Thunderbird Falls

CHAPTER 17

I left the hospital feeling a bit lighter of heart, Gary’s semi-outraged protest at being protected by a tortoise still ringing in my ears. I’d pointed out tortoises lived a hundred and fifty years, which had silenced him into a slow grin that reminded me of the garden Gary. It was almost as if I was a competent human being.

Of course, a competent human being would have already told Morrison that Cassandra Tucker had apparently died of a heart defect aggravated by the use of magic, but I hadn’t found it in myself to try. I didn’t know which was worse: him believing me, or not. Either way, I could put it off a little longer, because I still had an afternoon beat to walk.

The heat was making people either crabby or listless. I busted up more than one burgeoning fight on the Ave, glad I wasn’t working someplace more dangerous. My vision behaved itself all afternoon, and between that and Gary, I genuinely felt up to attending the coven event that evening. I went back to the precinct building to clock out and to shower, too disgusting with sweat to wait until I went home. My equipment bag had shorts and a tank top, far more suited to the weather than wool pants and a cotton shirt. I jogged out of the building with my duffel slung over my shoulder, thinking about running home to start laundry before I met up with the coven.

“Walker!”

I turned warily. Morrison shouting for me wasn’t usually a good sign. Especially since he should’ve gone home by now.Especially since I’d been avoiding him all day, and the sound of his voice was a sharp reminder I’d been expecting him to show up and rescue me from the desert.

He looked tired, not much like a desert-searching hero, and not much like he wanted to talk to me. Neither of those was unusual, but I was oddly disappointed. After all, if he was going to feature heavily in my subconscious fantasies, the least he could do was be pleased about seeing me. Not that I had the slightest intention of telling him he was apparently my own personal champion. And not that he’d arrived on the scene to rescue me, which sort of annoyed me when I thought about it.

I slung my duffel over my back, holding on to the strap with two fingers, as if the oversized action would force my internal nattering out of mind. Morrison really did look tired, or maybe angry, his mouth a thin line and blue eyes squinted against the sun. I should’ve been used to him looking irritated, but the underlying weariness sent a pang of compassion through me. “Everything okay, Captain?”

He cut off whatever he was about to say and eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds. I tried to keep my expression neutral:no, boss, I really mean it. Is everything okay? He’d never believe it.

“Yeah,” he said after enough time that I wondered if he was going to answer at all. “Tomorrow—”

I got ready to blow up. Tomorrow was my day off. “—is Cassandra Tucker’s funeral,” he said. I choked on my own indignation and stared at him as he concluded, “I thought you might want to go.”

I wet my lips and looked around, anywhere but at my captain, so that I could work off being embarrassed over my near blowup. “Thank you,” I finally said, awkwardly. “I really appreciate that. Look, does that mean they know what happened to her? Because—”

“Congenital heart defect,” he said shortly. “No murder investigation. I assume you didn’t get anything from your…sources.”

For some reason, it didn’t make me at all happy to have Virissong’s explanation verified by a coroner. I stared at Morrison for a long time without really seeing him, then wet my lips. “Nothing substantially different.”

“Substantially?”

I should have known better than to put an adverb into my response. I wet my lips again and shook my head. “Someone thought it was brought on by an overload of…” I felt like Michael Keaton trying to tell Kim Basinger his secret. If Morrison would only turn around so I couldn’t see his face, I was sure I could finish saying, “Doing magic.” What I said instead was, “It doesn’t really matter, does it? The cops and the freaks are in agreement on this one.”

Morrison’s expression had gone sour as I approached the end of my first explanation, as if he knew perfectly well what I wasn’t saying. Then it changed from sour to genuinely disapproving, and I had to stop myself from backing up a step. “Don’t do that,” he said.

I hadn’t moved. “Don’t do what?”

“Belittle yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

I gaped at him. “I’m sorry, Cap, but when did you get on the it’s-okay-for-Joanne-to-be-a-super-shamanic-weirdo bandwagon?”

“I didn’t,” he said very evenly. “I don’t like what you can do at all. But I like you setting yourself up for the sucker punch even less. It’s degrading, and you’re better than that. I won’t tolerate it.”

I felt like my world had taken a sharp swerve and dip to the left. “Morrison, you rag on me all the time.” He did. He said I was a pain in the ass, which was true, and to not darken his doorstep again, which I always did, and a variety of other blusteryyou bother me sorts of comments.

But I couldn’t think of one single time where he’d outright insulted me, or anyone else, for that matter. I stared at him some more, trying to fit that piece of information into the Morrison-shaped prejudices I carried around, and then looked at a wall and reached for safer ground. “Do you know when and where Cassandra’s funeral is?”

“I do,” he said, still very evenly, as if the last bit of conversation hadn’t happened. “I’m going. Should I pick you up?”

