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CHAPTER SEVEN

No fewer than eight cops—all of whose cars I tinkered with regularly—lingered outside Morrison's office, ostentatiously reading files or exchanging stories over their desks. Every one of them fell silent as I carefully closed Morrison's door and stepped away from the office. Bruce, a thin blonde who had no business being away from the front desk, put on a mournful smile.

"Well?"

"The son of a bitch fired you," Billy guessed before I had time to draw breath. An uproar met his speculation, a wall of outrage entirely on my behalf. Rex, short and stout as his name, flung his hat on someone's desk and stalked toward me. I backed up into Morrison's door, alarmed. The doorknob hit me in the butt.

"Get out of the way, Joanie." Rex sounded like a bulldog, low-voiced and growly. "I'm gonna give that bastard a piece of my mind. He can't do this to you! You were on family leave, for Christ's sake!"

I edged to the side. "Urn, actually..."

Rex stormed past me and flung Morrison's door open, banging it closed behind him again. Around me, furious cops swore and waved their hands and lined up, God help me, actually lined up to be the next one to take on Morrison.

"Actually," I mumbled, "he didn't fire me."

Nobody listened. I rubbed my hand over my eyes, setting my contacts to tearing again, and sighed. Bruce appeared at my elbow and guided me to a desk to sit down. "It'll be okay, Joanie," he promised. "You're a fantastic mechanic. You'll get a job in no time. Heck, you could probably keep yourself busy just fixing our cars, huh guys?"

"I fix your cars anyway," I pointed out. "Nobody pays me for it." Bruce had exactly one hobby: running. His wife's car, a 1987 Eagle station wagon with a manual transmission, broke down more often than soap opera stars. I wasn't sure he knew how to drive it, much less fix it. "Look, Bruce, I'm—"

Bruce patted my shoulder reassuringly. "Elise wants you to come over for dinner Friday. She's going to raise holy living hell about you getting fired."

Elise made the best tamales I'd ever had, and was convinced I was killing myself eating macaroni and cheese for every meal. "Elise is an angel," I said, "but—"

Rex burst out of Morrison's office, cheeks bright red with exertion. Billy marched through the still-open door. Even over the general noise I could hear Morrison's, "Oh, for Christ's sake!" A moment later Billy backed out of the office, herded by Morrison, who stopped at the door, broad-shouldered and impressive.

"Joanne Walker has not been fired!" he bellowed. "All of you get the hell back to work!" He stepped back into his office, slamming the door behind him.

Eight officers of the law turned as one and stared at me accusingly.

"That's what I was trying to tell you," I said weakly. "He didn't fire me. He busted me back to foot patrol." For a moment I wondered if a mechanic could technically be busted back to anything. Everyone was silent for about as long as it took me to wonder that, and then the cacophony began again. I tried, briefly, to explain, then gave up and let Billy defend my dubious honor as an honest-to-God cop with a badge and everything. I wasn't sure where that badge was. I remembered they'd given me one when I graduated from the police academy, but my best guess was that it was in my sock drawer. Or possibly in the glove compartment of my car. Or maybe in the junk drawer in the kitchen. I slunk out while the debate about whether I was really a cop heated up.

Gary and Marie were waiting impatiently in the lobby. "You're a cop?" Gary demanded as I came through the turnstile.

"No. Yes. No. Shit! Why?" I flung myself onto a bench and scrubbed my eyes.

"Jeez, lady, I didn't mean to ask a tough question. What happened in there? Why didn't you say you were a cop back at the church? Or the airport? I thought you were nuts, goin' after some broad you saw from a plane." Gary towered over me, hands on his hips. Marie hovered in the background, looking just as curious as Gary.

"I'm not a cop. I mean." I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. "I am a cop. I guess I'm a cop. I'm a mechanic. That's what I do. Except now I don't. Now I write jaywalking tickets, or something. I wonder when I'm supposed to be back at work. Shit."

Gary and Marie stared at me. After several seconds, I mumbled, "I make more sense when I've had some sleep." I pried my eyes open. Tears welled up again. Gary became sympathetic all of a sudden.

"All right, all right. I'll take you home. Tonight we'll get together and figure this out." He actually patted my shoulder, just like Bruce had done.

"We?" Marie and I spoke together. She sounded surprised. I sounded small and pitiful.

"What, you think I'm gonna miss out on what happens next? Crazy dames." Gary shook his head and pushed his way out of the station, muttering to himself.

Gary dropped me off at my apartment complex. I stood on the concrete stairs and waved as he drove off, then staggered up to my apartment, navigating to the bedroom without turning the lights on. No one lived there but me; it was a safe bet that there wouldn't be anything unexpected on the floor except four months worth of dust. I was right: falling face-first into the bedcovers dislodged dust and made me sneeze, but nothing worse awaited me. My last conscious thought was that I'd forgotten to take my contacts out.

The apartment was empty of unexpected things. My dreams were not. Coyote was waiting for me. He looked warily approving while I frowned at him groggily. "How d'you do that?" I demanded. "Dogs don't have that much expression."

"You've never owned a dog, have you?" Coyote asked. "Besides, I'm not a dog."

I put my face in my hands, eyes closed. "Whatever. Where are we? What do you want?" I peeked at him through my fingers. "Are you always going to be bothering my dreams?"

"This isn't a dream." Coyote cocked his head to the side, looking around. After a moment I did too, wearily. I had to admit I'd never had a dream that looked like this one. Even falling dreams, which weren't big on detail, usually had a gray sky and a very long drop. This one didn't even have that much, just dark storm clouds pushing at each other with no particular pattern or intent. I thought I preferred falling dreams.

I dropped suddenly, a sickening distance in no time at all. Coy-ote yipped, a short sound of annoyance and alarm. I flinched upright, back where I'd started. "Pay attention," he said sharply.

"I am," I protested. "What was that? Where are we?" There was nowhere for me to have fallen. Coyote and I drifted, in the middle of it, sitting on nothing.

"You called a dream up," Coyote said patiently. "We're in a place between dreams."

"Why? I'm so tired." I was whining. I made a small sad sound and straightened up, trying to behave like an adult. Coyote licked his nose.

"You did a good job this morning," he said. I blinked at him slowly.

"Is that why I came here? So you could tell me that?" I didn't mean to sound like a snappy, ungrateful bitch. I was just so damned tired. Coyote let the tone blow over him.

"Partly," he agreed. "Ask the banshee to help you with your shields. You're going to need them."

"My shields?" I wasn't used to feeling this thick.

Coyote smiled. I didn't know dogs could smile. "I'm not a dog," he said, and, "she'll know what you mean. Now get some sleep." He dropped a golden-eyed wink and disappeared.

Or at least, I ceased to be aware of him. Instead I became aware of someone pounding on my door with the patience and rhythm of a metronome. I stayed very still for what felt like a very long time, hoping the pounding would go away. It didn't. After six or seven years I rolled out of bed and crawled toward the front door.

I made it to my feet somewhere in the living room and was rewarded for my monumental effort by barking my shin on the coffee table. I reached for the doorknob and the injured shin at the same time, pulled the door open, and slammed myself in the forehead with the edge of the door. Collapsing onto the floor in a sniveling lump seemed the only thing to do, so I did it. It was only when tears started to unstick my eyelashes that I realized that I not only hadn't, but couldn't, open my eyes. I took turns rubbing at my shin and my forehead and my stuck-together lashes. Somewhere up above me, Gary said, "Jesus Christ, Jo. You look like someone ran you over and backed up to see what he hit."

"Nice to see you, too, Gary." Not that I could see him. I put a hand over my throat. I sounded like a bulldozer had dumped a load of gravel into my chest. "What time is it?"

"Seven-thirty." He crouched; I could tell by the location of his voice.

I pried one of my eyes open. "No way. I just went to sleep." I turned my wrist over and tried to focus on my watch. I couldn't, but that was okay, since it was wrong anyway. "No way."

"Yep. Seven-thirty. We're supposed to meet Marie in half an hour at her place." Gary straightened up again. I got my other eye open, and blinked tearfully at him.

"Okay. I guess, uh. Let's go." I swallowed, trying to loosen my voice up some, and worked on getting my body moving in a direction that felt like 'up'.

"Uh," Gary said.

I could only do one thing at a time. I stopped trying to stand and squinted at him. "What?"

"You might wanna think about taking a shower and changing clothes."

I looked at him without comprehension for a while, then looked down at myself. And, in growing horror, looked some more. After a while, I said, "Oh yuck."

I wouldn't have thought sleeping in bloody gory clothes could be beaten for general yuckiness, but adding in a layer of dust over all that made me a fine imitation of a desiccated corpse. "Come in," I grated. "I'll shower." I crawled away from the door without waiting to see if he came in.

* * *

The reflection in the mirror was marginally kinder fifteen minutes later. My hair was clean and slightly gelled into spikes. I was still pale, but only from lack of sleep, rather than from blood, dust and lack of sleep. I'd managed to unstick the contacts from my eyes and was wearing an old pair of glasses, thin gold wire frames with long narrow oval lenses. The gold did cool things to my eyes, or at least it did when I wasn't still suffering from bloodshot-from-hell eyeballs.

I stared at my reflection, fingering the thin white scar on my cheek. It began just behind the glasses lens, next to the corner of my eye, and ended in the faint smile line above my mouth. It wasn't exactly detracting, but it sure as hell wasn't something I was used to. Bumping my fingers over it didn't make it go away. I finally looked away from the mirror and wove my way into my bedroom to find clothes.

The first T-shirt I found was black, probably the worst possible color to wear when I was one step paler than death, but it was clean, and the V-neck didn't mess up my hair as I yanked it over my head. Sometimes that's all a girl can ask for. It would've shown off my new necklace well, except I'd had to abandon that until it spent some quality time with silver polish and goo remover. Blood did not go well with silver.

For a girl who didn't wear jewelry, I felt weirdly naked without the necklace. I dug up the only other piece of jewelry I owned, a copper cuff bracelet my father'd given me for Christmas while I was still in high school. It went on my left wrist, having left the dysfunctional watch on the bathroom counter. The etchings around the outer edges of the bracelet were Celtic knots, which I'd never realized before. For the first time, I wondered if Dad had done that on purpose. I stood there staring mindlessly at the bracelet for far too long, tracing a fingertip over the line etches of various Cherokee-favored animals between the two bands of knots, then shook myself. I was supposed to be getting dressed. I could handle a task like that. Really.

I clawed through my sock drawer and came up with socks, a G-string and the police badge. I threw the badge back in the drawer and pulled the G-string on. Not my favorite kind of underwear, but slightly better than going without. I tugged a pair of jeans on and went out to the living room with my socks in one hand.

Gary was on the couch with one of my secret weaknesses: an entertainment magazine, now four months old. I sat down on the love seat and pulled a sock on. "Are we going to be late for Marie's?"

"Nah." Gary looked over the edge of the magazine. "She doesn't live too far from here. Hey, you don't clean up so bad."

It took a minute to work my way through that. "Thanks. I think."

"Sure," he said, and went back to the magazine. I got my socks on straight and went looking for shoes. All my favorite pairs were in my luggage, at the airport. I snagged a pair of boots that weren't too reprehensible, went back into the bedroom, got a pair of skinnier socks that would fit better under the boots, and left the ones I'd had on in the middle of the floor. Such are the joys of living alone. No one can yell at you for doing things like that. "Okay, I'm ready when you are."

"Just a sec." Gary didn't look up from the magazine.

"You can borrow it." I grinned and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. When I came back Gary was on his feet, waiting.

"Damn,"he said, and looked at my feet. So did I. The boots had heels, nice thick sturdy ones. Cludgy, in fact, but I like cludgy boots. I have big feet and can't wear sexy skinny little shoes, so I always went for the opposite extreme. In those shoes I was every bit as tall as Gary was, maybe a little taller. I grinned at him.

"Lady, you scare me," he said, and opened the door for me. I went out feeling pretty good about myself.

