believe in that stuff, Billy?” I’d never thought, or maybe dared, to ask before.
He glanced at me, mouth drawn in a thin line. “I had an older sister.”
“Had?” I tried to remember if I knew anything about Billy’s childhood, other than the unfortunate name his parents had given him. Nothing surfaced.
“She died when I was eight. She drowned.” Billy’s shoulders were tight, his voice quiet.
“God. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He glanced at me again, stopping outside the coffee shop door. “When I was eleven, I woke up from a dream that I was suffocating. Caroline was sitting at the edge of my bed with her fists knotted in her lap. She told me that my best friend, Derek, had fallen into the slurry a neighbor was pouring for the concrete foundation to their house. I woke up the whole household and we all went running over there in our pajamas.”
My own hands were knotted at my sides. “And?”
“My dad pulled Derek out of the slurry. It was half-set and crushing his ribs. My dead sister saved his life.”
I hauled in a deep breath of air and rubbed my breastbone. “Jesus.” I smiled lopsidedly. “So you’re telling me you see dead people?”
Billy shot me a look, seeing if I was teasing him. I was, but it was the only way I could get through the conversation. I didn’t mean to hurt him, and after a moment he realized that. His shoulders relaxed and he smiled back, crookedly. “Yeah. Not like the kid in that movie. Not nearly that often. But yeah, I do. You remember the Franklin murder a couple years ago?”
I shuddered. “Yeah.”
Mrs. Franklin had killed her fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily, after the girl claimed she could see her new stepfather’s past, and that he was a rapist. Mother and daughter had a screaming fight, ending in the girl’s death. Mr. Franklin’s police record proved Emily correct, too late. It was the sort of case the cops hated to have on the news; the tabloids made a huge fuss over it, while the coroner’s office held its tongue about whether Emily had been sexually abused. The news crews took the coroner’s silence as an implicit yes. The police department didn’t like to talk about the fact that she hadn’t been. It led to unanswerable questions about the little girl’s apparent psychic abilities.
“Yeah, I remember. The whole thing was insane.” I wasn’t supposed to have been there. I’d been out with Billy, trying to hear the hitch he claimed was in his engine, when he was called to the murder scene.
“Emily Franklin was in the corner watching you the whole time you were there, like you were the sun and had just come out.” Billy turned and pulled the door to the cafe open for me.
“Emily Franklin was dead, Billy.”
“I know.”
Hairs stood up all over my body, like someone’d dropped an icicle down my back. “You’re telling me there was a ghost watching me?”
“The ghost of a clairvoyant little girl. She said you didn’t have any past at all. She’d never seen anyone like you. She wanted to see what was going to happen to you. After a few days she let go, but I’ve been waiting ever since to see what happens to you. With you.” He ordered a large decaffeinated espresso and waved his hand at me to order while I stared at him unhappily. “Go ahead and get something.” He dug in his pocket for cash.
“Hot chocolate with mint and whipped cream,” I mumbled. Forget cars. I needed real comfort food. “A grande. Why didn’t you ever tell me that, Billy?”
“Would you have believed me?” He pulled the top off his drink and blew on it before taking a sip. I frowned at the counter.
“No,” I admitted.
He shrugged. It was answer enough. “So something finally happened.” He took a bigger sip of his drink and cursed, sticking his tongue out in an effort to reduce the burn’s pain. “I’ve been waiting two years. You do this kind of about-face, I’m prepared to believe it. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe it yourself. So tell me about the shamans. Was your friend one, too?”
I got my hot chocolate and found a couple dollars to give him for it. “I don’t think so. She had something else going on. Look, where do I start, Billy? I’ve got a feeling I’ve got a lot of catch-up work to do. Starting right now, and starting with some old Celtic gods.” I said it with a hard C, the way Marie had, and Billy looked both surprised and impressed.
“I woulda thought you’d say ‘Seltic,’” he said. I wrinkled my nose at him.
“I just got back from Ireland,” I pointed out, let a beat pass, and admitted, “Marie said Celtic. I didn’t know better before then.”
“There’s no soft C in the Gaelic language.” Billy took another sip of his coffee, then set it down. “Okay, tell me about this…god? God, Joanie. You start believing and you go whole haul, huh? I’ve just got dead people.”
“Lucky me.” I shook my head. “The guy I fought with yesterday wasn’t a gang member. He was…Marie thought it was Cernunnos. An ancient Celtic god.”
Billy sat back, pressing his lips together. “What do you think?”
“He wasn’t human.” It was strange to hear myself say that. I felt like an alien had taken over my body. Billy nodded slowly.
“You think he’s the one who killed Marie? Who did the other five murders?”
“I don’t know. I hurt him pretty badly yesterday, and I don’t know if he could heal from it that fast. And then there’s the high school this morning.”
Billy nodded again. “Same M.O. Is it your guy?”
I wrapped both my hands around the paper cup. “Marie thought there might be someone else involved. It doesn’t feel right to me, pinning this on Cernunnos.” I barked laughter. “Doesn’t feel right. God, listen to me.”
“I am,” Billy said seriously.
Hot chocolate splashed as I set the cup down. “And that freaks me out even more.”
Billy studied me as he took a long drink of his coffee. “What’s it like?” he finally asked. I dropped my head and looked into my hot chocolate.
“The good news is it’s keeping my mind off having to walk the streets.” I scowled at my drink. “That came out wrong.” I pushed the chocolate away and lowered my head to the table, resting it on my forearms. “You remember the first time someone you loved died, Billy? It’s like that. I can’t believe it, but I can’t not believe it, either. At the very least I should be in a hospital bed breathing through a tube. I should probably be dead.” I sat up, fingers drifted to my sternum again. “It’s like the whole world is a badly tuned engine. I’m starting to feel when it misses or lurches. And I’ve got this stupid idea that I can fix it.”
“The world,” Billy said. I smiled thinly.
“Let me just start with Seattle.”
I turned up at Morrison’s door, still carrying my hot chocolate, at five minutes to eleven. He stared at me like he’d never seen me before. “You didn’t tell me when my shift started,” I said with all the aplomb I could manage.
Morrison continued to stare at me. “I don’t have a patrol uniform, either. I do have my badge!” I dug it out of my jacket pocket and waved it at him.
He stared at it.
“So now you pair me with an old curmudgeon, right? Somebody to show me the ropes? Somebody who hates paperwork and foists it all off on me? That’s what happens now, right?” That’s what happened in the movies, anyway. I frowned at Morrison. “You okay?”
“What the hell are you doing here, Walker?”
I straightened up, startled. “What’d you think I was gonna do, not show up so you’d have an excuse to fire me? Y’know, I might have loads of stupid, Morrison, but I’m not quite
“Walker.” Morrison walked around to my side of his desk, pausing to close the door. My heart lurched. “You are a suspect,”
Morrison said, the words measured, “in a murder case. Walker. Do you really think I’m going to put you on the street?”
I swallowed hot chocolate wrong, and coughed until my eyes teared. Morrison stared at me impassively. When I could breathe again, I croaked, “Suspect? But they let me go.”
