Read the book: «Spirit Dances»

Praise for
C.E. MURPHY
and The Walker Papers series:

Urban Shaman

“A swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist,

magic, danger—Urban Shaman has them in spades.”

—Jim Butcher, bestselling author of The Dresden Files series

Thunderbird Falls

“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and the works

of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should

enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.”

—Library Journal

Coyote Dreams

“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a

compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and

successes will captivate new and old readers alike.”

—RT Book Reviews

Walking Dead

“Murphy’s fourth Walker Papers offering is another gripping,

well-written tale of what must be the world’s most reluctant—

and stubborn—shaman.”

—RT Book Reviews

Demon Hunts

“Murphy carefully crafts her scenes and I felt every gust of wind

through the crispy frosted trees…. I am heartily looking forward

to further volumes.”

—The Discriminating Fangirl

Spirit Dances
Book Six: The Walker Papers
C. E. Murphy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one is for Matrice,

who has been waiting for it for a long, long time :)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 8:34 A.M.

“Walker, Holliday, you’re up. Homicide in Ballard, probably domestic violence. Be there yesterday.” A set of sedan keys flew across the room at my head. I caught them painlessly, only because I’d just come in the door and hadn’t yet taken my gloves off. The guy who’d thrown them at me—our lieutenant, Braxton, who was decent, hardworking, and who never impinged on my consciousness for a single moment beyond those I spent following his direct commands—jerked his jaw at the door, indicating we should already be gone. I did a quick dance of shedding my coat, shrugging on my duty weapon—an item which, like Braxton, lay outside my realm of active awareness except when I was actually at work—and pulling the coat back on before my partner made it to the door.

Because my desk was three steps from the door, I got there first, and that meant I won: I got to drive. After nine months of that game, I wasn’t sure why we bothered, be cause neither of us pretended Billy was the better driver. Not that he was a bad driver, mind you. It’s just that it was the only class at the academy I’d been too proud to come in anything but first.

He caught up to me and muttered, “I hate domestic cases,” as we headed out the door.

“I know.” Nobody liked them, which was part of why Billy and I were up on this one. Braxton tried to rotate the DV cases through the whole Homicide team, because under the best of circumstances, they were emotionally messy, and under the worst—which was more usual—cops ended up the bad guys no matter what they did. “Could be worse. At least a murder means there won’t be an outraged spouse trying to beat us off because her partner didn’t really do anything wrong.”

“Walker, are you seriously telling me murder is preferable to a live victim who doesn’t want to press charges?”

“That wasn’t what I meant.” It was, however, kind of what I’d said. No wonder I let Billy do most of the talking at crime scenes. We drove over to Ballard while Dispatch offered a few more details on the homicide we were approaching. There was a pattern of abuse in the family, instigated by the wife, one Patricia “Patty” Raleigh, against whom the city had twice pressed charges. She’d done anger management courses and then a short stint in jail. We weren’t sure yet if it was herself or her husband, Nathan, or possibly both, who was the victim: one of their children had run out of the house, bloody and screaming hysterically about Mommy and Daddy being dead. The neighbor had called it in.

Billy left his coffee untouched as the information came in, muscle in his jaw bulging like flexible stone. “I hate domestic cases.”

“I know.” There was nothing else to say. I pulled up along the curb in front of the Raleighs’ ranch-style home a few minutes later, and we got out of the car. It wasn’t a wealthy part of the city, the houses mostly from the fifties and sixties. They tended to look careworn, with sagging fences, older tricycles and swing sets in small front yards. A few houses stood out as having been renovated: fresh paint, new roofs, lawns trim and shipshape even though winter was only just letting go its grip.

The Raleighs’ house wasn’t one of those. I glanced over it, then met the eyes of a broad-boned black woman standing in the next yard over. She had two kids with her, both white, both huddled against her strong form. Her hands were on their chests, over their hearts: protective, like a mama bear. She was probably the neighbor who’d called in the 273D, and the kids were probably Nathan and Patty Raleigh’s. I nodded to her once and she nodded back, then retreated to her front porch, taking the kids with her. She’d been letting us know where they were, and now planned to stay out of the way until we needed them and her. Most people intimately involved with a murder weren’t that clearheaded. I chalked it up to equal likelihoods that she was involved or that she was very sensible, and followed Billy up the driveway to the house.

He paused at the door, an eyebrow lifted at me. I gave him a nod much like I’d just given the neighbor, then let the Sight filter over my normal vision.

Truth was, though normal investigative homicides like this one made up the bulk of our work, Billy and I weren’t partnered because we were good at solving run-of-the-mill cases. We were partners because he saw dead people and I was a shaman. A healer, basically, though I had a wider range of talents than that. Together we made up Seattle’s one and only paranormal detective team, and even on a mundane case, there was no reason to let our esoteric skills go to waste.

The world viewed with the Sight was something of a wonder to behold. Everything shone with purpose, rich aura colors making light of the most ordinary objects. Newly budding leaves on trees thrummed with brilliant blue-green threads that would become bluer as they grew, until they were vibrant with life pouring through them. Houses, buildings and fences tended to radiate a resolute green, a pride in protecting the things they held. Everything, living or in animate, had purpose, and I could See that purpose when I looked with shamanic eyes.

I could also See people’s auras, even through walls, which was unusually handy in clearing a house for entry. There was nothing living inside the Raleighs’ house, though a bright orange shimmer said a housecat was probably in the back yard hunting early-season bugs. A crawl space beneath the house would’ve been a better choice for the cat: plastic tarp down there kept the earth warm and I could See the squirms of potato bugs and other such small things doing whatever it was bugs did. The attic was quieter than that, not so much as a squirrel hiding out. I nodded to give Billy the all-clear.

He knocked anyway, as was polite, and introduced us loudly before trying the doorknob. It turned, to neither of our surprise: if the kids had come running out, they weren’t very likely to have stopped and locked the door behind them. And an inSightful all-clear or not, we both went in like we were entering hostile territory, because God forbid I should be wrong and we should fail to follow protocol. Our boss—Morrison, the precinct captain, not Baxter-the-forgettable—would rip us apart if we did.