* * *

Marie lived barely ten minutes from me. My all-day nap had evidently made a dent, or at least I'd caught another wind, because I took the stairs up to her condo two at a time, leaving Gary behind. "She said it'd be open," he called as I looked both ways down the hall. "Number one twenty-one." I took an arbitrary left as Gary caught up, found Marie's door and did a staccato rap before pushing it open.

"Hey, Marie, it's us." The entryway was a short hall with a longer hall to my right and a kitchen to my left. At the end of the entryway, in front of us, was a Nene Thomas print, a woman surrounded by ravens. "I like the print," I called, and went past the kitchen, past the print and around a corner into the living room, still smiling.

Marie's very dead body lay sprawled across her living room floor.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I backed up and crashed into Gary, elbowing him in the gut. He grunted, offended. "What the hell was that for?"

"She's dead," I whispered.

"What?" Gary crowded me forward again. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure." I swallowed. Gary did the same, right behind my ear.

Marie lay on her back on the floor, one arm flung above her head, a classic faint. Except it wasn't a faint. A hole had been torn through her midriff, starting just to the left of her breastbone. It rose up at an angle, and it didn't take much imagination to envision the heart muscle cut neatly in half beneath the crimson blood. There were no superficial wounds that I could see. It looked like someone had walked in, jerked a knife up through her chest without warning, and walked out again. I rubbed my chest where Cernunnos had stabbed me, nervously. "Where's that sword?"

"In the trunk of my cab," Gary whispered back.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"I wonder if that's good or bad."

We stood there staring at Marie's body. "Maybe we should call the cops," Gary suggested.

I pulled my glasses off and rubbed my eyes, then put them back on. Marie was still lying there, dead. "Shit," I said after a while. "I am the cops." I backed up again and went looking for a phone. I found one in the kitchen, lying beside the tooth Marie'd collected from the church parking lot. She'd cleaned the blood off it and it looked innocuous, like it was waiting for the tooth fairy. I picked it up and stared at it, then folded it into my pocket as I got the phone and went back into the living room, dialing 9-1 -1.

We were still standing there twenty-five minutes later when the real cops showed up. They bustled us down to the station in separate cars. I thought if we were really criminals, we'd have either abandoned the place or worked out our story while we were waiting for the cops, but no one wanted to listen to my point of view.

Gary had an all-day alibi; he'd been at work until two, then at a senior's poker game until he came to wake me up. I had no alibi at all. A cop I didn't know questioned me for over an hour. He kept getting hung up on the fact that I'd seen Marie from a plane in the first place. Everybody was having trouble with that idea. I made a mental note not to play Rescue Chick from the air again.

He let me go after verifying I really was a cop. Gary was waiting on the station stairs for me. We stood there watching splats of rain hit the sidewalk.

"You think it was Cernunnos?" Gary asked after a while.

"I don't think his horse would fit in that apartment." I sat down hard on the steps. Gary looked down at me in surprise. I smiled up at him weakly. "I haven't eaten this week." I didn't think I was even exaggerating.

"You could eat?" he asked in horror.

"Either that or I could pass out." I gave him my hand to pull me up. He did, and put a steadying hand at my waist when I wobbled. I smiled dizzily at him. "You know, Gary, if you were forty years younger I could get to like you."

"Yeah," he said. "That's what all the girls say. Where we going? My cab's at Marie's."

"There's a Denny's right around the corner."

"No doughnut shop?"

I grinned a little. "Down the street. But I need real food."

"You could eat," he said again, sort of admiringly. I nodded and teetered down the street.

A plate of mozza sticks, a grilled chicken-with-cheese-and-bacon sandwich, a copious number of fries and a chocolate milkshake later I could think again. Gary watched me eat with silent fascination and didn't so much as steal a fry. When I ordered a hot-fudge brownie sundae and sat back to wait for it, Gary judged it safe to speak again. "So do you think it was Cernunnos?"

I pulled my glasses off and chewed on the earpiece. "I don't know. Do ancient Celtic gods go around murdering people in their apartments?"

"Dunno. Never met any before. Don't know why they wouldn't."

I looked up and squinted, trying to resolve his fuzzy edges into something more solid. My vision wasn't that bad—I could drive without my contacts, if I had to—but I'm nearsighted and things more than about three feet away took on the Christmas tree-light effect. "I think maybe we should start with something a little less esoteric."

"Sure," Gary said, "like a jealous rival in the anthropology department." He stared at me until I wrinkled my nose and put my glasses back on.

"It could happen," I mumbled.

"Could," Gary agreed. "You think it did?"

"No," I said reluctantly. "I think Marie was into something weirder than that."

Gary nodded, satisfied. The waitress came back with my sundae and I poked at it with a fork, no longer hungry enough to eat it. "It was too clean to be Cernunnos."

"Whaddaya mean, too clean? Didn't you look at her?"

"Yeah, but." I waved the fork around. "Think about his host. Dogs and birds and guys on horses. Do you think he goes around killing people all by himself? What if it was that other guy?"

"What other guy?"

"The one with the knife. She said it wasn't Cernunnos, but she'd thought it was up until the diner this morning." I frowned at my brownie, and took a bite. It was pretty good. I took another bite.

"The human guy?"

"I donno. I wonder if there are any humans associated with Cernunnos. Maybe we should find out."

"I don't think the library's open this late, Jo."

My eyebrows went up. "Doesn't matter. I've got a computer at home." The brownie really was pretty good. I ate some more.

"Never touch the things," Gary said disdainfully.

I grinned. "Try it. You'll like it." I finished my dessert, paid the bill and we went home.

I have a little sign on my computer that says: On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A Dog. I dusted it off while the computer booted up. Gary stood back about four feet, looking wary. "It isn't going to bite you, Gary."

"That don't look like the ones on TV," Gary announced.

I shook my head. "I'm running Linux."

Gary squinted at me. I inhaled to explain, and gave it up as a bad job before I even started. "It means I'm a computer geek."

"Right." Gary edged closer. I opened up a Web browser while he watched curiously. "And you know what you're doing?"

I grinned over my shoulder at him. "Welcome to the twenty-first century, Gary. Anything you want, you can find it on the Net. It takes hardly any effort to find one hundred percent right answers, and one hundred percent wrong answers."

He leaned over and planted a hand against the corner of my desk, peering at the screen. "How do you tell which is which?"

"Personal prejudice, sometimes. But for this kind of stuff—" I waggled my fingers at the screen "—you can check through half a dozen sites or so and pick up the information that's common to all of them. That's pretty close to being true. I mean, we're talking about Celtic gods here, Gary. I don't think there's a real unquestionable expert on the topic, you know?" I clicked through to one of the sites. Gary dragged a chair over and we both read the screen.

There were a lot of origin stories for the Hunt. Some of it was what Marie had told us already, though some of them mentioned someone called Herne the Hunter. Those ones said the Hunt was made up of mortal hunters who had worked for Richard II of England. The rest suggested it was either of "faerie," which looked like an obnoxious way to spell "fairy" to me, or made up of great warriors from the past. Even King Arthur was listed among the riders.

"His punishment for killing the children," Gary said when we got to that bit.

"What?" I pushed my glasses up, peering at him.

"Arthur had hundreds of kids killed."

I stared at him. "I never heard anything like that."

Gary shrugged. "It's one of the stories. Sort of like the Pharaoh killing all the kids trying to get to Moses. Except Arthur was trying to destroy Mordred. Maybe he's riding with Cernunnos as his punishment for killing them."

"Where'd you learn all that?"

Gary cocked an eyebrow at me. "I'm an old dog, lady. You pick up a few tricks along the way."

Great. Apparently I was the only nonbeliever in Seattle. Well, me and Morrison. Somehow that didn't make me feel any better. Gary reached out and clicked back to the search engine, and through to another site. I half smiled.

"I thought you never touched these things."

"Don't tell anybody. You'll ruin my rep." He leaned forward, jutting his jaw at the screen while we waited for a slow-loading page to resolve. "So the only mortal mentioned with Cernunnos is this guy Herne. Is he our guy?"

I slid down in my chair, sighing. "I don't know. Some of the descriptions sound like they might just be the same person. Which doesn't do us any good. Dammit."

"What's that?" Gary leaned forward, examining the screen. Badly rhyming nonsense filled the page in a painstaking handwritten font.

I call on the East Gate to close and bind thee I call on the gods who would listen to me I call on the wind and the earth and the sea I call on fire to help bind thee In this god's name I set my geas That this binding cannot be broken By my will and by these words By these powers and by my skill I bind thee for eternity

"In Cernunnos's name I set this geas?" Gary asked, grinning. I reached out and clapped a hand over his mouth, startling even myself. Above my fingers, his eyes widened. "Wwwf wng?"

I looked back at the chant. It still looked like nonsense, but I

shivered anyway, discomfited. "I don't think we should read that out loud."

Gary's eyebrows went up a little and he glanced at the computer before shrugging. "Okay."

What, that was it? Just "okay"? My surprise must have shown on my face, because he shook his head, smiling. "Jeez, lady, don't you ever go on gut feelings?"

I spread my hands. "No."

"Well, that's what you been goin' on since I met you. Better get used to it."

"God, I have been, haven't I?" I looked around for my glasses and put them back on. "Tomorrow," I said firmly, "I will wake up normal and rational again."

"And have answers to all your problems, right?"

I smiled halfheartedly. "Right."

"Sounds like a good plan to me." Gary sighed and ran a hand back through his hair. He didn't have a lot of it, and what there was, was white. It was the only thing that made him look somewhere around his age. Even his wrinkles were sort of Ernest Hemingway wrinkles, like they were from too much squinting into the sun rather than age. They made him look dependable, not old. "Well, lady, I'm an old man and I've been up since early, so I'm heading home. I gotta go to work in the morning."

"Yeah, okay. Me, I'm going to..." I trailed off and frowned at the computer.

"Gonna what?" Gary prompted. I shrugged.

"I'm going to find out who murdered Marie."

"No fair having all the fun without me. My shift ends at two. I'll see you then, maybe."

"All right. In the meantime, don't pick up any guys with swords. Oh, hey. Your car. You want a ride to Marie's, um, to where Marie lived, um, to your car?" I stood up, digging in my pocket for my car keys as an attempt to keep my mouth from running off and making me sound even more idiotic.

"You don't have to do that," Gary dissembled, but I'd just spent weeks in Ireland. There's a certain protocol I'd learned there.

In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.

"No, really," I said. "It's the middle of the night and there's a crazy man with a knife between here and there, and besides, I need to stop at the store and get something to eat for breakfast tomorrow. There's no food here at all."

"Well, if you're sure," Gary said, and I fought back a grin as we headed for the door.

I sat in the parking lot after Gary pulled out, both my hands on the steering wheel. I was tired, but it was the kind of twilight tired where I felt a little lighter than air and not quite like I could sleep. I knew I could, but as long as the false high was with me, I thought I should run with it. Somewhere not very far above me was a dead woman who'd needed my help, and somewhere inside my head things had happened that I didn't understand. I leaned forward, folding my hands on top of each other on the steering wheel, and rested my forehead against them. I could smell the old leather on the wheel, and a faint lingering scent of a perfume I rarely wore.

Cars are my refuge, my comfort food. My first real memory is looking out the window of my father's great big old Oldsmo-bile. I was about three, too little to know I'd be making a trip like that every few months until I left home. Dad tells me that when I was too little to see the cars, I'd hear them and go, "Oom!" because that's what I thought they sounded like. He got into the habit of saying, "Zoom!" and "Vroom!" to make me happy. I still do it myself, from time to time.

Marie's murder was a little too surreal for me. People you've just met aren't supposed to end up dead twelve hours later. I shook my head and let my mind slide off that for a moment.

Of course, that left Cernunnos and Coyote to think about. You want to talk about surreal. I groaned quietly and thumped my head against the wheel. I should be going home. I should be at home, looking up Native American legends on the Net. Native American legends, and dream interpretation, and the name of a good psychologist, since it was pretty clear I was losing my mind. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone. It kept right on not having a hole in it. I kept right on not being dead. This was beyond mortal ken.

