by C. E. Murphy
“Was that, ah. Was that…?”
Really, I shouldn’t have had the foggiest idea what he was asking. Five words, two of them repeated and one a filler rather than a real word, did not an actual question make. But I understood perfectly, and a soft breath rushed out of me in something like a laugh. “No. No, that’s Les. I guess he had kind of a crush on me in high school. I had no idea until yesterday afternoon. No, it’s… That’s Lucas. Lucas Isaac.”
I folded my arms over my chest and looked down, lower lip caught in my teeth. Then I sidled around Petite’s big back end so I was closer to Morrison, because I knew the body language I was using was all “go away, I don’t wanna talk about it,” which wasn’t exactly true and wasn’t the impression I wanted him to get. I just wasn’t good at talking about it, having kept the secret bottled up for well over a decade.
Morrison was the first one outside of the Qualla who’d sussed it out, anyway. I’d told him my real name, the full Irish-Cherokee hybrid tongue tangling disaster of it, last summer. He’d gone and looked up one Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, aka Joanne Walker, and had discovered I’d had children while still in high school. After asking very carefully if I’d been raped—there were no police reports indicating I had been, but God alone knew what a fifteen-year-old might choose to report—and hearing the answer was no, he had let the whole thing go with a great deal more grace than I would have shown.
But that was then, and everything was different now. I was different, we were different, and our whole potential future was different. Maybe that was so huge it should all be put off for later consideration, but I was still of the mind that with my life, there was no telling whether there would be a later to consider. So I cleared my throat and tried to answer all the questions he’d been too gentle to ask over the past year. “We hadn’t really been in the Qualla all that long. A year, I guess. And I had a chip on my shoulder like you wouldn’t believe.”
Morrison tried to hide a snort of laughter and completely failed. I laughed, too, and looked up, my cheeks hot. “Yeah, okay, you’d probably believe it.” I looked down again, because I still didn’t like telling this story, even if I’d come increasingly to terms with having to. “Anyway, Lucas came in that fall from Vancouver, and he was really cute. Really cute. And I had a terrible crush on him, and Sara was my best friend and she said she didn’t like him, which wasn’t true but I didn’t get it. Anyway, I was desperate to make him like me so I did the obvious. The really, really dumb obvious. It didn’t work, of course, and to make it worse I got pregnant. And being fifteen…I don’t know. Maybe I thought being pregnant would suddenly make him like me and it’d all be fairy-tale princesses from there on out, but what ougnant. happened was he hightailed it back to Vancouver at Christmas break, and I had twins about a month early. The little girl died.”
I rolled my jaw, stopping Morrison from saying anything. It had been thirteen years ago and I’d never meant to keep the babies anyway, but it still made a sick sad place inside me to think or say those words. “Aidan was adopted by a local woman. It was an open adoption, of course, I knew she would be taking him, she knew I was having him, none of it was secret, It was all just what we both wanted. I don’t know if he’s ever even met Lucas. I haven’t seen him—Lucas—since he left. I met Aidan yesterday. Seems like a good kid. He knows who I am, which I didn’t know if he would, and Ada, his mom, she’s a little touchy about me being here even if everything was open and okay, but anyway, so Sara grew up and married Lucas after all, which I learned last December. And on Wednesday she called to tell me my father was missing but she somehow forgot to mention that Luke was, too. So she’s furious at having to call me and I think she’s equally terrified I won’t find him, and that I will and suddenly some long-buried passion will spark and we’ll, I don’t know, steal Aidan and run away together.”
“Should I be worried?”
That was so unexpected I lifted my gaze again. Morrison did not look like a worried man. The corner of his mouth was lifted, and his blue eyes were concerned, but not in a way that suggested he felt threatened. He was concerned about me, that was all, and when I inadvertently smiled at the question, his own smile broadened a bit. He came over, put his arm around my shoulders, and tugged me into an embrace. “Thanks for telling me. I knew some of it, but not the details.”
I put my forehead against his shoulder. “I knew you did. You’re a gentleman, by the way. For not pushing it last summer.”
