by C. E. Murphy
A silence in which it became very clear Brad Holliday didn’t trust me with his nieces and nephews followed. I finally looked at him, trying to keep my expression neutral.
Apparently it didn’t work. His eyebrows drew down and his mouth tightened, which was enough to allow me an exasperated sigh. “Look, Brad. I’m Billy and Melinda’s friend. Their kids know me. I get you don’t like me, and I even get why. That’s fine. But do you really want to wake four little kids up and herd them while you’re trying to admit their second parent to the hospital? I’m here, and as far as I know, neither of them have any other family in the area. Who’re you gonna call?”
There was one brief moment of camaraderie where Brad and I both all but swallowed our tongues, struggling against the obvious response. Brad passed a hand over his eyes and muttered, “That question is ruined for all time,” under his breath, while I turned a nearly violent grin at my hands. Dr. Brad was human after all. “All right, fine,” he said more loudly and very decisively, as if doing so could wipe away the moment of sympathy. “I should be back well before eleven.”
“I think Robert’s old enough to watch the little ones for a while, if there’s a gap. I—crap.” I turned my wrist up, looking at the watch I’d finally gotten fixed. Now that it worked again, I kind of missed it telling me the time in Moscow. “I guess I’ll call Gary and get him to stop by my apartment for my stuff. That way I won’t have to leave until a quarter till or so.” I wouldn’t be more than a few minutes late, unless traffic on Aurora was critically bad. Morrison would probably want to bust my ass for it, but that was nothing unusual.
I got out of Brad’s way so he could bring Mel to the hospital, and stopped by Robert’s room to tell him, as I’d promised, what was going on. He looked worried and sleepy, but when I whispered, “Shh, go back to sleep, kiddo,” the coil of energy inside me sent a soothing warm splash of power over him that seemed to weight down his eyelids and help him fall asleep again. I actually thought that was kind of cool. It wasn’t anything big or dramatic, but it was the first time I could remember being actively pleased with the gift I’d been given. I’d been relieved in the past, and sometimes glad to have been of help, but this was a little warm bubble of genuine pleasure, and at something as simple as making sure a kid got some sleep. Maybe, just maybe, if I could learn enough to fix the crises that kept lurching into my life, it would all smooth out to little happy-making moments like this one.
That thought got me through the next several hours, in which Erik got up and vomited again and Clara discovered neither parent was at home anymore and cried until her face turned purple. Robert got Jacquie and himself breakfast while I cleaned up after Erik’s Technicolor splatters, but Clara was too busy hyperventilating to eat. I liked kids in a sort of abstract way in general, and Billy’s kids in particular, but by the time Gary showed up at ten-fifteen with my work gear, I was trembling with exhaustion. I had no idea how Mel got through a single day of this, much less three hundred-sixty-five of them, year after year.
Gary got Clara to stop crying by picking her up by the ankles and carrying her around like a sack of flour. Within ten minutes she was giggling and willing to eat breakfast, and I was collapsed on the living room couch staring at the old man in admiring disbelief. “I thought you didn’t have any kids.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Old army technique. Distract and redirect. Works, too, don’t it?”
I said, “You’re a god among men,” which Gary rewarded me for with a toothy white grin.
“’Course I am. That kid called while I was at your place, to say he had a nice evenin’ and to check up on you. You went out with him, Jo?”
“I—” I shot a guilty look at the kids that Robert, at least, read clearly. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Last night. I kind of crashed the evening by having a vision and passing out, though. And if I hadn’t maybe I’d have been doing something useful and Mel wouldn’t be in the hospital right now.”
“Mebbe,” Gary said. “Mebbe not. The last few weeks you’ve been steppin’ up to the plate with your shamanism, and I’m proud of you, doll, don’t get me wrong. But runnin’ away from the rest of your life ain’t gonna help matters any.”
“Damn it, Gary.” Great. I sounded like Morrison. “I’m sorry, but at what point did you turn into Mr. Bossy Telling Jo to Get Her Life Together, anyway? Who says you get to do that?”