And dammit, I didn't believe in beyond mortal ken. What did an atheist do if God shows up on the doorstep? I'd invited him in for breakfast.

A sharp rap on the window startled me into bolting upright. I drove the heel of my hand into the horn. A broad face under a blue hat leaned over the windshield, wincing quizzically. I puffed my cheeks out and took my hand off the horn, opening the door to hang out of it.

"Was I speeding, Officer?"

"Didn't know it was you, Joey. Just wanted to check and make sure everything was okay."

"Hi, Ray. Define okay." I smiled wanly. Raymond was a short wide guy whom I was pretty sure could bench press a Buick. Not the fastest on his feet, but between him and a nuclear bunker, I'd take him every time. He stuck his hand out, and I stood up, leaning over the door to shake it.

"Heard you got your balls busted," he said sympathetically. Ball-busting was Ray's favorite term and he applied it with blithe disregard to gender-based improbability. "Guess I never thought about you going to the academy. But you're a real cop, huh? What're you doing out here?"

"I'm a real cop," I agreed. "Sort of." The other question was easier to answer: I pointed a finger up toward Marie's apartment. "I found the body a few hours ago."

"Coming back to the scene of the crime? Common criminal mistake, you know. You know this is the fifth murder like this in the past couple weeks?" Ray shook his head.

My eyebrows went up. "I didn't. Just got back from Europe." God, that sounded pretentious. "What do they have in common?"

Ray shook his head again. "Not much. Different age ranges, different races, different day jobs, different genders, no phone calls to or from the same numbers, not even pizza joints. Different parts of the city, different everything."

"No, there's something linking them," I said absently. I tugged my glasses off and pinched the bridge of my nose, glasses dangling from my fingertips. A piece of wire contracted around my heart and I took a deep breath, trying to shake the feeling off. A brief image of the spiderwebbed windshield flashed behind my eyelids. I frowned, trying to shake that off, too.

"Yeah? Don't suppose you can tell me what it is." Ray reached up and twisted his hat on his head. His hair was visibly thinner right where his hat sat on his head, from doing that for years. It occurred to me that I knew the guys at the department inside and out, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a date. My heart was still tight, the spiderweb image still bothering me. I put my shoulders back, trying to breathe.

"No, but there's something. Can I look at the files?" The web inside me loosened a bit and I was able to catch my breath.

Ray twisted his mouth in much the same way he habitually twisted his hat. It dug deep lines around his mouth. Being a cop left its mark. "I don't know. You're not a detective."

"Christ, Ray, the woman was murdered practically under my nose. Gimme a break."

Ray frowned at me, then waved his hand. "Arright. I've got copies in the car. I thought this might be another by the same guy, so I brought 'em to compare pictures to the placement of the body."

"And?"

He shrugged. "And there's nothing to compare. There's no ritual in how the bodies have been laid out. They've all been punched through the chest with a sharp weapon, but that's the only common element. Looks like they've all just been left to lie as they fell."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Neither. The repeat use of the weapon is good, the lack of any other ritual is bad. Nothing to pick up, nothing to deviate from. I don't like it." Ray twisted his cap around on his head again.

"Do you usually like horrible murders?"

Ray eyed me. I held up my hands in supplication. "Can I borrow those files?"

"You said look," he objected.

"Look, borrow, whatever. I'll be careful with them. Promise."

I made my eyes all big and wide and hopeful before remembering they were bloodshot. Eww.

Ray frowned at me for a while, then turned around and went and got the files. "Don't let Morrison find out or he'll be busting my balls," he said as he handed them over.

I flipped one open, not really listening to him. "I won't. Thanks, Ray."

"Yeah, well, my car needs work."

I looked up with a crooked grin. "As soon as I find out my new work schedule."

"It's a date." He nodded at the files again. "Don't mention where you got 'em."

"I won't." I watched him walk back to his car, wondering if it really was a date. Not that I particularly wanted to date Ray. It was just that fixing guys' cars seemed to be my idea of a pretty good date, which probably explained why I didn't get out more. Maybe I could start my own escort service. Oil change and dinner. I'd have to come up with a catchy name for the place. The only things that came to mind involved lube jobs, and that was just bad.

I got back in my car and went home before I started taking myself seriously.

CHAPTER NINE

Wednesday, January 5th, 12:30 a.m.

Ten minutes later I spread out the files on my kitchen table, standing over them. There was no file on Marie yet, but I'd seen that in living—or not—color. Raymond was right. The victims didn't appear to have anything in common. Nothing obvious, but there had to be something. I could feel it practically vibrating in my eardrums.

What did I know about Marie? She was an anthropologist who started believing in what she studied. She had a talent that let her see more than the average person saw, things that could be politely labeled esoteric. I yawned, and the wire around my heart went spang, releasing so fast it hurt. I swallowed a whimper and rubbed my chest again. I could almost feel spiderweb cracks sealing up.

All right. What if that was what they had in common? They were all banshees. The spiderweb fissured again, and I sighed. "Okay, that's not it," I muttered. "How about they're all, uh...aware of another plane of existence. Not the kind of thing you're going to talk about, right?" The wire-web relaxed and let me breathe again. I scowled hugely at the photographs. It was Oh God Thirty and I was standing in my kitchen talking to heartburn. Talking out loud, no less. I needed sleep. Or a dog.

"Sleep," I said out loud. "If any of you want to tell me what your gig was, stop by dreamland. Otherwise I'll figure you out tomorrow." I turned the lights off, went to bed and lay there a long time in the dark, looking at the ceiling, faintly white in the dimness. I used to do this when I was a kid, zone out until I could feel myself floating about three inches above my body. I always fell back down into myself as soon as I noticed. I felt like that now, very slightly detached from my flesh.

It was not a comforting feeling after a day like today. I tried closing my eyes and found out they were already closed, but the ceiling still glowed faintly white up above me. I blinked. Darkness came and went, but I didn't feel my eyelids move. A shock ran through me, radiating out from my heart like the sudden release of a metal-on-metal lock, sharp and high-pitched and tingling through my whole body.

And then I was free, looking down at my shape under the covers. I looked very comfortable. I looked down at my feet, the ones I was standing on. I could see the carpet through my toes.

Something tugged at me, pulling me up. I turned my face up, and disconnected with the floor entirely, floating upward.

Next time I go for a flight, I'll go out through the window. Even a glimpse of what the upstairs neighbors were doing—well, I honestly hadn't known human beings could get into that position.

The world outside glowed. I was sure there'd been no moon when I came home, but a brilliant crescent lit the sky with more wattage than usual, silver-blue light weighting down tree branches as if it were snow. Leaves glittered with color, reds and golds and greens that had more to do with neon than nature. Pathways and streets were dark blue streaks undershadowed with something else, like an artist had slapped paint on and let it slide down the canvas to expose other shards of colors beneath it. I stood in the sky, looking down over the streets as the dark blue slowly blurred away.

One exposed path led under an arch of trees that reminded me of Anne Shirley's "White Way of Delight." It twisted, sliding underground, and somewhere down it I could feel a heavy presence waiting for me. It felt like it could drink down the light and me with it, like the rabbit hole pulling Alice in. I reached up to tug a leaf off one of the trees, watching it glow a soft silver in my palm. It brightened into a beacon as I scrambled down the pathway.

It met the mouth of the cave, sliding underground. I hesitated at the dark entrance, lifting my leaf up to try to light the way. I saw a reflection, a glimpse of something bright, in the instant before a wall roared up, damming the cave's mouth. I put my hand against it, the leaf gleaming, but nothing changed except the sensation of the thing waiting for me. It was somewhere beneath the earth, and amused, and patient. I stayed where I was a few moments longer, then slowly turned back up the White Way. The one who waited suddenly felt much more distant, and then I couldn't feel it at all.

The world changed around me again, then again, and again, until they came so fast I could barely distinguish one from another. Some of the permutations I recognized: glimpses of Paris and New York, places that looked as solid as reality, overlooking the vibrant glow that had nothing to do with city lights and a great deal to do with things I didn't want to think about. Others were harder to grasp, African plains with seas of violently purple grass, Australian Outback with a sky as bloody red as the stone beneath it. Every one got farther away from civilization, until I exploded into a place of absolute stillness with the hard white light of the stars pricking my skin.

"Well, she's no good," a tart little voice said. "Look at her. A baby, spilling out all over the place. You want a cosmic bed wetter to take care of this? She can't even see us."

"That's no way to speak to our guest," another voice said very firmly. This one was rich and dark and full of very round vowels, chocolaty, like James Earl Jones. "She's come a long way on nothing but faith."

"She's come a long way on our faith," the tart voice said. It sounded like Granny Smith apples. "She hasn't got any of her own."

"She's a newborn," a third voice broke in. He sounded like mellow cheese. "She didn't mean to invite us, but she's willing to help." Two more voices chimed in, everyone bickering and sniping at one another until they sounded like a flock of geese. I turned around in a full circle twice, trying to see the people the voices belonged to. The starlight jabbed at my eyes unrelentingly, no shadows or shapes to go with the voices clouding them. It suddenly felt weirdly familiar.

I hadn't seen Coyote until I believed in him. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that I'd better believe in the voices, because I was pretty sure I had invited them to do...whatever they'd done. Hauled me out of my body to somewhere that horribly murdered people hang out.

My brain just shut down around that thought.

"Look," I finally said. It got very quiet in the star field. I turned around one more time to find a handful of people behind me, all staring at me with wide, curious eyes. "You're wrong. I can see you." I wasn't sure which one was the Granny Smith, so I fixed them all with a gimlet eye. "And I'm not all that inclined to help somebody who called me a cosmic bed wetter, when you get right down to it." A tall woman's long nose twitched. I guessed her to be Granny Smith and removed the gimlet eye from the others to give it just to her. Her nose twitched again.

"Sorry," she said after being elbowed in the ribs by a short man whom I guessed to be the James Earl Jones voice. He didn't look anything at all like Jones. I was hideously disappointed.

"You'll have to forgive Hester," he said. "She's not taking well to having been interrupted."

"Interrupted." My eyebrows flew up. "You mean murdered?" I was sure these five were the files I had lying on my kitchen table. They were all the right general sizes and shapes, even if I'd only seen photos of their corpses.

He made a moue. "I suppose so. It's really just an inconvenience, but Hester is young."

I peered at Hester. She looked like she was well into her fifties, at least. Her mouth pursed up like she'd bitten into one of the apples she sounded like. "Not as young as this one," she sniffed. I scowled, and suddenly there was an enormous distance between myself and the five, the star field endlessly expanded. I could see, with sharp-edged clarity, the alarm on all five faces.

"Dammit, Hester," one of the others said, "you're going to put her off us entirely before she'll agree to help us at all." Her voice was absolutely clear despite the distance between us, like she was standing on a sound stage. It echoed faintly. Hester flared her nostrils, then lifted her chin.

"I'm sorry." It was much less grudging this time. "Roger is right. I was in the middle of something important, and I'm not sure I'd done enough to make it last. But that's no reason to be rude. You've been extraordinarily generous with your invitation already, even if you didn't know it." Her voice was still tart, but it was more like the tart of apple pie. I began to wonder if I was hungry. "Will you stay long enough to let us tell you what we know?"

"Well, I'm here," I said. Distance contracted again, so that the five and I were only a few feet apart, stars glittering around us. "I might as well listen. Maybe you can tell me what the hell is going on." There was a note of miserable confusion in my voice. I straightened my shoulders and pretended I hadn't really sounded that pathetic.

"You almost died this morning," a petite blond woman said. She had dumpling cheeks that went with Earth Mother curves. I remembered from the file that her name was Samantha.

"Yeah, I was there for that part." I rubbed my breastbone uncomfortably and screwed up my face.

"Do you know that near-death experiences often open people's eyes to another world?"