Nathan Raleigh was just inside the door, a late, macabre addition to an otherwise low-key, attractive living room. He hadn’t been dead all that long. His color was still fading, but there was a remarkable amount of blood soaking into the pale blue carpet. Billy and I exchanged glances, then Billy tipped his head to the left, indicating he’d check out the room through the next doorway, barely two steps away. I nodded and edged forward just far enough to keep an eye on him. There was a short hallway in front of us, down which I guessed were bedrooms, which I couldn’t let go uncovered while he checked out the open-plan kitchen and second living room to our left.

He said, “Clear,” after a few seconds. “Doorway to my right.”

“One to my left here, too.” We knocked our respective doors open, winding up on opposite ends of a T-shaped bathroom, guns pointed at each other. Billy crooked a faint grin, then stepped into the top of the T, putting himself exactly opposite me.

A short brunette woman came through the door behind him, a nail-spiked baseball bat already descending toward his skull.

I shot her.

CHAPTER TWO

Time slowed down in crises, for me. I wasn’t sure it was possible to drop into actual bullet-time, like in The Matrix, but I swore I saw the bullet’s spin and the percussion blast as it slammed into Patricia Raleigh’s right shoulder. Blood misted out. She screamed. The bat’s downward momentum was knocked far enough askew to no longer threaten Billy. He hit the deck anyway, flipping on his back to bring his weapon up defensively, finger still on the trigger-guard.

Mine was still squeezing the trigger. My throat hurt, though I couldn’t remember yelling. I knew I should have. Drop your weapon! or Police! or something like that. Maybe I’d said both. In protocol terms, it mattered. It mattered very much. In real-world terms, it mattered a lot less: my partner had been under attack, and shouting was never going to stop the bat from bashing into him. One shot, a good one, had been enough. Good thing, too. I’d never shot another human being before. I wasn’t sure I could do it again, even for a double-tap to make certain Billy would remain safe.

Patty Raleigh staggered a few steps backward and fell over.

My belly erupted with pain, diamond claws digging in and hauling my insides apart as the core of my magic went to war with what I’d just done. I dropped my gun and limped forward, one arm curled over my stomach. I paused next to Billy, who hadn’t yet moved, cords standing out in his neck and breath coming hard. He jerked his gaze to me, then nodded, one sharp movement to say he was okay. Nausea that I interpreted as relief swept through the pain in my gut, and I kicked Patty Raleigh’s baseball bat—it was already bloodied, the nail thick with matter I didn’t want to examine—farther away before kneeling at her side.

There was no exit wound spilling blood onto her pale blue carpet, which meant the bullet had lodged in her right clavicle. A very good shot, then, because the impact and lodgment would have knocked her farther off balance than a clear shot through the muscle would have. In terms of preventing a nail from taking up residence in Billy’s head, I couldn’t have done better without killing her.

Which I hadn’t. She was still breathing, though the inhalations were shallow and shocky, and her eyes were glazed with pain. The wound technically wasn’t life-threatening, but that made less difference than people thought, with shooting victims. Shock or sepsis did them in. The human body was not meant to stop small metal objects traveling at 850 feet per second, and tended to react poorly. Patty Raleigh might very well die with me kneeling beside her.

Of course, I could prevent that from happening. Or at least, I could in theory prevent it. My stomach was still a mass of twisting pain, every bit of magic I’d ever commanded turning black and red with its own kind of septic shock. My fingers were too thick to bend, my hands frozen and stiff. I put one on Raleigh’s shoulder and applied pressure, disquieted at the heat of her blood. She gurgled, more disturbing than a scream, and I thought if anything should unlock the healing magic I carried within me, it should be that sound.

Nothing happened, not a rush of instantaneous healing, not even the far more familiar layered vehicle body work that I’d used as my healing imagery for most of a year. I was no more use than any ordinary person, putting pressure on a bleeding wound. “Billy.”

He started talking as I said his name, calling in the shooting, requesting an ambulance, requesting backup: all the things I’d been going to ask him to do. Intellectually I knew he was on the ball, that it had been barely ten seconds since Patricia Raleigh had swung the bat at his head, but I felt encased in ice, like everything was still happening at a glacial pace. Shock, just like Raleigh was in.

Billy said, “Don’t move,” to me, and went to clear the rest of the house. I should have thought of that. I should have thought of a lot, except I couldn’t think of what else I might have done. Patty hadn’t been in the house—hadn’t been on the property—when I’d examined it psychically. Either that or she could batten down her aura like nobody I’d ever met, but I really didn’t think so.

There was an open sliding glass door beside us, making up the back wall of the living room. She’d clearly come through it, but where she’d been before that, I had no idea. The cat I’d Seen was still pouncing around the backyard, intent on capturing a moth.

“Clear.” Billy came back from the bedrooms and crouched beside me, face grim with concern. “You okay, Walker?”

“Yes. No. I can’t heal her.”

To my utter surprise, he touched my right cheek. I had a scar there, thin and mostly invisible, a remnant and reminder of the day my shamanic powers had exploded to life. “You couldn’t heal this, either. Some things aren’t meant to be fixed.”

“But I did this.” My belly cramped again and the words came out tiny and painful.

“Maybe that’s why you can’t undo it. The paramedics will be here in a few minutes.” He was silent a few seconds, then put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing. “You saved my life.”

I wanted to make a joke. Just a small one, something about I had to or your wife would kill me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t at all. I only nodded, a jerky little motion like he’d given me a minute earlier. He offered a heartbreaking smile in return, like he understood exactly what I couldn’t say. “Keep pressure on that wound until the ambulance arrives.”

It was a very sensible order. It made me feel like I was accomplishing something, when we both knew the truth was I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. If I’d had to, yeah, probably. But short of somebody else coming out of the woodwork to kill Billy, no, I was stuck there on my knees next to Patricia Raleigh for the interim. I nodded again, and Billy went to the front door to await an onslaught of cops, paramedics, forensic examiners and, inevitably, Michael Morrison, captain of the Seattle Police Department’s North Precinct, and our boss.

