Coyote Dreams

CHAPTER 21

I’d thought the wall of cold that had come down over me was going to be a permanent fixture. It turned out to have nothing on sheer, irrational jealousy. The muscles in my neck creaked audibly as I turned my head to stare at Barbara, who showed no signs of understanding the mortal danger she was in. I was much bigger and stronger than she was. I could probably claw her eyes out before Morrison could stop me.

She smiled brilliantly and tilted over, scooping her purse up from the floor so she could dig through it and moments later display the piece of topaz I’d given Morrison. It wasn’t a remarkable piece of topaz, except that it was supposed to be his and he was most definitely not supposed to have given it to her. “I love topaz,” Barbara was saying happily. “It’s my favorite stone. Our birthstone,” she said to Mark, as if he didn’t know, and he grinned and nodded. “I really didn’t expect Michael to give it to me, but I noticed it on his desk this afternoon when I dropped by to ask if he’d like to go out to dinner. So it’s magical? How does it work?”

I heard everything she said through heavy static, my ears and cheekbones so hot I thought they must be glowing. Even my vision was fuzzy, white noise buzzing around the edges of it as I stared furiously at the stone in Barbara’s palm. I wanted to snatch it up and throw it at her or at Morrison or through a window. In fact, I jolted like I might do that, a violent spasm that knocked my knuckles against the table. The spike of pain sent me shooting to my feet, full of clumsiness and blind anger. My chair fell over behind me with a noisy clatter, a pool of silence rippling out around us in the restaurant.

Normally that would only last an instant before the usual sounds of dining reasserted themselves. Not so with me as a focal point, misbehaving in public. My stomach muscles trembled from being held so tight. The whole restaurant seemed to inhale expectantly, waiting to see what happened. Mark pushed his chair back, concerned, and Morrison came half out of his seat, angry perplexity at my display written across his face. I still felt heat in my cheeks, but my hands were icy and I felt like the color had drained from my face, leaving me with an expression of childish injury. Morrison reached for my elbow and I jerked away hard enough to pull myself a step back.

That step proved my betrayal, undoing whatever it was that bound me in place. I whipped around and bolted for the door, smashing my thigh into the corner of someone’s table as I ran. A hard knot of pain formed in the muscle as silverware jangled and glasses crashed over. Morrison shouted, “Walker!” and I threw a raspy apology at the diners, breaking for the door again. In all the horrible silence of everybody watching drama unfold, I heard Morrison mutter an apology at Barbara and come after me. I slammed my shoulder on the door frame on the way out, half clumsiness and half punishing myself for something I barely understood.

I got to Petite before Morrison caught up with me, shaking hands fumbling the keys repeatedly. My heart hammered so badly it hurt, taking up all the room in my chest so I couldn’t get any air, and the only clear thought I could form was that I didn’t want to scratch Petite’s paint job with my shaking hands and key.

Morrison put his hand on my shoulder. Confusion, anger, concern all flared in the touch, tainting the purples and blues of his aura. I felt it all the way through me, the same bright agonizing definition of things around me that I’d experienced when he’d picked up my drum and played it.

Under the circumstances, it was an unforgivable intimacy.

I turned around and threw a punch, catching him in the chest with a meaty thwock. My keys, folded into my fist, cut into my fingers, and that, like the knot in my thigh and crashing into the door, was better than the hurt that squeezed my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Morrison staggered back, more from surprise than the power of the blow, and I dropped my keys to grab his shirt in both fists.

“Do you just not get it, Morrison? Are you just totally failing to comprehend that I’m trying to protect you? Do you think sheer blind arrogance and ignoring what’s going on is going to get you through it unscathed?” I let him go with a shove, taking the step with him so I could stay right in his face. “Let me tell you that I’ve learned the hard way that it doesn’t work. I know you don’t want to believe it. I don’t want to believe it, but goddamn it, Morrison, you’ve got to be smarter than I am, and even I’m finally listening.”

My grip on the second sight slid off somewhere in my outrage, so the only way I could tell Morrison was building up a head of steam was the way his face darkened into a dangerous shade of red, instead of watching his aura do the same. I jerked my hand at his throat as if I’d cut his words off before he spoke, and it seemed to work. He inhaled, but didn’t yell.

Maybe that was because I wasn’t giving him a chance to get a word in edgewise. I’d backed him up another several steps, until he hit a row of hedges. Once he did, he didn’t lean away from me or move forward, just stood his ground while I shouted. “This sickness is killing people, Morrison! It killed Coyote!” I slapped my palm against his chest, not quite the outright punch I’d thrown before, but enough to cause a sharp crack of sound and a sting in my hand. “You think you’re special? I promise you, you’re not! That goddamned piece of stone is supposed to keep you safe while I try to figure out how to fix all the crap I’ve fucked up. I need you to have that rock, Morrison, because how am I supposed to do my job if I’m worrying about you? Sure, great, you gave the fucking thing to a beautiful woman, guess that makes you a real hero, doesn’t it? Just like you’re supposed to be, the handsome cop saving the girl. Good for goddamned you, Morrison, but what the hell am I supposed to do if something happens to you? I’m trying to protect you, Morrison, because I don’t know what—”

I finally broke off, my anger going cold and lonely as the rest of that sentence finished itself in my head. Morrison was florid, his jaw set and eyes blazing with fury. At least a couple dozen people from the restaurant had come out to watch me berate my boss, including Mark and Barbara. Barb had her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with distress, and Mark stood with his gaze cast down, as if he couldn’t watch or look away, either. A bunch of others looked delighted, the thrill-seeking sons of bitches. Some of them were clearly embarrassed for the people causing the commotion, and a little of that started to sink through my stomach-churning emotion.