"I know that's what they say," I replied. Samantha smiled a tolerant little smile. It occurred to me that my current position was a fragile one for argument. "All right." I gritted my teeth and pushed the words out. "So maybe there's more than meets the eye." I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone again and took a deep breath. "All right, there is more than meets the eye," I said defensively. "Normal people don't start burning and smoking when you stick a knife in them. The guy who stabbed me this morning was definitely not normal."

Hester snorted faintly. Roger elbowed her again. "Be quiet. That's quite an admission for her."

"Must it be an admission to come around to stating the obvious?" Hester asked. Apparently sour was just her nature. The moment of grace earlier must have come hard-won. It had worked to make me stay, but she wasn't earning any brownie points.

"Give me a break, Hes," I said. She looked up sharply. I bet nobody had called her that since third grade. "Yesterday the world made sense and today I'm standing in a star pit talking to ghosts." I looked back at Samantha. "So what happened to me?"

"You got to make a choice. Most people don't get to."

I spread my hands. "Why me?"

"You must have a lot to offer," she said. "Many times, those who need the most healing are the ones who can in turn heal the most."

I took a step backward, a scowl falling down my face like pitch, until I was glaring at her through my eyebrows. "What do you mean, need the most healing," I said. She was clever enough to withhold an answer. Instead, she spread her hands, a polite mimicry of my earlier gesture.

"I did not mean to intrude," she said so deferentially that the anger drained out of me again. "What do you know about shamans, Siobhan Walkingstick?"

My eyebrows went up and my jaw went down until my face was as long as a donkey's. My father had taken one look at the unpronounceable Gaelic first name my mother had bestowed on me and had given me another one. I'd looked up the pronunciation when I was a teenager, but I actually hadn't been sure that the bizarre combination of letters was pronounced She-vaun, not See-oh-bawn, until my mother used the name when she called to ask to meet me. Aside from that one conversation, not even she'd called me Siobhan. It was even less a part of me than the Walkingstick name I'd abandoned a decade ago. "How did you know that name?"

Samantha drew an outline around me with her fingertip, a loose general shape. "It's a part of you that you've been denying your whole life, and now it's spilling over. Think of it like a floodlight shining on you, illuminating all the information you've been keeping filed away. It's very clear to anyone who knows how to read it. It's eager to be acknowledged. You have a remarkable heritage, Siobhan. You ought to explore it, not turn your back on it."

I stood there and stared at her. After a while I tried to crank my jaw back up. Part of me wondered why I was reacting physically when my body, as far as I could tell, was tucked safely in bed, back at home. Wherever back at home was, from here. "Right," I said eventually. "This is getting a little too thick for me." It came out exactly right, casual bullshit. I was very pleased. The thing was, right down in my gut, I believed her.

"You're not a very good liar, are you?" The fifth person finally spoke up. He was taller than me and had a wonderful Grecian nose and broad cheekbones. He hadn't looked so good in the murder photos. It was too bad he was dead, or I'd have asked him on a date. His mouth curved in half a smile, and I had the sinking feeling he'd somehow heard that. Coyote and Cernunnos had certainly heard things I hadn't said out loud.

"Don't worry," he said. "I won't tell anybody. But thanks." He winked, and the half smile turned into a grin. I told myself I couldn't possibly blush, without a body handy. I think it even worked.

"I always thought I was a pretty good liar," I finally mumbled.

He shook his head. "There's nothing wrong with your delivery. But the truth flares up around you like a spotlight. We probably don't have much time, Joanne. Let's save the pretenses for later."

"Subtle, Jackson." Samantha smiled. He grinned and shrugged.

I opened my mouth to argue, and let all my air out in a rush. "Okay. Okay. So maybe I'm kind of on-purpose dense about American Indian—" I waved my hand around "—stuff. I just hate playing into stereotypes, you know?"

"Actually, you're afraid of it," Jackson murmured. I straightened my shoulders, offended.

"What's there to be afraid of?"

"Power," every single one of them said. I took a step back.

"Responsibility," Samantha said, and Hester said, "Change."

Roger smiled and shrugged a little, as if to say, what can you do?, and added, "Love," to the list. "Death," said the woman who'd been quiet except for swearing at Hester, and Jackson breathed, "Life."

"I'm not afraid of any of that," I threw back. "Not that I'm eager to die, but—"

"You've been very closed off since you were about fifteen," Sa-mantha said, sympathetic again. I felt my stomach knot up, and took another step back. "The world was a lot more wonderful before then, wasn't it?"

One of those cracks I'd seen inside me tore open, surgery with a battle-ax. For a moment there was nothing but pain and rage and a terrible sense of loss, memories that I'd kept safely locked away in a small black box in my mind. "How do you kn—"

I clenched my jaw on the words. I was not having this conversation with dead people in a star field somewhere outside of my own body. I felt a little tug around my heart and ignored it. "What is it that you five have in common," I said flatly. "There has to be some kind of pattern."

All five of them exchanged glances, and Jackson spoke up. "Sam asked earlier. What do you know about shamans?"

I shrugged, stiff. "I don't know. They're medicine men. They do magic. What do they have to do with me?"

"The world has a lot of people and a lot of problems these days," Hester murmured. "It needs more shamans than ever."

"A shaman's job is to heal," Roger said. "Whatever needs healing. That's what we did, in life. Most of us have been doing it for many lifetimes."

I stared at him for a while, waiting for the punch line. When it didn't come, I rubbed my eyes, noticing that here, I could see perfectly clearly without glasses or contacts. "So why would someone go around murdering cosmic caretakers?"

"Power," the quiet one said wryly. She sounded English. Hester frowned at her.

"It doesn't work that way."

"Not our power," the quiet one said patiently. "His own power. We're all people who could have fought or helped him, and so we threatened his power."

"Fought? You just said you were healers."

There was a little silence while they all looked at each other again. "There are different paths," Jackson finally said. "Some of us are warriors. Others are less confrontational. The end purpose is the same, to take away pain, physical and emotional, to heal."

Very, very slowly, a light came on at the back of my head. "That's not what I've gotten myself into." I figured this was the moral equivalent of asking for a no. It was like asking, "You wouldn't want to help me paint the fence, would you?" Put it that way, and you were setting up for denial.

I really, really wanted to be denied.

"We rarely understand the consequences of our decisions at the time they're made," Samantha murmured, which didn't sound much like the answer I was hoping for.

"I didn't have a lot of time," I snapped. Another tug pulled at my insides, a little stronger than last time. I rubbed my breastbone absently and took a deep breath. I wondered if my body back in bed did the same thing.

"The important decisions usually come when there's not much time to debate," Roger agreed. I frowned at him. He seemed so nice and down to earth, and I was unconsciously counting on him to back me up. My hopes and dreams were obviously being lined up to be crushed.

"Well, Christ, there's got to be a way out of this, doesn't there?"

"Of course there is." Hester'd become even more disdainful, which I wouldn't have thought possible. "Ignore it."

"Will it go away?" I asked hopefully.

"No. You'll keep struggling with the urge to help people, and every time you turn your back, a little part of you will die. Eventually you turn into a prune."

I stared at her. I could have nightmares about turning into someone like her. To my surprise, she threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, I might rub you the wrong way, Walkingstick, but there are people who respond to me fine. Listen to this—a shaman is a trickster. To heal someone, you need to change their way of thinking, if only for a moment. Your armor is fractured. One good hit—" She flicked her middle finger against her thumb, like she was thumping me in the chest. The tug returned, painful this time. "—And you'll come apart into a thousand pieces. Keep your promises, and you might not shatter."

I hated suspecting people were telling me God's own truth. I gulped against another painful tug, and the five of them suddenly seemed distant. "Oh, hell," said the quiet one. "We've wasted too much time. She's too tired to stay."

"She's very young," Roger reminded her.

"I know, and she's come a long way, but—" The quiet one broke off and stared at me intensely. "Listen to me—"

"Wait," I said. "Marie wasn't a shaman, was she? What did she have in common with you?"

"I don't know Marie," the quiet one said impatiently. "Find him, Siobhan Walkingstick. His power and his pain will bleed off him. Find the scent of it and follow him back."

"But who is he?" My voice sounded very thin and distant, even to myself. The tug was a steady pull now, and the stars were streaking by me, disappearing as I faded away.

"I don't know. But he controls the—"

I took a sharp breath, woke up and rolled over. Something crunched in my palm. I opened my hand and blinked through the dimness at the shimmering leaf there. After a few moments I sighed quietly and went back to sleep, cradling the leaf carefully. It was seven-thirty and I'd woken up to a still-dark sky before I remembered that it was January and there were no leaves on anything but the evergreens.

CHAPTER TEN

Wednesday, January 5th, 8:30 a.m.

I don't go to confession. For one, I'm not Catholic. For two, the whole idea of being absolved of your sins by telling a priest about them has always struck me as a little strange, probably because I'm not Catholic.

On the other hand, a priest isn't allowed to call up die loony bin and have you committed after you tell him all your crazy little stories, and he's a whole lot less expensive than a shrink.

St. James Cathedral in downtown Seattle was the only Catholic church I knew of for certain. I parked in one of the lots at the corner of 9th and Columbia, having made it from the University District in thirty-seven minutes. On a weekday morning, that was a record-breaker. Finding a parking spot put it off the charts.

St. James didn't exactly look like it was imported wholesale from Europe, but it had all the impressive dignity a cathedral ought to. Buff-colored brick and two very tall bell towers defined the place; that, and a sixty-foot arched entryway. I felt properly awed as I went inside, cradling my shimmering leaf in my palm. I kept expecting it to disappear and leave lines of fairy dust on my hand.

I edged around the pews and up to a confessional booth, sliding inside. The leaf gleamed slightly.

There was a thump in the other half of the confessional, and a gusty sigh.

"Ever had one of those days?" the priest asked. "Where you're doubting everything?"

I'd never done this before, but I was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be his line. I'd been sort of looking forward to the bit where I said, "Forgive-me-father-for-I-have-sinned," and he'd ruined the pattern already.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, "I like my job. But don't you ever get up and wonder if you've made the right decisions? Wonder if you've really got a calling, or if it's just all some sort of infinitesimally large joke? Catholics don't mind the ancient-earth theories so much. I can see that God might call a billion years a day. Life is complicated like that. It's just that every once in a while something happens that really shakes the hell, excuse my French, out of my faith."

I blurted, "What happened?" He flashed me a sad little smile through the lattice.

"You haven't seen the news yet, have you? There was a massacre this morning at one of the high schools. Four children were killed. The really sick thing is that it was some lunatic with a knife. Not a gun. He went and tore every single one of their hearts out, all those innocent souls. How could God let that happen?"

"They didn't catch him?"

The priest let out a bitter laugh. "How do you not catch some-one who's sticking knives into kids? But no, they didn't. Their teacher was knifed, too. And nobody saw anything."

"No one saw anything?" Had I done this? Was it vengeance for knifing Cernunnos yesterday? I closed my eyes. How long did it take for a god to heal? What possible purpose was there in the deaths of four kids? Did it give him strength? Hester said power didn't work that way.

"No." I spoke aloud, my eyes popping open. Shamanic power didn't work that way. Cernunnos was a god, not a shaman. Maybe his power was some kind of death power. The Web pages hadn't said.

"No," the priest agreed angrily. "No one saw. So what's the point?" I saw the shadow of him move, leaning forward to put his face in his hands. "If God can let this happen, how can I have faith in Him?"

I stood up slowly. The priest turned his head and watched me rise. His eyes were brown and his face unlined, in the unobtrusive confessional light. He couldn't have been much older than I was. "Don't worry, Father." I took a deep breath. "If God can let this happen, then he can put people on Earth who can stop it, too."

"But where are they?" he asked softly. I lifted my hand and pressed my palm against the lattice. The leaf crunched quietly and shattered in a tiny splash of light.

"I'm right here."

