Urban Shaman

CHAPTER 15

Morrison was close enough to kiss. He had tired shadows under his eyes, and his hair had silver threads in it, neither of which I’d ever noticed before. We stared at each other, almost cross-eyed, our noses nearly touching. He drew in a magnificently deep breath through his nostrils in preparation to launch a tirade. I lifted my hand and put my fingertips over his mouth, clumsily. His eyebrows shot up, as much surprise as I’d ever seen on Morrison’s face.

“Shh,” I whispered. “There’s lots of sick people here. Yelling makes bad juju. You don’t want to make anybody die, do you? Shh.”

In a very modulated tone that did nothing to hide his anger, Morrison demanded, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

It seemed increasingly likely that I was. I rocked back on my heels, lost my balance and staggered half a step backward, which took me well out of kissing distance, if not out of Morrison’s personal space. One of his hands flashed out and clamped around my biceps, steadying me. I was too startled to answer him.

He didn’t really want me to answer anyway. “What the hell are you doing here? I have this dream,” he charged on as I tried to formulate an answer. “I have this dream that I’ll get up one day and the whole damned world will make sense. Being a practical man, I know that’s not going to happen.” Morrison’s volume was building. “But it seems like I should at least be able to stop by for a visit with a key witness without finding the mechanic I suspended yesterday hanging around a police-protected wing of the hospital!”

I found the wall with one hand and leaned on it, letting Morrison’s crescendo break and wash over me. It took a great deal of careful thought to manage, “I thought I could help.” My voice sounded thick and fuzzy, like I’d been snacking on polar fleece.

“Help? What the hell do you know about helping in a murder investigation? You want to be a mechanic. And even if you wanted to be a police officer—”

I leaned against the wall a little harder, closing my eyes. If he’d only choose one pitch and stay at it, I could probably go to sleep standing here, but the fluctuations in volume forced me to listen to him.

“—I don’t want anyone I’ve suspended to ‘help’ with criminal cases they’re involved in. If you have information that will help, give it to the police and we’ll take it from there. You know that’s how it works, Walker. There’s nothing you can do that we can’t.”

“On the contrary.”

I peeled my eyes open to discover Mrs. Potter had come up the hallway and was standing at Morrison’s elbow, waiting for him to acknowledge her interruption. He glared at her.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I don’t need your opinion right now. You—” The last word was directed at me, and then Morrison’s head snapped back around as he recognized the schoolteacher. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

“As I was saying,” Henrietta said equitably, “I believe Miss Walker may be able to do a number of things you can’t.”

The next few hours got very blurry while people asked me the same questions over and over, sometimes several at once and frequently in a staccato series. I kept looking up to see if there was a single hard white light bulb dangling over my head. All I wanted to do was leave. There was something important I had to go think about, but I couldn’t think with all the noise and the yelling and the questions. I needed sleep. The world would make more sense once I’d had some sleep.

What I got instead was Morrison’s scowl and doctors who wanted desperately to know how I’d done what I’d done. I remembered shouting, “I’m not a goddamned faith healer! I don’t talk to God! I’m a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken!”

They left me alone for quite a while after that.

I waited for the nice young men in their clean white coats to arrive. When they didn’t, the bed Henrietta had abandoned was too tempting to ignore. The nice young men could wake me up.

Gary woke me up instead, gently shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, lady. Jo?”

“Lady Jo,” I mumbled into the pillow. “Kinda like that. Sounds like a romance heroine.”

Gary paused, distracted. “You read romances?”

“S’my deep dark secret. Go ‘way.”

“Can’t. The ten o’clock news just came on. You might want to get out of here before Morrison gets back.”

I tried to peel one eye open, but my contacts were glued to my eyes again. “Whu?”

“You’re all over it. C’mon, let’s go.”

“Oh, God.” I turned my face and buried it in the pillow. “I don’t care. Let him kill me. As long as I get some rest.”

“You’ve had five hours of sleep,” Gary said without sympathy. “You’ve only got another day to solve this case, y’know.”