I was sitting on the front steps, holding gun and badge loosely in my hands, when he came up the driveway. Any cop involved in a shooting had an automatic three-day suspension, so Morrison didn’t have to ask: I just handed the weapon and badge over. Patty Raleigh’s blood was under my fingernails, and Morrison noticed it as he accepted them. He checked the chamber and magazine—I’d already unloaded it—then tucked the gun into an empty holster under his suit jacket before asking, “What happened?”

I knew I should probably stand up and make a brisk report, but instead I stayed seated and outlined the incident in as few words as possible, mostly staring at Morrison’s belt while I did so. “Paramedics took Raleigh away about three minutes ago. She’ll probably live. Billy’s, uh. He’s inside, heading up the investigation on Nathan Raleigh. He thought it was better if I…”

Morrison nodded, only partially visible from my viewpoint angle. Then he sat down beside me, wooden porch creaking with his weight. “So what happened?”

I looked sideways at him. He wasn’t looking at me, gaze focused on the fence or the street beyond it, but he didn’t have to be looking my way for me to feel the weight of his concern or his determination to get an answer. I put my hands over my face, realized they smelled like blood, and dropped them again to stare at the street just like Morrison was doing. “I couldn’t heal her. I couldn’t…”

“I’ve seen you use shields to protect people. Why didn’t you stop her that way? Put one up around Holliday?”

Christ. Morrison, who liked magic even less than I did, would still be a better practitioner than I was. “I didn’t think of it. This wasn’t a paranormal case. It was a domestic homicide. I don’t usually bring the whole shooting match to the day job. She was there, she had a weapon, I had a weapon, I shot her. And now my gut feels like I ate a box of fishhooks and the healing won’t respond. And if I was anybody else you wouldn’t be wondering why I used my Glock .40 instead of magic.”

“That’s true. But you’re not anybody else.” Morrison exhaled, and I dropped my head again, though I kept my fingers laced together in front of my knees, not wanting to breathe in the scent of blood a second time. He was right. I wasn’t certain he was unconditionally right, but the power within me had always put forth some pretty clear ideas on what I should and shouldn’t do. The wrenching pain in my stomach and the lack of response from the magic both told me flat-out I’d chosen poorly.

“I’m supposed to be on a warrior’s path, you know that?” I asked the stairs beneath my feet. Morrison didn’t know, because I’d never discussed it with him. I didn’t discuss it with many people, much less the boss with whom I had, until quite recently, had a distinctly antagonistic relationship. “That’s what I was told right when all this started. That I was a healer on a warrior’s path. That I was going to have to fight to make things right. But there’s no memo. There’s no handbook saying ‘these are the circumstances you get to fight in.’ Instead what happens is something like today. Or back with the goddamned zombies. God, I hate zombies. Anyway, I always find out the hard way that I can’t use the magic offensively or it craps out on me. Now it turns out if I use ordinary real-world physical force on ordinary real-world people, I get bit in the ass for that, too. I know you don’t think I’m the greatest cop in the world, but I followed protocol. I did the right thing in police terms to protect my partner. Didn’t I?”

My voice got small as I recognized there were probably a million people it’d be better to say this to than Morrison. Unlucky for him, he was the one who’d asked what had happened, and unlike the psychologist I knew I’d have to talk to later, he was aware of and believed in—however reluctantly—the occult side of my life.

“There’ll be an investigation before I can properly answer that, Walker,” he said with unusual gentleness. I put my face in my hands again after all, holding my breath to avoid the smell of blood, and startled when he touched my shoulder. “But yes, it sounds like you did.” His voice went wry. “And no one else will be asking why you didn’t use a magic shield instead of a gun. I just wondered.”

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to think of the magic first, Morrison. Most cases don’t need it. I’m…” I trailed off with no real idea of what I wanted to say, and Morrison got to his feet.

“You’re officially suspended from duty pending an investigation into this shooting, Walker. A minimum of three days. Thanks for not making that difficult. You have an appointment with the psychologist at one. Get somebody to bring you back to the precinct building and get cleaned up. I want to see you when you’re done talking with her.”

I whispered, “Yes, sir,” and went to do as I was told.

Being suspended from duty for three days almost certainly meant “go home once you’re cleaned up,” but although I only lived a few miles from the precinct building, back-and-forthing seemed like a waste of time. I had clothes at work—the blue polyester pants and button-down shirt that were ubiquitous to police officers everywhere—so I showered, put them on and went back to my desk in Homicide. There was paperwork to do, not just for the morning: there was always paperwork to catch up on. It was a damned sight better to work than sit at home and brood. One of the other detectives came by to offer me a green armband, which was his way of offering sympathy for the morning’s incident without making a fuss about it. I put the armband on, glad not to have gotten pinched, and spent the next three hours writing reports, filling out forms and trying hard not to think about Patricia Raleigh’s glassy stare and short, shallow breaths. Mostly it worked, except when I had to write the actual incident report, and then I sat there a long time, wondering why I hadn’t responded the way Morrison suggested I should have.

Well, no. Not really wondering. I’d gone to the police academy, and though there’d been three solid years of working for the department as a mechanic before I became a cop, at the end of the day, I’d been trained to react the way I had. A couple of times during the academy I’d awakened from dreams I didn’t remember, kneeling in the middle of my bed in a firing position. That kind of training became hardwiring, and nothing I’d done in the past fifteen months had driven magic-using responses that deep into my brain. There was, as far as I knew, no such thing as shamanic boot camp, much as I could use it.

Knives prickled at my gut again, suggesting that I really could use a shamanic boot camp, or something else that forced me to react with magic first and brute force later. Either that or it was sheer nervousness, as it was a few minutes to one and I had an appointment with a shrink. I abandoned my desk and went upstairs to her office, heart hammering and hands cold for the second time that day. I’d met the psychologist, talked with her a few times, but never officially, and for some reason it was terrifying.