“You.” Gary sat down in Billy’s easy chair and kicked it back, folding his arms behind his head and giving me a steely gray-eyed look. “Or didja forget the part where you said you had lots to learn from this old dog?”
I really hated it when people got all supercilious at me. Especially when they were right. I was searching for a biting rejoinder when I noticed there were four small people watching Gary and me as if we were the final pair at Wimbledon, bright interest writ large across their little faces. I said a word I absolutely should not have in front of Billy’s kids, and they all brightened even further. I lifted my hands in defeat. “All right. Maybe you’re right. I’ve got to get to work, Gary. Can you keep an eye on them until Brad gets back? He should be here any minute.”
“Yeah. Told dispatch I was runnin’ late today. Who’s Brad? You got another guy on the line, Jo? Good for you. About time, I say.” Gary looked pleased and I smacked myself on the forehead, then ran for the door, leaving poor Robert to explain who Brad was.
I made it to the precinct building in the nick of time, bewildered to find plenty of parking. The building itself needed expanding, and the parking lot was always full. I climbed out, looking around in confusion, and patted Petite’s roof. “Stay brave, girl. Don’t feel lonely. I’ll be back for you.” There were cars in the lot, including a news van a dozen spaces down from me, but it wasn’t overflowing. That was even weirder than me having a date.
I turned away from Petite to find Morrison striding across the lot toward me, and hoped he hadn’t heard me talking to my car. “Whatever you do,” he said as soon as he was close enough to be heard without shouting, “do not talk to the press.”
“What?”
Down the row, the van’s sliding door rumbled open, and a pleasant, neutral expression slipped over Morrison’s face. Only his eyes told me to get the hell out of there, and for once I was in complete agreement with my boss. I gave him a quick nod and managed about six steps toward the precinct building when a woman’s curious, professional voice said, “Joanne Walker, right? We met in January at Blanchet High School in the aftermath of the murders.”
I set the edges of my front teeth together in a grimace, then made it into a smile as I glanced over my shoulder. A lovely woman, her ethnic background clearly involving at least Asian and Caucasian, had climbed out of the van and was smiling at me. “Laura Corvallis, Channel Two News.” She offered a hand and I found myself casting what I hoped was a well-disguised helpless look at Morrison as I turned to shake her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you again,” she said. “I see you haven’t been stricken by the Blue Flu. Do you have any comments on the illness that’s bringing Seattle’s police force to its knees?”
CHAPTER 13
A muscle cramped in my neck as I tried not to look at Morrison. I had no idea what she was talking about, and worse, no idea if I should. My tongue felt like it’d swollen to choke my throat, which, all things considered, was probably good. It made it very difficult for me to say the wrong thing. I could practically feel Morrison telegraphing keep quiet! at me, and after a few seconds I got my tongue loose enough to croak, “I don’t, Ms. Corvallis. No comment. Nice to see you again. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get to work.” I tilted my head at the building, nodded at Morrison, said, “Captain,” just like a good little police officer and made a break for it.
“Don’t you think it’s rather odd that a quarter of the North Precinct police force can’t get out of bed this morning?” Corvallis called after me. “How do you suppose you’ve escaped the illness, Officer Walker?”
I nearly tripped over my o
wn feet. A quarter? That explained the empty parking lot. I was afraid to look over my shoulder and see Morrison’s expression, and I still had no idea how to respond to Corvallis. I repeated, “No comment,” in a strangled voice and tried not to actually run for the building. Corvallis let me go, turning her shark’s smile on Morrison instead. I ducked into the building hyperventilating and feeling sorry for my boss.
A quarter of the force? It didn’t seem possible. The lot was empty, but that empty? It’d only been Billy, yesterday, and Mel this morning. Hollow laughter built inside me and faded away again. Funny how I assumed it was the same thing striking everyone, but Corvallis had said people couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t know how else to construe that.
Morrison was going to want to talk to me. Morrison was probably going to want to kill me, but if I got into uniform before he came back into the building, maybe it’d remind him he shouldn’t go around killing police officers. I barged off to the locker rooms, which were noticeably emptier than was normal a few minutes before shift change. I changed clothes and escaped the echoing chamber feeling like I was getting out of solitary. For a moment I just leaned on the wall outside the locker room, eyes closed and my cheeks puffed out. This was not going to be a good day.
