Urban Shaman

CHAPTER 15

Morrison was close enough to kiss. He had tired shadows under his eyes, and his hair had silver threads in it, neither of which I’d ever noticed before. We stared at each other, almost cross-eyed, our noses nearly touching. He drew in a magnificently deep breath through his nostrils in preparation to launch a tirade. I lifted my hand and put my fingertips over his mouth, clumsily. His eyebrows shot up, as much surprise as I’d ever seen on Morrison’s face.

“Shh,” I whispered. “There’s lots of sick people here. Yelling makes bad juju. You don’t want to make anybody die, do you? Shh.”

In a very modulated tone that did nothing to hide his anger, Morrison demanded, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

It seemed increasingly likely that I was. I rocked back on my heels, lost my balance and staggered half a step backward, which took me well out of kissing distance, if not out of Morrison’s personal space. One of his hands flashed out and clamped around my biceps, steadying me. I was too startled to answer him.

He didn’t really want me to answer anyway. “What the hell are you doing here? I have this dream,” he charged on as I tried to formulate an answer. “I have this dream that I’ll get up one day and the whole damned world will make sense. Being a practical man, I know that’s not going to happen.” Morrison’s volume was building. “But it seems like I should at least be able to stop by for a visit with a key witness without finding the mechanic I suspended yesterday hanging around a police-protected wing of the hospital!”

I found the wall with one hand and leaned on it, letting Morrison’s crescendo break and wash over me. It took a great deal of careful thought to manage, “I thought I could help.” My voice sounded thick and fuzzy, like I’d been snacking on polar fleece.

“Help? What the hell do you know about helping in a murder investigation? You want to be a mechanic. And even if you wanted to be a police officer—”

I leaned against the wall a little harder, closing my eyes. If he’d only choose one pitch and stay at it, I could probably go to sleep standing here, but the fluctuations in volume forced me to listen to him.

“—I don’t want anyone I’ve suspended to ‘help’ with criminal cases they’re involved in. If you have information that will help, give it to the police and we’ll take it from there. You know that’s how it works, Walker. There’s nothing you can do that we can’t.”

“On the contrary.”

I peeled my eyes open to discover Mrs. Potter had come up the hallway and was standing at Morrison’s elbow, waiting for him to acknowledge her interruption. He glared at her.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I don’t need your opinion right now. You—” The last word was directed at me, and then Morrison’s head snapped back around as he recognized the schoolteacher. “You shouldn’t be on your feet.”

“As I was saying,” Henrietta said equitably, “I believe Miss Walker may be able to do a number of things you can’t.”

The next few hours got very blurry while people asked me the same questions over and over, sometimes several at once and frequently in a staccato series. I kept looking up to see if there was a single hard white light bulb dangling over my head. All I wanted to do was leave. There was something important I had to go think about, but I couldn’t think with all the noise and the yelling and the questions. I needed sleep. The world would make more sense once I’d had some sleep.

What I got instead was Morrison’s scowl and doctors who wanted desperately to know how I’d done what I’d done. I remembered shouting, “I’m not a goddamned faith healer! I don’t talk to God! I’m a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken!”

They left me alone for quite a while after that.

I waited for the nice young men in their clean white coats to arrive. When they didn’t, the bed Henrietta had abandoned was too tempting to ignore. The nice young men could wake me up.

Gary woke me up instead, gently shaking my shoulder. “Wake up, lady. Jo?”

“Lady Jo,” I mumbled into the pillow. “Kinda like that. Sounds like a romance heroine.”

Gary paused, distracted. “You read romances?”

“S’my deep dark secret. Go ‘way.”

“Can’t. The ten o’clock news just came on. You might want to get out of here before Morrison gets back.”

I tried to peel one eye open, but my contacts were glued to my eyes again. “Whu?”

“You’re all over it. C’mon, let’s go.”

“Oh, God.” I turned my face and buried it in the pillow. “I don’t care. Let him kill me. As long as I get some rest.”

“You’ve had five hours of sleep,” Gary said without sympathy. “You’ve only got another day to solve this case, y’know.”

I pulled one eye open long enough to look at him. It teared up and shut again of its own volition. “What’re you talking about?”

“Most murders go unsolved if the murderer isn’t caught in forty-eight hours.” Gary spoke with an air of great authority.

“Serial murders are different. Go aw—” An alarming thought drained through my sleep-heavy brain. “What’s the date?”

“Fifth of January.”

I rolled onto my back, blinking tears away as I frowned at the ceiling. “Tomorrow’s the sixth?”

“There’s a bright girl,” Gary said approvingly.

“His power peaks tomorrow night.”

“Whose does?”

“Cernunnos. Yuletide. That’s what Marie said. His power peaks and then begins to fade until the summer solstice, and then he’s banished back to…”

“Wherever Celtic gods are banished to,” Gary supplied.

“Until Sa—Halloween.”

“Samhain,” Gary said. Sow-ehn, he pronounced it. I shook my head.

“I saw that word on the computer. When I look at it I see ‘Samhane.’ How do you remember how to say it?”

Gary shrugged. “Old dog. So what’s the big deal? After tomorrow, you get the upper hand. Sounds like a good way to play the game to me.”

“If I live through it.” The words made a little pit of sickness in my stomach. There was a very real possibility that I was going to end up dead tomorrow. I’d certainly come close enough in the past couple days. Gary frowned and jerked his chin at the door.

“Come on. You won’t live through tonight if your friend the police captain gets his hands on you.”

I groaned and rolled off the bed. “There’s a reassuring thought.”

“I do my best,” Gary said modestly. I chuckled through exhaustion. An alarming number of things were striking me as funny. I wondered if I’d ever get enough sleep to get over that.

“All right. All right. I didn’t even say anything to that stupid reporter. How can he kill me?” I opted against looking in the mirror, dragged the door open and walked into Morrison for the second time that evening. This time I bounced back a step while he stood there like a wall. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I oughta have you arrested.” Morrison was nose to nose with me again. I looked down at his shoes, tilting my head to the side a little. The soles of his shoes were the same thickness as mine. If I thought he could have, I would have guessed he’d done that on purpose.

“For what?” I looked back up at him. I could feel Gary looming behind me. It obviously didn’t bother Morrison at all, but it made me feel a little better.