He reached up and pressed his hand opposite mine, separated by a few centimeters of wood. He was quiet so long I thought he might laugh at my arrogance. But then he smiled, the kind of smile a priest ought to have, gentle and compassionate and full of serene confidence that there's a better place than this world. "Go with God."

He left me standing alone in the confessional, a fading imprint of leaf dust glittering on my palm.

"They were shamans." Out of everyone I knew, Billy Holliday was the only person I would dare say that to. Billy was as enthusiastic as Mulder, a true believer in the things that went bump in the night. New people on staff always gave him shit about it— God knows I had—but it invariably faded into being one of those accepted quirks that make people interesting. Billy had more than his fair share of those quirks, but for the moment I was more or less grateful there was somebody I could talk to without Morrison throwing me in a nuthouse.

I plunked the files Ray lent me on Billy's desk, doing my best to look triumphant and in control. Billy blinked up at me, eyebrows climbing up his forehead like caterpillars.

"Where'd you get those?" he asked first, to his credit for keeping the security of the department, and, "Who were?" second.

"I found them in a garbage can."

He eyed the stack of paperwork. "You're an officer, you know? Not a detective."

"I've been with the department more than three years. I'm up for detective." I widened my eyes. Billy snorted.

"Yeah, right. Who were shamans? Are you supposed to be here?"

"I dunno," I admitted, glancing in the general direction of Morrison's office. "He didn't tell me what shift I was on. I think he expected me to quit."

"Have you ever quit anything in your whole life?"

"Not much. Shift change is at eleven, right? It's ten-thirty. I can be all perky and on time. Listen to me, Billy. These five murders in the past couple weeks, they were all shamans." I pushed my fingertip against the files. My knuckle turned white.

"How do you know that, Joanne?"

I straightened up, squared my shoulders and said, firmly, "I met them dream-walking."

Well. It was supposed to be firm. It was really more of an embarrassed whisper. Billy held my gaze for longer than the priest had, until I twisted my shoulders uncomfortably and glanced away. "Look," I said very quietly.

"No," he said, "I believe you."

Despite his rep, I was taken aback. "You do?"

He stood up. "Let's get some coffee. Down the street."

That was the usual cue for the good cop to leave the room while the bad cop terrorized the witness. I didn't usually think of Billy as the bad cop sort, but I sucked my lower lip into my mouth nervously and stuffed my hands in my pockets as I followed him out the door. On the street, he said, "You're about the most rational person I know."

I drew on what little dignity I had left. "Thank you."

"I like you and respect you even though you've been laughing up your sleeve at me for years."

I winced. "I gave up laughing ages ago, Billy. I just..."

"Think I'm nuts."

I winced again. "In a good way. Look, I mean..." I sighed. "I mean, why do you believe in that stuff, Billy?" I'd never thought, or maybe dared, to ask before.

He glanced at me, mouth drawn in a thin line. "I had an older sister."

"Had?" I tried to remember if I knew anything about Billy's childhood, other than the unfortunate name his parents had given him. Nothing surfaced.

"She died when I was eight. She drowned." Billy's shoulders were tight, his voice quiet.

"God. I'm sorry."

"Me too." He glanced at me again, stopping outside the coffee shop door. "When I was eleven, I woke up from a dream that I was suffocating. Caroline was sitting at the edge of my bed with her fists knotted in her lap. She told me that my best friend, Derek, had fallen into the slurry a neighbor was pouring for the concrete foundation to their house. I woke up the whole household and we all went running over there in our pajamas."

My own hands were knotted at my sides. "And?"

"My dad pulled Derek out of the slurry. It was half-set and crushing his ribs. My dead sister saved his life."

I hauled in a deep breath of air and rubbed my breastbone. "Jesus." I smiled lopsidedly. "So you're telling me you see dead people?"

Billy shot me a look, seeing if I was teasing him. I was, but it was the only way I could get through the conversation. I didn't mean to hurt him, and after a moment he realized that. His shoulders relaxed and he smiled back, crookedly. "Yeah. Not like the kid in that movie. Not nearly that often. But yeah, I do. You remember the Franklin murder a couple years ago?"

I shuddered. "Yeah."

Mrs. Franklin had killed her fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily, after the girl claimed she could see her new stepfather's past, and that he was a rapist. Mother and daughter had a screaming fight, ending in the girl's death. Mr. Franklin's police record proved Emily correct, too late. It was the sort of case the cops hated to have on the news; the tabloids made a huge fuss over it, while the coroner's office held its tongue about whether Emily had been sexually abused. The news crews took the coroner's silence as an implicit yes. The police department didn't like to talk about the fact that she hadn't been. It led to unanswerable questions about the little girl's apparent psychic abilities.

"Yeah, I remember. The whole thing was insane." I wasn't supposed to have been there. I'd been out with Billy, trying to hear the hitch he claimed was in his engine, when he was called to the murder scene.

"Emily Franklin was in the corner watching you the whole time you were there, like you were the sun and had just come out." Billy turned and pulled the door to the cafe open for me.

"Emily Franklin was dead, Billy."

"I know."

Hairs stood up all over my body, like someone'd dropped an icicle down my back. "You're telling me there was a ghost watching me?"

"The ghost of a clairvoyant little girl. She said you didn't have any past at all. She'd never seen anyone like you. She wanted to see what was going to happen to you. After a few days she let go, but I've been waiting ever since to see what happens to you. With you." He ordered a large decaffeinated espresso and waved his hand at me to order while I stared at him unhappily. "Go ahead and get something." He dug in his pocket for cash.

"Hot chocolate with mint and whipped cream," I mumbled. Forget cars. I needed real comfort food. "A grande. Why didn't you ever tell me that, Billy?"

"Would you have believed me?" He pulled the top off his drink and blew on it before taking a sip. I frowned at the counter.

"No," I admitted.

He shrugged. It was answer enough. "So something finally happened." He took a bigger sip of his drink and cursed, sticking his tongue out in an effort to reduce the burn's pain. "I've been waiting two years. You do this kind of about-face, I'm prepared to believe it. You wouldn't be here if you didn't believe it yourself. So tell me about the shamans. Was your friend one, too?"

I got my hot chocolate and found a couple dollars to give him for it. "I don't think so. She had something else going on. Look, where do I start, Billy? I've got a feeling I've got a lot of catch-up work to do. Starting right now, and starting with some old Celtic gods." I said it with a hard C, the way Marie had, and Billy looked both surprised and impressed.

"I woulda thought you'd say 'Seltic,'" he said. I wrinkled my nose at him.

"I just got back from Ireland," I pointed out, let a beat pass, and admitted, "Marie said Celtic. I didn't know better before then."

"There's no soft C in the Gaelic language." Billy took another sip of his coffee, then set it down. "Okay, tell me about this...god? God, Joanie. You start believing and you go whole haul, huh? I've just got dead people."

"Lucky me." I shook my head. "The guy I fought with yesterday wasn't a gang member. He was...Marie thought it was Cernunnos. An ancient Celtic god."

Billy sat back, pressing his lips together. "What do you think?"

"He wasn't human." It was strange to hear myself say that. I felt like an alien had taken over my body. Billy nodded slowly.

"You think he's the one who killed Marie? Who did the other five murders?"

"I don't know. I hurt him pretty badly yesterday, and I don't know if he could heal from it that fast. And then there's the high school this morning."

Billy nodded again. "Same M.O. Is it your guy?"

I wrapped both my hands around the paper cup. "Marie thought there might be someone else involved. It doesn't feel right to me, pinning this on Cernunnos." I barked laughter. "Doesn't feel right. God, listen to me."

"I am," Billy said seriously.

Hot chocolate splashed as I set the cup down. "And that freaks me out even more."

Billy studied me as he took a long drink of his coffee. "What's it like?" he finally asked. I dropped my head and looked into my hot chocolate.

"The good news is it's keeping my mind off having to walk the streets." I scowled at my drink. "That came out wrong." I pushed the chocolate away and lowered my head to the table, resting it on my forearms. "You remember the first time someone you loved died, Billy? It's like that. I can't believe it, but I can't not believe it, either. At the very least I should be in a hospital bed breathing through a tube. I should probably be dead." I sat up, fingers drifted to my sternum again. "It's like the whole world is a badly tuned engine. I'm starting to feel when it misses or lurches. And I've got this stupid idea that I can fix it."

"The world," Billy said. I smiled thinly.

"Let me just start with Seattle."

I turned up at Morrison's door, still carrying my hot chocolate, at five minutes to eleven. He stared at me like he'd never seen me before. "You didn't tell me when my shift started," I said with all the aplomb I could manage.

Morrison continued to stare at me. "I don't have a patrol uniform, either. I do have my badge!" I dug it out of my jacket pocket and waved it at him.

He stared at it.

"So now you pair me with an old curmudgeon, right? Somebody to show me the ropes? Somebody who hates paperwork and foists it all off on me? That's what happens now, right?" That's what happened in the movies, anyway. I frowned at Morrison. "You okay?"

"What the hell are you doing here, Walker?"

I straightened up, startled. "What'd you think I was gonna do, not show up so you'd have an excuse to fire me? Y'know, I might have loads of stupid, Morrison, but I'm not quite that bad."

"Walker." Morrison walked around to my side of his desk, pausing to close the door. My heart lurched. "You are a suspect,"

Morrison said, the words measured, "in a murder case. Walker. Do you really think I'm going to put you on the street?"

I swallowed hot chocolate wrong, and coughed until my eyes teared. Morrison stared at me impassively. When I could breathe again, I croaked, "Suspect? But they let me go."

"It looks bad. You chased that woman all over hell and breakfast, and twelve hours later she's dead? The papers will have a field day. Murdering cop put on foot patrol. The department can't afford that kind of publicity, Walker. The only place I want to see you in the next week is nowhere near here."

"If I'm nowhere near here how can you see—" Morrison's eyebrows shot upward. I shut up.

"Since you're here, go get a uniform and the rest of the equipment. Then stay outta my sight until this thing is cleared up."

"But—"

"Get!"

I got, stopping by Billy's desk on the way out. "Swing shift?" he asked. I snorted.

"No shift. I'm on temporary leave of duty until this murder's been taken care of. Morrison thinks I'm the prime suspect."

"Isn't it nice to have co-workers who have faith in you?" Billy shoved the paperwork I'd gotten from Ray at me, grinning. "So go clear yourself."

I retreated to the coffee shop to study the files, reading about the murders and trying to figure out what they had to do with Marie. None of it made any sense to me. The last of the shamans, the quiet woman whose name I hadn't been able to remember, had died on New Year's Eve. Her next of kin was listed as Kevin Sadler, and there was a contact phone number. Maybe I hadn't missed the funeral.

I'd never called up a stranger to ask about a dead person be-fore. Kevin Sadler had a quiet voice and told me I'd missed the funeral but he would appreciate a visit; the house was very quiet and empty now. Nervous, uncomfortable and glad I wasn't in uniform, I drove to the address he gave me.

The man who met me at the door was as unprepossessing as his voice, with thinning ashy brown hair and weary hazel eyes. He was at least my height, but his shoulders stooped and he gave the impression of being much smaller. Despite the shadows under his eyes, he smiled at me and offered his hand. "I'm Kevin. I don't think Adina ever mentioned you, Joanne."

I shook his hand and came in as he ushered me. "We only met once, very briefly," I said awkwardly. "The circumstances were unusual."

A genuine smile flickered over his face. "Things with Adina often were. Can I get you some tea? I have the kettle on."

Despite my discomfort I smiled back. "If you're sure it'd be no trouble, I'd love some tea." I followed him into the kitchen, looking around.

The Sadler home was tiny, small enough to be called a cottage. The kitchen was country-style, with innumerable calico cat figurines, besieged with flouncy bows, on wall racks and littering the counters. The walls were butter-yellow where they could be seen behind pine cupboards, and the counters a cheerful orange that somehow avoided being overwhelming. Only one small window, with pretty gingham curtains, gave the room natural light, but it seemed bright and pleasant anyway. A calico-printed kettle puffed madly, a promise that any moment now it would whistle and the water would be ready.