She took one look at my expression when I came in and said, “Don’t worry, everybody feels that way the first time. I promise it won’t hurt a bit. Louise Caldwell, not that you don’t know that.” She offered a hand, I shook it, and we both sat down as she asked, “How’re you doing?”

“Been better.” A shrink probably expected a deeper, more profound answer than that. I held my breath, sought something more profound and came up with the same thing again, this time as a shaky laugh on an exhalation: “Yeah. Been better.”

“Good,” she said crisply. “You’d be surprised how many people walk through that door after shooting someone and say they’re just fine. Did you have a choice?”

I blinked, taken aback at the no-nonsense approach. I thought psychologists were supposed to pussyfoot around things. Not that Dr. Caldwell looked like the pussyfooting sort: she was in her late forties, gray streaks at her temples probably indicative of carefully dyed hair, and dressed in a well-tailored suit that gave an impression of seriousness. I cleared my throat, wondered if that came across as hesitating and shook my head. “I really don’t think so. There was no warning. Detective Holliday stepped into the bathroom and she was behind him, already swinging the bat. If I hadn’t reacted immediately he would be badly injured, maybe dead.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

“I’d sure as hell rather have shot her than have Billy be in the hospital! Especially since she’s not dead.” I cleared my throat again, pretty certain that was entirely the wrong thing to say, but faint humor flickered across Dr. Caldwell’s face.

“That’s a comparatively healthy attitude, Detective. It’s easy, in a bad situation, to accept only blame instead of seeing the other potential side of the scenario. As you say, she isn’t dead. Was that a deliberate choice?”

“No. It was just the clearest shot I had, her right shoulder. Billy dropped, but I didn’t double-tap. That…that was deliberate. Kind of. I don’t know if I could’ve shot a second time.” I looked away from her, focusing on one of half a dozen framed certificates on the wall, and much more quietly said, “I could have if she’d kept coming. I would have. I don’t think I knew that until right now.”

My stomach twisted again, glass shards jabbing at me, but somehow the knowledge made me feel better in a completely screwed-up way. Police officers almost never had to shoot anyone in the line of duty even once, much less twice, but I was darkly certain I could do it again if I had to. I didn’t want to, but there was probably something wrong with somebody who wanted to go around shooting people. I relaxed a little and Caldwell saw it, but apparently it was okay. She kept me there for over an hour, asking questions that eventually had me weary to the bone, but I walked out feeling like I hadn’t completely fucked up, either at the scene that morning or there in her office. I had no idea what she would tell Morrison, but I was too tired to worry about it.

I went by his office as instructed, but he wasn’t there. I dropped off my incident report, then went back upstairs to Homicide to collect my coat. At some point “suspended from duty” had to mean “go home,” and I was emotionally wrung out enough to decide that point was now. Morrison could kill me for disobeying the come-see-me order later, after I’d napped. Coat in hand, I waved a short goodbye to the rest of the team and headed for the door.

It cracked open before I got there, revealing a sliver of a woman in her fifties. She had an exceedingly mild blue gaze and short hair that had at one time been blond, but had since gone dirty yellow. She was dressed eclectically in a long skirt, a wool overcoat with a reflective vest over it and combat boots. There was a sparkly green shamrock pinned to the vest. On someone else, the whole outfit could’ve been deliberate eccentricity. On her it looked like the Army-Navy surplus store.

I fumbled to make sure my own green armband was in place as I tugged the door all the way open. “Oh, hi, sorry, come on in. I’m Detective Walker. Can I help you?”

“Detective Joanne Walker?”

I looked over my shoulder like I expected another Detective Joanne Walker to have appeared, then shook myself and looked back. “That’s me. Can I help you?”

A smile rushed across her face and took ten years off her age. “My name is Rita Wagner. You saved my life.”

CHAPTER THREE

There was nothing like a statement of that nature to take one’s mind off the problems at hand, especially when the problem at hand was nearly the polar opposite. My brain dropped out of the slightly shocky slow motion it had been lingering in all day and surged into its more usual mouthy overdrive.

I had done a variety of remarkable things over the past year. Many of them had involved saving peoples’ lives, although most of the time they had looked more like shutting down Seattle’s power, rearranging the Lake Washington landscape, or wrestling monsters of differing sizes and shapes. In the handful of cases where I’d actively saved someone, I usually knew what they looked like.

I’d never seen this woman before in my life. I was searching for a nice way to say that when she continued, “You probably don’t remember. Officer Ray Campbell told me it was you, though, who got the ambulance there in time to sa—”

She kept going, but I said, “Oh! You’re the troll lady!” over her, and only too late realized how awful that sounded. I didn’t mean it badly. It was just that she’d gotten in trouble down by the Fremont Troll, one of Seattle’s more charming landmarks, and I’d never learned her name. I’d only saved her life. I’d been three miles away at the top of the Space Needle, looking for something else entirely, when I’d Seen a flare of rage and violence in Seattle’s city-wide aura. Because of that, the cops had gotten there before aggravated assault turned to murder in the third degree.

She was still smiling. “I am. I’m the troll lady. I know it’s been months, Detective Walker, but I wanted to thank you. I—”

Feeling a little desperate, like I’d become a bad host by way of not recognizing the troll lady, I blurted, “Would you like to sit down?” with too much emphasis on the last two words. I sounded like something dire would happen if she didn’t. A wince crawled over my whole body, caving my shoulders, and I tried for a more modulated tone: “Or go for coffee or something? I mean, it’s great to meet you, but the department’s not very comfortable, we could take a few minutes to talk, we—” I wished someone would come along and stuff a sock in my mouth.

Instead Rita gave me another astonishing smile. It really did take years off her face, and I wondered if she was a hard forty-something instead of the fifties I’d originally pegged her as. “If you have time, I’d like to have coffee. You don’t know me, but I feel like I owe you something. At least a cup of coffee.”

