walked me back to Petite very carefully. It’d gotten later than I thought, pressing two in the morning, and the streets were empty as we drove back to my apartment, listening to music too loudly. A few blocks from the building Mark turned the music down and glanced at me. “So what really happened back there?”
I sucked air in through my teeth. “I had a vision.” It took a long time to say that.
Mark quirked a smile. “This is killing you, isn’t it?”
I hoped not, or that it was only figurative if it was. “Yeah. Look.” Apparently that word took so much effort I couldn’t say anything again until I’d pulled into my building’s parking lot and killed the engine in my usual spot. “Look,” I said again, then.
Mark said, “Hang on,” and got out of the car. Came around to my door and opened it for me, giving a little half bow as I chuckled and climbed out. He closed the door behind me gently, patted Petite’s roof, and then turned his attention to me. “Okay. Now go.”
“Why now?”
“Because it’s much less awkward to kiss you good night and make an elegant exit after your speech when I’m already on my feet,” he said, smiling openly. I stared at him for a few seconds, then laughed.
“Confident, aren’t you?”
“Hopeful,” he corrected. “So what were you going to say?”
“You know, I really don’t know.” The heel of my hand went to my breastbone and rubbed there, a nervous habit I hadn’t been able to break since getting a sword stuffed through me. “Just…”
“Joanne.” Mark lifted a finger, as if he’d put it over my lips but didn’t complete the touch. “You seem like a pretty solid person. Obviously this shamanism thing is important to you but you don’t want to talk about it, so how about we just leave it at that? You get to where you want to talk, well, I’m kind of hoping I’ll be around for that. In the meantime, I won’t push and I won’t roll my eyes and mutter, ’What a kook,’ when you’re gone, okay? Does that sound like a good place to work from?”
I felt a disbelieving smile pull at my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said around it. “That sounds pretty great, actually. Maybe too good to be real.” I knew people whose too-good-to-be-real early relationships had turned into actually- just-good-enough-to-be-real ones. I knew ones that hadn’t turned out, too, of course, but all of a sudden I was feeling hopeful. So he was a kook who was willing to go with my whole magic-filled lifestyle. For somebody like me, that might not be a bad thing. And he knew when not to push it, which for somebody like me was perfect. “Where exactly did you come from?”
“Arizona.” He grinned, touched my cheek and ducked his head to steal a brief kiss, as threatened. Then he stepped back with another grin and a wink, and left me smiling idiotically after him as he sauntered off to find his car. Not until he left did I stagger upstairs to collapse in my bed, eyes wide despite a great weariness encroaching on me. I felt peculiarly
Which was a complex thought in and of itself. The last six or seven months, when I’d thought something along those lines, it’d meant old gods and spirit guides and magical things were going on. Right now it meant I’d almost accidentally slept with somebody and had gone out dancing and appeared to have something of a social life.
I honestly couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or not.
Somewhere right around the edge of sleep I could feel an idea of what I should be doing next starting to form. I was afraid to look too closely at it, for fear of sending it scurrying away. A few hours’ sleep before work might shake it loose, and in the morning I’d have to tell Phoebe I owed her one. Who could’ve known that a little R & R was good for the soul? I rolled over, chortling sleepily at myself, and dragged a pillow across the bed to moosh my face into it. It smelled faintly of Mark’s after-shave, which made my stomach tighten up, but the vast sleepies had a head start on berating myself with a
I was very nearly asleep when the phone rang.
CHAPTER 10
Panic smashed through me, turning ice water to nausea in my belly. I fell out of bed and grabbed for the phone on the way to the floor, fumbling the receiver and putting it to my ear with shaking hands. “Hello? Jesus. What’s wrong? Hello?”
“Joanne?” It was a little boy’s voice, so out of place my foggy brain couldn’t comprehend it for a moment. “Joanne?” he asked again.
“Yeah, this is—yeah.” I rubbed my eyes frantically, trying to wake up. “Who is thi—is this Robert?”
“Yeah.” A gulp, precariously near a sob, sounded in the word. “Joanne, Mommy went to sleep like Daddy did. Erik is sick and tried to wake her up and we can’t get her to wake up. Can you help us? Please?” Robert was nearly twelve, the quaver in his voice swallowed down in an attempt at adult bravery, but
“Everything’s going to be okay, Robert. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Are your sisters okay?”
“Clara’s still sleeping. Me and Jacquie are awake. And Erik keeps saying he’s gonna throw up.”
“Okay. You guys all get a blanket so you stay warm and keep Erik company in the bathroom so he can throw up in the toilet if he needs to, okay?” I pulled clothes on as I talked, exhaustion burning my eyes. “I’ll be there as fast as I can. Just hold tight, Robert. I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “What do I do if somebody else goes to sleep?”
Billy’s sleeping image flashed through my mind. And I’d gone out to have fun instead of trying to find answers. I was never going to forgive myself. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Robert. It’ll be okay. I’ll be right there. You did good, calling me. I’ll be right there,” I promised again, and hit the door at a run.
The Hollidays’ home had a wonderful front yard that’d seen better days. Trees and bushes were mashed, and a section of the picket fence had been replaced but not yet repainted. The front porch, similarly, was of fresh raw wood, though a can of stain sat on the corner of the railing, making a dark cylindrical spot against the lightness of the wood. Billy’d repainted the new boards above the front door where the frame had been torn apart and fixed, since the last time I’d been over. Even in the middle of the night and half repaired, it looked like the sort of place where a person would want to raise a herd of children. Billy and Melinda were doing just that, with four already and a fifth on the way.
There was a white Mercedes SUV parked behind Billy’s car. I parked Petite behind Mel’s minivan and didn’t think anything of the SUV until I rang the doorbell, expecting Robert to answer. Instead, Brad Holliday, bearing the wild-eyed combination of alarm and anger people do when they’re woken up at two-thirty in the morning, flung the door open and stared at me. Even straight out of bed, he wore the heavy ring that had helped annoy me at the hospital. It was on his right hand, wrapped around the edge of the door above his head, and I wondered if he wore a wedding ring on his left hand. I hadn’t noticed earlier.
We stared at each other a few seconds, equally surprised, before I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there was another adult here,” and he started berating me for small-hours visits.
Robert appeared in the hall behind him and interrupted with “I called her, Uncle Brad,” before ducking under Dr. Bradley’s arm to take my hand and pull me into the house. Brad got out of the way, surprised into silence by his nephew’s arrival on the scene. I gave Brad a fleeting, semi-apologetic smile, and hugged Robert.
“Told you I’d be here as fast as I could. How come you didn’t get your uncle instead of me?”
Robert shrugged against my ribs. “You’re the one who got the Thing out of the kitchen.”
“Yeah.” I ducked my head over Robert’s, an arm around his shoulders as I pressed my mouth against his hair. I didn’t want to call it a kiss. Kissing sounded all girlie and uncomfortable, the wrong sort of thing to impose on an eleven-year-old boy. Comfort could be imparted by mouth presses, too. “Yeah, I guess I did.”
“The thing in the kitchen?” From the tone of his voice, I couldn’t tell which was worse for Brad: asking, or not knowing.
Robert shrugged under the weight of my arm, matter-offactly. “There was a Thing in the kitchen a couple