I pulled one eye open long enough to look at him. It teared up and shut again of its own volition. “What’re you talking about?”

“Most murders go unsolved if the murderer isn’t caught in forty-eight hours.” Gary spoke with an air of great authority.

“Serial murders are different. Go aw—” An alarming thought drained through my sleep-heavy brain. “What’s the date?”

“Fifth of January.”

I rolled onto my back, blinking tears away as I frowned at the ceiling. “Tomorrow’s the sixth?”

“There’s a bright girl,” Gary said approvingly.

“His power peaks tomorrow night.”

“Whose does?”

“Cernunnos. Yuletide. That’s what Marie said. His power peaks and then begins to fade until the summer solstice, and then he’s banished back to…”

“Wherever Celtic gods are banished to,” Gary supplied.

“Until Sa—Halloween.”

“Samhain,” Gary said. Sow-ehn, he pronounced it. I shook my head.

“I saw that word on the computer. When I look at it I see ‘Samhane.’ How do you remember how to say it?”

Gary shrugged. “Old dog. So what’s the big deal? After tomorrow, you get the upper hand. Sounds like a good way to play the game to me.”

“If I live through it.” The words made a little pit of sickness in my stomach. There was a very real possibility that I was going to end up dead tomorrow. I’d certainly come close enough in the past couple days. Gary frowned and jerked his chin at the door.

“Come on. You won’t live through tonight if your friend the police captain gets his hands on you.”

I groaned and rolled off the bed. “There’s a reassuring thought.”

“I do my best,” Gary said modestly. I chuckled through exhaustion. An alarming number of things were striking me as funny. I wondered if I’d ever get enough sleep to get over that.

“All right. All right. I didn’t even say anything to that stupid reporter. How can he kill me?” I opted against looking in the mirror, dragged the door open and walked into Morrison for the second time that evening. This time I bounced back a step while he stood there like a wall. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I oughta have you arrested.” Morrison was nose to nose with me again. I looked down at his shoes, tilting my head to the side a little. The soles of his shoes were the same thickness as mine. If I thought he could have, I would have guessed he’d done that on purpose.

“For what?” I looked back up at him. I could feel Gary looming behind me. It obviously didn’t bother Morrison at all, but it made me feel a little better.

“Interfering with a police investigation.”

“Have I interfered?”

“You’ve wasted my time and that of one of my officers for the past seven hours by keeping us here at this hospital.”

My eyebrows crawled up my forehead. “I’ve been asleep for the last five hours. How’d I keep you here? Hell, Morrison, you didn’t even know I was here when you showed up. You can’t blame me for you still being here.”

“You affected a principal witness in the case, Walker.”

“‘Affected.’” I stared at him. “How’s she doing, anyway?”

“The doctors can’t even find any scar tissue. What the hell did you do?”

“I healed her and Richard the Second of England through a psychic link with a Celtic demigod drawn out of her memory of the murders this morning,” I said flippantly, knowing Morrison wouldn’t believe it, even if it was God’s own truth. Or possibly because it was God’s own truth. His hand bunched into a fist and loosened again. I almost wished he’d hit me. A good old-fashioned hands-on ass-kicking might do me some good right now. I didn’t even much care whose ass got kicked.

“I always liked you, Walker,” Morrison said out of the blue. My jaw dropped.

“You did not.”

Morrison snorted, a sort of laugh, and admitted, “No. But you always seemed to have a head on your shoulders. No tact, but a head on your shoulders. But now you’re talking like Holliday. What the hell happened to you?”

I felt old and tired suddenly. “I’d love to sit down over coffee and tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me. It’s been a rough couple days, Morrison. I think something bad is going to happen tomorrow night and I have to find out what and stop it.”

“I have to, dammit! It’s not your—”

“My job,” I agreed wearily. “I know. It’s your job. I just don’t think you can find what’s doing this, Morrison. I’m not sure I can, and they’re talking to me.”

