Coyote Dreams

But his voice was very serious as he answered, “’Fraid not, Ashley.” He crouched, too, so our knees knocked together, and gave Ashley all the respect due an adult. “Officer Walker and I have to take care of some police business by ourselves. But when Officer Walker gets the chance to reschedule and bring you to the station, come by my office and I’ll see if I can’t scare up a case for you to work on, all right?”

I thought the girl was going to lift right off the floor from so much delight and pride. “Okay!” She darted back to her mother to say, “Captain Morrison’s going to make me a police ossifer, Mommy! With a case for my own! I’m going to be a peace captain when I grow up!”

“I’m sure you will be, Ashley,” Allison Hampton said with the fond patience of a parent who heard at least a half-dozen different when I grow ups a day.

Morrison put his hands on his thighs and pushed himself upright, a quiet hint of a smile on his mouth. I looked up at him for a few seconds, trying to hide my own half smile.

I liked to think of Morrison as my personal bane of existence, the end-all and be-all of rigidity and things I didn’t like about cops. We shared a years-old antagonistic relationship that stemmed from me knowing a lot more about cars than he did—although honestly, I still couldn’t comprehend how someone could possibly mistake a Mustang for a Corvette—and which had developed into long-running habitual disagreement on any given topic. But the truth was I respected my captain, and he regularly pulled off little coups like the one with Ashley that made it clear to me that he deserved the captaincy he held, even if he didn’t know a damned thing about cars.

I took my gaze away from Morrison and caught Gary looking at me with the faintest smirk in the world. He wiped it off so fast I knew I’d read it correctly, making me hunch my shoulders and scowl as I straightened out of my crouch.

“I’m sorry,” I said to everybody in general, except Morrison. “I’ve got to go. Gary, I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Gary’s bushy gray eyebrows shot up. “You mean I ain’t goin’ with you?”

“No.” Morrison bristled so much I suspected Gary’d asked just to get a rise out of him. “You’re not.”

I couldn’t get the cabbie to meet my eyes and confirm his intentions, though. Instead, Gary gave Morrison a toothy white smile and asked, “Then who’s gonna drum her under?”

Every hair on my body stood up, until I felt like a spooked cat. Morrison’s expression went tight, as if he’d been caught out. I thought he probably had been. Gary’s smile stayed toothy. I found myself staring at the floor, feeling like looking at one or the other would be playing favorites in some kind of weird male rivalry thing that I didn’t understand.

“I will,” Morrison said. He didn’t sound happy about it, and cold lay down all over my arms and spine. I started to say, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Captain,” but he fixed me with a gimlet glare.

“It’ll be fine, Walker. Where’s your drum?”

I was pretty sure being drummed under by somebody with Morrison’s temperament and opinion about my abilities—which were pretty much on par with my own—wasn’t really fine, but Allison was looking at me curiously, and I very much didn’t want to get into it with her there. I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “In there. On the dresser.”

Morrison walked into my bedroom like he’d done it a hundred times, while I gave Ashley and Allison another apologetic smile. “Monday and Tuesdays are my days off. We could reschedule for next we-eek?” My voice broke on the last word as I felt Morrison pick my drum up, a startling gentle caress that ran over my stomach like he was brushing the instrument’s surface. Warmth spread through me, up and down, and I put my hand on the door frame for balance as I looked back at my captain.

He held the drum like it was valuable, which it was. An elder in Qualla Boundary had made it for me, the only thing I’d even been given in my life that was unique and for me alone. It had a raven dyed into the soft deer leather, its wings sheltering a rattlesnake and a wolf. The stick that went with it had a knotted leather end and a rabbit-fur end that was dyed raspberry red. It meant more to me than any other possession I’d ever owned. Gary usually drummed for me, when I needed its music to go into a healing trance.

Gary picking up my drum had never given me a visceral thrill that made me consider locking myself in my bedroom with him. I swallowed on a surprisingly dry throat and Morrison looked up, expression so mild it was neutral. Either he wasn’t getting the same kind of thrill I was from him handling the drum, or he was hiding it very well. I bet on the former and swallowed again, turning back to Ashley and Allison. “Would that be okay?” My voice croaked, but no one seemed to notice.

