that again, Walker. Try not to do that again.”
“I’ll try.”
“A-hem.” Suzy drew our attention back to her, and I couldn’t decide if her tone of offense was for us ignoring her or for what her friends had done. “They called me. Like I was a magic dog or something. And then...” Offense flew out the window, replaced by a shiftiness that had no business on a face as young and innocent as Suzanne’s. Never mind that she’d pretty well lost any innocence the day we’d met, when her adoptive parents had been murdered by her birth father, whom I had then run through with a sword. “Then some things happened. But that’s not important right now!”
Some things happened was not a phrase I wanted to consider too deeply when discussing two teenage girls and a teenage boy as participants. Morrison the police captain, however, had no compunction against it at all. “What kinds of things, Suzanne?”
Suzy blinked and turned scarlet from the collar of her shirt up. “Oh. My. God. Not those kinds of things. Omigod. No, it was magic stuff, not—omigod.”
The poor kid was fit to die of mortification. Morrison, who could not be embarrassed on such, or perhaps any, topics, studied her momentarily like he was deciding whether she was telling the truth. She kept blushing a flaming blush until he nodded with satisfaction and gave her a brief, reassuring smile. I wasn’t nearly that good a person, and merely tried not to laugh. “Okay, so it wasn’t that kind of stuff. What kind of magic stuff?”
“It was like stuff with...I don’t know, it was kind of creepy. But I’ve been having visions since then, or I haven’t been, and that’s the important part, Dete—uh, Ms. Walker.”
All my laughter dried up. “Visions of what?”
“I don’t know!” The last word was nearly a wail. Suzy collapsed back onto the bench, shoulders slumped, elegant fingers dangling between her legs. “I don’t know. Darkness, but not like nighttime. It’s alive, it’s...it’s greedy. It’s...it’s fighting the green,” she said in obvious embarrassment, though I had no idea what she was embarrassed about. “It wants something. It wants something really important, and I can’t See what.”
I exhaled noisily. “It’s the thing that made the cauldron, Suzy. It’s the Master. And he probably wants me.”
“I don’t think so. It more like he wants...me.”
My teeth clicked together and a hole opened up in my heart. There were a lot of reasons I could imagine something dark wanting Suzy. “Maybe we better go back to ‘what kind of magic stuff?’”
Suzanne sighed deeply enough that I thought I’d better go sit next to her. That kind of sigh preceded long stories, in my experience. But all she said was, “Kiseko was trying to raise an earth element, and she got me. I guess that kind of makes sense, but whatever. Anyway, when, or once, I came through, so did something else. And it felt...bad. And I fought it, and I won, but it, like, leaked oil inside my head. All I can see is the darkness, futures where everything has gone dark. That, and green. And I’m green, Detec—Ms. Walker. Ms. Walker.”
“You can call me Joanne.”
Suzy hesitated. “I don’t think so. My aunt would look at me. But thanks. Anyway, it’s like I feel all these dark futures in my head, Ms. Walker, and...and they want something. Something that’ll help them come true.” She swallowed. “I’m afraid it’s me.”
“Then we won’t let that happen.” I sat down beside her, put my arm around her shoulders, tugged her closer to me, and did my best to sound like a confident, reassuring grown-up. “It’ll be fine, Suzy. I promise.”
She sighed again and leaned on me. Morrison, still standing across the hall, got an oddly soft expression, then looked away with a smile. I decided not to read anything into that, because I was pretty sure it crossed into territory I wasn’t yet prepared to tread. “How long has this been going on, Suze?”
“Since last night? They only just summoned me.”
I closed my eyes, mumbling, “I’m going to have to tell Billy his son is summoning people. That’s not going to go over well.” Then my eyes popped open again. “Wait, last night? How did you even know I was here?”
“Every paper in Seattle is talking about the woman who came back from the dead. Where else would you be?”
“North Carolina,” I said dryly. “That’s where I was until...” I paused to adjust my mental time line. “Until last night. Wait, does that mean it’s April first? This is all a pretty crappy idea of an April Fools’ joke.”
Morrison didn’t even crack a smile, and Suzy kind of slumped in defeat. Apparently it was a crappy enough April Fools’ joke that it wasn’t even worth commenting on.
Staring at her toes, Suzy mumbled, “Well, I just, I mean, I thought you’d be here.”
“How does anybody even know about Annie? It shouldn’t be in the papers. I’d think the hospital would be trying to keep it quiet.”
“That Channel Two reporter got hold of it. The pretty one. She was covering some other story at the hospital and heard people talking about this old woman who turned up out of nowhere. So she turned the story into an exposé on the carelessness of the Seattle hospital systems. She was on the national news last night.”
I groaned and sat forward to put my face in my hands. “Laurie Corvallis? God, the national news? That’s got to thrill her right down to her cold-blooded toes. How much you want to bet she parlays this into an anchor position somehow?”
“That’s a bet I wouldn’t take,” Morrison answered. I smiled in admiration of his wisdom while Suzy peered between us.
“We’ve met Laurie Corvallis,” I explained. “Frankly, we’re lucky she’s only doing an exposé on the hospital system, not trying to shine light on the magical aspects of the world. Believe me, if she thought there was anything hinky about this, and that she could make a story of it that people would believe, she’d be all over that like white on snow.”
“Hinky.” Suzy wrinkled her nose dubiously. “Did she really just say hinky?”
“I’ve learned to think of her verbal tics as part of her charm,” Morrison said, straight-faced enough that I thought I should be offended. Then he cracked a grin and Suzy let go a relieved little burst of giggles, like she’d desperately needed the pressure release. Morrison was much better at kids than I was.
Of course, I was pretty certain giant squid were better at kids than me. That was good. Under the circumstances, somebody needed to be. I drew my tattered dignity around myself and sniffed. “If you’re quite finished making fun of me...?”
Suzy giggled again, which pleased me. I squeezed her shoulders. “Okay. First—wait. First, does your aunt know you’re here, this time?” Much to my relief, she nodded. “Good. Wait. How? If you got magicked—never mind. You promise she knows?” Suzy nodded again and I struggled past all the hows and whys to focus on the important part. “In that case, I’m basically not letting you out of my sight until this is over, okay? I can keep you safe if we’re together.”
It occurred to me that I needed to tell Annie Muldoon the same thing, and that I’d just left her all alone with Gary. My stomach turned upside down and I got up awkwardly, limbs no longer responding the way they should. Annie had said vampires were real. And Annie was back from the dead. I wobbled over to the room door and peered through the window.
My knees weakened. I put my hand on the doorknob for support, and my forehead against the window. They were fine. Holding hands, foreheads pressed together, looking for all the world like wrinkly teenagers in the throes of puppy love.
“Walker?”
“I just had an ugly thought. Never mind. It’s okay.” I sounded like I’d swallowed a rasp. Morrison and Suzy—she’d gotten up when I did, though I hadn’t really noticed in the moment—came to frown through