“Who are?”

“The old gods.” I half laughed. “Dead people. This is not what I signed up for, dammit!”

“What did you sign up for?”

“Living another day, I guess. I didn’t know it was going to get so complicated.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, squinching my eyes closed. The contacts finally loosened up a bit and I could feel moisture in my eyes again. “Morrison, are you gonna charge me with anything, or can I go home now?”

“Are you going to go home?” He sounded like a belligerent bull.

“Yes,” I promised.

“Are you going to stay there?”

“What are you, my mother? Tell you what. I’ll stay home for the rest of my life if every two weeks you’ll cut me a paycheck I can live on.” I stepped forward to see if it would make Morrison move out of the doorway. It did. I was very impressed with myself. “I’m going home, Morrison. Good night.” Gary followed right on my heels, like an oversized protective shadow. I was halfway down the hall when Morrison’s voice followed me.

“Walker.”

I turned around reluctantly. Morrison frowned down the hall at me. “Stay home. This guy’s dangerous.”

“You’re making me all sentimental, Morrison. Knock it off before I get weepy.” I got all the way to the gate and out it this time.

“I think he likes you,” Gary said as the gate clanged shut. I laughed, a sharp bark of sound.

“Morrison wouldn’t like me if I were kind enough to never darken his doorstep again. He’d find me easier to tolerate, that’s all.”

“He likes you,” Gary said again, with an air of certainty. “He’s just afraid of you.” He slowed and let me go through the open half of a double door in front of him, while I glared over my shoulder at him.

“Afraid of me? Why would he be afraid of me? I’m not scary. You’re not scared of me.”

Gary pursed his lips. I stopped and looked at him, arms folded, waiting.

“You’ve done some scary things since I met you,” he volunteered after a moment. I snorted.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t start rising from the dead until after I met you. Maybe you have that effect on people. There’s no reason for you or anybody, especially Morrison, to be scared of me. He’s hated me for ages, anyway. He’s not afraid of me.” Scowling, I started back down the hallway. “Where are you parked, anyway?”

“Visitor parking. Gotta leave through the main lobby. You don’t gotta get so huffy, Jo. There’s lots of work for scary people. Body-guarding, for example.”

“Bodyguards look like professional wrestlers.” I eyed Gary. “Don’t you dare say I do.”

Gary held up his hands and wisely didn’t say a thing. I waited, then nodded, satisfied. “Okay. Can I go home now?”

Gary not only brought me back to my car, but followed me home afterward. I couldn’t decide if he was overprotective by nature, or if he was one of those strays that moves in and takes over your life. I made coffee and logged on to the computer. There were three more spams, something from one of the online political organizations I belonged to, and a note from Kevin Sadler saying, It was nice to meet you. Adina would want me to help you learn anything you can. If I can even be a sounding board Jot you, let me know.

“He likes you,” Gary said cheerfully.

“Please. His wife was just murdered. I don’t think he’s hitting on me. And I don’t need you setting me up with every guy I come across, jeez.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Gary, I’m sure.” I frowned at him, then at the screen and hit Reply. Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate the offer. Some bizarre stuff happened today. Want to get together for lunch and hear about it? I can probably spare an hour tomorrow.—Joanne.

“What am I?” Gary demanded. “Chopped liver?”

I grunted and sent the message, then fidgeted impatiently for several minutes, hoping for a reply. “It’s eleven at night,” Gary finally said. “He’s probably in bed.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I yawned myself, eyes tearing, which reminded me to go take my contacts out. I came back into the living room wearing my glasses and still yawning. “I hate not being able to see.”

“Least you’ve had time to get used to it,” Gary said. “I hit about fifty-five and all of a sudden my arms were too short to read.”

“Maybe you should stop writing on your arms.” I grinned at his expression. “You did okay with my magazines and the computer screen.”

“Takes a while for a headache to set in,” Gary said. “How long’ve you worn glasses?”

