a man thirty years younger would set my heart aflutter.
I rubbed my eyes again and squinted. Gary’s grin got wider. He looked like a devilish old movie star in a set scene, and like he knew damned good and well his presence was the culminating factor. After about thirty seconds’ more silence, I said, “Sure,” and wished I’d been suave enough to just say that in the first place. And then because I wasn’t suave at all, I squeaked, “What the hell are you doing here?!” in disbelieving delight.
Gary threw his head back and laughed out loud. He had suspiciously good teeth for a man his age who used to smoke. I suspected dentures, but had never been rude enough to ask. Then he stepped forward and swept me up in a bear hug, which put paid to any thoughts of his teeth as I grunted happily and repeated, “No, seriously, what the hell?”
“Mike called me. Told me to, and I quote, get my old ass on the next flight to Dublin and try to catch up to Joanne goddamned Walker, who’s gone off again and needs somebody to keep her from doing anything stupid, end quote. So I got on the next flight outta L.A. Got in ten minutes ago. What’s going on?”
I pulled my head back far enough to look up at him. “Mike? Mike who? You mean
“That’s the one.” Gary set me back, hands on my shoulders, as his grin faded. “’Cept I hear he ain’t the boss anymore.”
“Not the boss of me, anyway.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m not six, really.”
“What happened, doll?” Real concern was in my big friend’s gray eyes. I’d gotten into Gary’s cab over a year ago, on the very morning my shamanic powers had been violently awakened. He’d been at my side, backing me up, ever since. Gary was the sort of person I wanted to grow old to be: vital, fascinated by the world and always up for an adventure. At twenty-six, when I’d met him, I’d been none of those things. At pushing twenty-eight I was just getting on the bandwagon. I couldn’t have a better role model.
“It’s okay, I quit. I mean, I didn’t get fired. Everything’s cool. I just…” It turned out I had other things to not think about besides a werewolf bite. The enormity of what I’d done—quit my detective job on the police force with no notice and with no prospects for other employment in the future—hit me, a mere twelve hours after the fact. Or a full day, counting elapsed travel time. Either way, I felt myself go colorless and the insistent pit of magic in my belly turned to just a boring old pit of sickness for a moment.
Gary put a hand under one of my elbows and crooked a smile. “Don’t worry, Joanie. I can always get you a job at Tripoli Cabs.”
If Gary was calling me Joanie, I looked even worse than I suddenly felt. Usually he went with Jo, a nickname I’d never liked until he used it. Still, rough laughter bubbled up from somewhere beneath the ook in my tummy. “Petite would never forgive me if I took to driving another car most of the day.”
“You better not tell her ’bout your plans to get a winter vehicle, then.”
“She’d understand,” I said unconvincingly. “Classic Mustangs aren’t meant to weather the winters Seattle’s been having lately. She’s got no clearance. I’ll just get her a boyfriend. A 1936 Dodge pickup. In red.”
“They got no clearance, either, darlin’,” Gary said with the confidence of a man who’d been there and done that, never mind that he’d been only four years old in 1936. “’Sides, you get that sweet young thing an old fella like a ’36 Dodge and you’ll start giving me ideas.”
Laughter won again, this time because half the people I knew were convinced I had a Thing going on with Gary. Even Morrison thought so, despite it being fairly clear that I was hopelessly, idiotically, madly in love with him. “Petite’s older than I am,” I pointed out, like it made a difference.
“And I’m older than a ’36 Dodge. You all right, Joanie?”
“Stop that. It makes me think I’m falling apart.”
“Are you?”
“A w—” I nearly swallowed my tongue. I hadn’t even told Morrison a werewolf had bitten me, and there I was about to confess all to Gary. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn’t do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, “A wee little bit,” instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do. “It’s been a really long day. Weekend. You missed a lot.”
Childish dismay splashed across Gary’s face. “One weekend, Jo! I went to California for one weekend, and you had to have adventures without me?”
“You have no idea. I can shapeshift now,” I said almost idly. The weird thing was, learning to shapeshift really did come low on the totem pole of what had gone on the past three days. No wonder I’d slept so hard on the plane. I was pretty sure the last time I’d napped had been in the shower a couple of days earlier.
Gary’s eyes bugged and he pointed imperiously to the door. “We gotta get out of here so you can show me.”
A tug in my gut wiped away the last of my job-related nausea. My boiling-over magic thought getting out of there was an excellent idea. We made mad rushes for different car rental agencies, eyeing each other to see whose line moved more quickly. I beat Gary to a counter by thirty seconds, and he came to loom over me as I filled out paperwork. “Second driver?” the woman asked, and Gary muttered, “Don’t you dare think I ain’t doin’ some of the driving, Jo.”
I obediently put him down as the second driver. He snagged the keys out from under my fingertips and in retaliation I grabbed his carry-on suitcase as well as my own. He looked ever so slightly smug and I suspected I had gotten the raw end of the deal, but he flashed me another one of his legendary grins. “Hey, Jo?”
I muttered, “What?” about as graciously as an angry alligator, and the big lug of an old man earned a lifetime’s forgiveness with two words as we headed out the door:
“Nice coat.”
Chapter Two
The last time I’d been in Ireland—also the first time, overlooking the detail of having been born here, which I didn’t remember—I’d had none of the phenomenal cosmic powers I was now endowed with. Part of me wanted to trigger the Sight and look into the depths of history and magic the island was legendary for.
The much smarter part of me didn’t want to, since I’d stolen the keys back and was driving. The Sight had been whiting out and blinding me for the past twenty-four hours. Driving blind seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. So instead of calling up the mystical mojo, I filled Gary in on the weekend’s details while we worked our way through Dublin traffic, which was negligible compared to Seattle. By the time I got to the werewolves, we’d left the capital city behind, and Gary kept saying, “Werewolves,” in audible disappointment. “Werewolves. I’m never around for the good stuff.”
“Says the man who left an annual shindig to fly last-minute to Ireland.”
“I couldn’t risk missin’ something else, now, could I?” Gary peered out the window. In theory there were green rolling hills out there. In reality, there were concrete walls fifteen feet high that blocked off the countryside. “Where we goin’, anyway?”
“The Hill of Tara.” I knew almost as much about Irish history as I’d known about shamanism a year ago, which was to say nothing, but even I’d heard of Tara. I scowled at the road, trying to remember if I’d gotten that far in what I’d told Gary. “It’s in County Meath, which is sort of the wrong way, more north than west, and I keep feeling like I need to go west. But I had a vision last night. Or the night before. Saturday night. Anyway, I saw a hill in the vision, so Tara seems like a good place to start.”
“What with bein’ a hill and all,” Gary agreed solemnly.
I said, “Exactly,” even though I knew perfectly well I was being mocked. Gary laughed and I gave him a dirty look. “Besides, starting with a known cultural and spiritual center probably isn’t a bad idea, even if it’s the wrong one. Did I tell you about the woman wearing my mother’s necklace?”
Gary arched his bushy eyebrows, which I took as a no, and I asked, “You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tied to hundreds of others you don’t know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?”
Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, “Yes and no, darlin’. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real.”
