C.E. Murphy - Coyote Dreams

He made me a cop.

I mean, I had the credentials and everything. The department had sent me to the academy because of that whole heritage-and-gender thing, and I hadn’t done too badly, but I’d hired on as a mechanic and nobody’d expected me to stop doing that and start arresting people. Neither, frankly, did Morrison. He figured I’d quit. I figured I’d rather poke myself in the eye than give him the satisfaction. It’d taken six months to get back where I belonged, back down in the garage. I yelled an answer to some half-heard question and crawled out of my pit, content with my place in the universe. That was all I really wanted.

The room changed around me, turning into the reception area upstairs. Dozens of cops moved around, doing their work, getting ready for the day, most of them little more than blurred faces in the background, though I picked a couple people out and waved greetings. Ray, who was built like a fireplug and who was usually the first to warn me when Morrison was on the warpath. Thin-faced Bruce, whose wife Elise made me tamales for fixing their car, looked up from the front desk and gave me a broad smile. “There you are. They’re waiting for you.” He looked me up and down, still beaming. “You look beautiful, Joanie.”

I hadn’t asked. That made me nervous. I looked down at myself to see I was no longer wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but an honest-to-God dress with a dropped waist and a fair amount of frothy cream lace. It could’ve been a wedding dress, though not one of the meringue ones that were so often advertised. It kind of suited me. Pretty but understated. I was also wearing fantastic shoes, with bits of gold glimmering through the straps. I said, “Who’s waiting?” but it was too late: I’d gone around the corner to meet a man in a tuxedo.

Mark Bragg. He looked fantastic, goldy-brown hair brushed back, his tux navy-cut with long tails. I smiled automatically and looked past him; he wasn’t the one I expected. After a few seconds, the one I did expect appeared. Morrison, also in a tuxedo, though his wasn’t nearly as ornate as Mark’s. Barbara Bragg appeared behind him, in a very simple, pretty yellow gown that made mine look all the more formal. I could see the butterfly fluttering on her shoulder.

A burp formed in my stomach and refused to go anywhere, just sat and collected nervousness until I thought I might sick up. I said “Um,” very quietly, and the ridiculous music started. I started to sing, “Big fat and wide,” beneath my breath, but Mark nudged me and shook his head. “No making fun of brides today, Joanne. Not today.”

I nodded, but I didn’t really hear him. Dad wasn’t there. We weren’t exactly close—I didn’t remember the last time I’d called him, in fact—but it seemed like he should be the one walking me down the aisle. Walking with the man I was going to partner myself with was nicely symbolic and all, but I wanted that man to be waiting for me at the altar.

Barb was up there, in the maid of honor’s place, holding a bouquet as bright as her butterfly tattoo. Morrison stood opposite her, and all I could think was he was standing in the wrong place.

I jolted awake with sweat beading on my forehead. Melinda still slept, cheeks flushed with color. The weight that pressed down on her seemed to fill the room, darkness trying to work its way into me, too.

I dragged in a breath through my nostrils and staggered to my feet, rubbing my eyes and then the scar on my cheek. “Arright.” My voice was scratchy. “All right, Jo. You’re awake. It’s okay. Just a nightmare.” Only I wasn’t sure it had been. Overlooking that I thought weddings probably weren’t supposed to be nightmare material, an awful lot of that dream had been just what I wanted. My old life back, my old friends back. It was a little early to be planning a wedding to Mark, but as a flight of fancy it didn’t seem too awful. Except the part where color rushed to my cheeks when I thought about Morrison being the best man. I guessed it was nice my brain thought they’d be friends, but that didn’t make any of it feel quite right.

I shivered and went to look out the window. The sky was graying with the coming dawn, suggesting my nap had lasted longer than it’d seemed. That was twice, first sleeping under Petite and now this. Sleep and me were clearly going to be a dangerous combination for the next few days, until I got whatever was going on figured out. I wondered if I could put in a petition for one of my adventures being done with plenty of extra snooze time, instead of operating on half-brained sleep deprivation, which had been the order of the day so far and appeared to be coming up on the roster yet again.

I put the wish aside and went back to Melinda’s bedside, bracing my face in my fingers as I sat. The air still felt weighty, making me reluctant—or, more accurately, outright afraid—to try slipping into her mind again, or to try following the thing keeping her asleep back to its source. I’d woken up once. I didn’t know if I’d do it again, not when I was sitting there by her side with dark pressure drawing me toward sleep.

I honestly didn’t know which way to turn. I had nothing useful to work with, nothing I could go look up on the Internet and find answers to. Gary, for all his sturdiness, didn’t seem likely to come up with a solution for this one. The only person I could think to ask hadn’t responded to me in almost three weeks, not since I’d encouraged him to shove off in the face of impending doom. Having a snit and staying away didn’t seem like very spirit-guide-like behavior to me, but I’d never had a spirit guide before, so what did I know? “All right,” I whispered out loud again. “One more try, Coyote. I don’t know what else to do.” At least going inside myself seemed less dangerous than questing outward in search of the right thing to do. My index finger started tapping against my cheek, rhythmic little thump-thumps that made a heartbeat pattern. I wasn’t sure it would work, but it was quiet in the house and there was nothing to distract me.

It might’ve been general tiredness that let me slide deep into my own psyche. Sleep deprivation was one of those tools shamans were supposed to use. Either way, it didn’t seem to take very long, Melinda’s bedroom fading around me in favor of a misty, moonlit garden.

There was no use standing around in there yelling for Coyote. I’d tried that several times in the last weeks, to no avail. But it struck me that when I’d come to my garden the very first time, Coyote had found me in an uber-Arizona desert and led me here. I thought if I could get back to that desert—which I vaguely envisioned as being a place accessible by anyone who knew how, rather like Babylon—I might just be able to get Coyote’s attention again.

Of course, the key words there were anyone who knew how . Not for the first time I cursed my own amazing contrariness, and paced my garden, trying to determine how to get out of it.

You could try a door , the snide little voice in my head suggested. I swear, if I could have grabbed it and shaken it, I would have. I nearly clutched my own head to do just that before I got ahold of myself. Or didn’t get ahold of myself, more accurately. “There isn’t a door,” I muttered, then ground my teeth together. I really hated that voice. I especially hated it because it was right a lot of the time.

I mean, technically, I was right. There wasn’t a door in my garden. But it was my garden, and if I wanted a door, then there would be a door. It would be at the misty end, hidden by soft fog. I walked around the garden’s edge, trailing my fingers over the rough stone wall and keeping my gaze forward, expecting the door to appear before my eyes or under my fingers.