about running on empty. I exhaled, puffing my cheeks. “‘Boss’, huh? I kind of like that. We’re going to go look for a pretty teenage girl.”
Gary grinned, cheerfully wicked. “Sounds like my kind of plan.”
“You’re an old pervert.”
We left the office a few steps behind the mechanics. Nick, my former supervisor, averted his eyes when I offered him a weary smile. It felt like a gut-punch. Gary saw it and nudged my shoulder as we went by.
“Hey, it’s a tough job, being a dirty old man. Who’s the girl?”
My head swam. It didn’t seem possible Gary didn’t know what had happened, but telling him distracted me from Nick’s carefully blank expression. Gary herded me into the front seat of his cab and I spent most of the drive to Suzy’s address to get all the details in more or less the right order. When I was done talking, I looked around for the first time, realizing we’d driven into one of the precinct’s posher neighborhoods while I’d been concentrating. “Suzy Q’s a rich girl,” I murmured.
“Poor kids don’t go to Blanchet High, Jo,” Gary said. I shrugged.
“Never paid attention.” I remembered how clean and big the school was, though, and tried not to compare it to my high school.
That led, inevitably, to trying not to remember old scabs Cernunnos had ripped the tops off. I hunched my shoulders and stared resolutely out the window, not thinking about it.
The problem with not thinking about a specific topic is that it eats at your brain and won’t let you think about anything else until you’re distracted by an outside influence. I was grateful when Gary pulled up beside an imposing, dark-windowed house, and said, “Here we go. Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”
I leaned forward to peer out the windshield at the house. It was painted in cream with brown trim and had enormous, imposing pillars holding up a front porch. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter,” Gary corrected. I glared sideways at him and got out of the cab. Most of the muscles in my body groaned in protest, and the bruise from Cernunnos’s sword reminded me it was there. I rubbed it gingerly as I climbed the steps to the front door. A neat little red-and-gold sign greeted me: No Solicitors.
“Wonder what they’ve got against lawyers.” I cast a wary glance over my shoulder. Gary was still in the cab, from whence he couldn’t hear me making smart-ass remarks to myself. Satisfied, I located the doorbell, which was irritatingly hidden in an intricate carving of leaves framing the door, and rang it.
There was no answer. I stood there a minute, then rang the doorbell again, more than half-expecting a tuxedo-clad butler to appear, looking irritated and aloof. When, after another minute, one didn’t appear, I idly tested the doorknob.
Which turned, and the door swung open. I jumped back with a yelp and stared into the foyer. The floor had the ugliest tile pattern I’d ever seen, fleur de lis of thick blocky lines. I imagined it was very expensive.
“Well, now what?” Gary asked from behind me. I yelped, turning to scowl at him.
“I didn’t hear you.”
He looked like a pleased five-year-old. “I know. I snuck up on you.”
“Well, don’t!” He might’ve looked like a pleased five-year-old, but I sounded like a petulant one. “Oh, be quiet,” I muttered, and turned around to look into the foyer again. “Now what?”
“I asked you first.”
Damn. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t remember that.
“Front door’s open,” I said. “Isn’t that an invitation for cops to sneak in, in the movies? As long as you don’t touch anything? To, um, make sure everything’s okay?”
“This isn’t a movie,” Gary pointed out, “and the door wasn’t
“It was unlocked. That’s like open.” I leaned forward and stuck my head into the foyer, shouting, “Hello?”
It echoed, but no one answered. I looked at Gary. He shrugged. “This is the police!” I shouted, and then burst into a fit of giggling. Gary grinned. “Sorry,” I said when I got my breath back. “That was just fun to say.” In fact, I said it again. “This is the police! Is anybody home? Suzanne? Mrs. Quinley? Mr. Quinley?” The foyer smelled faintly of chocolate, like someone had been baking.
Still no one answered. Gary shrugged again when I looked back at him. “Got any gut feelings on it?”
One very small part of me announced,
“Jo?”
I became aware I’d been standing with my eves closed for over a minute. “Just a little tired.” The words came out thick, like syrup. I rubbed my breastbone, above the bruise, and dropped my chin to my chest. If I couldn’t control it, I’d try for the other way. “C’mon,” I said out loud, to the city. “Hit me with everything you got.”
In the future, remind me not to ask a city to hit me with everything it’s got. Cernunnos had nothing on the influx of power that slammed through me as my pathetic shields disintegrated. I staggered back, my back foot catching the edge of the top step. I held my balance there, weight off-center, the city revitalizing me like fresh strong blood in my veins. Inside a breath I was a mugger, a fireman, a newborn, a dying man. The impatient roar of vehicles filled my ears, the city’s lifeblood flowing from one place to another. Even the air was charged, electricity carried in the molecules along with particles of smog and dust. If I could carry this in me all the time, I would never be tired, never need to eat or breathe. It was exhilarating, every life in the city my own, and mine a part of everyone’s. Had this once been shared by all humanity, as Eve had implied? A long time ago, when there were far fewer of us? I couldn’t imagine anyone being willing to give up something this good, being so connected.
There was a storm building off the coast. It was only a change in the wind now. In a few days, it would gather, and late next week it would dump eight inches of snow on the city. I knew it as clearly as if I were already in the midst of it.
“Jo?” Gary said again. I opened my eyes. He was brilliant again, the thrumming V-8 engine, his colors surrounding him in curious pulses. Unable to resist, I reached for him specifically, out of the millions of lives in Seattle. His was a joyous one to touch, tempered with pain. In his memory, I sat by Annie’s deathbed, holding her hand. She was delicate and pretty, thin hair neatly coiled. Her grip was firm even though she was dying. She spoke quietly, smiling, not about regrets, but about all the beautiful things in her life. Stories about me, about us, making me laugh, even knowing the conversation was her last. Leaving a good memory, for the last one.
And the first one. A tiny elegant young woman, in an evening gown the color of peaches, the back swept down low and her golden hair in permanent waves, Veronica Lake-style. I was a soldier on leave. I asked her to dance, knowing from the very beginning that I wanted to spend my life with her. Daring and confident, I kissed her at the end of the evening. What a lifetime it was going to be, with Annie at my side.
Scarlet fever, terrifying. Annie, never robust but always strong, so fragile I counted her breaths to make sure she still lived. The doctor, apologetic. There would be no children. It didn’t matter: my Annie was still alive. The fights, oh, the fights over that, when she wouldn’t believe that I still wanted her, when she saw herself as only half a woman. I held on and waited it out. There was nothing else I could do. In time the pain faded.
I drew back from Gary’s memories with a shiver. He watched me with a frown, tilting his head toward the house. “Anything?”
I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. With the strength of the city energizing me, I left my body behind and stepped into the foyer.
The house was eerily cold. I hadn’t noticed temperatures before, except in the desert where Coyote met me in the first place. It had been, well, desertlike, but not even the void between the stars had been cold like the Quinley’s house was. Even with the force of the city running through me, I couldn’t feel any life in the austere building.
I walked across the ugly tiles silently, then up a sweeping Cinderella staircase, perfect for making an
