I had not known much joy in my life after that. The image of a silver key, buried thirteen years, flashed through my mind. Buried since I realized I was pregnant, keeping me apart from the heritage the makers of the world planned for me. I had not been any unhappier in the half a lifetime since then than I had ever been before it, but I had not been happier, either. It was a hitching point, the center of my spider-webbed soul, and the only thing I’d given myself over to fully in the intervening years was lavishing attention on my Mustang. I swallowed hard and cleared my throat to give myself voice.
“Bring him back, Coyote. Send him back to the world we came from, so the water will not rise and try to find him.”
Coyote sighed, a very human sound, and picked up the baby in his teeth, carrying him back to the hole between worlds. He set the child down in the rising water, and a sigh of joy rose up from the world below. Water receded, and all the men and women and creatures that had survived another world smiled and began to explore their new home.
All but Coyote, who sat with his back to me, looking into the hole. “Who do you think you are?” I rasped. “Playing games that bring the world to an end. Who do you think you are?”
He looked over his shoulder at me, and his face was my own.
I recoiled so violently it reflected in the physical world, pulling me loose from the bridge I’d made between Billy and Melinda. I came awake falling to the side, and grabbed for the first thing I could to regain my balance.
Unfortunately, it was Brad Holliday’s leg. He yelled and jolted to his feet. I yelled and fell over, still flailing at bedsides and chairs. It was a good thing there weren’t any IV racks near me. I sprang to my feet in a flurry of embarrassment and dismay, not sure if I was more upset by waking Brad or by what I’d seen. I was looking for a way to explain myself when he demanded, “How’d you get in here,” and my mouth replied, “Magic,” flippantly, without consulting my brain.
Anger contorted his features sharply enough that I lifted a hand in apology, though my mouth went on without any evident concern for what it was getting me into. “What’s the story, Doc?” I asked with genuine curiosity. “I know Billy’s side of it. Is it just that it’s incredibly frustrating to have a little brother everybody thinks is nuts? Don’t get me wrong.” I let go a huff of air that I thought passed for humorless laughter. “I’m really on your side of things by nature. I don’t blame you for not liking the superstitious stuff. I don’t, either. But Billy’s so into it. What’s your story?”
“That’s none of your business, Officer Walker.”
That much was certainly true. I squinted, hoping to take a look at his aura, but even that tiny shift toward using my power seemed to alert the sleeping thing in the room. I felt it gather, ready to pounce, and let go my grasp on the Sight before it even came into focus. Brad Holliday and I might not get along, but I didn’t want to be responsible for putting him into a coma. I was a little surprised he wasn’t already, after hanging out in this sleep-laden room for hours. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Brad turned away, folding his arms across his chest as he looked down at his brother. His ring caught blue light from one of the monitors, turning it green, and I found myself staring at the jewel in its weighty setting. I still hadn’t noticed if he wore a wedding ring. “Class ring?” I heard myself say.
He glanced at me, frowning, then at his hand, and scowled even more deeply. “From medical school, yes.”
A thin band popped around my heart, releasing a thin wash of satisfaction. African evil spirits seemed ever-more unlikely, but my enemy did seem reluctant to mess with topaz. I didn’t know how, or by whom, the stone had first been recognized as conducive to easy sleep and pleasant dreams, but I thanked them for it. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something, and I was grateful for a reprieve, small as it might be.
Right on cue, my cell phone rang.
CHAPTER 25
I was really beginning to detest that thing. Strike that: I detested cell phones on general principles. I was starting to have a deep personal and abiding hatred for mine in specific. Visions of taking a sledgehammer to it drifted pleasantly through my mind as I took it out of my pocket and said, “Please tell me nobody’s dead.”
“Can’t help you there,” Laurie Corvallis said. “Sorry.”
I reached for the railing on Mel’s bed, using it to support myself. “What do you mean?”
“Tell me something first. How’d you know to start on the seventh of January?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. What do you mean, you can’t help me there?”
“Try me,” Corvallis said. “You’d be surprised what I believe.” She left it alone, though, a note of cockiness coming into her voice. “There was a whole burst of sleeping sicknesses around the tenth of January, down in the southwest. Half of the Navajo Nation dropped off the planet for a couple days—”
“Half?” I demanded, genuinely alarmed. “Isn’t that about a hundred thousand people, Laurie?”
Silence was followed by an impatient sigh. “All right. Maybe one percent. There’s no drama in that, Officer Walker. Regardless, literally hundreds of people dropped off, then woke up two days later and quietly started making preparations for the end days. There’ve been some news stories about it, but they’ve gotten about the same amount of attention than your average Christian sect predicting the end of the world does.”
“I’ve heard of a couple of those,” I objected. I could almost hear Corvallis shrug.
“There were thirty-seven separate dates that various sects believed the world would end in the year 2000. How many of those did you hear about?”
“Does the Y2K bug count?”
“No. You see my point.” She went on without worrying about whether I did or not. I did, anyway. “That was it. No more of the Dine went to sleep, and un—
“Dine?”
“The Navajo, Officer Walker,” Corvallis said, impatient all over again. “It’s their name for themselves. It means—”
“The People,” I guessed. The Cherokee’s original name for themselves meant more or less the same. A lot of Native American tribe names did. I felt vaguely guilty for not knowing the Navajo called themselves something else.
“Would you like to tell this story?” Corvallis asked. I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut, and after a moment she said, “Until a few weeks ago, nobody else did, either.”
I tightened my grip on Melinda’s bed frame. “How many?”
“Ten or twelve. Nothing like what’s going on here.”
“Do they have anything in common?” I pushed my glasses up to rub my eyes.
“Yeah. This is the weird bit. The new group who’ve gone to sleep worked in the University of Phoenix physics department. Grad students, professors, you name it. The CDC is still down there trying to figure out what did it, but it looks like it was something called Project Rainbow. I haven’t gotten past the classification yet, which probably means it’s a weapon of some kind under development for the military. You were right, Walker. You gave me a story. I really didn’t expect it. Maybe somebody’s been running tests on their weapon or, hell,” she said, sounding suddenly enthusiastic, “maybe it’s a terrorist attack. My God, that’d be a story.”
I sat down on the edge of Melinda’s bed and stared at the floor. “Physics?” I thought shamanism was outside my realm of expertise. I didn’t have any idea what to do with a bunch of physicists. “Has anybody died? Are they still asleep?”
Corvallis hesitated, which I hadn’t known she could do. “Nobody’s died, but nobody’s woken up, either. No, that’s not true.” I could almost hear her shrug, and then sly pleasure came into her voice. “Two people did wake up from the university plague. The weird thing is that they apparently have Navajo blood themselves. If I worked for a tabloid I’d be all over that link. Magic Indian blood saves—”