"I think the first thing I heard Adina say was swearing at someone," I commented, still looking around. "I don't think this is the kitchen I would have expected from her."

Kevin smiled as he took down teacups from a cupboard. They looked like real china, with cats on the sides. "Adina liked to shake up people's preconceptions. When did you meet her?"

"I was looking for help." I couldn't find a tactful way to say "last night" to this quietly mourning gentleman. "I think she may have had some answers, but I didn't have time to ask her." The whistle blasted. Kevin took the kettle off and poured boiling water over tea bags.

"What did you need help with?" He reached out to pat one of the calico cats on the counter. It opened its eyes and purred. I leaned back, startled.

"I'm trying to find someone," I temporized, then suddenly went on a gut feeling and corrected, "I'm trying to find the man who killed her."

All the smile went out of Kevin's face. "He's a very dangerous man. A lunatic."

"I know. But a friend of mine was murdered last night and the police think it's the same man. Four kids were massacred this morning, and I think it's the same man. I don't—" I took a breath and gulped down air. "I don't have much to go on. He seems to be attracted to different kinds of power."

Kevin glanced over at me. "What kinds of power?"

Damn. I was going to have to say it out loud. "Shamanic power. And—and death power."

Kevin nodded slowly. "Adina believed in those kinds of things. Do you?"

I let my breath out, relieved he hadn't laughed and shown me the door. "I didn't used to," I admitted, "but some pretty convincing things have happened to me lately. Adina said she was a shaman and that...I was too." I didn't like saying it out loud. "But I don't know much about it. I'm running blind."

"But you think you can stop this man."

"I promised a priest." I smiled a little. "Seems like the kind of promise you shouldn't renege on."

Kevin smiled back without it touching his eyes, and turned away to take the tea bags out of the tea. He offered me a cup. I sipped and watched him struggle for words. "Adina went back east for Christmas," he finally said. "To visit her family. She came home early to surprise me, and—" He took a shaking breath.

"Hell of a Christmas present," I mumbled, and clapped a hand over my mouth when I realized I'd said it out loud. Kevin lifted his teacup in a mock salute, a ghost of an unhappy smile on his face.

"And a Happy New Year."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I left Adina and Kevin's home with a list of books to check out and no more information at all about Cernunnos or anyone who might be working with him. I stopped off at the University Bookstore on the Ave., found all but one of the recommended books, and went home to check my e-mail. There were two messages promising I could lose fifty pounds in thirty days, and another telling me I could make twenty thousand dollars in the same amount of time. My spam filter was getting sloppy. I manfully resisted these temptations and sat down with one of the books. I was still reading when Gary pounded on the door.

"You look better," he announced when I let him in. "I was half afraid you'd be dead, too."

"Gee, thanks. I didn't think you'd come by." I let the door swing shut and went into the kitchen to start some coffee. Gary followed me.

"Lady, you're the most interesting thing that's happened to me since Annie died. You think I'm gonna miss out on all of this? Sowhat'd you find out?" He leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest, looking for all the world like he belonged there. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen a man who looked as comfortable in my kitchen as Gary did. He filled up the room in the same way I imagined Sean Connery might, so easy with himself it was like the air around him vibrated.

I put the distracting but otherwise appealing thought of Sean Connery out of my mind and lifted a hand to tick off my accomplishments for the day. "Priests are losing faith, the police don't want my help and shamanism is kind of interesting."

"Shamanism." Gary's bushy eyebrows climbed up toward his receded hairline, making deep solid wrinkles in his forehead. "I leave you alone a few hours and I miss all kindsa things."

"You have no idea." I frowned at the countertop, trying to find a place to start. There was a crack that ran along the edge of the counter. It had been there since I'd moved in. It had never bothered me before, but it looked dark and uncared for after Adina's kitchen. I bumped my fingertips over it, shaking my head. "Funny thing is, a lot of this stuff makes sense to me. I mean, drug-induced spirit journeys, I'm not sure if I think that's real. It could just be the drugs. But trance-induced, that's easier to take. It's not being brought on by mind-altering drugs, you know? It's something your psyche is doing all on its own. But on the other hand, how much of it is influenced by what you've read or been told or have held in your subconscious somewhere? Does it matter? Is it any more or less real because it's been influenced by something?" "Jo," Gary said politely, "what in hell are you talking about?" I looked up and laughed. "Can you play a drum, Gary?" He leaned back, eyebrows quirked. "I can keep a beat, sure." "I want to try an experiment. I went somewhere yesterday when Cernunnos stabbed me. I want to see if I can go there again."

"Spirit journey," Gary guessed. I nodded. "Thought you Injun types knew all about that." He grinned as I rolled my eyes. "Got a drum?"

"Nope. I thought you could use one of my stainless steel pots."

Gary blinked at me. I laughed out loud, and his blinking faded into mild chagrin. "Makin' fun of an old man," he grumbled, but his gray eyes held a spark of humor.

"I don't see any old men here," I said as I went back through the living room into my bedroom. I heard his snort of pleasure and the creak of the floorboard as he followed me out of the kitchen. I came out with a drum and handed it to him, trying not to look proud. It must not have worked, because he took it with a great deal of grace and care.

"Where'd you get this, Injun?"

Trying not to sound proud didn't work, either. "It was a birthday present. One of the elders made it for me."

I didn't own much that qualified as art. In fact, the drum was probably the sum total. It was about eighteen inches across, thin stretched hide evenly tanned and evenly pulled over the wooden frame. A raven whose wings sheltered a wolf and a rattlesnake was dyed into the leather, bright colors that hadn't faded in the fourteen years I'd owned it. Bone and leather strips decorated the frame, hand-carved polished beads dangling down from the ends of stays that crossed under the head to make a handle. The drumstick that went with it had a knotted leather end and a cranberry-red rabbit fur end. I brushed my fingers over the soft drumhead, smiling. "He said I'd need it some day. I thought he was crazy, but it was the most beautiful thing anyone'd ever given me. No one ever made anything just for me before."

Gary grinned. "Not even a valentine?"

"I wasn't ever at any schools long enough to get valentines." Half-truths were a lot easier than whole truths, sometimes.

Gary brought the drum and drumstick together with a deep ringing boom. "Looks to me like that was their loss."

"You're too old to flirt with me, Gary." I grinned, though. I'd been complimented more in the day I'd known Gary than in the past year put together.

"Listen to her. A minute ago she's sayin' she didn't see any old men. 'Sides, the day I'm too old to flirt is the day they nail the coffin shut, lady. Keeps you young." He reached out and poked me in the chest with the drumstick. "You oughta remember that. This gonna wake up the neighbors?" He knocked the drumstick against the drum again.

"I don't care if it does. I have to listen to them having kinky sex at two in the morning. They can listen to my drum at two in the afternoon."

Gary sat down on the couch. "How do you know it's kinky?"

"You don't want to know," I said fervently. "Can you keep a heartbeat rhythm?"

The answer was a pair of beats, the sound of a heartbeat. I snagged a pillow off the couch and stretched out on my back on the floor, eyes half-closed. The drum had a deep warm sound, and Gary's rhythm was close enough to my own heartbeat to send a wash of chills over me.

"How long we playing for?" Gary asked over the drumbeat.

"Half an hour after my breathing changes." I admired how confident I sounded, just like I knew what I was talking about. "I'll wake up when the drum stops." Well, that's how the book said it ought to work, anyway.

"Gotcha," he said, and I drifted.

I knew where I was going this time. I wasn't sure if I could get there, but I knew what I was looking for. The drum bumped along steadily. I wondered, briefly, about the sanity of inviting someone I barely knew to sit in my living room and watch me zone out, but the idea set off no alarm bells and I performed a mental shrug.

The room wasn't quite warm enough for this kind of behavior. I could feel a cool draft from somewhere, and while I'd always appreciated the breeze in the summer, discovering it while lying on the floor in January wasn't as pleasant.

On the other hand, the floor was remarkably comfortable. I'd slept on it for two months after I'd moved into the apartment, too broke to afford a bed. The carpet was soft enough to sort of sink down into, like I might fall through the floor.

I did fall through the floor, and into the coyote-sized hole I'd traveled before. It got smaller and smaller, and so did I, until I was mouse sized. A stream appeared alongside me and I jumped onto a palmero leaf that bobbled along the water's surface. A moment or two later it dropped over the edge of a newly appeared waterfall, and I spread hawk wings to glide to the edge of the pool before landing on my own two perfectly human feet. I felt dizzy and exhilarated by the shifts, even if I didn't know how I'd performed them. I stretched my arms, feeling like I might be able to sprout wings again, then relaxed.

"You're back soon," Coyote said. He hadn't been there an instant earlier, but somehow it didn't surprise me as he trotted up beside me and sat down. I scratched his ears and his tongue lolled out blissfully while I looked around.

The garden was healthier than it had been yesterday. There had been a lot of function, no form, precise trees and neatly cut grass, like an English maze. The trees had been browning, as if they needed watering, and nothing had bloomed, like the flowering season was long over. I was surprised at how much I remembered. I didn't think I'd looked around that much.

"It's your garden," Coyote said lazily. "You should know what it looks like." He stuck his nose in my hand and flipped my hand back on top of his head. I skritched his ears again, obediently, and looked around some more.

It still favored function, with austere stone benches and narrow pathways leading from bench to bench, to the pool, and to flowerbeds that had been empty of life yesterday. Today they were greening, and wind dusted up fallen leaves, shuffling them away in favor of growing grass. There were, I could see clearly, twigs sticking out from the carefully clipped trees, so they were no longer perfectly symmetrical.

It was very quiet, though. "Is everyone's garden this quiet? I don't hear any birds or squirrels or anything."

"Some people like it quiet." Coyote snapped his teeth together and wagged his tail, eyeing my hand hopefully. "I didn't think you'd come back so soon. What happened?"

I sat down cross-legged and scruffled his ears again. "Is it undignified to scratch a spirit guide's ears?"

He thumped his tail against the grass. "Not if the spirit guide likes it." He lay down and put his nose against my leg, looking hopeful. I grinned and rubbed the top of his head.

"I went and visited a bunch of dead people."

Coyote's ears pricked up in alarm. "That's dangerous."

"Now you tell me. Did you know you were making me a...shaman?"

He sat up, paws placed mathematically in front of him. "I didn't make you anything. You almost died. You chose to live, and that woke possibilities in you."

"But you knew it was going to happen."

He lay down again, chin on his paws. "There are so many people." He sounded sad. "There are lots of new shamans, and they make a difference, but the Old Man thinks he needs someone with a little extra power."

My eyebrows went up. "Old Man?"

Coyote licked his nose. "Grandfather Sky. The Maker. He has a hundred names. Brand-new souls are hard to make,"he said. "He worked hard on you. I knew if you chose to live everything you keep inside would start to spill out."

"Damn," I murmured. "I like my intestines where they are." Coyote snapped his teeth at me again, like I was an aggravating fly. "I know," I said. "That's not what you meant. You meant..." I trailed off again. "What did you mean? Somebody made me? On purpose? Come on, Coyote. There've got to be jillions of new souls every day. There's lots more people than there ever were before. Besides, who would make me?"

"The Old Man would. There are many more people than there used to be, but there are far more souls than there have ever been people. They recycle."

"You don't look like a Buddhist."

"Is there anything you believe in?" Coyote sounded impatient.

I thought about that. "I suppose this is an inappropriate time to say, 'I believe I'll have another cookie.'"

The coyote gave a very human-sounding sigh. "There's no talking to you."

I sighed back at him. "What's this good for, Coyote? What do I do with it? Why am I the shiny new soul?"

He shifted his eyebrows, peering up at me until he was certain I was listening. "The Old Man wanted to bring together two very old cultures to make a child who would bridge both of them. There've been lots of Celtic-Cherokee crossbreeds before, but he wanted someone who could grow to her full potential. You can't be tied down with a lot of back story, to do that."