I said, “You don’t,” under my breath, but it didn’t matter to either of us whether she legitimately owed me something or not. I was grateful as hell to get hit in the face with evidence of having done well, and even if I hadn’t been, I also wasn’t callous enough to say “Just doing my job.” Even if that was true, when you’d saved someone’s life, regardless of the madcap fashion, there was an element to it that ran deeper than just doing the job. Humans were like that. We needed connections and stories to make sense of the world, and Rita Wagner had become part of my story. “There’s a terrific coffee shop up the block.”

“The Missing O? I saw it, but I thought it was a doughnut shop.”

I tugged my coat on, hiding the green armband. “It is, but it has good coffee, too, and we call it a coffee shop as to not perpetuate the stereotype of cops and doughnuts.” My indulgence in the stereotype, now that I thought about it, was probably responsible for five or so pounds that had crept up on me the last few months. I made a note to buy vegetables, even though I knew they’d end up melting into brown slime in my fridge’s fruit bin, and held the door for Rita. We escaped the precinct building a minute later, me holding the door for her again. “Not to be rude, but why now?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d like me very much straight off,” she said forthrightly. I did a classic double-take, the second glance offering me a glimpse at her aura as the Sight washed on without my conscious command. That, as much as her mood-altering arrival, was a relief: the soured magic inside me wasn’t so intent on punishing me for my misdeeds that I couldn’t use the Sight. Rita’s colors were mostly brown, earthy and steady, with prickles of yellow poking through. The prickles were nervousness: she was afraid I’d judge her. Or maybe that I’d judge who she’d been three months ago.

It clearly wasn’t necessary. She was doing a fine job of bringing down judgment on herself. I said, “Why not?” with genuine curiosity, though I already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

“I was a drunk living rough and fighting over booze and drugs. I smelled like beer and piss and figured I’d die soon and nobody would care.”

I said, “Someone always cares,” very softly, though I was sadly aware it wasn’t quite true. Still, Rita gave me a quick look that turned into another one of her de-aging smiles. For someone who’d been living on the brink of extinction only a few months earlier, she sure seemed to smile a lot.

Then again, maybe she had reason. “I wouldn’t have agreed with you, the day I got stabbed. I’d have said nobody ever cares. I had blood leaking through my fingers. I could see it freezing on the ice. I knew I was dying, Detective Walker, and I figured that made me one less problem in the world.”

We reached The Missing O as she said that, leaving a nice dramatic moment to pick up from once we’d ordered coffee and doughnuts. Or, more accurately, a hot chocolate with mint for me, pumpkin-spiced tea for her and frosting-covered cinnamon doughnuts called pershings, which were as big as my head, for both of us. Mindful of being in polite company, which was to say someone who didn’t put up with me daily, I tried very hard not to lick the frosting off my pershing like a six-year-old while Rita picked up her story again.

“I still have dreams about the ambulance. All the sirens and lights. I was bleeding a lot and it all seemed loud and bright and I got the idea it was God sending angels to say ‘Not this one, not yet.’” She picked up her tea, hiding behind it as she gave me a wary, hopeful look. “Does that sound crazy?”

Thoughtful as always, I said, “Yes,” then made a face. “Sorry. I’ve heard much crazier things.” I’d done much crazier things, but I didn’t want to get into that. “They say God works in mysterious ways. Ambulances and cops aren’t even all that mysterious, when you get right down to it.”

Her eyebrows, which were almost nonexistent, twitched up. “Do you believe in God?”

Man. There was a question I didn’t want to contemplate, much less give an answer to. I exhaled noisily into my hot chocolate and stared at my doughnut for a while. “Not by nature, no. But there’s a lot more out there than is dreamt of in my philosophy. I know that for a fact.” Because fifteen months ago I hadn’t believed in magic at all, and these days I was a regular practitioner. Which was something else I wasn’t about to lay out for Rita Wagner.

“Me either. Not by nature. If I believed in God at all, it was to have someone to blame. But Officer Campbell said you’d called in the attack before you even got there, and that sounds a lot like a miracle to me. I thought if somebody’s putting out a miracle for me then maybe I’d better get my shit together. The hospital got me into an AA program and I’m doing volunteer work at a shelter.” She finally put her tea down, though she kept her hands wrapped around the cup. Her fingers were thin and sallow, like they’d been frostbitten. “So I thought now was a good time to see you. I thought now you could be glad you saved me.”

Hot chocolate went down the wrong way and I coughed. “I was pretty glad before.” My boss and partner had been gladder. I’d been too fixated on the thing I’d been trying, and failing, to do, to be sufficiently impressed with myself for saving someone from halfway across the city. Yet another data point Rita Wagner probably didn’t need to know. I chewed my lower lip, not wanting to be condescending. “You didn’t have to do all this to make a good impression, but I’m glad you did. You’re kind of amazing, Rita. Maybe I saved your life, but you’re the one turning it around. That’s huge. You should be proud. I am. Is it okay if I say that?”

Pleasure swept her face, like I’d given her some kind of benediction she’d been hoping for. “It’s okay.”

It struck me that Rita was a very lonely woman, and that I might be the only person to whom she could hold herself accountable. I had issues of my own galore, even overlooking the shooting. The idea that I could be someone else’s lifeline back into society would be laughable, if it weren’t also so sad. “Well, then, I’m proud of you. Where do you volunteer?”

“At Solid Ground, downtown. At their new soup kitchen off Pioneer Square, mostly, but that’s the other reason I wanted to visit you now. They just did one of their fundraising drives and had a lot of people with money at their headquarters last week. The volunteers got prizes drawn out of a hat, and I, well, I can’t use mine, so I thought…I thought I could say thank you by giving it to you.” She dug into the pocket of her wool overcoat and came out with a small brown envelope which she pushed across the table to me. “They’re tickets. To a dance performance. Native American dancers, they’re on tour. I didn’t know it before I saw you, but you’re Indian, aren’t you? Maybe you’ll like it.”

