CHAPTER 15

Returning home felt anti-climactic. Garth’d rejected me, I hadn’t found Morrison and I still didn’t have any actual answers. I climbed the stairs slowly—for once it might’ve been faster to take the building’s ancient elevator—and bumbled the key into my door’s lock. Turning the knob proved it’d been open and that I’d just locked it, which didn’t strike me as too unusual. I’d been known to forget to lock the door before. But when I reopened it and entered my living room, I found Gary snoozing on my couch. He had his hands folded over his belly and his ankles crossed on the arm, so his knees were locked. My own knees ached in sympathy, but my mouth said, “I know I didn’t give you a key, Gary!”

He cracked one gray eye open. “That ain’t stopped me yet, darlin’. Welcome home.”

“I thought you had to work. Are the kids okay?”

“I thought you had to,” Gary said in a perfectly reasonable rejoinder, kicking his feet off the couch arm. “Called Keith and told him I wasn’t comin’ in today after all. Kids are fine. What’ve I missed? Start with passin’ out.” He sat up and clapped his hands together, making an unexpectedly loud pop.

I dropped into the other end of the couch and pulled my knees up until I could put my chin on them. “Did I tell you I fell asleep on the concrete outside yesterday?”

“Jo,” Gary said in astonishment. I couldn’t tell if there was reprimand in it, too, and had to look up to find Gary’s bushy eyebrows drawn in concern. “What’s goin’ on, doll?”

My hands fluttered, making a useless circle in front of my shins, which were in the way of my stomach. “I don’t know, Gary.” I recounted the larger part of the past twenty-four hours as best I could, a feeling of unease settling inside me. It was centered in that coil of power I carried, the same pressure that’d driven me to find a woman I’d seen from an airplane seven months earlier. I took a breath, trying to dispel it, then moved my legs to press my hands against my stomach. It wasn’t as bad as it’d been then, but that didn’t surprise me. I’d had a whole lifetime of unused magic to tune into then, and now I was at least sort of used to it. “I’d think it was this sleeping sickness, except—”

“’Cept you woke up,” Gary said. “You been dreamin’?”

“About all kinds of things.” I didn’t want to go into dreams of marrying Mark Bragg while Morrison looked on. “Yesterday it was about a coyote. Not a real one. Like a—I guess I dreamed about a spirit quest. But it wasn’t mine. I mean, it wasn’t the one I did with…Judy.” I said the name slowly, a prickle of shame stinging my cheeks. “It was like a real one,” I added more quietly. “Like the one I did for you.”

“Makes sense, don’t it? You got Coyote as your spirit guide. Mebbe he’s just tryin’ to show you the way.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t—have you eaten?” I wasn’t trying to change the subject, though Gary gave me another bushy-eyebrowed look. “All I’ve eaten was cereal this morning. I’m starving.”

“Got any Pop-Tarts?” He followed me into the kitchen and snitched one of the doughnuts he’d brought by the previous morning. “I could use a snack,” he allowed. “Ate lunch before I came over. Now, finish what you were sayin’, Jo.”

I sat down at the table with a glass of water and watched Gary putter around the kitchen while he ate his doughnut. “My Coyote, Little Coyote, doesn’t look like the spirit coyote I saw or like your tortoise or any of the other animals who came when I asked for help for you. They were all luminescent and drawn out of fine lines, like they didn’t exactly have bodies to them. Like constellations. Little Coyote’s solid. I’ve never seen him get all starry like that. So he’s not the same.”

“How ’bout Big Coyote?” One of the things I loved about Gary was that he went along with my terrible naming scheme. Even so, referencing Big Coyote made me shiver and take my hands away from the glass of cold water.

“Big Coyote was like the thunderbird, Gary. Solid’s too weak a word for him.” The scent of burned sand filled my nostrils, memory so vivid I felt a wash of heat come over me like it was renewing my tan. “Big Coyote and the thunderbird and the serpent, for that matter, are all solid like the earth is solid or like space is empty. You couldn’t move him even if you had the lever and a place to stand, unless he wanted you to. Little Coyote’s just not like that. And the spirits aren’t, either.”

“You’re startin’ to sound pretty sure of yourself, lady.”

“I know,” I muttered at my water glass. “I just wish I knew if I was right.”

“Arright.” Gary came to lean on the table, making knuckles against its hard surface without appearing to suffer any discomfort. “So you’re dreamin’ about spirits quests like one you’ve never done, is that it?”

“Pretty much.” I drank my water and put the glass down again as Gary cocked his head at me.

“Maybe it’s a hint, darlin’. Why doncha do one?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again and looked intently at my empty glass. “Because last time I did, I was hoodwinked by the bad guys?”

“You think I’m one of the bad guys, Jo?”

Every vestige of good cheer drained out of me like somebody’d opened a valve, complete misery rising to take its place. My throat went tight and my eyes stung with tears, color heating my cheeks even as my stomach twisted and my hands turned icy. “If you are I’m throwing the towel in now, because I just couldn’t handle that.”

“Aw, hey, Joanie.” Gary took my wrist, pulling me to my feet and into a bear hug that left me snuffling in his shoulder. “I was teasin’, sweetheart. I ain’t one of the bad guys. Just an old dog with a pretty girl to look after.”

I snuffled again, leaking tears. “’m not little.”

He chuckled against my head. “Didn’t say you were, darlin’.”

“Oh.” I sniffled again and extracted myself to find a tissue. “I guess you didn’t.” Gary turned to watch me.

“You all right, Joanie?”

“Yeah.” I scraped up a smile and offered it to him. “You never call me Joanie.”

The old man waggled his head dismissively. “Tough broad like you don’t usually need to be called by a little girl’s name. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Just don’t turn out to be one of the bad guys, okay?” I gave him another weak smile, then put my cold hands over my too-hot face. It felt good, so I stood there until my hands warmed up again. “You think maybe there are some real spirit animals out there for me?” I asked into my palms.

“Only one way to find out.” Gary came up to me as he spoke, slinging his arm around my shoulders to give me another brief hug. “You found one for me, didn’t you? If an old tortoise could spare some time for me, there’s gotta be somethin’ out there for a powerhouse like you. I’ll get the drum.”

“Thanks, Gary.” I dropped my hands to watch him exit the kitchen, then slumped against the counter, trying to remember if my little emotional breakdowns were usually followed by getting my act together. Maybe I needed to start keeping a journal: Wednesday: burst into tears on Gary, then saved Seattle. A good day. The idea made me smile and I pushed off the counter to get ready for a spirit quest.

I had an almost complete lack of things that struck me as appropriate for preparing for a spirit quest. I had no overheated hut like the dream had featured, I had no drum circle, I had no guide and I had pretty much no idea what I should be doing, except for the examples of the dream and the success of the quest I’d done for Gary. With any luck, that would be enough. I forewent the towel I usually tucked against the front door, as the draft from under it felt nice in July, and plunked down in the middle of my living room floor.

There was no electric shock when Gary picked up my drum, and the beat he picked out didn’t send shards of light through my soul and out into the world. Overall, I thought that was probably a good thing, even if it did make my heart skip a thud with missing Morrison’s rhythm.