CHAPTER 16
The snake wasn’t actually coiled around my shoulders when I opened my eyes in my dark living room. I could feel its weight, but my fingers brushed my arms as I folded them around myself, not meeting any scaly resistance. My head hurt. Myskin hurt; I tested it with my fingertips, trying to feel heat. There wasn’t any, but the papery dryness of sunburn was there. I got up and walked through darkness to turn the shower on, not bothering with the lights. The single window in the bathroom was curtained, but enough morning light leaked through the shade to keep me from killing myself as I stepped into the tub.
The hot water was too hot. I turned it down again, then again, until it was lukewarm and cooled my skin. I felt vaguely sick to my stomach, more exhaustion than genuine illness, and wondered what time it was. Maybe I could nap before work.
No, I couldn’t. I groaned and put my face against the shower wall. The tile was cold, shocking my cheekbone. I groaned again, in appreciation, and turned around to lean against the tile, letting cool water run down my front.I felt sunburned, all over, my skin too thin and too hot. I wondered if I had any aloe vera, and then I slept for a while, standing there with my feet lodged against the far edge of the tub so I wouldn’t fall down.
I woke up when the lukewarm water turned cold, with no sense of how much time had passed. Last time I’d done that—and the fraction of my brain still capable of thought decided it was a bad sign that there was a last time for falling asleep in the shower—Coyote had visited me. My coyote. Not this time. A sudden surge of energy hit me and I jolted out of the tub, grabbing a towel in the semidark and scrubbing it over my face.
Then I sat on the toilet and whimpered for a while until my sunburned skin stopped protesting the rough abuse from the towel. Getting dressed was going to hurt. But I had to. Even if I called in sick to work, which Morrison wouldn’t believe because it was going to be another beautiful day, I still had to deliver the spirit guides to Colin and Gary. And if I was going to get dressed at all, I might as well go to work instead of calling in with the Blue Sky Flu.
The red numbers on my clock flared an inversed blue when I wobbled into my bedroom: 9:37. I flipped the light on and it went black in my eyes before reasserting itself in the more normal yellow-white bulb light. I rubbed my eyes gingerly and went to find my uniform. Coyote’s little explosion trick was leaving a mark.
Halfway through getting dressed I noticed my skin wasn’t visibly sunburned. It stillfelt burned: I kept involuntarily flinching away from cloth brushing my skin, and the idea of putting on a vest made my head pound even harder. I glanced at the clock again; a quarter to ten. I had forty-five minutes to get to work. I might be able to tear by and visit Colin, who was the sicker of the two. Maybe I could see Gary at lunch. Either way, I wasn’t going to be left with enough time to plop down on my bed and see if I could get rid of the ache of sunburn with the idea of a new paint job, or the funky vision with a little windshield wiper fluid. It could wait till tonight. I could suffer until then. I went back into the bathroom, drank three glasses of water, put my contacts in, and determined that my reflection was haggard, horrible, and not in the least sunburned. It didn’t seem fair somehow.
The phone rang on my way out the door. My stomach seized up and I ran back, snatching it out of the cradle. A woman demanded, “Are you alive?”
“What?” God, my voice sounded as dreadful as it had in the desert. I cleared it and tried again. “I mean, yes.”
“This is Phoebe. You were supposed to be here fifty minutes ago. Fencing lesson?”
“Oh. Oh, God. I’m sorry. Last night got kind of weird.” I felt the snake’s weight slither around my shoulders, settling more comfortably. That was just so totally not cool I couldn’t even begin to express it. The tortoise was much more circumspect. I knew he was there somewhere, waiting for me to need him. I liked that a lot more than the slithery snake. “I just got home. I’m on my way to work. I completely spaced it.”
“Everything okay?” I could hear the frown in her voice.
“Yeah. More or less. Look, I’ve really got to go, so I’ll call you back and reschedule later, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I just wanted to be sure you were okay.”
I wondered what she’d say if I said, “Sure, fine, except the sunburn that isn’t there, the lack of sleep, the thirty-pound snake on my shoulders, and the way the lights keep imploding their color.” Fortunately for both of us, I didn’t really want to say it, and instead said, “Thanks for checking up on me. I’ll call. Bye.” I hung up and made a break for the great outdoors and Petite.
The sky went yellow and the sun went black when I stepped outside. I flung my equipment bag into Petite’s passenger seat, dropped into the driver seat, and fumbled for my sunglasses, wondering if the traffic lights were going freak out the way the rest of the lights were. That would be a real pain in the ass. I tried to remember if the order was red-yellow-green or red-green-yellow as I drove down the street.
It was red-yellow-green, but watching the yellow burst into incandescent blue was so interesting I ran the light and nearly T-boned a Camero. I didn’t blame the guy for leaning on his horn. After that I bit my tongue and paid significant attention to what I was doing.
By the time I reached the hospital I’d figured it out. The color inversion wasn’t a constant: it just happened when light changed, and then faded back to normal. I’d be okay for the day as long as I was cautious, though I’d have to hope I wouldn’t need to identify any runaway vehicles, because my first glance at anything seemed to come up with entirely the wrong colors.
Colin’s pale hair looked black and silky as death, for example. It faded back into blond as I sat down by his bed, grinning crookedly at him. He opened one eye and lifted an eyebrow. “Couldn’t get enough of me, huh?”
“Guess not.” My voice fell into that irritatingly quiet hospital voice that people use. “How you doing?”
“Better, with an Amazon visiting me. They killed off their sick and weak, you know. For the good of the tribe.”
My eyebrows went up too. “I didn’t know. I don’t think they mentioned that in the comic books.”
“Different kind of Amazon. You could be one of that kind.” he said, looking me over critically. “Except, no offense, you’ve got nothing on Lynda Carter.”
I laughed out loud, shaking the hospital voice off. “You’re not old enough to know who Lynda Carter is.”
“Dude,” he said, sincerely, “I’m notdead.”
I laughed again. “And ‘not dead’ is all it takes?”
“Damn straight,” Colin said with a nod, then sank back into the covers, looking weary.
“Hey,” I said, quiet again. “I can only stay for a minute, okay? But I wanted to come by and say hi. Say a couple words of Amazon healing over you, that sort of thing, huh?”
Colin smiled without opening his eyes again. “Every little bit helps. Thanks, Joanne.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. The snake didn’t need telling; it just coiled its way down from my shoulders to wrap itself around Colin’s.
My vision smashed into inversion, the walls and bed, Colin’s white skin and blond hair, all going black with hard shimmering blue edges. The lights overhead seemed to pop out, emitting blackness, and for a moment I could see the spirit-snake, his pale tans and browns all gone to blue and greens like they had in the Lower World. I jerked my hand off Colin’s shoulder and put it to my head. He opened his eyes, frowning. “Joanne?”
“It’s…I’ve got something weird going on with my vision this morning. It’s okay. It just went all freaky.” The effect was fading now, although the edges of things seemed a little dimmer, still hanging on to their reversed colors.