My gaze ping-ponged between the envelope and Rita, astonishment at the gift warring with astonishment at what she said. “My dad’s Cherokee, yeah. Hardly anybody sees that in me. My coloring’s all wrong.” I had Dad’s black hair, but I’d gotten sunburnable pale skin and green eyes from my Irish mother, and people rarely saw past that to notice my bone structure. In black and white, I looked Indian. In color, I looked Irish. “Um. God, Rita. I’m not sure I can accept these. I mean, like, legally, ethically, all of that. I had to make the lady who runs my favorite Chinese restaurant stop giving me free food when I became a cop…”

“Take them.” She patted the envelope, then pulled her hands away. “I really can’t use them, percussion makes me crazy. If you can’t use them yourself, you probably know more people who could than I do.” She made a small gesture at herself and added, “Most of the people I know wouldn’t pass the dress code.”

I smiled. “You’re assuming I’ve got something nicer to wear than what I’ve got on.” I did, but even my polyester pants were probably more suitable to an evening out than Rita’s blaze-yellow safety jacket. On the other hand, this was the Pacific Northwest. I doubted they’d throw her out if she turned up in it. I picked up the tickets and tapped them against the table, then nodded and tucked them in my coat pocket. I was sure Morrison wouldn’t approve, but I didn’t want to insult the woman. I’d go back to the office and skulk around until he showed up so I could ask him what to do about them, out of Rita’s sight and hearing. For the moment I said, “Thank you. It’s not at all necessary, you know that, right? But thank you.”

“I know. But I can’t use them, and it made an excuse to meet you.”

She had a smile to break my heart. I wondered what her story was, and couldn’t think of a way to ask without seeming rude. We chatted a few minutes longer, then at the same time glanced toward the clock on the O’s back wall and said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get back.”

I grinned, and Rita added, “The shelter starts serving dinner at four and I help cook, so I need to catch a bus back downtown. I hope you go to the concert, Detective. And thank you for letting me meet with you.”

I shook my head. “Thanks for coming up. We don’t usually get visitors who are just coming to say hi. Usually something terrible’s happened. It’s nice to see something wonderful happening instead.” Especially after today, but that was yet another thing she didn’t need to know. We got up and I figured if I was going back to the office, I might as well return bearing gifts. I ordered Morrison what the menu called a St. Patrick’s Day Latte, and examined the doughnut cabinet, which had an array of mint-to pine-green frosted doughnuts lined up by hue.

The drink that came back was swamp-green and decidedly nasty-looking. Rita gave it, then the doughnut cabinet, a considering look, then smiled at me. “I’ll go catch my bus while you decide if you’re brave enough to bring someone that horrid-looking drink or make people break a bunch of Lenten promises with those doughnuts. It was nice to meet you, Detective Walker.”

“I think I’ll do both.” I ordered one of each shade of doughnut and waved goodbye at Rita at the same time. “It was nice to meet you, too. Visit again sometime, okay?” She nodded on her way out the door, and a couple minutes later we waved again as I hurried past the bus stop back to the precinct building.

Billy had returned by the time I got back and took the latte with a suspicious sniff. I’d meant it for Morrison, but Billy’s grimace after taking a sip made me just as glad he’d swiped it instead. The rest of the Homicide detectives swarmed the doughnut box like a pack of wolves, and I retreated to Morrison’s office, ticket envelope held between my fingers like it might bite.

He was concentrating on paperwork, which gave me a moment to stare at the top of his head and get my nerve up.

I usually thought of him as silvering, but looking at the top of his head made it clear he was really just silver. He wasn’t that old, not yet forty. I wondered when he’d started going gray. Not that it mattered. It looked good on him, playing into the whole aging-superhero look that I thought of as being his thing.

I rattled myself and tapped on his door. Morrison glanced up, curiosity sliding across his face. “You look nervous, Walker. Caldwell said the interview went well. What’s wrong?”

“You said to come by, and besides, I have a ques…” My knees buckled a little as my brain caught up to what he’d said. I caught myself on the door frame. “She said that?”

Morrison elevated an eyebrow. “Did you think other wise?”

“Morrison, I’ve never shot…” I closed the door behind me and sat down, probably signaling to everyone in the open office area outside that I was in trouble again, but for once I didn’t care, possibly because for once I wasn’t actually in trouble. “I’ve never shot anyone before,” I said quietly. “I’ve never spent any significant time talking to a shrink. I had no idea if it went badly or well.”

“I’ve talked to Holliday and Caldwell. They’re both working up their reports, and I saw you already dropped yours off. It was a shit situation, Detective, and from what I’m seeing so far you handled it as well as you could’ve.”

“Even…” I waved a hand, encompassing the whole magical aspect of my skill set which I’d utterly failed to use.

“As you said, if it was anyone else, I wouldn’t even have asked. I shouldn’t have asked you. You did what I’d expect any detective to do when her partner was in danger. The suspension is still in effect,” he warned me. “I can’t do anything about that.”

“No, I know, it’s fine. It’s standard procedure. I just…” The last word came out as a shuddering breath and I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to let stinging tears overwhelm me. My hands smelled like maple frosting and cinnamon now, a vast improvement over the pre-shower scent of blood. “Sorry. I’m a little up and down. I just, I feel like I made the right choices, but it helps to hear you say that, sir. Thank you. And if there’s anything else I need to do or not do while the incident is being looked into…”

“Just keep your nose clean. You can manage that for three days, right?”

I groaned and pushed the envelope across his desk at him. “I don’t know. Tell me if this qualifies. The woman whose life I saved down at the Fremont Troll in December just gave me these.”

Morrison shook the tickets free of the envelope before eyeing me. “Dance concert tickets?”

“She won them at a…” It didn’t matter. “She gave them to me as a way of saying thank you. I told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted and I didn’t want to insult her and I didn’t know if it was like an ethical breach to take them so, well, I just thought I should take them and then come ask you—”

“Ask what?” Morrison said in amazement, interrupting my breathless explanation. “If I wanted to go with you?”