Allison nodded and Ashley bounced up and down in enthusiastic agreement. That in hand, I looked beyond them at Mark. I had no idea what to say to Mark. I desperately didn’t want Mark to still be here when I came home. I’d be happier if Mark had never been there at all, but unless I could turn back time, that didn’t seem a likely scenario. I had a horror of going near him, for fear he’d try something unforgivably intimate, like kissing me goodbye. I’d have to break his lovely nose.

“Make sure the door’s locked when you leave,” I said after a few seconds. It seemed to cover all bases: it said I expected him to be gone, and I thought it didn’t leave room for Morrison to infer that Mark had a key to my apartment, which “Lock the door when you leave” might have.

Not that I cared what Morrison thought of my love life.

I slid a pair of sandals on and went out the door before anybody could say anything else.

Morrison followed on my heels, his gaze making the skin between my shoulder blades itch. He didn’t say anything, which was worse by far than questions. Even, “You had a party and didn’t invite me?” would have been nice. Something I could snap back at and therefore restore my shattered equilibrium. But Morrison wasn’t obliging me, no doubt on the warped logic that my personal life wasn’t his business. Never mind that if he said one word, that’s exactly what I’d tell him. That wasn’t the point, dammit.

“Mel asked for me?” I asked again, as much to shut my thoughts up as to break the silence. We cornered at a landing—I lived on the fifth floor in the same apartment building I’d been in since college—and I shot a cautious glance over my shoulder at the captain. He looked like he’d bitten into a sour grapefruit, not, once I thought about it, that I’d ever encountered a genuinely sweet one.

“No.”

“So what’re you doing here?” Somewhere in the midst of the sentence I figured it out and wished I hadn’t asked, because it meant Morrison had to answer.

“You’re supposed to have a knack for fixing this kind of problem,” he growled, and I wished some more I hadn’t asked. It hadn’t been all that long ago that Morrison and I had shared a healthy disrespect for the whole concept of other worlds and mystical healing and things like magic. That it was all malarkey had been the one thing we agreed on.

Empirical evidence had changed my stance, even if I’d spent most of the time since then resisting it with every fiber of my being. Morrison had been treated to an overwhelming load of first and secondhand proof that ranged from watching me come back from the dead to Billy Holliday’s house being all but destroyed by a demon I’d unleashed on Seattle. He was not a man to disbelieve his own eyes, but it was possible he hated it even more than I did.

But he was also too smart and too good a police captain not to use the assets he had available. If Billy was suffering from an inexplicable medical condition, then Joanne Walker, Reluctant Shaman, was the right person to come to. Whether Morrison liked it or not, he was putting his faith in the esoteric abilities I’d proved to have. I didn’t deserve his trust.

And I hoped he wasn’t making a mistake. Two weeks of crash-course training—much of which had been spent desperately searching for my spirit guide, who’d disappeared during that whole demon incident—was likely to be worth diddly. I was still working on instinct, which had turned out to be a messy way of life.

“That thing with Ashley,” I said, too loudly and too abruptly. “Is that how you ended up wanting to be a cop? Somebody gave you the time of day when you were a kid?” We hit the July sunlight as I asked the question, me squinting against it as I forged into the parking lot. Morrison caught up with me in two steps and cast me a sideways look that said he knew I was changing the subject and it was just fine with him.

“You think there had to be some kind of life-changing event that made me want to be a police officer? Just because it’s not your cup of tea, Walker…”

“It’s just that I never met a guy so obsessed with growing up to be a cop he couldn’t take time to learn the difference between a Mustang and a Corvette.” I reached the Mustang in question and strode around to the driver’s side while Morrison shot me a look of horror.

“We are not taking your muscle car, Walker. I’m driving.”

“I hate other people driving, and you always drive when we go somewhere together.” Crime scenes and funerals. Morrison knew how to show a girl a good time. “I bet you’ve never even ridden in a Mustang before, and besides, Morrison, I mean, come on, give me a break. Your car sucks.”

He looked affronted. “It’s got the highest safety ranking in its class. And the back end of yours is bashed in.”