“Are you done?” Morrison asked, so softly I was surprised I could even hear it, for all I was only standing three inches away. I turned my head to the side and pressed my lips together, embarrassment and anger welling up in equal parts. After a couple of seconds I nodded and Morrison took one abrupt step forward that sent me back a couple of steps.

“I’m going to cut you some slack, Walker, because a friend of yours just died.” The quiet rage in my boss’s voice was about a thousand times worse than the shouting I’d gotten used to. “But if you ever. So much as think. About throwing another punch my way, I will have you up on assault charges so fast your head will spin, and I am goddamned good and certain that your bag of tricks doesn’t hold a get-out-of-jail-free card. Do I make myself perfectly clear, Officer Walker?”

Blood curdled in my face, so thick and painful I wanted to cry just from the weight of the blush. I nodded twice, stiff motions, then forced, “Yes, sir,” through still-compressed lips.

Morrison didn’t say anything else. He just turned away from me and went back to Barbara and Mark. I heard him making apologies to them, to the restaurant staff, to everyone, while I stood there like an unstrung marionette, my heart beating so hard in my throat I thought I would be sick. Mark broke away from the others and approached me. I shook my head before he got close enough to speak, and then did it again, lifting my palm to ward him away. It was a nice gesture on his part. I could almost feel sympathy and unhappiness coming off him. I just didn’t want to even try explaining myself just then. After a few seconds I saw his shoulders slump, and he turned away, joining the breaking crowd in returning to the restaurant.

Only when I was more or less alone in the parking lot did I wet cracked lips and whisper, “Because I don’t know what I’d do without you,” to the empty pavement.

My skin had gone numb, sometime between my breaking off and Morrison dressing me down. My head was hollow and my ears were ringing, eyes too dry and mouth sticky. I knew myself well enough to feel like I ought to have some witty rejoinders, a way to blow off what I’d just admitted to myself with a sarcastic comment or two. Instead I stood there staring at the pavement. I had the idea that finding a sword to fall on was probably the appropriate thing to do. It was what I’d do if I were the heroine of a Chinese film, having just confessed to the unreachable hero that I was in lo—

My own self-censorship wouldn’t even let me finish that thought. I supposed the only small thing preventing me from having to throw myself on a sword was the fact I hadn’t actually made an idiot of myself in front of Morrison.

Boy. Some things sure were relative. I hadn’t made an idiot of myself over that particular topic in front of Morrison, to be somewhat more accurate. Besides, seppuku was for people with moral resolve, not windshield-shattered police mechanics whose mystical backgrounds were catching up to them. I wondered how long I might’ve gone on, able to deny to myself what was obvious, if Coyote hadn’t interfered with what would have been an otherwise very dramatic death seven months earlier.

There was a flaw in that thought process, but I didn’t want anybody pointing it out to me, not even me.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t known what was going on behind Melinda or Gary’s sideways smiles when my tongue got tangled up over Morrison, but hunching up and looking away had worked as a denial method. Besides, there were half a million good reasons to not think about it, starting with the screamingly obvious one: he was my boss.

He also didn’t like me very much, didn’t like my gifts at all and knew nothing about cars. In no way was it a match made in heaven, or even by a canny matchmaker planning to rake in her profit for arranging an unlikely marriage. Kate and Petruchio, comparatively, were a sure thing.

I could almost feel thoughts whirling around in my head, like I was deliberately trying to keep them on the surface, nice and superficial. It seemed like a very me thing to do, which in and of itself made me uncomfortable. I didn’t particularly like being aware of my emotional status. I especially didn’t like being aware and suspecting it was equivalent to the maturity level of your average turnip.

“Siobhán.”

No one but Morrison knew to call me that name, and he had already left. The voice wasn’t his, anyway, and it repeated “Siobhán” after a few moments’ delay.

I tried to put my hand over my throat but couldn’t. The voice wasn’t mine, either, but I thought it was me talking. I turned around in the parking lot, looking to see who was there, and discovered I wasn’t in the parking lot at all.

Stars, distant and meaningless, surrounded me in a place between worlds and dreams. They went on just less than forever, to a horizon so distant it made me feel insignificant. I stood among the blackness and the stars, comfortable with it: I’d traveled there an uncountable number of times already, though this was the first time I’d made the journey on my own. It was dangerous in the way any new territory was dangerous. An unwise show of power could attract things that were never meant to find fragile humans, but a judicious asking could as easily call up protectors for that same delicate psyche. My own protector danced around me even now, lithe and furry and looking for a chance to cause trouble.

Not trouble, I chastised myself, or thought I did. It could as well have been Coyote, shaking his golden head at me. He never caused trouble, only learning opportunities. Who did the learning was beside the point, and the fact that he never seemed to learn himself even more so.

“Welcome, Siobhán,” I said one more time, and finally someone else appeared in the Dead Zone. A girl I knew, all elbows and knees, her black hair cropped short in defiance of the big bangs and perms that were stylish when she was that age. She was more than half asleep, a frown etched between her eyebrows, and she glowered at me suspiciously.

I offered out a brick-red hand and smiled. “This is where it begins. Brightness of body, brightness of soul.”

A doorway opened up in my mind.