"Back story?"

"We carry the scars of our past lives with us. He thought starting fresh would be best."

I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. "I've got plenty of scars."

"I know." Coyote's voice gentled. "I'm not sure the Old Man remembered that we carry the wisdom of our past lives with us, too."

I didn't like where this conversation was going. I hunched my shoulders and scowled. "So what do I do with it?"

One of his ears pricked up, like a human lifting an eyebrow. "It's a lever," he said after a while.

"You don't look much like Archimedes, Coyote. I bet he was taller than you, for one."

How long does it take for the human eye and brain to register something it sees? For exactly that amount of time, Coyote was the golden-eyed Indian man again, stretched out on his belly with his chin in his hands, grinning at me. "Not really," he said, and it was the coyote who said it. I blinked at him.

"Stop that." He grinned, a toothy coyote grin, and I rubbed my eyes. "Shouldn't it take more than a blink of an eye to shape-change?" I demanded waspishly. He laughed, a mixture of human laughter and a coyote's cheerful yip.

"Not when you've got as much practice as I do." He sat up, lining his paws up together again. "It's a lever, Joanne Walker. Sio-bhan Walkingstick. You can move the world. It won't be easy, but I told you that before. You have the power to heal." He leaned forward and butted his head against my shoulder. It was like having a block of furry concrete smack me. I rubbed my shoulder, frowning at him.

"But what am I, a physician's assistant or a surgeon? I don't understand this, Coyote."

"You're both." He stuck his nose under my palm and asked for more scritches while he spoke. "Heal the patient, Jo. The patient—"

The drumbeat stopped and I opened my eyes on a sigh. "—is the world."

"Eh?" Gary set the drum aside and leaned forward, looking down at me.

"The patient is the world," I repeated, then slowly grinned at him. The euphoria of the drumbeat surged through me even though it had ended. The colors were brighter, noises sharper. Gary looked different. There was an air of contentment around him, knowledge of a life well-lived. "God damn, Gary, I feel good."

He chuckled, like a nice big V-8 engine purring. I bet his Annie had been a V-4, higher pitch to complement his deeper sound. Divisible numbers, too: one went into the other. It fit. I wished I'd been able to meet her. Gary stood up and put the drum carefully on top of my computer desk. "Glad to hear it. You get anywhere?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I did." I got up from the floor, whistling "I'm A Believer." Gary pursed his lips like he was trying to fight off a smile. "You hush," I told him happily. Another crack fused shut, a feeling of heat and sizzling deep inside me. I rubbed the heel of my hand over my breastbone and grinned at Gary. "You hush," I repeated. "You just let me be giddy and weird here for a minute. I'm jumping between worlds here. This is too wild. You just hush."

Gary laughed and I stuck my nose in the air and went into the kitchen to put some water on for coffee. Gary followed me, leaning in the door. "Tell me something."

"What?"

"How come you don't know anything about your heritage?"

I was in a good enough mood that the question didn't even piss me off. I turned around and leaned on the counter while the coffeepot started up and looked for a place to start. Some of the good humor fell away, but not enough to make me clam up. "I was about twelve when I told my dad we were going to choose one place to live and stay there until I was out of high school. My whole life we'd been picking up every three or four months and going somewhere new and I was sick of it. He looked at me like he'd never seen me before and the next time we got in the car we drove to North Carolina, where he'd grown up. Eastern Cherokee Nation."

I shoved my hands in my pockets, looking at the floor while I spoke. "I knew he was Cherokee, but he hadn't ever talked about growing up. He taught me pretty much my whole primary school education, math and science and English. I mean, I went to school, but we were always moving, so I was never anywhere really long enough to get the curriculum. Anyway, he didn't tell me anything about the People. So I got to North Carolina and I was already years behind in what a lot of other kids had just grown up with. And I'm all horrible and pale like my mother was. Not that there aren't other Native kids who're pale, but I was really sensitive about it." I spread my hands, looked at them, and shrugged. "So I worked really hard on not learning anything. Not caring."

"Were you born contrary or did you have to work at it?"

I looked up. "Born that way."

"So where was your mom?"

I snorted and looked over my shoulder to check the coffee. "Ireland. I was the unexpected product of a one-night stand during an American holiday." God. Apparently I was the deliberate product of a one-night stand. It was just that the deliberation wasn't on the part of my parents. I fell silent, trying to adjust to that thought.

"And?"

"Um. And she brought me back to the States when I was three months old, handed me over to Dad and went back to Ireland for good."

"I thought your dad was on the move all the time. How'd she find him?"

"That," I said, "was the last time he spent more than five months in one place." Gary winced.

"But you said you'd gone to her funeral. So she turned back up?"

"Why are we playing Twenty Questions About Joanne's Life?" Everything was still a little too clear, the smell of coffee brewing sharper than normal. My question didn't come out as acerbically as I'd meant it to. I felt too good to be really bitchy, and I was still trying to absorb what Coyote had said.

"I guess she'd been corresponding with my dad for pretty much my whole life. Once every couple years. She sent letters to his parents in North Carolina and they'd forward them on to wherever we were."

"And your dad didn't mention this?"

"No." I didn't feel like adding anything else to that. "Anyway, so Mother just called up one day and said she was dying and she'd like to meet me before she keeled over. I was furious. I mean, who was she to ignore me my whole life and then turn around and pull something like that?"

"Your mother?" Gary offered. I sighed and nodded.

"That was basically what I came up with, too. I mean, I spent a really long time..." I went quiet, choosing my word carefully. "Resenting her. Maybe even hating her. She abandoned me and I was like any other kid who figured her life would've been way better, way different, if she hadn't. But in the end I thought, you know, if I don't go meet her, I'll never know. Maybe I'll find out it was best that way."

"Was it?"

"I still don't know." I leaned on the counter, dropping my head. "Her name was Sheila MacNamarra. She looked a lot like me. Black Irish. She liked Altoids. Um."I pressed my lips together. "We spent four months together and I feel like all I really know about her was she liked Altoids. I didn't really like her. I didn't really dislike her, either." I touched my throat, where the necklace she'd given me wasn't. "She gave me—I don't know if you noticed it. A necklace. I was wearing it yesterday."

"The cross thing, yeah. I saw it."

"Yeah. It was literally the last thing she did, giving me that. I don't know why she did it, really. It didn't seem very much like something she'd do. It was this weird personal touch after months of hanging out with a stranger. She didn't ask me very many questions and she didn't talk about herself, the whole time. She was a lot like my father. He doesn't like talking about himself either."

Gary's eyebrows rose. "The apple don't fall far from the tree."

"What?" I poured two cups of coffee, frowning at him.

"I mean, you don't open up so easy, either. I'm askin' you questions all over the place and you're real careful about choosing your answers. Maybe she couldn't figure out how to say anything to you." Gary took his coffee and watched while I ladled sugar and milk into my own.

"She was my mother," I said, frowning.

"So what? That means she was s'posed to be able to just know how to talk to you? You're an adult. I bet it's pretty hard trying to talk to a kid you left behind almost thirty years ago." Gary waved his coffee cup as I frowned more deeply.

"So you're saying it's my fault I don't know anything about her?"

Gary shrugged and waved his coffee cup again. "I ain't sayin' anything. What'd she die of?"

I exhaled. "Boredom, I think."

Gary lifted his eyebrows skeptically. I shook my head. "No, really. I think she was done. She'd seen what she wanted to see and she'd met me and she was done. So that's the kind of person she was. I don't know. Tidy. Focused. Capable of dying of boredom, or at least dying when she was done with her checklist of things to do."

Gary pursed his lips."' Scuze me for sayin' so, but I think you're still resentful. That's a big thing to get stuck with. A mom who didn't think you were interesting enough to stick around and get to know?"

"Thanks, Gary, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Can we change the subject now, please? What about you? You've got kids, right?"

He crinkled his eyebrows at me. "Kids? Me? No."

I took a sip of coffee and eyed him over the top of the cup. "You said you had to get married when you knocked your old lady up.

"Oh, that. I was tellin' stories." Gary grinned disarmingly and sat down at the kitchen table. I stared at him, morally offended. "C'mon, siddown,"he said, still grinning. "Stop looking so put out. An old man's gotta keep himself entertained somehow."

I shook my head, muttering semiserious dismay at him, and came to sit down. "Entertain yourself with figuring out what's going on with Cernunnos. I still think Marie doesn't fit." I planted my elbows on the table, supporting my head with fingertips pressed into my temples. It gave me a headache. Instead of stopping I rubbed little circles against my temples and frowned at the table.

"You said that." Gary drained his coffee cup and got up for a second. "If the guy's a death god, why doesn't it fit?"

I frowned more. "Because why kill a bunch of shamans and then start taking out banshees and school kids? Where's the connection?"

"I thought you were a cop. Aren't you supposed to be good at this kind of thing?"

I lifted my head to glare at him. "I'm a mechanic, Gary. Mechan-ics fix cars. For some reason solving murders just didn't end up on my resume."

"My garage needs somebody," Gary said. I let my head fall to thump against the table.

"I can't quit now. Morrison expects me to," I said into the varnish. "If I can't hack it I'll come talk to your garage. But this week I'd like to learn how to be a shaman and try to solve a murder, if that's okay."

"Well," Gary said slowly, "if that's all you think you can handle...."

I looked up incredulously to see a broad grin showing off those perfect white teeth. "You," I said, "are a sonnovabitch." Gary put a hand over his heart, looking wounded.

"Good thing my mammy's in her grave to not hear that."

"Your mammy, my ass." I got up to get another cup of coffee. Gary handed me his to refill. "Do you have the world's largest bladder, or what?"

"Lotsa practice drinking beer," Gary said sagely. I grinned and poured him another cup of coffee. "So Marie's murder and the school kids don't fit, and you're out of coffee. Now what?"

"I don't usually have to make it for more than one person." I frowned at the sludge in the cup. I was getting a lot of practice frowning lately. "I think now I go to the school."

"School's gonna be empty. They're not gonna keep the kids there after what happened."

"I know. I probably should have thought of it this morning. But Adina said the guy who was doing this would have a sense of power about him. Maybe I can get a scent of it."

"You're a bloodhound now?"

"I'm playing by ear, Gary. Besides!" For once I felt certain of something. "I bet I can tell if it's Cernunnos, if I go over there. I know what he feels like." That much I was sure of. I didn't think anybody could forget what the horned god's raw power felt like once they'd met it head-on.

"You didn't get that off Marie."

"I didn't know I should even be trying. Now I do. If I can get even an idea about what's going on, I shouldn't pass it up, right?" I drank some of the coffee, shuddered, and added more milk.

"Guess not. Who's Adina?"

"One of the dead ladies I talked to last night." I stared at Gary over the edge of my cup, just daring him to comment. He shut his jaw with an audible click. I grinned into the coffee cup and went to get my shoes.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wednesday, January 5th, 3:35 p.m.

When I was about nine, my father told me that forgiveness was easier to obtain than permission. I wondered, even at the time, about the wisdom of telling a kid that. In retrospect, it was smart: I tested the premise occasionally, discovered he was right and probably got in less trouble than I would have otherwise. The end result, seventeen years later, was me walking into Blanchet High School like I belonged there. Forget permission. Just act like you belong. I felt very smooth.

Until it turned out it didn't matter. One hall, cordoned off with yellow police tape, was still packed with reporters, paramedics, cops and traumatized teachers. No one was paying attention to anything else. I watched the throng for a few minutes, then turned down another hall and began pacing through the school, looking for nothing in particular.

I hadn't been inside a high school since I'd graduated ten years earlier. Blanchet High had a lot more money than the school I'd gone to did. The wide halls were carpeted, and walls above tan lockers gleamed white, like they'd been repainted over Christmas break. Florescent lights hummed, altering the color of posters cajoling students to turn out for the weekend's basketball and wrestling tournaments. Water fountains seemed to be about two inches lower than I remembered them being. Either I'd grown since high school, or Blanchet was full of short kids.

