steps and cast me a sideways look that said he knew I was changing the subject and it was just fine with him.
“You think there had to be some kind of life-changing event that made me want to be a police officer? Just because it’s not your cup of tea, Walker…”
“It’s just that I never met a guy so obsessed with growing up to be a cop he couldn’t take time to learn the difference between a Mustang and a Corvette.” I reached the Mustang in question and strode around to the driver’s side while Morrison shot me a look of horror.
“We are not taking your muscle car, Walker. I’m driving.”
“I hate other people driving, and you always drive when we go somewhere together.” Crime scenes and funerals. Morrison knew how to show a girl a good time. “I bet you’ve never even ridden in a Mustang before, and besides, Morrison, I mean, come on, give me a break. Your car sucks.”
He looked affronted. “It’s got the highest safety ranking in its class. And the back end of yours is bashed in.”
“Like I said.” I jangled my keys at him, exasperated. “Look, you can drive yourself if you want, but I’m taking Petite. Come on. Live a little, mon capitán.” I leaned forward to put my hand on Petite’s purple roof and murmured, “It’s okay, baby. You’re not bashed in. Just a little dinged up. It’s not that he doesn’t like you. He just doesn’t know you like I do.” Honestly, Morrison was right. Petite’s rear end was smashed up, ugly but not disabling, due to having fallen down a fissure opened up by an earthquake. That wouldn’t be so bad, except I’d caused the earthquake.
Okay, it would have sucked every bit as much, but being the epicenter of a world-shattering event that racked my car up made it just that much worse. Petite had survived, and her calm steel soul wasn’t concerned about the depleted bank account that had already paid for one vehicular disaster this year. She was sure I’d make her as beautiful as she’d once been, and she was right. I whispered that promise as if she could hear me, and patted her roof a second time.
“Walker, your relationship with your vehicle is pathological.” Morrison glanced down the parking lot at his staid Toyota Avalon and sighed. I beamed and unlocked Petite’s door, giving her another pat as I swung into the driver’s seat.
“See?” I said as I unlocked the passenger door for my boss. “Nobody can resist you, baby. Not even the Mighty Morrison.”
“The what?” I’d never seen anybody look so awkward getting into a car before. Morrison sat down in the leather seat as if he was afraid it might bite him, and put the drum carefully into the back. “Walker, does this thing even have safety belts?”
“Click it or ticket, sir,” I quipped. “I put them in myself. Just for you. Even though she’s a classic and strictly speaking I didn’t have to.” I pulled my own seat belt on and waited for Morrison to get his on before adding, “I figure anything that goes a hundred and fifty oughta have ’em, after all.”
Morrison turned pale. I grinned and pulled out of the parking lot too fast, feeling pretty chipper despite the hangover, Billy’s condition and Mark.
CHAPTER FOUR
Once upon a time, the antiseptic smell of hospitals gave me sneezing fits every time I went in one. The past month I’d been in and out of them often enough that the sneezing had reduced itself to just feeling like somebody’d stuffed plugs up my nose, making my eyes tingle and water. It wasn’t much of an improvement, and I really wanted to just not have to go into hospitals at all anymore.
The universe was supremely indifferent to what I wanted. I rubbed my nose and followed Morrison up to an ordinary hospital room, not the intensive-care unit I was expecting. Billy Holliday was, by all appearances, sleeping comfortably in a bed that looked too small for his barrel-chested frame. There was an oxygen sensor on one finger, and monitors I couldn’t identify beeped in the background. He looked fine.
His wife, on the other hand, looked like hell. I’d only seen Melinda Holliday look less than lovely once previously, during the demon-in-her-kitchen episode a couple of weeks earlier, but the one-two punch seemed to have taken the spark out of her. Her dark hair was in a listless ponytail, olive skin drawn and pale and she wasn’t dressed to disguise early signs of pregnancy. Since I’d been admonished not to mention she was pregnant for several weeks yet, I knew she was worried: Mel wasn’t the kind of woman who would accidentally dress badly, or let show something she wanted kept private.
Morrison stopped in the doorway and let me go in ahead of him. Or maybe he made me go in ahead of him, but either way, I went in as he hung back in the door frame. Mel looked up and blatant relief swept her expression, tears bright in her brown eyes. “Joanie. Michael said he’d get you on his way over. I’m so glad you’re here.” She got herself around the bed and over to hug me as she spoke, while I stumbled over the idea of someone calling Morrison by his given name. I knew he had one, of course, but it was the mental equivalent of Babe Ruth saying, “Hiya, King!” to King Edward of England.
I wasn’t sure who would find it more appalling that I was putting Morrison on the same pedestal as British royalty: Morrison, or the English. Fortunately, it was a thought that would never escape the confines of my mind.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I said to the top of Melinda’s head. “Billy’s going to be fine. What happened?”
Mel extracted herself from the hug, stepping back with her chin lifted, a way of instigating control over her emotions. “I don’t know. He just wouldn’t wake up this morning. The doctors said his vitals are strong and he seems to be in REM sleep, but he just won’t wake up.”
“I’ll do what I can, Mel. I’m not all that good at this.” I sat down at Billy’s side, trying not to gnaw on my lower lip.
“You’ll help him.” She went back to her seat on the other side of the bed, taking Billy’s hand. I bit my lip after all and looked over my shoulder at Morrison.
He leaned in the door frame, arms folded across his chest as he stared at me so intently I felt a blush crawling up my cheeks. My drum dangled from his fingertips, against his ribs, like he’d forgotten it was there, though I was certain he hadn’t. He was waiting for something, and I knew both what and why. I almost couldn’t blame him.
Morrison had never actually been present when I’d tried healing someone before, though he’d been in the vicinity and had seen the evidence of success after the fact. Proof didn’t make him happy about my talents, and I could feel discomfort rolling off him in waves. It wasn’t any especial attunement to emotion or altered states of being that let me feel it, either, just his glower and the tightness of his shoulders.
“Mel could drum me under,” I offered. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear—he wanted to be told none of this was necessary—but it was the best I could do. By getting me here he’d already pushed well past the boundaries of what he considered reasonable behavior. It wasn’t the first time he’d forced his own hand into asking what my esoteric gifts might be able to come up with, but it was the first time he’d found himself playing an actively supporting role.
I had complete and total sympathy with the not wanting to be there for it. I’d have checked out myself, if I could’ve, although that impulse was slowly being replaced by a grim determination to just get this shamanism thing right. A wash of regret burbled through me, leaving weary sadness behind. “You don’t have to do this, Captain.”
“Yeah, I do.” Morrison shoved off the doorjamb, making it creak. I startled at his contrary agreement, then found myself staring at the man.
I tended to think I was Morrison’s size because I was Morrison’s height, but seeing him framed in the doorway reminded me why I also tended to think of him as an aging superhero. The summer heat had taken some of the extra flesh he’d been carrying from around his middle, so the aging part seemed to slip away, leaving just the hero behind. His hair needed cutting, which was the sort of thing I rarely noticed on myself, much less anyone else, but the marginally longer length