What a firm grasp of the obvious I had. I huffed a breath and wrinkled my face, eyes still closed. Someone chuckled. “That’s not such a good look for you.”
My eyes popped open. Thor had just exited the men’s locker room, the door swinging shut behind him. He looked, as usual, like a thunder god, all blond and broad-shouldered and chisel-jawed as he grinned at me. “Thor.” I’d been going to try to call him by his real name. That was one of my new Joanne resolutions. “I mean, uh, Ed. Hi.”
“Edward.”
“What?” I needed a better comeback than that, for when I missed a beat. I felt like I was saying, “What?” a lot lately.
“Edward’s better than Ed. Leftover childhood trauma.” It took me a couple of seconds, but I got it: “Mr. Ed, huh?”
He smiled, brief twist of one corner of his mouth. “Yeah. As far as nicknames go, ’Thor’ doesn’t seem that bad when you’re used to being called after a horse.”
“I guess it wouldn’t.” As if missing a night of sleep wasn’t enough, I was now having a nearly normal conversation with the guy I’d been considering my arch nemesis ever since Morrison gave him my job. This was, once again, a whole different kind of weird than the weird I’d gotten used to. “Did you…want something?”
He cleared his throat. Actually cleared his throat. Put his hands in his pockets and pushed his mouth out in duck lips before asking, “You ever go out clubbing?”
“What,” I asked in astonishment, “like cavemen?” No way the one night in the last however-many years I’d gone out a coworker had seen me. It just wasn’t possible. Especially when it was a good-looking coworker. Especially when it was a good-looking coworker who didn’t like me.
Edward laughed, an out-loud belly laugh that nearly knocked me off my feet from sheer surprise. He had a nice deep laugh, infectious enough to make me give him a confused smile in response. “No,” he said a moment later, still chortling. “Dancing. I coulda sworn I saw you last night.”
I was going to kill Phoebe. Or Mark. Or both of them. “Uh. I, um. Yeah. Was out last night. At Contour. Sort of a freak occurrence. Like, never happens. Probably never will again. Like, you know, a perfect storm or something. Not that I’m perfect. I dance like an accident victim.” I bit my tongue to keep from babbling any more.
“Well, I thought you looked pretty good.”
“So why didn’t you ask me to dance?” I asked, suddenly full of inexplicable piss and vinegar. Oh, the snide little voice in my head said, maybe because you’ve been nasty to him pretty much straight for the last seven months?
“I figured you’d say no.”
I stared. “Why would I do that?” Oh, the snide little voice repeated. I told it to shut up and go away.
Edward shrugged one shoulder and did the half smile again. It was a kind of nice smile. “Told you. It’s like trying to follow Roth. We haven’t exactly gotten along. Besides, you looked like you had a date.” He hesitated, then crooked another half smile and said, “Promise you won’t sue me for sexual harassment if I say this.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’re probably safe.” To the best of my recollection, no one in my entire life had ever said anything to me that might set them up for a sexual harassment suit. I was almost hopeful.
“Well, you’re usually…” He gestured at me: bulky blue uniform, clodhopper boots, broad-shouldered and without a discernible waist beneath the Kevlar. “I’d never seen you dressed up before. You were kind of intimidating.”
“Intimidating?” I was beginning to think someone had replaced me with Folger’s Crystals and I hadn’t noticed. “You must be very confident to confess that to me.”
He flashed me a genuine grin. “Yeah. Just not confident enough to ask a coworker to dance.” He waited out my jaw-dropped, stunned silence for a few seconds, still grinning. “Maybe I’ll catch you at a club sometime. Right now I better get to work.”
He left me standing in the hallway, blinking in astonishment after him.