“You said nobody’d hurt you. I had to trust you on that. I figured you knew where I was if you wanted to talk.”
“Is there a universe in which you thought I might actually come talk to you?”
“You just did.”
“Yeah, but you couldn’t have seen that coming a year ago. Could you?” I leaned back, trying to gauge his expression.
“A year ago you were my employee, Walker. Anything you wanted to say to me then would have been in a different confidence than what you tell me now, even if it’s the same information.” He brushed my chin with his thumb and smiled.
“Did you know I love you?” The question popped out, followed by a blush so hard it made my eyes water. I’d said it on the phone, but that wasn’t the same as saying it right to his face, and besides, it seemed awkward on the tail of the conversation we were having.
His grin only got wider, though. “Then or now? Now, yes, I’ve been starting to suspect. Then? Then it didn’t matter, because I was your boss.” He hesitated. “And you took the promotion, so I wasn’t sure.”
The Promotion. Morrison had made that job offer very carefully, after we’d shared a kiss that hadn’t exactly happened in the real world. I’d had the impression then that he was testing the waters, seeing which I wanted more: him, or to become a police detective. “I wasn’t ready. I was still way too much of a mess, and…and besides, you’d kind of thrown down a gauntlet. You said, I don’t know if you remember, but the day I came back from Ireland you said you thought I could be a good cop. Of course, that was right after you said you’d always liked me, so I probably should’ve taken it with a grain of th and…and salt, but—”
“I did like you. I can tell the difference between a Corvette and a Mustang, Walker. It was the woman sitting on the hood that got me flustered. Then you realized I was your new boss, and it seemed like we were better off off to a bad start than making up.” Morrison’s eyebrows darted up and he amended that, turning into something of a confession: “It seemed like I was better off if we stayed on bad terms.”
A smile tugged the corner of my mouth in turn. I leaned against Petite, sliding my feet wide so Morrison could lean against me. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear you can tell Corvettes from Mustangs. Any doubts I might have had are now put to rest.”
“Were you having doubts?”
“No.” I sighed and put my forehead against his shoulder again, easier now that I was scooted a bit lower than he. “Pretty much not since I threw that temper tantrum in the restaurant over Barbara Bragg.” I’d come a breath from going all Fatal Attraction on Morrison’s paramour, and then read Morrison the riot act for putting himself in danger while I was trying to save him. It had not been my proudest moment. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s all right. Though that was some of why I wasn’t sure about what you felt. It seemed fairly clear there in the parking lot, but you took the promotion after that. And you did turn out to be a good cop, Walker. You proved that to me.”
“I guess I had to. Maybe not just to you, but to myself, too. But the whole shamanism thing, it’s pulling me another direction.”
Morrison’s voice dropped. “Is it what’s pulling us back into Petite’s front seat?”
He was right. We were in serious danger of scootching our way right back in there. I groaned and shook my head. “No. It’s pulling us, or at least me, up into the mountains, and if you want to know the truth, Boss—”
“Not ‘Boss.’”
I smiled briefly. “Mo
rrison. Whatever I call you, the truth is I don’t know how to find what’s up there, much less how to handle it.”
“I’m sure it’ll find us, Walker. The rest we can figure out.”
There was nothing better than having a handsome man completely confident in your abilities, except maybe having one who also intended to go into battle with you. I kissed him, then squeezed away before we did fall into Petite’s front seat and went searching for the shotgun I had carelessly tossed away. I was surprised Les hadn’t read me the riot act on that, too, when I found it half-under the Impala. I bent to scoop it up and my phone rang, making me clap my hip as I stood. Morrison straightened, his gaze watchful as I answered with a “Yeah?”
“You answered too fast to be driving back down here, and I don’t want to know why you’re not,” Sara said. “But belay those orders anyway, because Ada Monroe just came to the school. She says Aidan has gone missing.”
