Most of the rest of us. Les cast Morrison and me a look, then followed Sara. Ada lurched to her feet and ran for Aidan, catching him in a hug that made him grunt and squeak with protest. Not much protest, though: he hugged her back, face buried in her shoulder, while my Dad sat down hard and rubbed his hands over his eyes. Gosh. I wondered where I’d gotten that habit from. After a minute, he said, “So this is your life, Joanne?” into his palms, but I was busy crawling toward Morrison and didn’t want to answer. Dad didn’t seem to expect an answer, either, and for a few minutes we all simply sat there, wrung out, with no thoughts for the future.
The poor military guy finally broke the silence. Not by asking what the hell had just happened, which would have been legitimate, but by saying, “I’m going to have to radio this in. They’ll already be wondering why we haven’t reported. You probably won’t have long to get your people out of the valley.”
I couldn’t help asking, “What are you going to tell them? And, look, I’m sorry, but what’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Dennis Gilmore.” Lieutenant Gilmore rightfully looked as though he’d seen ghosts, and like he didn’t want to give the only answer he could. “I’m going to tell them that we had an encounter with the epidemic’s source and were able to eliminate it, but at great personal cost. We’ll send out a search team for the body, and I will identify it as our target.”
That reminded me. I closed my eyes, breathed, “Jesus,” and opened them again. “Lieutenant, I’m really, really sorry, but you’re going to have to burn Captain Montenegro and everybody else who died out here tonight. By sunrise.”
He turned his wrist over, looking at a watch, then looked through broken trees at the starry night. “Four hours. We can do that, ma’am, but it’ll complicate things if the tribe is still in the woods.”
“Won’t it complicate things if they all come back to town, too? The CDC—”
“Ma’am, the CDC is not going to let this go. But if we can obtain the source and return it to the CDC, I believe that once they’ve satisfied themselves that the epidemic has run its course, they’ll leave Cherokee town and the Qualla Boundary without unduly disturbing its residents. The sooner you get them home so blood tests can be run, the sooner we’ll be out of your hair.” He sounded so professional I wanted to cry for him. His entire team was dead, and he was holding it together admirably. I wondered what he would let himself remember.
Dad stood up. “We’ll get them home and we’ll get the blood tests underway. Thanks for your understanding here, Lieutenant.”
“I can give you half an hour.” Lieutenant Gilmore went to the bodies of his fallen comrades, standing over them in silence. Dad gestured to the rest of us, and we got up to abandon the valley together.
Choppers flew overhead when the collected tribal members were barely out of the valley. Not all of the fight had gone out of them, nor would it ever, I thought; there was just too much bad blood between Natives and the government. But they’d been there when the ghosts had come to lay the pain to rest, and that went a long way toward sobering even the most hot-headed of them. Sara and Les were among them, but I stayed well out of their way, trailing near the back with Morrison. Dad, who’d taken up a position of leadership, eventually fell back to join us, and repeated the question he’d asked earlier: “Is this what your life is like, Joanne?”
“By and large, yeah. You get used to it. Kind of.” I drew breath to lay down the accusations and the arguments we’d already started once, then sighed and let it go. He should have told me about my heritage a long time ago, no doubt about it. But he hadn’t, and that was the hand I had to play. There were no do-overs, no matter how badly I might want them. Eventually I said, “You were pretty awesome back there, actually. Those Lower World guys, that was kinda great. You should, um. You should teach me how to do that, huh?”
“I’d like that.” Dad hesitated as much as I had, then repeated himself. “I’d like that. Does that mean you’re going to stay awhile?”
My hand crept into Morrison’s. “Probably not. Morrison’s got to get back to work soon, and I have to go find a job.”
“I thought you worked for the police department.”
“I quit a couple weeks ago. This—” I lifted my hand in Morrison’s, gesturing a circle with both of them. I meant the motion to encompass the entire magical mess we’d just gone through, but realized that our entwined fingers were just as much a part of this as the magic was “—this was starting to get in the way of the job.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Slay demons and fix cars, probably. Isn’t that what most people want to do when they grow up? Oh, God, my car. I have to go get Petite. I am not leaving her on the mountain for another night.”
Dad pursed his lips and glanced at the throng of people heading down the hills. “They won’t miss us. Come on, I’ll take you across the mountains.”
“Are you sure? Because I’m not exactly Ms. Fitness. It might be faster to—”
“Change shape and run?” Morrison asked blandly.
“...I’d been going to say, ‘Go down to the highway and hike back up.’ Are you volunteering to go for a run on the wild side with me, Morrison?”
“I thought you and your dad could go. Family bonding time.”
The amazing thing was he said it with an utterly straight face, as if perfectly serious. My father, however, wrinkled his eyebrows at us both. “Shapechanging is a spiritual transformation, Mr. Morri—”
I twitched. “Captain.”
“Mike.”
Dad waited a moment to see if we were going to argue about that, then said, “Mike,” cautiously. “Spiritual, not literal. People can’t shapeshift.”
Morrison said, “Oh, I see,” while I tried so hard not to laugh that tears spilled down my cheeks. Dad looked increasingly offended, until I finally gasped and wiped my face, then patted his shoulder. “You sound just like me, Dad. Just like me. Okay. Tell you what, let’s go for a hike. Morrison, you coming?”
He shook his head. “I’ll catch up with you in town.” Apparently he thought we really did need some bonding time, which was probably true. I kissed him, took the empty shotgun back just in case we met any wights that needed clobbering, and Dad and I slipped off to the west while everyone else headed downhill.
For bonding time, it was remarkably silent, punctuated mostly by my swearing as I clambered over things that Dad just seemed to melt over. I really didn’t know what to say to him, nor he to me, at least not until the sun broke behind us. Once we were in the full gold and pink light of morning he stopped to study me until I became uncomfortable from it. “What?”
“I haven’t seen you in years, Jo...anne. I just wanted to get a look at you in daylight, without a war going on around us. You grew up nice.”
“I’m working on it, anyway.” I put my hands in my jeans pockets, shoving the long coat out of the way to do so. It made me feel like a superhero again, which once more made the coat easily the best money I’d ever spent. “You’re not going to turn out to be a horrible monster now, are you? Because this is usually about when that would happen.”
“Not planning to, no. Will you tell me what happened?”
I let out a short breath. “Starting with what?”
“Whatever you want. It’s a long walk.”
“And I still don’t have any food.” I honestly didn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, besides the shriveled apples. Four hundred years ago, in the valley we’d left behind, maybe. I really needed to start taking better care of myself. With my life, that evidently meant always having a three-course meal in my pocket, which I didn’t see happening, but it was a nice idea. I fell into step beside Dad again, getting into the rhythm of motion before I started at the beginning.