I lurked around the hall outside Morrison’s office, mostly out of sight, until he came back from the Channel Two interview. He wasn’t quite in dress uniform, but his clothes were crisper than usual, as if he’d known the interview was coming. But crisp or not, there were worried wrinkles around his eyes, and his gaze was concerned as it roved over the empty desks in the room outside his office. A frown pinched his eyebrows, and a wave of wry exasperation filtered through me. I was pretty sure he was looking for me. Even in the midst of a crisis I could annoy him with the mere question of my presence. Go, me. Morrison went into his office and I lurked for a couple more minutes, giving him some time to wind down after the interview before coming out of hiding to tap on his door.
He said, “There you are. Good job with Corvallis,” as I came in. I actually looked over my shoulder to see if there was someone else behind me, which got a faint smile out of my captain. “I’m talking to you, Walker.”
“So I see. It just seemed incredibly unlikely.”
“Take what you can get,” Morrison suggested, and gestured toward a chair. “Now tell me what the hell is going on with my police force.” I sat, then sank into the chair as weariness swept over me. Morrison’s mouth soured as I fought and lost to a yawn big enough to make my eyes water. “Did I interrupt your beauty sleep, Walker?”
“No.” I squeaked it out on the last of the yawn. “Robert Holliday did. Mel’s gone to sleep, too.”
A subtle flinch went through him. “Melinda Holliday? She’s not—” Morrison’s expression darkened until his blue eyes were almost as gray as Gary’s. “What’s going on, Walker?”
“She’s not a cop,” I finished for him. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Morrison. Billy and Melinda kind of make sense. They’re—” I struggled with the right way to say this. “Like me,” I finally said, though it was incomplete. “I don’t know why I’m still awake.”
“Because they’re not like you,” Morrison said flatly. “Holliday’s a believer, Walker, but he can’t do what you do. You want to see the roster of people who are out today?” He shoved paperwork across his desk at me. I leaned forward to pick it up, not wanting to see it at all.
Almost everyone from the garage was on it. Nick, who hadn’t smiled at me in months, except in the dream that morning. The guys I’d been drinking with on the Fourth; all the old friends I’d bantered with in my sleep. Bruce was there, and so was Ray. For a moment I thought I was onto something, but I let it go with a hoarse laugh. Morrison wasn’t on the list, and he’d featured heavily in the dream. Damn. It’d been a good thought.
I slid further down in my chair and put one foot against Morrison’s desk and my elbow on the armrest so I could push my knuckles against my mouth and rub my thumb over the scar on my cheek.
Somewhere during the fidgeting I got the impression Morrison was looking at me disapprovingly, but I couldn’t stop. “All I know is whatever this is, I woke it up,” I said through the barrier of my knuckles.
Morrison stood, then walked across the room to windows that overlooked the parking lot. He’d taken his jacket off before I’d come into the office, and sunlight softened the sharpness of his white shirt, making a faint shadow of his torso inside the fabric. The line of him was casual, hands in his pockets, but I could almost see tension rolling off his shoulders. Energy fluttered behind my breastbone and I pushed the heel of my hand against my stomach, then stopped fighting the push of power and let myself blink.
And I could see, with a capital S. Morrison’s colors, dominant purples and blues, were stained with the tension I could now literally see. There was too much red in his purple, edging it toward burgundy, and the colors clouded over his shoulders in roiling dark swirls. Blues were tinged toward black, the color of anger mixed with fear. Not, emphatically not, fear for himself, but concern for his people, and anger at being helpless in the face of their illnesses. Compassion ran deep in him, royal-blue tempered to something more soothing, but gray ran through it, the frustration of being unable to act. Just beyond him, my second sight let the sky thrum with neon intensity, bright electric colors of life making Morrison seem unusually solid and grounded by distress.
I didn’t really mean to get up and walk over to him, and I certainly had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. Morrison made it a moot question by turning to look at me when I was still a few steps away. A flicker of expression washed over his face, and he said, “Your eyes are gold again,” before brushing past me and returning to his desk. I stood there alone, staring out the window at a world of garish colors.
Morrison said something else and I flinched, all the brilliance of my other sight disappearing in a flash. I closed my eyes, not particularly wanting to look at a dull-colored earth and more particularly not wanting to look at Morrison, though I turned my head toward the sound of his voice. “I’m sorry, sir. What did you say? I was…I wasn’t listening.”