“I’m not, really. I like Billy’s kids, but I don’t really know anything about them.”

“She didn’t scream when you held her. That’s something.”

I let out a breath of laughter. “We Shevauns have to sti—” My mouth was always surprising me with the things it said. I swallowed the words too late. Morrison’s eyebrows shot up.

“You what?”

I wondered if it was some kind of felony to be hired as a police officer under a name that wasn’t your own. “Nothing,” I said, and bit my tongue until we got back to the car. Not until I was inside with the doors closed and the windows rolled up, in exactly the same kind of physical shielding that I used mentally, did I dare speak again. Even then I had to put both hands on the dashboard and lean into it, like I was drawing strength from the car, before I could manage the words. “My name is actually Siobhàn. Hers is probably spelled differently, but it’s the same name.”

Morrison stared at me like I’d grown another head. I sucked on my upper teeth, leaned back in the seat so I could fold my arms around my ribs, and stared just as intently out the window. The car was hot, far too hot for comfort, even if I wasn’t making myself uncomfortable already. The bone-deep sunburn made itself noticeable again. Eventually it became clear Morrison wasn’t going to so much as start the car until I finished what I’d started. I pressed my lips together until it hurt and kept my focus out the window.

“I’ve been called Joanne my whole life. My mother spelled Siobhàn the Gaelic way, S-I-O-B-H-À-N, which is just impossible for an American to say.” Even I’d spent most of my life half-convinced it was pronounced See-oh-bawn, despite having looked it up dozens of times to correct myself. “My dad took one look at it and started calling me Joanne.” My toe tapped against the floor, rapid tattoo displaying my discomfort even if I didn’t want it to. With conscious effort, I stopped it from tapping.

My finger started tapping against my thigh. I gave it up as a bad job and let my toe go back to it.

“Siobhàn,” Morrison said carefully. He hadn’t had a problem with the name earlier, when it belonged to the little girl, but attaching it to me appeared to take some serious thought and consideration. “Siobhàn Walker?”

I tilted my head back, looking at the ceiling of the car. Black fuzzy mat, nondescript and able to hold in the summer heat.In for a lamb, I thought, and said, deliberately, “Siobhàn Grania MacNamarra Walkingstick.” That was the full name written out on my Irish birth certificate. I honestly had no recollection of ever saying it aloud before. Part of me wondered why Morrison got to be the Father Confessor. The rest of me didn’t want to know.

Morrison didn’t say anything else. He turned the key in the ignition, put the car in Drive, and drove me home in silence.

Monday, June 20, Noon

I felt as if I deserved the bawling out Morrison had failed to give me on the way home. That, perversely, was my excuse for going down to the station after changing out of my dress uniform. I was off-duty, so I wore shorts and a tank top, and wished my skin didn’t ache like it was sunburned.

The precinct building’s air-conditioning was out. It seemed like the whole city’s air-conditioning was out. The heat was oppressive, as if it was deliberately trying to crush the life out of anything that breathed. I wasn’t sure if it was compounded by the coven’s activities the night before, or if it was just my very own personal screwed up power loop. I was afraid it was me.

Morrison’s door was open and he stood by the windows in shirtsleeves, talking on the phone. I tapped on the door and he scowled, but gestured me in. I sat and took slow deep breaths of the still air, trying to shake off the feeling of suffocation.

“What do you want, Walker? It’s your day off.” Morrison came back to his desk and dropped the phone in its cradle.

“I know.” I leaned forward, putting my forearms on my thighs, and then wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to unstick from the position. “I just wanted to talk about Cassandra Tucker, Cap.”

Morrison folded his arms over his chest, leaning against his desk as he looked down at me. “What is this ‘Cap’ thing, Walker?”

My train of thought derailed and I frowned at him. “Sir?”

“Sir is fine,” he agreed. “Captain is fine. You used to call me Morrison, or boss, when you really wanted to rub it in. Now it’s Cap. What is that?”

“It’s an abbreviation for Captain,” I muttered, but that wasn’t what he wanted to know, and all things considered, I felt like I should tell the truth. The problem was I hadn’t noticed me calling him Cap until he pointed it out. I moved my gaze to his kneecaps, and talked to them. “Pretty much I feel like I’m kissing your ass if I call you Captain or sir.”

“They’re my job title and an honorific worthy of the position,” Morrison pointed out dryly. I looked up from his kneecaps.

“Yeah, but this is me…” I couldn’t help it. A little grin slid into place, and I finished the sentence with, “Cap.” He didn’t smile back and I looked away again. “You always look like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop when I use Captain or sir,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I was just trying to find a way around that. Look, Morrison, about Cassandra Tucker…”

“The case is closed, Walker. It’s closed, and she’s buried. Leave her alone.”

“It’s just that I feel like there’s more to it.” My tongue and throat struggled over what to call him at the end of that statement, and couldn’t agree on an answer, leaving me feeling like I’d cut it off too abruptly. Christ. I was going to have to start calling him Michael, now that he’d made me self-conscious about all the other names I used for him.

I could not for the life of me imagine calling him Michael.

“There isn’t.” There was a flatness to Morrison’s tone, a lack of curiosity and a whole lot of barely controlled impatience. “The case is closed. Let her rest, and get out of my office. It’s your day off, and God knows I need it.”

I left feeling out of sorts, sticky, and a little confused. It was marginally cooler outdoors than inside, although I could feel heat radiating off the sides of buildings as I walked by. A bus rambled up in front of me and while I didn’t want to get on it, it made me notice the waiting bench it stopped at. I sat down, waving the vehicle on, and rubbed my eyes. My contacts were as sticky as I felt. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken them out. I wore the extrapermeable extended wear types just for that reason, but most days I remembered to take them out in the evenings. I was pretty sure I’d had them in for three days straight now. I wondered if I could manage to heal my own near-sightedness, then found myself rubbing the thin scar on my cheek. “Arright, yeah,” I muttered to myself. “Some things don’t need healing.”

A white-haired old woman on the far end of the bench looked at me nervously and scooted another scant inch or two away. “Sorry,” I said to her. “I’m not crazy. Of course, that’s what a crazy person would say, isn’t it?”

She got up and left.

Maybe I was crazy. It was possible. It was also possible Cassandra Tucker had had a heart attack brought on by too much use of magic, but the idea just made me itch. I’d been to the Dead Zone before. The bit with the snakes and the god-awful serpent monster was all new, and I didn’t believe Cassie’d died of something as ordinary as a heart attack. Not with that kind of welcoming committee on the other side. Even though Coyote told me my method of investigating the Dead Zone potentially opened me up to anybody who wanted to have a go at me, I still didn’t believe Cassandra’s death was natural.

I actually laughed out loud, looking up at the sky. “Satisfied?” I asked my invisible spirit animals. I couldn’t feel them with me, but I assumed they had to be around somewhere. “For once, I’m the believer. I’m the one who thinks something kooky’s going on when the perfectly mundane explanation makes everybody else happy. I’m getting good at this acceptance thing, huh?”