ago when my mother died, so I figure I’m probably screwed in that department.” The unfortunate choice of words hit me a little too late, but since ritual suicide sounded like a better option than trying to correct myself, I just kept talking. “I’ve got to go to Ireland. I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone, and I don’t even know what I’m going to be like when or if I come back. So what I’m really trying to say, Captain, is that you win. You win. I quit.”

“Well, thank goddamned God,” Morrison said, and took my face in both hands to guide me into a kiss.

On a list of Things Joanne Was Expecting, that one hadn’t even been penciled in. In the unlikely event it had, I would have imagined it as the possessive, frustrated kiss that impatient film noir heroes give the aggravating women of their dreams.

Morrison kissed me like he was apologizing for making me cry. Thumbs on my cheeks, brushing tears away over the thin scar, and he traced that scar like it meant I was fragile. His mouth was warm and soft and tasted a little bit like coffee, but once I’d noticed those things I didn’t seem to be able to quantify anything anymore, and besides, the floor had fallen out from under my feet again. I really thought I might be floating, so wrapping my legs around his waist seemed like a very sensible thing to do.

One or the other of us ran out of air before I got that far, though, and we broke apart, me with an astonished gasp and Morrison with that glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes again. I wet my lips two or three times and searched for something more intelligent to say than, “Buh,” and Morrison’s grin turned first sly, then slightly embarrassed. The embarrassment gave me something to hang my hat on, and I squeaked, “Speaking of sheer inappropriateness?”

“I’m—”

I clapped my hand over his mouth. “I swear to God, Morrison, if you say I’m sorry I will break your nose.” I thought I was more likely to knee him in the crotch, but men never think that threat is funny. Broken noses, funny. Bruised dangly bits, not funny. Morrison’s eyes crinkled a little and he took my hand away from his mouth to reveal a crooked smile.

See?

The smile fell away, though, and he put his thumb into the palm of my hand. I curled my fingers around it, like we were about to begin waltzing. “I don’t want you to quit, Joanie.”

“Don’t.” My voice shot up to a strangled register and I forced it back down. “Don’t you even dare start calling me Joanie now, Morrison. That is not fair.” My hand had tightened around his, hard enough to make my fingers ache. “Really? You mean that?”

Morrison pulled his lips back from his teeth, brief expression of frustration. “Yeah, I do. You’re turning into a decent cop, Walker. I never thought I’d say it, but you’re doing a good job.”

A knot I hadn’t known was there suddenly unraveled in my heart, sending sprays of light along a vision of a cracked windshield that flashed before my eyes. I could all but hear the glass crackling and fusing back together, sunshine heating it into something strong and whole again. When the flare of brilliance faded, there was still a vicious shatter-spot in the windshield, a hole punched almost all the way through, with spiderwebs of dark, injured glass radiating out from it.

But for the first time since I’d seen that windshield when I lay dying in a garden of my own mind, there was more whole glass than damaged. I laughed, a surprised little sound, and put my forehead against Morrison’s shoulder like it was the natural thing to do. “Thanks, Captain. Thank you. That means more to me than I know how to tell you.”

“You’re still quitting, aren’t you.”

I nodded against his shoulder and he put his mouth against my hair. “Thank goddamned God,” he said again. “I should’ve said resignation accepted before I kissed you.”

“I’ll consider not suing.”

He chuckled and tightened his hand around mine. “We need to talk, Walker.”

I backed up enough to give him a sloppy half smile. “About the elephant in the room, sir?”

Morrison looked pained. “Considering how long it took to get you to start calling me sir, I hate to think how long it’s going to take to get you to stop. Yeah,” he said more quietly and more seriously. “About the elephant in the room. We’ve been dancing around it a long damned time.”

“Yeah. We have been. Well. I knew I had been.” I let out another breath of laughter and closed my eyes a moment. “No wonder you were so pissed off about Mark Bragg. That makes me feel better. Shit, Captain. It’s always been you. Didn’t you know that?” I didn’t know why he should have. It took me ages to figure it out.

“No.” He shrugged, small motion. “I didn’t. Between Ed Johnson and you taking the promotion to detective, and your damned mentor—”

“Coyote,” I said softly. “Yeah, that was…but no. That’s not going to work for me. There’s…too much give, there.”

Morrison spread his hand without letting go of mine. “And that cab driver of yours—”

“Gary?” I flung my hands up and stepped back, laughter mixed with outrage. “What is it with everybody thinking I’ve got something going on with Gary? He’s seventy-four years old! He could be my grandfather! I love him, but come on! God! If I had half the sex life you people think I do, I’d—I’d get laid a lot more.” Oh, yes, that was me, mistress of witty repartee.

Morrison’s voice dropped about two octaves. “If you’d like to write a letter of resignation, that’s a topic I’d like to address in some detail.”

A blush that started somewhere around my navel—or possibly several inches lower—crept up to my cheeks. I covered my face with my hands, feeling like a glowbug, and sighed. “I can write the letter, but this conversation and…everything else…is going to have to wait. I’ve got to go to the airport. My flight is in two hours.”

“What?” Good humor drained out of Morrison’s expression, leaving something more vulnerable and bereft than I’d expected. Regret lanced through me and I bit my bottom lip.

“I’m leaving. When I said I had to go to Ireland, I meant right now. I’ve got this sick knot in my stomach yanking me that way. I’ve got to go. I need you to go see Jim Littlefoot this afternoon and tell the troupe they’re safe now, okay? Please. I would, but—”

He ignored the request, which I knew didn’t mean he hadn’t heard it, or that he wouldn’t do it. What he said, though, in a low voice, was, “You have a real knack for running away from things, Walker.”

A whole new kind of pain replaced regret: anger, sharpened with the discomfort of knowing how right my boss— former boss—was. “I know. I know, and that’s why I’ve got to go. There are things there I’ve been running away from a lot longer than I’ve been running from this.” I made a little circle with my hand, encompassing the both of us. “I’ll come back, Michael. I just don’t know when.”

“If you don’t,” Morrison said in a low rumble, “I’m coming after you, Walker.”

I managed a quick smile. “I’m counting on it, sir.”

Morrison reached up to brush his thumb over the scar on my cheek again, then let his hand drop as he nodded toward the door. “All right. Go. Get out of here. I don’t want to see you again until you’ve got this thing settled.” Familiar gruffness filled his voice, but for once I wasn’t fooled. I stepped forward to steal one brief, hard kiss, then bolted for the door before I could say anything to mess the moment up.

Two minutes later I was on the road, my heart still hammering until it made my stomach sick. I had to get to Ireland because of the pull I’d felt, because of the women I’d seen in my visions, and because of one other thing I hadn’t told Morrison. Something I was going to need help with, help that neither he nor anybody else I knew could provide.

Help finding a cure, because I’d been bitten by a werewolf.