Chapter Twelve
I didn’t know what my expression was, but Morrison came closer and put his hand at the small of my back. My heart’s tempo had picked up to an improbable degree, drowning out Sara’s voice. My face felt flushed and my fingers were freezing, but then those reversed while my stomach churned. Sara, distantly, was saying, “She says his bed hasn’t been slept in and the back door th anre was open. Their property backs up onto the mountains, Joanne.”
“He’s twelve,” I protested faintly. “How far could he have gotten in eight hours?” It was a stupid question. Even assuming he’d gone into the mountains at the very slow pace of a mile an hour, that made for a lot of square mileage to cover. Realistically he would know at least a few miles of the land well enough to move much, much faster than that, even at night. I stopped being able to extrapolate how much distance he could have covered. It was busywork anyway, my brain trying desperately to distract itself with numbers while adrenaline pumped through, urging me to move.
“The town is putting a search party together already, and he’s been reported missing in the NCIC and CUE, but—”
“But I’m already up here. CUE?” I knew the National Crime Information Center, but CUE was new to me and would give Sara something to talk about while I folded my hand around the phone and triggered the Sight. Petite herself flared reassuring, solid green, and Morrison had faint red tinges of concern dancing through his purple and blue aura. The mountains were brilliant with color, new leaves on trees burning electric blue, the sap running strong and bright. Bugs and larger animals made different-colored shadows against the blue pulsing life in the trees, but I was looking beyond that. Way beyond.
The Sight wasn’t exactly X-ray vision, but for my purposes it was close enough. I couldn’t track magic, but I could See it, and Aidan’s aura was brilliant and distinctive. Phone still folded in my hand, I turned my attention up into the hills, searching for the blaze of near-white blend that was Aidan Monroe’s presence.
Nothing. I gritted, “We’ll find him,” over Sara’s explanation about the Community United Effort, and hung up. “Horrible energy-sucking monsters have been moved into second place on the priority list. Aidan’s missing.”
“Your son.”
“Yeah. Ada’s son,” I said after a moment, because it was bizarre hearing someone else say those words aloud. I thought of Aidan as my son in the privacy of my head, but to the world outside my head, he was Ada’s. “Not that I’m trying to write him off. It’s just that she’s put all the time and effort in. All I did was give birth. A long time ago.” I wet my lips, then swallowed. I meant it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worried. Terrified, even. “I don’t want anything to happen to him, Morrison. He’s just a kid, and my screwed-up life is coming in to haunt him.”
“Your life…” Morrison paused long enough to make me give a hard little laugh.
“Isn’t screwed up, is that what you were going to say? Thanks, but it is. More than most.”
“Differently from most.” He thought about that, then exhaled and admitted, “More than most. Speaking of which, Walker, it’s a bad time, but how are you doing with the Patricia Raleigh incident?”
“Did she die?”
“No.”
“Then I’m fine.” I wasn’t certain it was true. Two weeks ago I’d shot a woman to keep her from killing my detective partner. I hadn’t shot to kill, and she’d survived, but shooting someone was a big deal all by itself. For me, though, it had also been the spark setting off two weeks of explosive, nonstop action. That kind of thing looked cool in movies, but was exhausting when it really happened. I was going to have a hell of a lot to work through when things slowed down.
At the rate I was goirat alsong, that would happen when I was about eighty. “I’ll be fine, anyway,” I amended. “Don’t worry about it right now. We have other problems. Aidan apparently knows these hills like the back of his hand, and he really wanted to go with me yesterday when it looked like I was going monster-hunting. If he’s gone hunting by himself….”
“He’ll be fine,” Morrison promised, and since, like George Washington, Morrison never told a lie, I accepted the reassurance gratefully. He edged me aside to pick up where I’d left off: packing the shotgun and other bits of the arsenal I’d put in Petite’s trunk over the past several months. “I’m glad no one stopped me for speeding. I had no idea what you had in the trunk. Is anything in here illegal?”
