C.E. Murphy - Walking Dead

Doherty’s green Miata was parked next to Petite. I’d managed to forget about him, so seeing his car was almost enough to make me climb into Thor’s truck and have my way with it right then and there. While I was wibbling, Thor came out of the precinct-building garage and jangled his keys, siren sound of seduction. “You know you want to.”

I groaned again and caught the keys when he threw them, but threw them back. “You’re right. I do. But I can’t promise to be back here by noon. I’m hoping to arrest bad guys for dessert.”

“You have a bizarre idea of fun, Joanne Walker.” Thor rattled the keys one more time, then swung up into The Truck’s cab. Doherty leaned over his steering wheel, watching us both, and I barely restrained myself from flipping him the bird as I climbed into Petite. He smiled pleasantly and gestured for me to pull out in front of him. I did, then, swearing, drove the speed limit all the way downtown.

I found parking at the First Avenue North Garage, which, at eleven in the morning, was against all odds. Triumphant, I scampered out to leave Doherty behind. He drove around the lot once, and must’ve invoked some kind of higher power of parking, because by the time he got back to Petite, a late-’80s Chrysler sedan had pulled out of the spot beside her and given him room to pull in. I wanted parking karma like that, although if I had to be an insurance adjudicator to get it, I wasn’t sure it was worth the cost.

At least my unwelcome shadow didn’t seem inclined to follow me into buildings. He was only interested in what I did with my car. I left him behind to watch over Petite—it was my car under surveillance, so I could interpret things as I liked—and bought two tickets to the Space Needle’s fiftieth-story observation-deck pinnacle. Thor met me at the elevators and a tour guide told us that the Needle was the height of eighteen hundred and fifteen Mars bars set end to end. I whispered, “When did Mars bars become a standard unit of measurement?” to Thor, and the guide gave us a dirty look when we began snickering. We couldn’t help it. “Marsing” wasn’t a common synonym for laughter, and she was the one who started talking in terms of candy.

The Sight washed out my normal vision as we stepped into the rotating restaurant. The food was decent but hugely overpriced, which I thought should somehow show up in astral terms, like flashing neon signs over every plate reading, You’re paying too much! It didn’t happen, though. Very disappointing. Auras ought to come with a sense of humor attached.

A pretty girl at the greeting desk said, “Two for lunch?” in a voice that did a wonderful job of belying how very bored she was. Her aura lay flat against her skin, occasionally popping, and I was fairly sure they were the aural equivalent of spit bubbles. Maybe auras had a sense of humor after all.

I said, “Yes, by the window, please,” and Thor gave me a dismayed look, his own colors going flat. “You own a truck that takes a stepladder to get into, and you don’t like heights?”

“The Truck is different. It’s not a six-hundred-foot drop from the running board.” He edged his way toward his seat when the hostess showed us to our table, and leaned toward the center of the room once he’d sat down. Blue and gray sucked up against his skin, like even his aura was nervous.

I tilted my head so I was in alignment with him. “Maybe you should ask for a seat somewhere else. I’ll come find you when I’m done looking for…stuff.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to explain. I just didn’t know how to summarize “looking for metaphysical evidence of a death cauldron’s location” in ten words or less. Like that, I guess.

“Your eyes are gold.” Thor spoke on top of my last few words, his aura suddenly bouncing back with interest. At least he dropped his voice to say, “You’re doing magic, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” I crossed my eyes like I could see their color, then blinked at him. “I needed to come up here to see if I could get a pinpoint on something, but I didn’t know you were afraid of heights. If you want to move…”

“No, no, it’s okay, I don’t want to get in the way of your thing.” His aura’d brightened right up. Apparently Joanne’s Funky Eye Tricks trumped long drops. That was good to know. Wondering if he’d asked me out in the first place because I was weird was less good. Maybe he was the kind of guy who couldn’t resist the strange, and dumped it once he’d figured it out.

On the positive side, I was so far from figuring myself out that presumably nobody else had a snowball’s chance. I could be looking at the love of my life. “Tell me if there’s anything good on the menu. I want to…” I made myself really look out the window for the first time since we’d come into the restaurant, and discovered I didn’t want to at all.

On the Go Team Me side, I’d been right: the Needle gave a fantastic view of the city and let me see, far more clearly, the thin inky blackness spreading over it. On the not-so-great flip side, a glance was enough to tell me that the death shroud was pooling in places. I sat there, gaze bleak as the room slowly rotated to show me other stretches of city. Thor asked me something about the menu and I nodded, less than half-aware that he put in an order with the waitress a few moments later.

Areas in the city glowed with serenity. Some of those soft inviting places were parks, deliberate bastions of wilderness within Seattle’s confines. Others were graveyards, and even there, bursts of light—animals, people, insects—whisked through the calm light, proving that life prevailed.

Cauldron murk clouded and gathered above the cemeteries. From the distance I was at, it looked like far-off rain clouds, seeping toward the earth without yet reaching it. Watching it set up tenterhooks under my skin, thin piercing discomfort that dug into the center of me and began pulling outward. Pulling toward the black rain, in fact, as if that was where I needed to go. That sick-stomach feeling had gotten me into the shamanic mess that was my life. Having it step up again, no longer integrated into the rest of my magic, promised all sorts of damage about to be unleashed.

I turned my wrist up like I wanted to check the time, but I already knew everything I needed to. It wasn’t quite noon, a good six or eight hours before Halloween night arrived. Come sunset, the cauldron mist would touch the ground. I was sure of it. I was also pretty certain something like all hell would break loose.

“Edward?”

“Yeah?” Flashes of red came through his usual stormy colors, concern and protectiveness. He put his fork down—the waitress had brought our food, and I hadn’t even noticed—to give me his full attention. Red turned orange and dulled, a visible-to-me effort to tamp down his worry. I pressed my eyes shut, as if doing so would convince the Sight to turn off and stay that way. It wouldn’t work, but at least when I opened my eyes again it had left me for the moment. It made looking at him easier, although it didn’t make what I had to say any smoother.

“When you get out of work tonight I want you to do me a favor. Stop at a store and get some rock salt, and then go home, lock the doors and line every window and outside door with it. If you’ve got any left, make paper-bag bombs with the rest, and don’t answer the door for anybody until morning.”

He stared at me a good long time, then cracked a grin. “Sure you don’t want me to load my shotgun up?”

I wanted it to be funny. I really did. All the funny parts of me, though, shriveled up under how level my voice was: “If you’ve got one, do it. But don’t answer the door.”

Bit by bit, Thor’s smile fell away. “You’re freaking me out, Joanne. What are you talking about? Rock salt?”