in too long and my eyes were far too dry, but I didn’t have spare glasses at the station. That wouldn’t be a bad investment, for days like this that went on forever. I rubbed tears away and parted my fingers to look at Redding’s name on the paper.
He could have looped the security tapes; he had access. And he was missing rather than proven dead. What I couldn’t see was any kind of motivation. If his family had just recently died, their bodies still on hand, then maybe I could see a certain kind of madness hoping to raise them from the dead. But the accident had been more than twenty years ago, and I was pretty sure that even with modern burial techniques there wouldn’t be much left to their bodies besides a few sticky smears, hardly enough to resurrect.
Which brought me back to the innocently auraed Sandburg. “Billy, is there some kind of—there’s got to be. Some kind of black market in magical artifacts?” I looked up to see him put his phone against his shoulder. I’d forgotten he was on it.
“You busy tonight?”
“It
“No. You get to meet a medium.”
“I’d rather have dinner, but yeah, I can—wait, what time?”
“She likes ten o’clock.”
“Really? I’ve always been partial to a quarter past anything.” I curled my upper lip in what I hoped was an approximation of
“Arright.” Billy got off the phone and reached for his coat. “I’m going to go home and kiss my wife before I stay out all night ghost hunting. I’ll meet you back here at nine-thirty. Take a break and get some real food, Walker.”
Granted a dispensation to stop working, I turned off my computer screen and leaned back in my chair. “Yeah. I will.”
I didn’t.
The morally superior thing to do would have been to follow up my own question about black-market magic. I, though, had never even pretended to be morally superior, and cut out of the office a few steps behind Billy.
Doherty was sitting in a green 1998 Mazda Miata a few spaces down from Petite when I left the precinct building. He reminded me of Laurie Corvallis, one of the local news station’s reporters, who’d stalked me earlier in the year, sure she could get a story out of me. She’d been wrong, not because there was no story, but because she didn’t have the eyes to see it. Much as she’d annoyed me, I’d almost felt sorry for her.
I didn’t feel sorry for Doherty. I was tempted to take Petite out for a high-speed spin and lose him, but it was still raining. Besides, his entire purpose in existing, as far as I was concerned, was to prove I was a liar, a fraud artist and an unsafe driver. No way would I give him the satisfaction of being proven right. I patted Petite’s dashboard as I climbed in, promising, “Another time, baby,” and drove over to Thor’s apartment. I figured I could earn good-girlfriend points by ordering Chinese and sacking out with him for part of an hour, even if I hadn’t called like I said I would.
His monster truck wasn’t in the parking lot, and the lights were out in his window. I pulled over to dig out my phone and laboriously punch in his number. My general loathing for cell phones had instilled in me an utter refusal to learn how to use them properly, although I was beginning to break down: this one asked every time if I wanted to save the number, and I knew one of these days I’d give in and do it. Not today, though. I peered up at Thor’s apartment as his phone’s voice mail invited me to leave a message. “Are you out having fun without me? I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. There was a murder, and…” And that was all he really needed to know to forgive me. “I’ll probably be busy with it tomorrow, but if you want to have lunch, call me, okay? It’s supposed to be my day off, so I can probably sneak out for an hour to eat with you. Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up and looked in my rearview mirror. Doherty’s Miata was idling half a block behind me. They were decent little cars, Miatas. They were certainly the right size for somebody of Doherty’s build. I wondered if Petite reflected my build accurately, and was sure The Truck reflected Thor’s. Amused by the idea, I drove home, changed into clothes that could both pass on a fencing strip and be wearable in public, and ate a Pop-Tart on my way out the door to the gym. I got there early, but went in anyway, pleased with the idea of leaving Doherty sitting in his car in the rain.
My next conscious thought was that my ankle hurt. I peeled my eyes open to find Phoebe standing beside the bleachers I’d sacked out on, her foot drawn back to kick my ankle again. “Oh, you’re awake. I guess that means you’re not having another out-of-body experience.”
“I dunno. You didn’t try kicking me last time.” I sat up and mooshed a hand over my face. “You showed up.”
“So did you.” Phoebe folded her arms. “Prove it.”
“What, that I’m here?” I kicked her in the ankle, feeling as satisfied as a seven-year-old with the tactic. “Good enough?”
“Ow! Prove you’re a shaman.” She thrust her jaw out, glaring at me defiantly.
I sighed. “Got any hangnails?” She probably didn’t. Phoebe kept her hands in beautiful condition, whereas I did well to remember to cut, not bite, my nails. “Chronic pain? Recent injury? Bad teeth?” She shook her head with each question, until I rolled my eyes. “I’m a shaman, Phoebe. Basically what I do is heal. I need to have something to heal before I can prove it.”
She got a glint in her eye and headed for her fencing bag. I jumped up and ran after her, catching her shoulder. “Don’t be an idiot. Hurting yourself to prove me wrong is stupid. What if I can’t heal you?”
“Then you’re full of shit.” She pulled away and I let her go, not having much of an argument against that. “You’re full of shit anyway,” she said grumpily. “What kind of crap is that? Shamanism? You weren’t insane yesterday.”
“Yeah, I was. You just didn’t know it.” I went back to the bleachers and sat down, elbows on my knees and head dropped. “Look, I get it. I’m like one of those nice ladies in a long skirt with wildflowers in her floofy hair who prattles about magic and Mother Earth and spiritual guides and who are tolerated because they seem harmless enough in their obviously crazy way. Except I don’t own any skirts and my hair’s only floofy right when I get up. And that’s more like a mohawk.”
Phoebe stared at me. I suspected I wasn’t helping myself. “Believe me, I was more comfortable being normal. I don’t talk about it because I don’t want people to look at me the way you’re doing. I’m sorry I can’t prove it. All I can say is for me it’s real, and I’ll try to keep it out of your hair if you still want to give me fencing lessons.”
She echoed, “‘For you it’s real.” Jo, real is real. You don’t get a different real than I do.”
“Of course I do.” I blinked, genuinely surprised. “You’re five-four, I’m five-eleven and a half. We experience different realities based on that, never mind something as off the wall as shamanism. We have a lot of converging points in our realities, but you live in a reality where you need a stepladder to change a smoke alarm, and I live in one where the top shelf in the kitchen is a reasonable place to keep things I use regularly. From one perspective, me being a shaman isn’t any weirder than you trying out for the Olympic fencing team.”
“It’s a
“Yeah?” I arched my eyebrows. “How many Olympic-class athletes do most people know?”
“How many
“That’s my point.” I shrugged. “They’re both extraordinary. I’ll grant you that the difference is, if you tell people you tried out for the Olympic team, they’re likely to say, ‘Really? Cool,’ and if I tell people I’m a shaman, they’ll probably say, ‘Oh, reaaalllyyy…’ and be uncomfortable.”
“Well, what’m I supposed to do?”
I let out a breath of semi-laughter. “I’d ignore it.” I
