Mercedes Lackey: Winter Moon

“Seriously?” I supposed it was unlikely Morrison had sprung fully formed from the forehead of his mother, but I’d never given much thought to his family. “He was a sailor?”

“Merchant marines. He died when I was twelve.”

Neither of us knew what to say after that. I slid down in my seat and wrapped my fingers around my hot chocolate tightly enough to bend the cardboard. “So,” I said after a while, just as he said, “Your hearing’s back.” I twitched a grin at the plastic top of my cup and nodded. I didn’t see if Morrison smiled, too.

“You and Holliday learn anything yet?”

“We would’ve mentioned it if we had.” It came out sarcastic. I hadn’t meant it to. I saw Morrison’s bulk move back a few centimeters, like he was responding to my nasty tone and putting extra space between us. Good, Joanne. Antagonize the boss. Again . “I’m trying, Captain. I really am.”

He muttered, “You certainly are,” under his breath, making me look up in amused offense. His expression hadn’t changed. Maybe I was the only one who thought he was making a joke. Great. Just great.

“I really want to solve this.” I kept my voice low, afraid he’d think I was kidding. After a moment something relaxed in his gaze, a little gleam of approval coming into it. I annoyed Morrison for a variety of reasons, starting with knowing a lot more about cars than he did, and ending, emphatically, with wanting a career as a mechanic when it was his opinion I could be a good cop. It was possible I’d taken one tiny baby step toward a better relationship with him by genuinely wanting to solve this case.

“Has it occurred to you that you might be in danger, Walker?”

The chocolate was hot enough to keep my fingers stinging with warmth, or I’d have dropped it in my lap, hands suddenly numb from surprise. “Sir?” I never called Morrison sir . I don’t know which of us liked it less.

“Your mother turned this killer in thirty years ago. If he puts you together with her—”

I sat there staring at him, slack jawed with stupefaction. “It’s unlikely,” I finally heard myself say. “Different country, different names, pretty much no connection….”

“Except whatever the hell you’ve got going on up there.” Morrison pointed a thick finger at my head. I touched my own temple guiltily. The man had a point. Crap. He had a point, and I had no idea what to do if he was right. I blinked at the table, hoping it might come up with a brilliant answer or two.

“Is this going to turn out like the last case?”

Then again, maybe I hadn’t taken any steps toward him approving of me at all. I curled a lip at the top of my hot chocolate, doing my best James Dean impression. “You mean with a dead body and no actual proof of guilt aside from the word of a semihysterical teenage girl?”

Morrison gave a credible growl that rumbled up from the depths of his chest. I took that as a yes, and shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m putting my money on ‘probably.’”

Silence stretched over the table long enough to break. I looked up when it snapped, to find Morrison glaring out the window, his mouth set in a thin line. At least he wasn’t glaring at me. “Get me some answers, Walker. Tell me how to stop somebody else from dying.”

I lowered my gaze to the cup again. “For what it’s worth, Morrison, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

He stood up, the chair feet squeaking back against the wet floor. “That’s the only thing that makes it bearable.”

I didn’t feel any less alone, watching him leave, shoulders broad and strong in the seaman’s coat.

I locked myself in the broom closet back at the station and struggled to get inside my own mind. When I finally did, my garden looked like somebody had dumped ash all over it, making it as tired and gray as I felt. It was not reassuring. Nor was the fact that it took Coyote a very long time indeed to show up, or that he looked distracted when he did. How a dog could look distracted, I didn’t know, but there you had it.

“I’m not,” he said for the umpteenth time, “a dog.”

One of the few thoughts I seemed to be able to keep to myself around him was the private glee at being able to get on his nerves with something as simple as calling him a dog. It made me feel better right away. I even managed a bright grin. “Sorry. I need your help.”

“God helps those who help themselves, Joanne.”

I startled. “What, you’re a Christian now?”

“Is that so strange?”

“Is it strange that my shape-shifting coyote spirit guide is a Christian? You tell me.”

He finally looked at me, little spots of brighter-colored fur above his eyes lifting like eyebrows. “No,” he said. “It’s not. You’ve got too many preconceptions, Walkingstick.”

“I wish you people would stop calling me that.” I didn’t like having my original last name bandied around. Especially not when I was dealing with psychic realms I didn’t really understand. The idea that names had power was one I could grasp, if nothing else. Which actually brought me to my point: “I need to know how to protect myself, Coyote.”

He snapped his teeth at me and got up to pace toward me, looking alarmingly like a predator instead of a scavenger. “You should’ve been learning that for most of the last three months.”

“So sue me. Are you going to throw me to the wolves just because I’m slow on the uptake?” More than slow, I admitted. One might go so far as to say recalcitrant. Deliberately recalcitrant.

I could live with that.

At least, I could live with it as long as he gave me the help I needed now. Possibly, very possibly, this was not a good long-term game plan. I promised myself I’d think about that later. Preferably much later. I did my best puppy-dog eyes on Coyote.

Note to self: puppy-dog eyes work better on people who do not actually possess puppy-dog eyes themselves. Coyote looked disgusted. I retreated on the puppy-dog defense and tried a verbal one. “All I need to know is how to protect the very core part of me, Coyote. My name. That kind of thing. I don’t want the bad guys to be able to get to it easily.”

“A thought which only strikes you now that a bad guy is looming.”

“Yeah.”

Coyote dropped his head in a very human motion, and sighed so deeply I was surprised he didn’t start coughing. “You know how to do it, Joanne. Think in metaphors.”

“What?” I found myself grinning just a little. “Like airbags and steel frames keeping my little ol’ name safe?”

He gave me a look that would reduce a lesser woman to blushes of embarrassment. I valiantly ignored the burning in my cheeks and mumbled, “Oh.”

“I don’t know why I put up with you.” He snapped his teeth at me again, and was gone.

“Because I’m cute and irresistibly charming,” I said to the empty garden. No one, not even a mockingbird, responded.

“Please tell me dinner isn’t going to suck as much as the rest of today has.” I leaned over the top of Billy’s computer, sighing. He looked up, offended.

“Are you dissing Mel’s cooking?”

I snorted a laugh. “No. I just feel useless.” I put my hands on his desk, letting my head hang. “Find anything about the Blade?”

Billy let out an explosive sigh and creaked back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. “Comic book references. Stuff about some swordsman named Bob Anderson. Wesley Snipes pictures.”

“Really?” I perked up, edging around his desk to try to get a look at the screen. “Any half-naked ones?”

“Joanie!”

I drooped. “I didn’t think so. There wasn’t nearly enough half-naked Wesley in those movies, anyway.”

Billy gave me a flat look. “Any luck with the psychic stuff?”