struck me that doing so might give her a better sense of the people she was meeting, and their emotional state, than anything else could. The one time I’d asked she’d brushed it off.
But she’d been one of the people who had known how to focus her energy and offer it up like she’d been trained in it when I’d faced down Cernunnos in the precinct’s garage. I rubbed my thumb over the topaz, watching it more than her. “This sleeping thing,” I said after a minute. “It’s not a virus or anything. It’s…” I gritted my teeth and scowled at Jen’s knees, working myself up to what I needed to say. “You’ve got the same kind of talent Billy does, the ability to focus your energy.”
I dared a glance through my eyebrows to find Jen ghosting a smile at me. My shoulders relaxed marginally and I sighed. “Yeah. This thing hit Billy first, and then Mel before it started spreading like wildfire. I don’t know what this morning’s explosion’s about, but I think it might be a good idea for people who’ve linked up with me to keep their heads down, if they’re still awake.” I presented the piece of topaz, my hand palm-up. “The only thing I’ve been able to find so far that might help is topaz. It’s supposed to be protection against non-viral sleeping sicknesses.”
That was playing fast and loose with the truth on a lot of levels, but Jen probably didn’t need to know about the evil African spirits, and it was a lot easier to say “non-viral” than “mystical.” Even as I said it I felt like I was trying to cheat my way out of admitting what was going on. I wondered if it’d ever be easy for me to admit, “Yeah, it’s magical in origin,” and didn’t know if it’d be better or worse if it was easy. I lifted my hand a little, offering Jen the topaz. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but you might want to hang on to this.”
Jen picked the stone up without touching my skin, lifting it to examine its clarity. There wasn’t much; smoke and scars filled the golden stone, which was the only reason I’d been able to afford a box of the stuff. As far as semiprecious jewels went, topaz wasn’t expensive, but gem-quality rocks would’ve put me back more credit than I had. Just watching her fold it into her pocket made me feel a little better. The stones had only been in my possession a few minutes, but I really
The bearer. God. All the people I’d mocked for getting weird with language when they got into otherworldly stuff deserved an apology. It really did do something to the brain, because now I was doing it.
“Let me know if I can help at all,” Jen said. Her hand was still in her pocket, making a bump in her pants where her fingers were curled around the stone. I ducked my head in a nod and backed toward the door, then stopped in it to look at her.
“Look, Jen, if this thing starts sniffing around you, don’t throw anything at it, okay? It siphons off life force. Just make yourself as quiet as you can.”
Jen gave me a quick smile. “You’re getting good at this, Joanie. That sounded like you knew what you were talking about.” She lifted her chin, ushering me out. “Get going. You’re letting the draft in.”
Almost nobody was as cool with my little weird gifts of topaz as Jen had been. I found myself saying things like, “I thought this might make a cool good-luck stone for you,” to almost everybody who’d helped me back in January. I don’t think most of them wanted to know why I was handing out good-luck stones. People preferred to forget the bizarre things I’d done. On the other hand, with a noticeable number of coworkers out of the office, nobody said no. They just didn’t quite look at me when I handed over the stones. I couldn’t exactly blame them, but I was starting to have an inkling of what it would feel like when I was actually good at being a shaman, and the rest of the world refused to see what was going on around them.
I plodded down to the garage, not really wanting to enter what I’d once considered my haven in the station. I’d seen the roster. I knew how many people from the shop were out sick. I came around the corner at the base of the stairs watching my feet, and nearly crashed into Thor. For once I darted to the left and he held still, so it didn’t turn into a dance of trying to circumvent each other. I even managed a faint smile, then blurted, “Hey, Thor, uh, I mean, dammit, Ed. Edward!” to his shoulders as he started up the stairs.
He turned and looked back at me with a curious expression. “You weren’t in my dream,” I said, more to myself than to him, and his eyes went even more curious. “Guess you wouldn’t have been,” I mumbled. “I mean, it was my job.” I was making sense to me, anyway. “Never mind.” I followed him up the stairs a couple of steps and offered a piece of topaz. “Hang on to this, would you? It’s kind of a…” To my surprise, I found I didn’t want to prevaricate. “A protective charm.”
His golden eyebrows rose. “You serious?”
“Yeah.” I managed another little smile. “I don’t know how good it is, but there’s some kind of weird stuff going on, and it might be a good idea to have it.”
He shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. “You and weird go together like beer and pizza, you know that?”
My smile faltered, not that it was very good to begin with. “You noticed, huh?”
“Yeah. Kinda hard to miss, really. The guys down here—” He broke off with the look of someone realizing he was about to betray ranks. I turned my face away, mouth twisting.
“Yeah. I know. Good old Joanie used to be awesome. The Girl Mechanic, kind of like the garage mascot, until she got screwy in the head. Trust me, I know what they say, and I know how half of them don’t like talking to me anymore, and—” It was my turn to break off and take a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, you want this or not?” I hefted the little stone, looking back at my big blond nemesis. I’d just decided he was going to say no and was thinking about putting it in his locker when he reached out and plucked it from my hand.
“What the hell. Anybody who can drink as much whiskey as you did the other day and look as good a night later is okay in my book.” He lifted the piece of topaz with a quick smile and stuck it in his pocket as he turned away and went upstairs.
Not that Morrison had any reason to avoid me, but a fruitless search of the station didn’t turn him up, and I left feeling vaguely out of sorts. I was supposed to avoid him, not the other way around. It was the whole pulling- rank thing. I’d ended up leaving one of the pieces of topaz on his desk with a note that said, “Put this in your pocket” and no signature. I couldn’t decide if my name on it would have made him more or less likely to do as I asked.
Okay, ordered. No wonder I didn’t date much. I had the social skills of a laboratory gorilla.
My next stop was the Ravenna area east of the university. Scraping up my nerve to get out of the car at the ranch-style house I pulled up at was harder than I wanted to admit to. Giving Morrison a topaz talisman face-to- face would’ve been easier than knocking on the door. The house emanated sorrow, old grief mixed with fresh. It didn’t take any particular skill to pick that up. I’d been there barely ten days earlier for the gathering after a funeral.
The young man who opened the door had lost weight since I’d seen him last, his sandy hair grown a little too long and flopping into his eyes. He wasn’t surprised to see me, but he wasn’t happy, either. He leaned heavily on the doorknob, making it clear he was a barrier between me and entering the house. “Joanne.”
“Garth.” I offered a little smile, then pulled my lower lip into my mouth. “How’re you doing?”
His gaze skittered away from me, the shoulder his weight wasn’t on twitching upward in a shrug that was supposed to be dismissive. “Okay. Dunno if Dad said thanks for coming to the funeral, so…” Another twitched shrug. “Thanks.”
“He did.” My voice was hardly a whisper, the smile I tried for weak and unhappy. “It was the least I could do.”
Garth’s gaze flickered back to me, and I saw him swallow the words:
“I don’t know if you’re still part of the coven,” I began. Garth cut me off with a slice of his hand and a harsh sound.
“Yeah, you know, what with everything that went down, between Colin and Faye, the coven kind of decided to take a step back. I’m out of it. That kind of shit doesn’t do anybody any good.” Bile filled his words, the bitterness of a true believer who’d seen his god’s feet of clay. While I would have shared his sentiment not very long ago, it left me with a hollow feeling where I was accustomed to my power being settled.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” My throat had gone all scratchy and my eyes stung with disappointment that struck me as inexplicable, even if it wasn’t really. “You had some real power. Look, I just came by to offer you this.” I took one of the topaz stones from my pocket and held it out. “It’s kind of a good-luck charm. I thought maybe…”
