C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

"Stop getting my ass kicked," I finished firmly. "I want the shamanic handbook, Yote. I want it all."

He laughed. "Oh how the mighty have fallen. It'd be easier if…" A crease appeared between his eyebrows and he sat up, exhaling a sharp breath that ended ruefully. "Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought."

Nerves seized my heart and I sat up, too, clutching my pillow. I didn't want him to say anything else, because I was pretty certain of what he'd say. We had, in fact, spent most of the past couple days not-quite-actively avoiding serious talk, which was made easier by me having to work. That made the hours we had together a little more precious, and neither of us had wanted to gum them up with anything other than living in the moment. It took everything I had to whisper, "What's going to be hard?"

"My grandfather bought me a plane ticket home last night, so I could be there for Christmas evening. It leaves SeaTac at ten-thirty." Coyote shot me an apologetic look and I shook it off even as a pang cut through me.

"You've been unconscious for months. I don't blame him for wanting you home for Christmas." I wanted him here for Christmas, but I wasn't quite selfish enough to say so aloud. Or maybe I wasn't quite brave enough. "That's not the hard part, is it."

"You're not supposed to know me that well. No, the hard part…it'd be easier to teach you if we were together. In the same place, I mean," he said hastily, and then, less certainly, "And maybe together, too. I know you can't today, but…but you could come with me, Jo."

I bent my head over the pillow, eyes closed. That was exactly what I'd thought he was going to say, and it made a hard little helpless place inside me. It took a long time to speak, and even then my voice was small and tight. "You're the shape of my dreams, Coyote. You came to me in my sleep when I was a girl and taught me magic, and now you're here and alive and beautiful and I—" I stumbled over the words so hard I almost swallowed my tongue, but I met his eyes so he could see me saying them: "I love you. You're my dreams come true. And this was going to happen," I said even more quietly, and mostly to myself. "Right from the moment you came back, this was going to happen. And it isn't fair, because it would break my heart to go and it'll break my heart to stay."

"But you're going to stay," Coyote said very softly. He glanced down as I slumped over my pillow. "I knew you would. I still had to ask." He touched my chin, making me raise my eyes, and offered a shaky smile. "Hey, I'll be back up here, you know. I've got to come back up when the weather clears so I can drive the Chief home. Maybe you won't be able to say no a second time."

"Maybe I won't." That idea hurt as much as the other. I snuffled and Coyote's gaze softened. He pulled me against his chest, and we stayed there, silent, until the alarm went off and it was time for me to go to work.

When I got out of the shower there was a flat rectangular black velvet box on my pillow. Not a ring box, but it didn't have to be: even as it was, it made my stomach lurch so hard I actually got dizzy. I hung on to the bathroom door frame for a couple seconds, just staring at the box before the penny dropped and I snatched it up to run into the living room shouting, "Coyote? Cyrano? Cyrano! "

He was gone. He was gone, and I'd known it on some level from the instant I saw the box. I knelt on the living room floor, wearing a towel and nothing else, working up the nerve to open the damned box. I was already late for work by the time I made myself do it.

Four earrings lay inside it. Two were gold wraps. One was a bird, so stylized you had to know me to know it was a raven. The other was more obviously a snake, with a rattle and all.

The other two were a wire pair, meant for pierced ears, which I'd never had. I got to my feet and went into the bathroom, stopping for a needle on my way.

Popping the needle through my lobes didn't hurt at all, nor did threading the earrings through the raw holes. It only took a whisper of healing power to seal the damage over, and then I stood looking at myself in the mirror like I was a stranger. Looking at the earrings, made of bone so smooth it seemed shaped, rather than carved.

Coyotes, crying for the moon.

Saturday, December 31, 11:48 P.M.

I had yet to get used to the earrings, which brushed my jaw and made me endlessly aware of their presence. Made me more aware of everything that had to do with my ears, for that matter, and that included the radio shouting in them. Its blaring countdown was the only human contact I'd had for hours. There were better places to be—Billy and Melinda's, for example; a New Year's party was in full swing, and Billy had called twice to see where I was. I'd promised to be there by midnight, but at this late juncture, not even Petite would get me there in time.

I had paperwork spread all over my desk, Google results and newspaper clippings and police files from all over the country. Missing persons reports were shuffled together like puzzle pieces, scraps of data highlighted or circled with red and yellow pens. I needed a drink of water. My eyes were dry from scowling at so much paperwork.

The office door opened, sending me half out of my skin with fright. I clutched my chest, and Morrison, in the doorway, did a lousy job of covering a laugh. "What're you doing here, Walker?"

"Besides getting the life scared out of me?" I settled back down in my chair, gulping a couple deep breaths to calm my heart. "Just, ah. Just finishing up some paperwork. Sir."

"It's New Year's Eve. You're off duty. You're supposed to be at the Hollidays'." He let the door drift shut behind him as he wove his way through desks to reach mine. "What's so important?"

"It's just…" I gestured at my papers. "I was just trying to figure out who she was." "Just" implied I hadn't spent most of my off-hours since Coyote left at this very same task, although half the department had commented that I was showing a lot of dedication given that it was the holidays.

Morrison sat on the edge of my desk, arms folded across his chest. "Any luck?"

"I don't know. We're never going to know for certain." I straightened up and pulled a handful of papers to the fore. "But this woman, Liz Gregory…she was Tlingit, from up in the Alaskan Panhandle near Juneau. She went missing last winter, during that cold snap in March. They never found her body, and…" I uncovered a newspaper photograph and handed it to Morrison. I'd long since memorized its image, a roundish, happy-faced woman sitting in front of a Native Alaskan-style block-print of a bear. She wore long black hair in a thick braid, and had a simple thong necklace with a claw pendant lying outside her T-shirt.

"Bear totem," he said after a moment. "Is that what I'm looking at?"

I nodded. "I think so. The newspaper stories about her…" I sighed. "She worked outdoors a lot, did a lot of living culture work within her community. There was no mention of her being a shaman or a mystic of any sort, but I'm not sure that would've been reported on even if it were true. And maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe she was just someone who had a big spirit and belonged outdoors, and when she got lost, the cold took her."

"The cold?"

I closed my eyes. "The place where her spirit was caught, Morrison…it was so cold. Cold enough to hurt. Cold enough that you'd do…anything. Anything at all, to get warm again. I didn't spend very long there, but you'd go mad, boss. Anybody would. I don't think very many people get out of there, once they're lost, and I'm not surprised you'd become something terrible in the trying." I shivered, trying to throw the memories off. "Anyway, the bear totem. I haven't contacted her family to ask about it yet, but…"