“Barb the bulldozer,” Mark repeated happily. His colors were an astounding complementary mix to Barb’s, all the opposite colors of the rainbow. When they laughed together, their auras jumped up and spun into a breathtaking light display. “That’s my big sister. Well, I’m glad, Joanne.”
I twitched, focus torn away from their entwining auras. “What? Oh. Yeah.” I retrieved a smile and pasted it on. “Big sister?” That was probably the wrong thing to say when a guy said he was glad to go out on a date with you, but the people who were having fun at this table were not Officer Joanne Walker and Captain Michael Morrison. Barb and Mark Bragg hadn’t seemed to notice.
“Seventeen minutes older,” Barb said triumphantly. “That makes me the boss of him.”
“And she never lets me forget it,” Mark said, full of mock despair. Morrison and I caught each other giving the other guarded looks, establishing that this was news to both of us.
“Twins?” I asked more than a little inanely. That was me, super-cop. They both laughed, sending their auras whirling together again in a rainbow of colors. Twins certainly explained that, anyway. It also explained the identical tattoos. I slid down in my chair, less happy than I thought I might be at clearing the Braggs of any likely connection with the sleeping sickness. At least if Barb was evil I’d have a legitimate reason not to like her. Instead, the more she talked, the more I felt like a jerk for hating her straight off.
“Identical,” Mark said, pulling his face straight. Morrison chuckled, a quiet sound, and I managed another smile, nodding.
“I can tell. All night I’ve been trying to figure out which one of you I was supposed to be playing footsies with.” I had no idea where that’d come from, but it got laughter from Mark and Barb. Morrison shot me a startled look. Mark leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
“What, can’t you tell with, you know.” A subtle eyebrow waggle suggested I was supposed to pick up on what you know was, but he wasn’t sure everybody else at the table was in on my shamanic practices. I sighed and flipped my fingers out, indicating a go-ahead. Morrison already knew. One more person thinking I was a weirdo wasn’t going to change the balance of my life. Barb leaned in curiously, and Mark put his elbows on the table to announce, with obvious relish, “Joanne’s a shaman.”
Her eyebrows shot up. Morrison exhaled quietly, a sigh that probably nobody but me heard. I didn’t look at him. “Really,” Barb said, then straightened up as the waiter came by with glasses of water and our menus. As soon as he was gone she folded her menu into her lap and leaned forward, all interested eyes and enthusiasm. “What’s that about, really? I mean, magic, right? You do magic?” Her voice was full of lightness. I couldn’t tell if it was laughter or teasing or humoring me, though I assumed all of it had a fair degree of mockery in it. Still, I was going to have to find a way to deal with this one way or another. No time like the present to start. Poor Morrison. I sighed, a half-conscious echo of his expression.
“It’s about healing. Magic.” My smile felt half-assed. “I’m really not all that comfortable with it. Normal people don’t do magic.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Barb said in evident seriousness. “I think it kind of depends on how you look at magic. When Mark and I were driving up here we went by Wild Horse Monument, out in eastern Washington. Have you been there?”
To my utter surprise, a little something loosened in my chest for the first time since I’d woken up from Coyote’s sacrifice. It hurt, like cracking a scab you didn’t know was there, both a relief and painful at once. From that break came a smile that bordered on tears. “Actually, yeah. I drove by it when I came to Washington, too. It’s amazing.” I’d glanced out my window to see horses on a cliff top, and pulled Petite over so I could scale the hill and stand in the midst of an iron herd, larger than life as they charged recklessly toward the edge of the cliff. The leading stallion had a wild abandon to him, as if in recognizing death he embraced it. I’d stood up there among them for hours, watching shadows bring them to life as the sun moved through the sky.
“Tell me that isn’t magic,” Barb said triumphantly. I laughed, a rough sound that went along with the tightness in my chest, and shook my head.
“I can’t.”
Barb sat back, smug. “See? I think it’s all over, if you want to see it. So healing. Does that mean you can help the people who are going to sleep?”
“I’m trying.” I found myself looking at Morrison.
“The topaz works as a charm against the sleeping sickness,” I heard myself add. Morrison’s expression went indecipherable.
“Good,” he said after a moment. “I gave that piece to Barb.”
CHAPTER 21
I’d thought the wall of cold that had come down over me was going to be a permanent fixture. It turned out to have nothing on sheer, irrational jealousy. The muscles in my neck creaked audibly as I turned my head to stare at Barbara, who showed no signs of understanding the mortal danger she was in. I was much bigger and stronger than she was. I could probably claw her eyes out before Morrison could stop me.
She smiled brilliantly and tilted over, scooping her purse up from the floor so she could dig through it and moments later display the piece of topaz I’d given Morrison. It wasn’t a remarkable piece of topaz, except that it was supposed to be his and he was most definitely not supposed to have given it to her. “I love topaz,” Barbara was saying happily. “It’s my favorite stone. Our birthstone,” she said to Mark, as if he didn’t know, and he grinned and nodded. “I really didn’t expect Michael to give it to me, but I noticed it on his desk this afternoon when I dropped by to ask if he’d like to go out to dinner. So it’s magical? How does it work?”
I heard everything she said through heavy static, my ears and cheekbones so hot I thought they must be glowing. Even my vision was fuzzy, white noise buzzing around the edges of it as I stared furiously at the stone in Barbara’s palm. I wanted to snatch it up and throw it at her or at Morrison or through a window. In fact, I jolted like I might do that, a violent spasm that knocked my knuckles against the table. The spike of pain sent me shooting to my feet, full of clumsiness and blind anger. My chair fell over behind me with a noisy clatter, a pool of silence rippling out around us in the restaurant.
Normally that would only last an instant before the usual sounds of dining reasserted themselves. Not so with me as a focal point, misbehaving in public. My stomach muscles trembled from being held so tight. The whole restaurant seemed to inhale expectantly, waiting to see what happened. Mark pushed his chair back, concerned, and Morrison came half out of his seat, angry perplexity at my display written across his face. I still felt heat in my cheeks, but my hands were icy and I felt like the color had drained from my face, leaving me with an expression of childish injury. Morrison reached for my elbow and I jerked away hard enough to pull myself a step back.
That step proved my betrayal, undoing whatever it was that bound me in place. I whipped around and bolted for the door, smashing my thigh into the corner of someone’s table as I ran. A hard knot of pain formed in the muscle as silverware jangled and glasses crashed over. Morrison shouted, “Walker!” and I threw a raspy apology at the diners, breaking for the door again. In all the horrible silence of everybody watching drama unfold, I heard Morrison mutter an apology at Barbara and come after me. I slammed my shoulder on the door frame on the way out, half clumsiness and half punishing myself for something I barely understood.
I got to Petite before Morrison caught up with me, shaking hands fumbling the keys repeatedly. My heart hammered so badly it hurt, taking up all the room in my chest so I couldn’t get any air, and the only clear thought I could form was that I didn’t want to scratch Petite’s paint job with my shaking hands and key.