“Like I said.” I jangled my keys at him, exasperated. “Look, you can drive yourself if you want, but I’m taking Petite. Come on. Live a little, mon capitán.” I leaned forward to put my hand on Petite’s purple roof and murmured, “It’s okay, baby. You’re not bashed in. Just a little dinged up. It’s not that he doesn’t like you. He just doesn’t know you like I do.” Honestly, Morrison was right. Petite’s rear end was smashed up, ugly but not disabling, due to having fallen down a fissure opened up by an earthquake. That wouldn’t be so bad, except I’d caused the earthquake.

Okay, it would have sucked every bit as much, but being the epicenter of a world-shattering event that racked my car up made it just that much worse. Petite had survived, and her calm steel soul wasn’t concerned about the depleted bank account that had already paid for one vehicular disaster this year. She was sure I’d make her as beautiful as she’d once been, and she was right. I whispered that promise as if she could hear me, and patted her roof a second time.

“Walker, your relationship with your vehicle is pathological.” Morrison glanced down the parking lot at his staid Toyota Avalon and sighed. I beamed and unlocked Petite’s door, giving her another pat as I swung into the driver’s seat.

“See?” I said as I unlocked the passenger door for my boss. “Nobody can resist you, baby. Not even the Mighty Morrison.”

“The what?” I’d never seen anybody look so awkward getting into a car before. Morrison sat down in the leather seat as if he was afraid it might bite him, and put the drum carefully into the back. “Walker, does this thing even have safety belts?”

“Click it or ticket, sir,” I quipped. “I put them in myself. Just for you. Even though she’s a classic and strictly speaking I didn’t have to.” I pulled my own seat belt on and waited for Morrison to get his on before adding, “I figure anything that goes a hundred and fifty oughta have ’em, after all.”

Morrison turned pale. I grinned and pulled out of the parking lot too fast, feeling pretty chipper despite the hangover, Billy’s condition and Mark.

CHAPTER FOUR

Once upon a time, the antiseptic smell of hospitals gave me sneezing fits every time I went in one. The past month I’d been in and out of them often enough that the sneezing had reduced itself to just feeling like somebody’d stuffed plugs up my nose, making my eyes tingle and water. It wasn’t much of an improvement, and I really wanted to just not have to go into hospitals at all anymore.

The universe was supremely indifferent to what I wanted. I rubbed my nose and followed Morrison up to an ordinary hospital room, not the intensive-care unit I was expecting. Billy Holliday was, by all appearances, sleeping comfortably in a bed that looked too small for his barrel-chested frame. There was an oxygen sensor on one finger, and monitors I couldn’t identify beeped in the background. He looked fine.

His wife, on the other hand, looked like hell. I’d only seen Melinda Holliday look less than lovely once previously, during the demon-in-her-kitchen episode a couple of weeks earlier, but the one-two punch seemed to have taken the spark out of her. Her dark hair was in a listless ponytail, olive skin drawn and pale and she wasn’t dressed to disguise early signs of pregnancy. Since I’d been admonished not to mention she was pregnant for several weeks yet, I knew she was worried: Mel wasn’t the kind of woman who would accidentally dress badly, or let show something she wanted kept private.

Morrison stopped in the doorway and let me go in ahead of him. Or maybe he made me go in ahead of him, but either way, I went in as he hung back in the door frame. Mel looked up and blatant relief swept her expression, tears bright in her brown eyes. “Joanie. Michael said he’d get you on his way over. I’m so glad you’re here.” She got herself around the bed and over to hug me as she spoke, while I stumbled over the idea of someone calling Morrison by his given name. I knew he had one, of course, but it was the mental equivalent of Babe Ruth saying, “Hiya, King!” to King Edward of England.

I wasn’t sure who would find it more appalling that I was putting Morrison on the same pedestal as British royalty: Morrison, or the English. Fortunately, it was a thought that would never escape the confines of my mind.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I said to the top of Melinda’s head. “Billy’s going to be fine. What happened?”

Mel extracted herself from the hug, stepping back with her chin lifted, a way of instigating control over her emotions. “I don’t know. He just wouldn’t wake up this morning. The doctors said his vitals are strong and he seems to be in REM sleep, but he just won’t wake up.”