“Since I was nine. You want to know the horrible thing? I felt like it was a big secret, that I couldn’t see, and I figured everybody’d point and stare when I came to school with glasses. Nobody even noticed. I’d spent all that time psyching myself up for the trauma of being teased. The trauma of not being noticed was worse.”

“Kids are self-centered.”

“Humans are self-centered,” I corrected. “Don’t let kids have all the credit.”

“How’d you get to be so cynical so young?”

I snorted. “I’ll introduce you to my dad sometime.”

“That would be interesting,” Gary said so neutrally I thought I should be offended. I frowned at him for a minute while he maintained the careful neutrality. I finally looked away.

“Don’t you have to be at work in five hours?”

Gary looked at his watch. “Six and a half. I’ll be fine.”

I grinned. “What makes you think I’m worried about you? I’m worried about your passengers. You’re terrifying to ride with even when you’re awake.”

“Hey, you’re alive, aren’t you?”

“No thanks to you,” I said happily, and Gary laughed.

“I didn’t get you stabbed,” he pointed out.

“Details, details. Where’s that sword, anyway?”

“At my apartment. Couldn’t keep it in the back of the cab while I was working. You want it?”

I thought about that for a minute. “Yeah, I think so. Can you bring it by tomorrow?”

“Before or after work?”

“Um.” I sucked on my teeth. “Before.”

“Okay.” Gary stood up. “I’ll be by around five-fifteen.”

“Gah. I’ll try to be awake.”

“You’re young. You can survive on a few nights of not much sleep.”

“Easy for you to say. You haven’t been fatally wounded twice in two days.”

Gary’s bushy gray eyebrows shot up. “Twice?”

“Um.” I rubbed my hand over my stomach. “The second time was at the hospital. It didn’t exactly happen on this plane of reality.” I winced as I said it. Gary’s eyebrows remained elevated, but he didn’t say any of the sarcastic things Morrison would have said.

“I got myself knotted into a couple of other people’s lives,” I mumbled. “If I hadn’t been able to fix them, I think I’d have been dead when you came back with the coffee.”

“Richard the Second,” Gary said, in that carefully neutral voice again.

“Yeah.” I scowled defensively. “He put Herne the Hunter to death.”

“Herne the Hunter.”

“Yes.”

“The one we read about on the computer.”

I nodded. Gary spread his big hands and shook his head. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“It was Herne at the school today,” I said impatiently. “I borrowed Mrs. Potter’s memories and Herne dragged me into his playing field.” I was sure I’d told him about this already. From his expression, my mind was playing tricks on me.

“Borrowed?”

I sat down. “She was telling me about what happened at the school and I wanted to help her get through the bad memories. Something happened. I shared her memories, like we had some kind of hive mind thing going. And then Herne dragged me out of her memories into his own. And I got all caught up in something that happened hundreds of years ago. It was like I was really there.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Gary was very quiet. I looked up to find him frowning at me. “Why didn’t you tell your captain any of that?”

“I—” I broke off, my forehead wrinkling. “Didn’t I?”

“No,” Gary said. “You didn’t.”

“Oh.” I considered the question for a minute. “Because he’s a sanctimonious asshole?”

“I get it,” Gary said sagely. “You like him, too.”

“For God’s sake. Go home, Gary, you’re getting delusional from lack of sleep.” I remembered thinking Morrison was close enough to kiss, and groaned. “Go home,” I said again. Gary finished his coffee and put the cup in the sink, looking at me with what I was beginning to recognize as his expression of concern. It looked a bit like a polar bear with indigestion.

“You gonna be all right here, Jo?”

“I’ll be fine,” I promised, absurdly touched by his worry. “I’m just going to read for a while and then go to bed. No crazy antics. I promised Morrison.” I made a face.

“No, you didn’t.”

Damn. “I don’t think he noticed that.”

“Don’t count on it. I’ll be by around a quarter after five,” he reminded me. “Lock the door.” I nodded and followed him to the door to lock it behind him, then stood there for a full minute, waiting for another shoe to drop.