My gaze snapped back to him. “You’re going?”

“We were the first two officers on the scene, Walker. I visited her mother.” Morrison’s voice was strained. I found myself staring at him again.

“Jesus, Cap. Shouldn’t the UW police have done that? I mean, not your juris—”

“I was the ranking officer,” he said. “It was my duty.”

My vision didn’t go all inverted again, but rather, for an instant, I saw with extreme clarity. The worst job anybody could have is telling a parent that her child is dead.

Morrison’d done it to spare somebody else having to.

Color burned along my jaw and up into my cheekbones and ears, a bewildering rush of pride to be working for this particular police captain. I swallowed and straightened my shoulders. “What time should I be ready?”

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought Morrison relaxed almost imperceptibly. “Nine-thirty. Funeral’s at ten.”

“I’ll be ready. Morrison?”

Morrison, already turning away, went still, and looked at me like he expected the other shoe to drop.

“Thanks.”

For a few seconds he looked as if he was waiting for the follow-up smart-ass remark. Then he nodded, a short, sharp motion, and walked away.

Sunday, June 19, 7:14p.m.

There was no time to get laundry started. I dashed to campus, stopping at the pizzeria to buy two slices of pepperoni and olive pizza. They offered me a soda large enough to swim in for a mere sixty cents more. Being a red-blooded American, I bought it and had vague guilty thoughts about exercise.

I was still licking pizza grease off my fingers when I ducked into the room the coven had been held in two nights earlier. Contrary to the smoky gloom of that night, it was bright and well lit and distinctly empty of both torches and witches. I said, “Um,” out loud to the empty room, and stood there with my soda feeling a little foolish. That was me, Joanne Walker, the world’s sneakiest undercover cop. Not that I was undercover, because Morrison had given me permission to case these people, although I suspected I might be going further than he meant me to. It didn’t matter. This was all on my own time.

Just like Cassandra Tucker’s funeral would be.

“I thought you’d be here,” Faye said from behind me. I flinched two inches to the left and whipped around, wishing I had something dangerous and sexy in my hand instead of a sixty-four ounce soda cup. My vision blurred again for the first time since I’d seen Gary, fluorescent lights above me twisting into purple streaks, and I pressed the heel of one hand against my left eye. I could feel the under-the-skin sunburn again, as if coming out of the daylight had made it more intense.

“Sorry,” Faye said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked petulantly. She smiled as I peeled one eye open to look at her. The light stabilized and I cautiously removed my hand from my other eye.

“Of course. I didn’t have your number to call, and you weren’t with us last night so you couldn’t know that we don’t usually meet in the same place twice in a row. I thought I’d drop by and get you.”

“I’m in the phone book.” I still sounded tetchy. Faye looked surprised.

“I didn’t think of it.”

I muttered, “Of course not,” and came back to the door, slurping my soda. “Where’re we going?”

“Ravenna Park.”

I blinked. “Not on campus?” Ah, yes. A brilliant deduction. “Won’t the park be busy?”

Faye herded me out of the room. “D’you have a car? I don’t. It’ll be busy, but no one will notice us.”

“Yeah, in the south lot. They won’t?”

Faye shrugged. “People look around magic a lot. I don’t know why. It’s like a big blind spot in humanity.” She beamed suddenly. “But we’re going to change that, Joanne. We’re going to make a real difference in the world. Starting tonight.”

There are certain phrases people like to hear. Mechanics, for example, are fond of, “The transmission’s okay, so the insurance company says fix it instead of totaling it out.” At least, they are if they don’t work for a cop shop that pays the same amount no matter how much work you do or don’t do, which wasn’t the point. “Elise will make tamales if you come over and look at the Eagle,” was another nice one, although possibly that only got mileage from mechanics who knew my friend Bruce. And every mechanic I knew liked, “She’s a beauty. Did you do the work yourself?”

That was not what Faye said when she saw Petite. Faye squealed, “Oooh, purple!” and leaned over the hood to see if she could see her reflection in the gilt-flecked finish. She could, in fact: I’d spent a lot of hours working depth into the rich paint, but the usual rush of smug pride wasn’t available with this go-around of appreciation.

I was too busy thinking about phrases that cops didn’t like.

“Starting tonight” was way up there, particularly when the cop in question thought she had another three days before the big bang. I drove down to Ravenna Park without listening to Faye’s chipper conversation, cranky at the inverted light and how much attention I had to pay to driving. It was probably a bad sign I didn’t normally pay that much attention to driving, but I was in no mood to think about that.

Tonight was a lot sooner than I wanted to participate in anything. I was working myself up to doing it, but I’d thought I had a few more days. Part of me wanted to just not show up. From what Faye and the others had said, without me they might not have enough power to pull their stunt off.