I pushed open a heavy door of solid wood with no window in it, and stepped inside a small theater. It was dark except for one white light in the sound booth, and smelled a little of makeup and sweat. I let the door close behind me and walked in quietly, taking the steps down to the stage in near-darkness.

"Long cold note on a tenor saxophone," a girl's voice said very clearly. I stopped where I was, halfway to the stage. She came out on it, nothing more than a pale shadow in the darkness. She had terribly blond hair, long and thin and straight, just like she was. She wore a pale sweatshirt that added bulk to her narrow form, and her legs faded into darkness, not even a shadow. Dim tennies were on her feet.

"Life's brief candle, a moment in the dark / laid down beneath the blade of sound." She knotted her arms around her ribs, like she was holding herself in. Her voice was as thin as she was, a clear soprano that rose and fell as she delivered the poem. When she quavered in speaking, she didn't try bullying through it, just let her voice shake, words falling to a whisper.

"Let me fold a thousand paper cranes / longing for a wish that cannot be." Hairs stood up on my arms, and I shivered. I had no right to listen to the girl's private grief, but I was afraid to move and warn her I was there. "Loss is pure in its first hour, jaded by time." She sank down onto the stage, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees. Blond hair fell over her arms as a choked sob broke the silence.

I turned and left the theater as quietly as I could.

* * *

Out in the hall, under the florescent lights again, the air was thick, like I was breathing in sadness. I leaned against a wall and kept my eyes closed until the tears stopped leaking and my heartbeat slowed down a little. I could feel something inside me, a knot of appalling rage, fueled by the girl's sorrow and the rough poem. It lit up all my own scars, all the cracks in my windshield, and threw them into sharp relief until they throbbed with the need to be answered. I slid down the wall, lowering my head and lacing my hands behind my neck. I felt like a beacon, flared up with terrible, unfocused fury that burned through the walls of everything else. I couldn't remember the last time I had been so angry, horror mixed with sorrow and disbelief, and the rage pulling in every other emotion after it, drowning them.

This has to be stopped. The thought, unnervingly clear through the anger, made me lift my head, staring sightlessly across the hall. This has to be stopped, and, I can stop it. I grasped the idea with sudden understanding, much deeper than the promise I'd given the priest. For one instant it was painfully obvious. Anger was a tool, and there was a choice in how to use it.

The Gordian knot of rage inside began unraveling, bright orange and yellow lengths of rope springing out to run through me instead of tying me up. Around the rage wound pale blue, thick ropy strands of compassion, feeding off fury. It all happened inside of an instant, and then I could breathe again. The unlocked center of me gobbled it up, storing all the burning energy for later use.

I could still feel the anger pulsing through me, self-righteous and forthright fury that someone could do what had been done. Compassion tempered it, though, delivering me the one step of distance that changed what I needed to do from vengeance to healing. Whomever had done this, whether it was Cernunnos or someone else, was terribly sick, and sickness could be healed.

"Joanie?"Billy's voice interrupted me, deep and worried. I startled and looked up. He was crouched right in front of me, big hands dangling over his knees, eyebrows beetled down in concern. "You all right? I said your name about three times."

"Sure."I blinked at him, then shook my head and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, thanks."

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing down here? The party's at the other end." If I hoped it would sidetrack him, I was wrong.

"Taking a look around. It's my job." Subtle emphasis on the last word. I closed my eyes. "It's not," he pointed out, "your job. You," he added helpfully, "are suspended."

"Thanks for the reminder, Billy. I heard it all yesterday." Had it been yesterday? They said hitting the ground running was the best way to deal with jet lag. I bet They'd never had two days like I'd had.

"That was this morning." He stood up, offering me a hand.

"I was afraid of that." I took his hand and stood up.

"Haven't caught up on sleep yet, huh?"

I smiled thinly. "There hasn't really been time."

He nodded. "What're you doing down here?"

Damn. I hadn't distracted him enough. "Sniffing around."

"For what?"

I shrugged stiffly. "Some sense of who's doing this. Trying to see if it's Cernunnos. Trying to get a feeling for his..." I swallowed, uncomfortable with what I was saying. "His power. His...whatever's driving him."

Billy folded his arms across his chest and frowned at me. "You think you can do that?"He sounded skeptical. I couldn't blame him.

"Figured I could try. I've got to start somewhere."

"You're not supposed to start anywhere, Joanie." He jerked his head down the hall and started walking. "C'mon."

I followed sullenly. "What, I warrant a police escort from the building?" Billy looked over his shoulder at me and kept walking. It took me a minute to realize we were heading for the crime scene, not the front door. I blinked and jogged a few steps to catch up, not questioning the decision.

"Still got your ID?" he asked, lifting the yellow tape for me to duck under.

"Morrison took my badge away," I muttered. It figured. One minute I didn't want to be a cop and the next I was sulking because I wasn't. "But I've got my station ID." I dug my wallet out of my pocket and flipped it open to the ID photo. A cop I didn't know gave it a cursory glance and waved us by. It seemed like half the North Precinct was there. It occurred to me this would be a good time to perpetrate other crimes, if I were the sort of person who did that.

Working for the police in any capacity had clearly been bad for me. I never would have thought that, back in the day. A couple guys I knew looked surprised but greeted me, and Billy went to talk to a hulk of a man who stood outside the classroom door. I stood around watching the reporters, who practiced looking good for one another, and waited for Billy to come back.

He did, looking grim. "Morrison's gonna have my eyeteeth if he hears about this," he muttered, "but come on. I told them you're on the serial killer case and you're coming in to see if there's any connection with these kids."

"You sound like you've done this before, Billy."

He threw a tight grin over his shoulder and led me into the classroom.

Afternoon sunlight streamed in the windows, glaring off whiteboards. Red and green and blue marker printed out class assignments more neatly than I remembered chalk doing. The teacher's desk was in front of the boards, and rows of one-piece chair-and-desk units were settled in uneven rows.

For a second, it all looked perfectly normal.

And then the smell hit me. Sweet and tangy and sharp all at once, the air conditioning filtered some, but not enough, of it away. I blinked one time and the haphazard rows of seats resolved themselves into a mishmash that pushed out from the center of the room. Three of the units were overturned, half blocked from sight by the desks around them. From where I stood, still in the doorway, I could see the beige carpet's discoloration as blood dried.

I didn't want to see more.

"Joanie?" Billy took a step back toward me, a hand extended and his eyebrows lifted. I shivered.

"I'm okay," I lied, and walked forward. There were footprints of blood on the floor, dried tennis-shoe shapes, from where the other children had run from the room. I could almost hear them screaming.

Three steps farther into the room any illusion of normality that was left dissolved. Four bodies lay sprawled on the floor, three boys and a girl. Three of them lay touching, arms slumped over ankles. All of them had died with expressions of mixed disbelief and terror. The girl had long brown hair, blood stiffening it to black. Every one of them had died the way Marie did, with one vicious knife thrust from the rib cage up through the heart. I stopped again, trying to control my breathing. I didn't want to vomit all over the crime scene. It smelled enough as it was.

"Joanie?" Billy asked again.

"I'm all right," I said, more sharply than I intended. "Just give me a second here."

He nodded and fell back a couple of steps, letting me walk forward alone, which was about the last thing I wanted to do.

I did it anyway. A second round of police tape circled the bodies, at about knee-height, wrapped around the desks, I stopped and stared into the circle of tape. I really, really didn't want to do what I heard my voice asking if I could do. "Can I cross this line, Billy?"

"Do you need to?"

I nodded mechanically. I could feel it, malevolence so close if I put my hand out it would be like touching a wall. "What kind of shoes are you wearing?" he asked. I looked at my feet.

Thick-soled boots, no heels this time. "All my clothes are still at the airport," I realized out loud. "They're made by somebody called Endura. Wide shoes for women. Size ten and a half."

"Got it," somebody else said. "Go on in."

I stepped across the police tape and into the blood.

Nothing happened. I was shocked enough to take a staggering half step backward. Billy, for the third time, now alarmed, said, "Joanie?"

"It's okay," I said distantly. I could hear Coyote's voice, faintly: Ask Marie to help you with your shields. You'll need them.

I was pretty sure I'd figured out shields all on my own. I still felt the malevolence, all around me, not quite able to touch me. And I knew I was the one keeping it away.

Great. I'd figured out how to shield. How did I take the blocks down?

Imagine you're a car. Coyote's advice, again. I almost looked over my shoulder for him. Instead I closed my eyes. A car with something blocked that I had to get to. Had to be in the dashboard, those were the worst bitch to open up and put back together. I envisioned searching out screws, and all the damned fine wiring. I dragged the dashboard open, the moral equivalent of unhinging the top of my skull and flipping it back.

All sorts of hell broke loose in my brain.

* * *

For what felt like about five hundred hours, pain and rage and chaos swam together inside my head, trying to tear my mind apart. They screamed together, telling me the horror of death and the glory of murder and the sheer unadulterated joy of power. Somewhere along the line my car analogy broke down, because now I was drowning. There was blackness, streaked with silver and gray, the not-colors rushing up beyond me as I fell down and down and down. The weight of despair pushed me farther and faster until it seemed I would pop out the other side of the earth. I tried to catch the streaks of light. Where I touched them, they turned crimson and bled, color sticking under my fingernails, but I kept falling, and they kept screaming.

I had to stop falling. In the Coyote dream, all I had to do was concentrate and I stopped falling. Here, I could hardly hear myself think, much less concentrate, and there wasn't much point anyway, because I was clearly going to die, just like the kids had. I felt them around me, cold fragile wraiths, nothing like the shamans I met dream-walking. Those dead men and women grasped the cycle of life. These kids still thought they were immortal, and the shock of death turned them into shadows. Not even so much as shadows, all their essence drawn away by the murderer—

—by the son of a bitch who had killed children—

All the colors of darkness stopped with a shock so hard I bounced. For one blessed moment, there was silence.

"Oh, no," I said into the quiet. "You don't get to take me that easily."

And the howling started again, but I wasn't alone anymore. Four children, less than insubstantial, stood around me, watching with pleading in what was left of their souls.

"I'll find him." My voice cut through the howling so sharply I

knew they'd heard me. One by one they gave me thin, ghostly smiles, and one by one they flew up like the silver and gray had flown.

This time I followed them.

I took one staggering step and opened my eyes, expecting the sunlight to be gone, expecting the police guard to have changed, expecting the world to be completely different.

It was exactly the same. Billy didn't say my name this time, but I felt him standing less than an arm's length away, just on the other side of the yellow tape. Goose bumps stood up on my arms and I shivered, looking down at the four bodies. I felt him, the murderer, could feel what he'd done.

"They were lucky," I heard myself say very quietly. "Something stopped the circle from being completed." I crouched and touched the hair of the last boy, whose outflung arm and sprawled legs were inches away from the legs of the two closest him.

"Lucky?" Billy asked, not as incredulously as I would have under the same circumstances.

"It was supposed to be a power circle of some kind," I whispered. "I can feel his exultation at the last death. And then rage. Something stopped him from aligning them properly. North, east, south, were all closed. West wasn't closed. He took their life essence." My voice shook and I couldn't stop it. "Drained them. But he meant to take their souls. Bind them to..." I shook my head and stood up unsteadily. "I don't know." I was crying. "But the circle wasn't closed, and their souls escaped."

Someone let out a very gentle breath. It changed the current in the room for just a moment, displacing air-conditioned air, adding moisture and warmth. I felt it as potential, like the butterfly who makes a storm in China. I could feel everything living in the room, an awareness a little bigger than my skin.

"Can you recognize this guy's power again?" Billy's question was quiet, but intense, spoken just behind me.

I took a deep breath, tasting copper on the air, tasting death and power and the last burning emotions of the murderer, his glee and his fury. "Yeah. I'll know him when I feel it again. I'll know the fucker."