“Do I want to know what that means?”
I shook my head and looked back at the garage. “Probably not.” I felt, more than saw, his frown, and was completely taken aback when he reached out and turned my face toward him again. His eyebrows were drawn down with curiosity.
“What color are your eyes?”
“Green. Hazel. Why?”
“Hazel,” he repeated after a moment. “Yeah, I guess.”
I sighed and moved my face out of his touch, closing my eyes. “They look gold right now, don’t they.”
“Yeah. I guess I can see the green in them from here—” I felt the warmth of his hand as he reached for my chin again, and looked back at him in bewilderment. People didn’t go around touching me that casually, unless it was to sock me on the shoulder in a one-of-the-guys routine. He’d sat up and his face was closer to mine than I was used to a man’s being. Nerves cramped my stomach, the closeness seeming uncomfortably intimate, but I didn’t know how to get away without being obvious to the point of rudeness. “—but if I were more than ten inches away I’d think your eyes were gold. Kinda cool. I’ve only met a couple of people with gold eyes before.” He sat back again, releasing me from the têtea-tête without seeming to notice it himself.
“I don’t think I’ve met anybody with gold eyes.” Except Coyote. Misery swept up unexpectedly and seized me by the throat, shattering the cold that had settled on me for a little while. I stood up fast enough to be rude after all, reaching for the railing. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get going, go do some things.” Action, moving forward purposefully, was the only thing I thought would get me through the next few days without wanting to die myself. If it could keep emotion at bay long enough, I could find a way to deal with Coyote’s death and the butterfly thing that had killed him. I could break down after that, or better yet, just build up that wall of cold until I didn’t feel the need to cry anymore.
“Yeah, I guess you probably do.” Thor didn’t sound offended as he squinted up at me, and twisted to watch me walk stiffly up the stairs. “Hey, Joanne.”
I looked back, taken off guard. He’d never called me by name before, and I’d half expected him to have a nickname for me as obnoxious as the Thor I’d saddled him with.
“I said maybe we’d see each other at a club sometime….” I felt my back muscles tighten, like I was waiting to take a hit. “Yeah. Don’t worry about it. I don’t go out much.”
“Yeah, you said that, so I thought maybe I’d better make it a specific sometime. I’ve got tickets for an Alan Claussen gig at the end of the month. You want to go?” Silver shot through his aura, looking like hope.
I thought of Coyote’s last gambit, the burst of sheer orange and blue power that had broken me free, and wondered if I had any right to go ahead and go on with my life when everything I’d done with it so far had been to fuck up in one dramatic fashion or another. I opened my mouth to say no, and Thor saw it, disappointment dimming the silver streaks to gray.
You gotta balance things out, Jo. The way you go ain’t healthy. Gary’s words came back to me and I tightened my fingers around the railing. Punishing myself wasn’t going to bring Coyote back. Trying to maintain the damaged hermitdom I’d imposed on myself was a hundred percent counter to what he’d wanted me to do. It shouldn’t take people dying to get me to pay attention, but if it did, I was goddamned well going to listen.
“Yeah,” I heard myself say, very quietly. “I’d like that. Thanks.”
Surprise lit his face like a sunbeam and Thor waved me off, smiling broadly. “Awesome. We’ll talk about it later. Go save the world.”
CHAPTER 20
That wasn’t the first time a good-looking man had given me a go save the world send-off. It wasn’t even the first time today. I could feel my usual sarcastic litany running through the back of my mind, things like, that can’t be a good sign, and it’s clear the world is in a lot more trouble than words can summarize if it needs somebody like me to be its savior. I usually enjoyed wallowing in that kind of woe-is-me patter.
Right now I was so disgusted with myself I wondered how I’d ever gotten any relief from it. That I couldn’t stop it from nattering on made a bad taste in my mouth, bitter and sharp enough that I felt like I was holding back vomit. I could even feel it in the way I held my face, as if what I really needed to do was get to a bathroom and spit out a mouthful of nastiness. I was still holding my mouth that way when I walked into Morrison’s office.
He was in the midst of shrugging a jacket on, and for the first time in history he said, “What’s wrong?” instead of berating me or looking frustrated that I was still around. I ignored him and got a cup of water from his cooler and washed the dredges of coffee out of my mouth, then sat without answering. Morrison stared at me, then slid the jacket off again and came around his desk, leaning on it as he folded his arms and looked at me. Concern flashed through his aura, dark patches in colors already blackened by stress.
Part of me admired how fast I’d adapted to seeing auras. Half an hour of it and it hardly seemed worth mentioning anymore. The rest of me just sat there and gave the button above Morrison’s belt a thousand-mile stare, like it might turn out to be hiding the secrets of the universe. It was more likely hiding Morrison’s belly button. For a few seconds I was actually grateful for my mind’s idiotic tangents while I tried to remember where standard-cut men’s waistlines hit the waist in relation to a standard-man’s belly button, and decided that yes, probably the first button above the belt was about right.
The jeans Mark wore rode considerably lower than that. I crumpled the water cup and put my hand over my eyes, beads of water making like tears down my cheeks. “How many more?”
Morrison was so quiet I thought he hadn’t understood my question. I’d just about convinced myself to look at him when he said, just as abruptly, “By the end of the day it’d piled up to a quarter of the force. Some of their families, too.”
“Like Melinda.” Not that Mel was really a good example, as she and I had been mystically involved. Which sounded like the sort of thing a person might call a 1-900 number for. Great. I didn’t know how I was going to break it to Billy that I’d been having an illicit psychic affair with his wife while he slept, but I’d give just about anything for the chance.
“Like Melinda,” Morrison agreed, blissfully unaware of my unfortunate internal monologue. I had a brief moment of envying him. At least he could get away from me. I didn’t like me very much right now, and I was stuck with me twenty-four/seven. “You all right, Walker?”
“Fine.” I dropped my hand, fingers still curled loosely around the cup, and looked at the jacket he’d left on his chair. “You’re here late. I’m keeping you. You have plans.” I wasn’t sure if that last was a question or not. Morrison took it as one, nodding.
“Dinner.”
“Sorry. I’ll get out of your hair.” I got up and Morrison stepped into my path. I was wearing sneakers, so he had the very slightest height advantage, less than half an inch. Nobody else would’ve noticed it, but we both did. I wanted to take a step backward to make it less obvious, but there was a chair behind my knees. Morrison knew perfectly well he was in my personal space and didn’t have the slightest intention of moving out of it, so I just waited, looking that all-important fraction of an inch up at him.
“Talk to me, Walker. You look like your best friend just died.”
“No.” An image flashed through my line of vision, a petite pretty girl with hair like buckwheat, thick and straight and long. For some reason I could see her aura, too, though I certainly hadn’t been able to thirteen years ago. It was tight against her skin, bubbling with wrath, just as her expression was full of rage. She’d been the only person who’d ever called me best friend, until I’d gone and slept with a boy she’d said she didn’t like. “Just a friend.” Butterfly-winged blackness swept Sara Buchanan’s memory away as easily as it’d swallowed Coyote, and for an instant I wanted to thank the nightmare thing for taking away that image.