But every time I thought about doing that, an image of Colin, whose cancer I didn’t know how to heal, flashed behind my eyes. Virissong might be able to pull off what I couldn’t, and I wasn’t sure I had the right to stand in the way of that happening. Not just for Colin, but for the whole overheated Seattle metropolitan area, and maybe the world.

I pulled into the lot at the north end of the park, still uncomfortable, and reached over to lock Faye’s door before getting out of the car. “Lead on, Macduff.”

Faye gave me a look of complete incomprehension. I rolled my eyes. “Never mind. Let’s just go.”

A stream large enough to be considered a river in some parts of the country ran through Ravenna Park. People were strewn along the banks, kids shrieking happily as they played in the water. I had no idea how a coven meeting was going to proceed undisturbed. I envisioned small children dashing through the sacred circle, then wondered if they’d be able to, or if there’d be some sort of mystical force field that they’d bounce off. The thought cheered me and I stuffed my hands in my pockets, whistling jauntily as I strode along behind Faye.

“Please don’t,” she said.

“Mmm?”

“Whistle. Please don’t whistle. Whistling brings down the walls between this world and the next.”

I stopped midwhistle, my mouth pursed. “You’re kidding.”

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “No. The tonal qualities and pitch are a bridge between worlds.”

“Fascinating. Isn’t that what we’re trying to do?”

Faye sighed, developing the very patient tone that isn’t. “Yes, of course. But we want it to be controlled, Joanne. Bridging worlds isn’t something that should be done lightly, and you’ve felt the kind of power we’re dealing with.”

That much, at least, was true. I stopped arguing and whistling both, and slunk along like a properly chastised new coven member.

Well, I would’ve if I could’ve kept my mouth shut for more than three steps. “What d’you mean, we’re starting to change the world tonight?”

Faye looked over her shoulder again, dimpled, and fell into stride with me. “The world has to be prepared for Virissong’s arrival,” she explained. “Tonight we’ll begin to thin the walls, and over the next few days humanity will become accustomed to the otherworld mixing with this one again.”

“It will?” My eyebrows climbed. “Humanity takes longer than a few days to get used to most things, Faye.”

“There’s a core of belief in all of us,” she said airily. “All we’re going to do is let the world start looking like that core expects it to.”

Several things, the nicest of which was, “Isn’t that a little naive?” went through my mind. I didn’t know I’d said it out loud until Faye gave me a dirty look.

“Maybe, but haven’t you always wanted to live in a world where magic was real?”

I was so startled I laughed out loud, a sharp derisive bark. Faye’s expression skidded into insulted anger and she tossed her hair, flouncing ahead of me. “Crap. Faye, wait up.” I jogged a few steps to catch up with her, then had to lengthen my stride to stay in step. Given the height advantage I had, that was a little embarrassing, but I did it anyway.

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. The truth is, no, I’ve never wanted to live in a world with magic. I like my world to make sense. I hate this mucking with magic thing.”

Faye whirled on me, eyes bright with emotion. “But you’re really powerful, Joanne! How can you say that? We all felt it, the power you command. You could change the world.”

“I know.” I looked down at her, searching for words. “Look, you ever notice how in movies or TV the one guy who gets the phenomenal cosmic power is the one guy who doesn’t want it? Maybe the universe sets itself up that way as a fail-safe. Maybe that’s why I ended up with all this power, instead of somebody who’d been pursuing it her whole life.”

Faye’s mouth tightened into a thin line. Great, I’d done it again. “Faye, I wasn’t trying to be insulting—”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said flatly. “You’re a part of the coven now. We’ll help guide you into your powers, and when Virissong has returned to this world you’ll see that it’s better the way that we’re trying to make it. Come on. We’re going to be late.” She turned and stalked off again, leaving me with nothing to do but walk away or follow.

I followed, feeling oddly abandoned. Tromping around parks preparing for coven meetings wasn’t my usual evening routine, and after the past few days I felt distanced from what I considered my real life. I wanted to hang out with Gary and maybe go see a movie, or go drink beer with some of the guys from the shop. Normal things, which I didn’t seem to have time for. Failing that, it would be nice to fit in with the coven in some fashion, but here I was, studying the angry swing of Faye’s hair as she marched ahead of me. I couldn’t imagine asking for a shaman’s gifts, or wanting the responsibility of trying to save the world, whereas the coven seemed very into that idea. Cars. I was happy being responsible for the state of someone’s vehicle. Their spirits or souls—that was a calling I wasn’t at all happy with.

Then again, my power animals hadn’t charged me with being comfortable with what I was and what I could do, only to accept, honor, and study. Curiously, that made me feel better.