“I have permits for all of it. Were you really speeding? Of course you were.” I took a back holster for the sawed-off shotgun out of the trunk and slung it on, but I was trying to stare at Morrison over my shoulder while he slid the shotgun home. It had a comfortable weight to it, though I bet after a day’s hike it wouldn’t be so comfy. “You really just drove across the country in two days, Morrison? Did you sleep?”
“Not much. I made good time through the Midwest and stopped at a motel for about six hours.”
I turned around to stare at him with my heart and my libido both speeding up. I’d driven that route when I was seventeen, all the way through South Dakota and into the speed-limit-free zone of Montana. I had a fair sense of what good time meant, in those regards, and I knew for damned sure what Petite’s upper speed range was. I had made it across the country, North Carolina to Seattle, and avoiding Ohio, which was lousy with cops, in about forty hours, including sleep, stopping for food, and climbing a mountain to look at the wild horse monument built there. My average speed had been around 75 miles an hour, and that took traffic jams into account. My top speed had been close to Petite’s nominal upper limit of 130, but I’d never quite pegged it. One of my goals in life was to bring her to Utah and let her rip on the salt flats.
The idea of Morrison tearing across the country at an average speed in excess of sixty miles an hour was one of the sexier images I’d been presented with lately. My cheeks flushed. Morrison looked amused. “You all right, Walker?”
I’d said it before, but it was worth repeating, except this time I said it in a lower, more throaty voice. “I didn’t know you drove that well.”
“Driving fast isn’t the same as driving well.” He gave Petite a sideways glance, then admitted, “She can move.”
My grin was big enough to split my head. I patted Petite proprietorially and beamed some more as Morrison put on his best official-cop face and went back to ransacking Petite’s trunk. He didn’t ask about the flask of holy water or the wooden stakes. Then he went around to the driver’s side, flipped the seat forward, and took out two more completely unexpected items from behind the seat.
The first was a black leather coat, which he shrugged on and magically transformed from Michael Morrison, Seattle police captain, to Mike Morrison, In Need of a Motorcycle and Possibly Not The Boy You Bring Home To Mother, After All. There was suddenly not enough air in the whole world. I got dizzy. Morrison glanced at me and smirked. I blushed. He laughed, and I said, “Well!”
“Glad you approve.” Then he took the other item out and offered it to me.
My blush turned intosh
&n
bsp; My drum. The skin drum given to me by the elders, Carrie Little Turtle included, when I turned fifteen. Aside from Petite, it was easily my most prized possession. Almost two feet across, its thin leather was stretched across a wooden frame. Crossbars were set into the frame’s insides, providing a handhold. Feathers and beads trailed from leather strings around the frame’s edge, and the images painted onto the drum skin were as bright and vibrant as they’d been nearly thirteen years ago when it had been given to me.
But the peculiar thing was, they had changed. Or one of them had, at least. A raven still arched over two other animals, their orientation giving the drum’s circle a top and bottom. On the left was a rattlesnake, poised to strike. But on the right, for more than a decade, a wolf or a coyote—I’d never been sure which—had faced the rattlesnake. Six months ago the painting had begun to fade and warp like it had been soaked, but the drum itself never lost any of its tension. I hadn’t been able to tell what was coming up in the coyote’s place, though even I had understood the change indicated a waning of my mentor’s influence on me.
Now, though, the image was there, fresh and clear as if it had always been the one painted onto the drum. A praying mantis, long legs folded and heart-shaped face examining the rattlesnake across from it. I touched it cautiously, a little afraid it would smear, though I knew perfectly well it was magic, not paint, staining the leather. I said Subtle, inside the confines of my head, and all three of my spirit animals radiated amusement. Most people didn’t go around announcing to the world what form their spirit guides took. I guessed I couldn’t do anything like most people did, and lifted my smile to Morrison. “Thank you.”
He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “I thought you might want it.”
“You…” I shook my head, still smiling. I was alternating between having the best and worst moments of my life the past couple weeks, crashing from one to the other with no real warning. Despite the low moments, Morrison’s presence and thoughtfulness were pulling everything heavily toward it being the best of times. “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting this. Thank you. You’re going to roast in that coat, up in the mountains.”