“—er.” For an excruciatingly long moment that was all I could think to say. Long enough that Morrison figured out that wasn’t at all what I’d meant to ask, and began to look uncomfortable. I followed up my initial witty “er” with a salvo of, “Uh,” then rubbed my nose ferociously. “Actually I’d been going to ask if it was an ethical breach or if it was okay for me to take them. But now that you mention it, um, there’s only two tickets so I can’t invite Billy and Melinda along, and Gary’s out of town, so if it’s okay for me to accept them, um, well. Would you…like to go with me?”

Someone with a modicum of cool wouldn’t have put all the emphasis on like. Sadly, I was not that person. The way I asked it sounded as if the idea that Morrison might want to go out with me was only slightly less unlikely than, say, the idea that a Hollywood producer might walk into the precinct building and randomly choose me to be the next twenty-million-dollar star.

For a few seconds I waited for a Hollywood producer to walk into the room, but it didn’t happen. Instead Morrison glanced at the tickets again, then shrugged. “I don’t have anything planned for tonight, and God knows you probably need some kind of distraction. Just log the tickets as a gift, and if the woman ever needs anything else from you make sure every second of your interactions are observed.”

“Yes, sir.” He could’ve been suggesting I take a long walk off a short pier, for all I was comprehending. I took the tickets back, got up, made it to the door, and said, “Er,” for the second time in our conversation. “Should I pick you up…?”

There was no chance on earth he would agree. My car was a 1969 Mustang named Petite who clocked over a hundred and ninety miles an hour. His was a nameless 2003 Toyota Avalon with the highest safety rating in its class. Ne’er the twain should meet.

Morrison’s expression, almost without changing, suggested the idea was so outrageous it stretched all the way to funny. “I don’t think so, Walker.”

“Well, then, we’ll have to meet there, because I have my pride.” And my smarts. Petite would never forgive me for tarting around with an Avalon. She knew these things.

Minute laugh lines crinkled around Morrison’s blue eyes. “Fair enough. I’ll see you at a quarter to eight, then. Go home and get some rest.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I scurried back up to Homicide, where, fortunately, all the doughnuts had already been eaten. I’d have gone on a panic-inspired binge if they hadn’t been. Instead I seized Billy’s arm and hauled him off to the broom closet which doubled as a crash pad for cops whose shifts had gone on too long.

He came along willingly enough, though he did say, “Do I need to tell Melinda you’re dragging me off to bed?” as I banged the closet door open and propelled him inside.

“Please don’t. She may be little, but she be fierce, and she’d kick my ass. Billy, something has gone terribly wrong. Somebody gave me concert tickets and now I’ve got a…a… like a date with Morrison!”

My partner was a steady soul. A good man. The sort, in fact, who could walk away from nearly getting a nail through the skull and still remain a bastion of calm. I was sure he, too, had seen Dr. Caldwell this afternoon, but there was nothing in his demeanor which suggested he’d had a bad day. That’s how glued-together he was.

So I hardly expected him to fall into a fit of what could only be called giggles, even if men who stood well over six feet tall were not normally prone to giggling. Offended, I stared at him, which upgraded his giggles to whoops. He staggered back, sat on the army-corners bed and leaned against the far wall while gales of laughter shook his body. It took over a minute for him to catch his breath, and I thought perhaps he was just a leeeettle more on edge about the morning’s events than he’d been letting on. Still, it was with genuine merriment that he said, “Sorry, Joanie, it’s just that when something’s gone wrong around you it usually runs to the apocalyptic. The captain having a date, even with you, probably isn’t a sign of the end times. Besides, isn’t it about time?”

My head heated up. I hated to think what color my cheeks were. “It’s not that kind of date!”

“Of course it is.” Billy wiped his eyes, looking as happy as I’d ever seen him. “For one thing, if you didn’t think it was, you wouldn’t be having a meltdown.”

“Billy, he’s my boss! Our boss!” Which, while true, had hardly stopped me from slowly falling for the man. I really didn’t know when it had happened.

Just because I didn’t know when it had happened, however, didn’t mean every single person I knew hadn’t noticed it happening. In fact, they’d all clued in ages before I did, which was its own kind of humiliating. I sank down on the bed beside Billy and mumbled, “It was his stupid idea,” into my hands.

Billy patted my shoulder and did a credible job of not sounding too interested in the details. “Really? Morrison asked you out?”

“Well, sort of!” I knew he was going to go home and gleefully tell Melinda everything, but I explained the awful scene in Morrison’s office anyway.

Billy manfully didn’t start giggling again. “He likes you, you know.”

“I drive him insane.”

“Which doesn’t negate the point. Look, Walker.” Billy knocked his shoulder against mine. “Just go and have a good time. A date is not the end of the world.”

“It is if I don’t have anything to wear!” Oh, God. I was turning into a stereotypical female before my very own eyes.

Billy choked on another laugh. “Call Phoebe. She likes dressing you.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then slumped. My friend Phoebe was a fencing teacher by vocation, but a fashionista in her heart of hearts. Tall, generally slender me was her idea of a perfect model. She loved dressing me up. Moreover, she had vastly better taste in clothes and style than I did, and I had the entire remainder of the afternoon, thanks to the suspension of duty. There was no chance she couldn’t make me presentable. “Okay, but I’m blaming you if this is a disaster.”

“It won’t be a disaster.”

That was our cue to leave the broom closet, but I only nodded moodily and sat there, slouched, for a minute before nerving myself up to say, “So how’re you doing?” in a much more subdued tone.

Billy pushed out a huge breath of air and said, “Okay,” after a while. “You?”

I bobbed my head around in a noncommittal okay of my own. “I haven’t heard how she is, yet.”

“Stable. She’s going to be fine. You did good, Joanie. The neighbor—not the one with the kids—said he thought she’d been hiding in their doghouse.”

“Big dog.”

“German shepherd.”

That was big enough, all right. “How’d she get into the yard?”

“Hole in the fence. The kids use it to go back and forth to play.”