“Joanne, Faye. There you are.” Marcia’s voice interrupted my train of thought and I blinked. We stood in a copse of trees, blocks of sunlight sliding through the trunks in golden, dust-littered chunks. The coven, looking mobbish and happy, surrounded me, and I hadn’t even noticed approaching them. Garth and Sam were building an entirely illegal fire.

“Nice trick,” I said. “How do you do that, the hiding in plain sight thing?”

“It’s a matter of expectation. I’m surprised you didn’t see us.” Marcia sounded ever so slightly accusing. I shrugged.

“I was thinking about something else. Aren’t we going to get in trouble for that fire?”

“No one will notice,” she promised me.

Another matter of expectation, I presumed. My own personal expectation was that somebody out of her sphere of influence would see smoke rising from the park grounds and call the cops, but I didn’t say that out loud. I sat down a few feet away, watching the fire build. “So I thought this was all going down on Tuesday.”

“Tuesday’s the grand finale.” Garth straightened out of his crouch, dusting his palms against his jean shorts.

“Okay. Tonight’s spirit, Tuesday’s the grand finale. What’s tomorrow?” At least I could be better prepared once.

“Tomorrow we give the spirits body.”

I must’ve looked as bewildered as I felt, because another coven member—a girl whose name I thought was Roxie—said, “So they can walk the earth as they did when the world was young.”

“We can do that without a full coven?” I asked cautiously. Around me, guarded looks were exchanged.

“We think so,” Marcia finally said. “It would be better with the thirteenth, but with you—”

What was I, the Energizer Bunny? “I’ll try,” I said. I felt like I had to. I wanted to do what I could to end the heat wave. Smiles met my words, and I ducked my head to hide a grimace. I hadn’t meant to sign on for changing the face of the earth, spiritually or otherwise. “Did it,” I started, then cut myself off as curious faces turned to me. “Never mind.”

“Did it what?” Roxie, if that was her name, had a headful of tight curls and a cant to her stance that invited openness.

“Did it ever occur to any of you that there might be a reason the spirits don’t walk the earth anymore?” I sighed. “Maybe a good reason?”

Blank expressions met my words. I nodded. “That’s what I thought. Just thought I’d bring it up. Never mind. Carry on.”

“We turned our back on the spirits a long time ago,” Marcia said. “They moved away, to wait for us to recognize our need for them. Now that we have, we’ll share that knowledge with the rest of the world, and balance will be restored.” She sounded utterly confident.

“And you don’t think eleven people making a decision for six billion others might be a little…arrogant?” Man. My mouth just wouldn’t shut up.

“Of course it is.” Marcia smiled, and Faye’s eyebrows drew down into a scowl. “If we’re truly arrogant and this is truly not the correct path, I believe that the Goddess will not allow us to succeed.”

“And if she does, it’s okay?”

Marcia nodded. The Elder stepped up beside her, as confident in his bearing as Marcia was in her words. “I admire your caution, Joanne. It shows wisdom.”

I grinned a bit. “A trait not normally seen in the young?”

He flashed me a smile in return, without nodding. For an unexpected moment, my vision deepened, setting aside the mundane world for the spirit world the coven was so eager to call up. The Elder blazed with power, a V-8 engine stuffed into a body designed for a V-6 at best. He was connected to the earth in an almost literal fashion, glowing lines of strength flowing from his spine, from his hands and feet, and burying themselves in the ground. When he stepped away from Marcia, it was with a profound sense of centeredness, as if nothing could knock him from his feet unless he permitted it to. The earth itself held him in its grasp, sure as the earth was in the sun’s thrall. Seen this way, he was gorgeous, serene colors of confidence connecting him to the world.

At least, I hoped they were serene colors of confidence. My vision clung to the inverted, and his power lines were weirdly spiked, black centers with glowing outsides that filtered from one shade to another. Hefelt honest and true, but my eyes couldn’t prove it.

Faye had real power as well, glowing a horrible lime-green against the black circle of the setting sun. I thought it might be sunlight yellow against the genuine gold of the sunset, if my vision’d been behaving. Garth, to my surprise, spiked with power, too, his a murky brown that I thought might really be green. My head was beginning to pound, but I didn’t dare blink as I looked from one coven member to another.

The others were duller, even the Father, their magic buoyed by their faith in the Goddess more than their own ability to command power. They were, I thought, what the strength of the coven needed: support. I blinked away from them toward Marcia, wanting a read on the final living member of the six named positions in the coven. She stepped into a shaft of sunlight as I looked her way, and inverted color inverted again, flaring from black into gold. Tears sprang to my eyes from the brilliance. By the time I’d blinked them away again, I’d lost the sight, and Marcia was smiling down at me. “Do you think you’re ready, Joanne?”

I wasn’t ready at all, but I climbed to my feet. “Yeah. Yeah, all right, let’s do this thing.”