Surprised, I laughed and put my hand out. He licked that, too, solemnly, then stood, his tail wagging slowly at first, then considerably faster. I smiled and tried to pet him one more time, but he turned away with unexpected speed and smacked me in the face with his whipping tail before bounding away into the desert.
The sting was still with me as my eyes popped open and I looked down at Mark Bragg, who gave me a tired, uncertain smile in return. “Do I know you?”
“No,” I whispered after a few long seconds. “Not really. You’ve been sick for a while, but you’re going to be okay now.” The door opened behind me as I spoke. I looked over my shoulder to see Brad Holliday, who was about the last person I expected. I got up, very aware I was wearing a hospital gown beneath my robe. I desperately wanted to ask what he was doing there, but helping out seemed like the obvious answer, so I refrained and said something else obvious instead: “He’s awake, Doctor.”
“I see that,” Holliday said shortly. I cast a rueful smile at the floor and edged toward the door as he came in. He gave Mark a perfunctory look and me a harder one. “Did you do this?”
I slowed and glanced back at him. “Does it matter?”
I saw him struggling with the question, wanting the answer to be yes and not sure it was. After a few seconds he went around the end of Mark’s bed, introducing himself and clearly dismissing me. It was as good a start—or finish—as any, and I let myself out as quietly as possible.
Laurie Corvallis, who was as much the last person I expected as Brad Holliday, was sitting on my hospital bed when I padded back into the room. “I missed something,” she said.
I hung there in the doorway wondering if I could stage a retreat through the whole hospital wearing only a robe. Probably not. “Missed something?”
“You promised me the big break on the sleeping sickness story. Yet here we are, the last sleeper awake again and I’ve got no terrorists, I’ve got no spooky disease, Project Rainbow is buried and I’ve got nothing. What’d I miss, Walker?” The officer part had been dropped. Apparently I’d slid a few points in her estimation.
I opened my mouth to give her the flippant, if honest, answer, and stopped again. I’d written off my knowledge of things as being magic a couple of times already. Corvallis didn’t strike me as the true believer type, but I didn’t like to point her along those lines any more than I already had. So I said, “I’m sorry. It didn’t work out the way I thought it would,” which was true enough. “At least I got you off my back for a couple days.”
To my surprise, that got a smile from her. Pointed, faint, but a smile. “It won’t work again. I smell smoke, Walker.”
“There’s no fire, Ms. Corvallis. I’m sorry.” I came all the way into the room—it was mine, after all—and looked around for my clothes. Corvallis watched me a good long minute or two, until I thought I might end up doing a strip tease for her, then got off the bed and walked out. I’d gotten myself dressed and down to the front desk to check myself out when Gary reappeared from somewhere.
“Had ta drive your pal Bruce home,” he announced. “Guess their Eagle’s actin’ up again.”
I laughed. “I’ll fix it. Elise is making me tamales anyway. What happened to Billy and Mel?”
“They headed out, too. Mel says she’s makin’ dinner for everybody tonight and you’re comin’ over. And Rob says—”
“Robert. He doesn’t like nicknames.”
“Robert,” Gary said with the patience of an old man humoring a young one, which was to say, no patience at all, “says you looked better when you woke up. Not so patchy, he said. He said you’d know what that meant.”
I looked down at my hands as if I’d be able to see what Robert saw in them, and smiled again. “Yeah. I know what he means. I think he’s right.” I knew he was. I couldn’t see my patchwork the way Robert seemed to, but there was no incessant ball of power beneath my breastbone any longer. I couldn’t even feel it anymore, not like it was something separate, anyway. It belonged to me, or I belonged to it, as much as my hand or eye did. It took less than a blink to be able to see silver-sheened magic coursing under my skin, and as little to turn that second sight off again. “I really need to practice,” I said, “but I think I’ve kind of got the hang of this thing now. It’s…” I looked up at the big gray-eyed old man and smiled. “I guess I’m not fighting it anymore. That’s good, right?”
Gary wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me against his chest. “That’s great, doll. Now, you take a ride home from an old cab driver?”
“Promise not to drive using only the Force as your guide?”
“No,” Gary said cheerfully, and herded me out the door.
I made him leave me alone at home. It was hours till dinnertime and Petite, despite her wrinkled back end, would get me to the Hollidays’ home just fine. I also badly needed some time to sit and think and just be me without any magical interference or helpful friends hanging out to make sure I was okay. I took a shower, knowing perfectly well I was going about things backwards, and put on some grubby clothes and my driving shades before getting my toolbox and going down to the parking lot to work on Petite.
Morrison was leaning on the hood of his gold Avalon, arms folded across his chest, studying my Mustang when I got down there. He looked as though he was actively, even aggressively, trying not to look like he had when I’d stepped into his garden.
He wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt instead of a button-down suit shirt. It fit snugly, tight around his biceps, and I suddenly realized the suit shirts and jackets he normally wore added a thickness to his waist that wasn’t his at all. Either that or he’d had some amazing sculpting surgery in the two days I’d been sleeping. The T-shirt was tucked into dark gray slacks, making his hips and waist look much narrower than I was accustomed to. He wore loafers. I couldn’t remember seeing him in anything but shining tied shoes, either, not even at the Fourth of July picnic. His hair was bright with silver in the sunlight, and he was wearing dark sunglasses, which would’ve seemed like an affectation if they hadn’t looked so good. The entire ensemble was completely unlike anything I’d ever seen Morrison in before.
For one brief and rather glorious moment I wondered if my captain had actually dressed to show off for me. Then I got myself under control and came the rest of the way out of the building, putting my toolbox down and leaning against Petite. I wished I was wearing something better than an oil-stained tank top and jeans with the knees already torn out, but that was me, Joanne Walker. You take what you can get. We stood there for a while, both of us leaning on our cars, both of us with our arms crossed over our chests, both of us watching the other through sunglasses that hid our eyes.
Then Morrison said, “Was it real?” and I found I had to look away even with the protective lenses.
“I don’t know.” I pulled my shades off and pinched the bridge of my nose, setting the glasses on Petite’s roof, then looked at him. “Yeah.” I didn’t like how low my voice was, but I couldn’t get it any louder. My heart hurt, and so did breathing. Morrison might have let me get off with the I don’t know, but I owed a lot of people better than that, not least him. “It was real for me. This is my reality. Waking or not.”
Morrison took his own shades off and pushed away from the Toyota. I straightened up automatically to just his height, and there he was, close enough to kiss again, his eyebrows drawn down a little over very blue eyes.
“This is going to keep happening with you, isn’t it. Things that can’t be explained sensibly. Whether I try to keep my precinct running smoothly and without—” His mouth worked and he grated, “Paranormal incidents,” before resuming something of a more natural tone. “They’re just going to keep following you around, aren’t they.”