I said, “Shit,” and put my face in my hands. “I should’ve looked beyond the Raleigh property. I’m sorry, Billy.”

“We weren’t supposed to be checking out anybody else’s property. You did fine. You saved my life.”

This time I managed the tiny joke I’d been reaching for earlier: “Had to. Who else on the force is going to put up with my bizarre life?”

He knocked his shoulder against mine again, a familiar and comforting action. “Nobody, that’s who. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

I wobbled from the impact. “Don’t think I don’t.” I had, for most of the four years we’d known each other, given him endless hell about his belief in the paranormal, right up until the paranormal came and bit me on the ass. Since then he’d put up with my shenanigans, held his tongue time and again and generally been as stalwart a companion as a girl could ask for. Nobody would have treated me as well as he did, past, present or future. I didn’t deserve him, but I was grateful as hell to have him. “You call Mel yet?”

“No. Morrison’s sent me home for the afternoon, soon as I get my report in. I thought it’d be better to talk to her face-to-face. She can’t panic about me being dead if I’m standing right there.”

“As long as the news isn’t reporting a North Precinct cop involved in a shooting incident yet, that’s probably a good idea.”

Billy looked pained and stood up. “I better check on that. You heading out?”

“Yeah. To let Phoebe dress me, I guess.”

My partner grinned. “Get a photo. ’Cause I promise, it won’t be a disaster.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 7:53 P.M.

It wasn’t a disaster.

Phoebe had slicked my short hair back in that wet look that either really works or really doesn’t. To my surprise, it worked: without any bits of hair to soften them, my cheekbones looked sculpted. Then she’d applied just enough makeup to smooth my skin and emphasize my eyes, so I almost didn’t look like I was wearing makeup, a trick I’d never myself learned. At my insistence, she’d left my eclectic jewelry—ivory coyote earrings, a silver choker necklace and a copper bracelet—alone.

The jewelry, though, was the only decision I could pretend was my own. I wouldn’t have dared put me into a forest-green velvet sheath that bared my broad shoulders and made my waist look improbably small. Also, any dress I would have chosen would’ve come to my ankles, whereas this one stopped somewhere just beyond fingertip-length. My legs were long to begin with. A dress that quit that far above my feet, coupled with three-inch strappy gold heels, made them go on forever. Every time I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, I didn’t know who I was, which made me accept the possibility that I was smokin’ hot. I owed Phoebe one.

The advantage to being a smidge under six feet tall in bare feet was that if I wore three-inch heels, there was almost no one I couldn’t see over. Beautifully dressed theater-goers milled around me and I stared over their heads, watching the front doors. In another two minutes I was leaving. The insurance I’d taken out on my nerves to make myself leave the apartment in my fancy new dress didn’t cover being stood up. It wasn’t a scenario I’d even considered.

Anticipated humiliation was getting my heart rate up when Morrison walked in. I’d never seen him in a tux. In fact, of all the people I interacted with regularly, the only one I’d seen in a tux was Billy’s wife Melinda. She’d been nine months pregnant and cute in a penguinlike way.

I had, therefore, kind of forgotten that men tended to be more devastating than cute in a tuxedo. Particularly if they looked comfortable in one, which Morrison did. It got a whole James Bond thing going, like he was slightly ruffled because he’d stopped to casually beat up forty-seven bad guys on his way to meet the girl.

Maybe that’s why he was late.

He saw me from across the room, which would have sounded a lot more romantic if I didn’t tower over everyone around me. We nodded at each other and I let him come to me, based on me being much closer to the theater doors than he was. It took him a minute to get to me, during which time I watched a couple dozen admiring women, and at least two equally admiring men, shift slightly so they could get a better look as he passed. I gave myself two points for having the best-looking date at the theater. Then I gave him two points for having a none-too-shabby date himself, when some of those lingering glances followed his trajectory and came to land, with hints of bitterness or approval, on me.

He had a shamrock pinned to his lapel. I touched it with a fingertip. “I think that’s cheating. You’re supposed to wear green, not be nominally adorned by it.”

“Are you going to pinch me?”

“Would I get fired?”

Morrison laughed aloud, which I didn’t think I’d ever heard him do before. While I gaped, he offered me his elbow. “Don’t risk it. You clean up good, Walker.”

“You’re not half bad yourself, sir.” I tucked my hand into his elbow and, unable to resist, added, “Except unusually short.”

“You didn’t warn me you were wearing platform heels.”

“If I was wearing platform heels your nose would be in my clea—” I cleared my throat, and Morrison, God bless him, slid a glance at the half-mentioned décolletage. We were exactly the same height, he and I, and in police-issue shoes neither of us ever had the height advantage. Back when we were still pissing in each other’s cereal for the crime of existing, I’d been known to wear extra-stompy thick-soled boots for the sheer glee of looking down on him. In retrospect, which I was only applying right now at this very moment, it had never seemed to bother him at all. “Right. Rented tux?”

“Will it damage your perception of me if I say I own it?” Morrison guided me to the theater doors, where I handed over the tickets, and then he walked me down the long aisle as though he had a great deal of practice at it. I, who wore heels seldomly, clung to him like an ingénue and couldn’t answer the question until he had me safely seated.

Then I couldn’t answer it anyway, because I was too busy gazing around the theater. We were twelve rows from center stage, just where the seating’s rake started to pick up speed. “Holy crap, these seats are fabulous. I’m going to have to go down to Solid Ground and thank Rita again. Wow.”

Morrison agreed, “Not bad,” and settled down to glance through the program, which gave me a few seconds to examine him surreptitiously. I always thought he looked like an aging superhero with his silvering hair and blue eyes and strong build, but in the tux, man, there was no aging about him. He just looked like a superhero. Not that most of them wore tuxedos, but that wasn’t the point. When he glanced at me, an eyebrow elevated—I wasn’t all that surreptitious, apparently—I blurted, “It doesn’t. Damage my perception of you. Owning a tux, I mean. You probably do this kind of thing all the time. Isn’t a lot of being a captain political?”