Thunderbird Falls

Morrison strode out of his office and down the hall. I scrambled to my feet. “No O for you,” I told Billy, “and streetwalking for me.” He made the obligatory snicker and I rolled my eyes. “I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”

“I’ll try to find out about snakes,” Billy called after me, and I ducked out of the station with Morrison hot on my tail.

CHAPTER FIVE

Morrison didn’t catch up with me. He didn’t have to. I spent the rest of the morning reciting what he would’ve said in my head, anyway. It was a bad sign when I’d bawl myself out and save my boss the trouble. I found myself writing more parking tickets than were strictly necessary. There was a kind of quota about them. Too many meant I was being overzealous, but not enough meant I was slacking. Being the sympathetic sort—at least when it came to cars—I usually erred on the side of slacking, but I was taking a mean vengeance against the universe by overdoing it today. I slapped a ticket on a double-parked cab and stalked by, muttering at the Morrison in my head.

“Lady, I cannot believe you just did that.”

My shoulders rose toward my ears of their own accord and my face wrinkled up until it felt like a raisin around my nose.

“I mean, after all I done for you, you go and write me a ticket? A…Christ, lady! A sixty dollar ticket?”

The raisin of my face started to split with a grin. I peeked over my shoulder. Leaning on the cab I’d just ticketed was the most solid old man I’d ever seen. His massive gray eyebrows were lifted toward an all-white hairline, and even squinting into the sun, his gray eyes were bright as he grinned.

“Gary,” I said, trying not to let my own smile slide into “idiotic.” “I thought you were calling me ‘copper’ these days.”

“I just can’t get the hang of it,” the cabbie admitted. He shoved away from the cab, holding the ticket as if it were something two weeks dead, and arched his bushy eyebrows more sharply. “You ticketed me, Jo. Doncha love me anymore?”

I snatched the ticket and stuffed it in my mouth, chewing. Two gnaws in, the flat gray taste of the paper and the sharp blue of the ink stung my tongue, and my mouth went all Mr. Magoo while I tried to figure out what to do with it now. “I didn’t know you were back,” I croaked, and spat the gooey ticket into my palm. “Don’t try that,” I advised, then grinned stupidly again. “You look good.”

“’Course I do,” Gary said with pleasant arrogance. He still had the build of the linebacker he’d once been, and deep-set Hemingway wrinkles assured the world he knew the score. “How’s my crazy dame?”

“Fine,” I said automatically, considered, then nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. You look like California was good for you. You’re tanned.”

Gary’s expression closed down, some of the brightness dying from gray eyes. “First time I’d been since Annie died.”

A cord of loss knotted around my heart, for all that I’d never met his wife. Gary’d walked into my life—or I’d climbed into his cab, more accurately—six months ago, the day everything went to hell. Somehow he’d become the most real thing in my life since then. “Was it tough?”

“Yeah. Sometimes. But she woulda hated the thought of me sittin’ around until I was rotted enough to die, so I figured I better get off my duff and go see some of the world again.”

I exhaled a snort. “Gary, I’m going to rot before you do.”

He squinted up at the sky. “In this heat, you’re prob’ly right. If I’d known it was gonna be ninety by noon, I mighta stayed in San Diego. At least the girls there wear bikinis.”

I put on my best indignant look. “Are you cheating on me, Gary? Running around with bikini-clad bimbos?”

“Yeah,” he said, good humor restored. “Blond ones.”

“You’re breaking my heart.” I smiled so I’d fool myself into thinking I wasn’t just a little bit jealous of a seventy-three-year-old’s romantic notions.

“Guess I better invite you over for dinner, then,” Gary said with aplomb.

“It’s a date,” I said instantly. “Wait. You’re not cooking, are you?”

He let out a shout of laughter. “Like you can complain about my cooking. I know what you live on.”

“Hey, you’ve got me eating frozen Italian dinners instead of mac and cheese. All your nagging did some good.”

“I don’t nag.”

“You do too. Italian dinners have vegetables in them. I haven’t eaten vegetables without nagging in my whole twenty-seven years.”

“Arright, if you say so, Jo.” He gave me a good-natured grin, like he knew he was humoring me.

Actually, it was true. I’d started eating better—frozen entrees did qualify as better than an endless diet of macaroni and cheese—in part because I wanted to look as good as he did at seventy-three. Hell, I’d be glad to look as good as he did at twenty-eight. “I get off work at seven, barring disaster.”

Gary’s bushy eyebrows drew together. “Been any lately?”

I hesitated, then brushed the answer away with a wave of my hand. “I’ll tell you at dinner.”

“Arright.” Gary beamed at me. “Look, I gotta take off, there’s this crazy lady cop who wants to ticket my cab. Call when you’re on the way over. Dinner at seven-thirty.”

“It’s a date,” I repeated. “See you tonight.”

Gary gave me a broad wink and climbed into his cab. I stood on the sidewalk, smiling stupidly as I watched him drive away.

Gary being back in town lifted my spirits despite the oppressive heat. With a dinner date to look forward to, I stopped writing so many tickets and grabbed a doughnut for lunch. I wanted to drop into the astral realm to apologize to Coyote, and a real meal would take too long. Besides, I was on street beat, which I told myself gave me license to eat anything I wanted because I’d walk it off. So far I believed me.

Doughnut in hand, I scurried down to the garage, my favorite place in the station. The smell of gasoline and motor oil soothed the savage beast, or at least the savage Joanne.

Not everyone down there would meet my eye. I still hadn’t gotten used to that, especially from Nick, who’d been my supervisor and a pretty good friend not all that long ago. His greeting was made up of shoving his hands in his pockets and lifting his shoulders as he dropped his chin, turning him into a no-neck wonder. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the wall as I gave him a tentative smile. Tentative didn’t used to be in my vocabulary around the boys in the garage. We’d worked together for three years, and I’d thought I was just one of the guys. But in January I’d invited the Wild Hunt into the garage’s office, and two months later I’d collapsed on the stairs, bleeding from the ears. Since then things had been a little touchy when I came down to visit. I hoped if I just kept it cool everybody would relax again, but so far it hadn’t worked.

Still, hope sprang eternal. I strengthened my smile for Nick and said, “Hi,” as normally as I could. My voice squeaked and broke, which at least made him look at me. I cleared my throat and smiled again, wishing it didn’t feel plastic. “I was wondering if I could hang out in the office for a little bit.”

Nick’s gaze snapped back to the wall and he shrugged his shoulders higher. “Sure. Whatever.”

Not the most ringing endorsement I’d ever heard. Nick stalked off to harass one of the other mechanics, who gave me a wry look and rolled his eyes. It made me feel better, and I said, “Thanks,” to Nick’s retreating back before turning to discover my arch nemesis, Thor the Thunder God, standing about eight inches behind me. Thor—whose real name was something dull like Ed or Eddie or Freddie—had been hired to replace me in the motor pool. He was blond, about six foot five, and had shoulders that Thor himself would envy. I figured him taking my job gave me license to call him whatever I wanted. For some reason he didn’t like it.

We both stepped the same direction, trying to get out of each other’s way. We both hesitated, then lurched the other way. By the third twitch, I was grinning. “Shall we dance?”

He took a deliberately large step backward and gestured me by with a sarcastic flourish. My smile fell away. “Thank you, O Mighty God of Thunder.” I saw his mouth twist as I headed for the office. It was the one place in the station I thought I could slide into the astral realm without the help of a drum. I was comfortable there, and back in January I’d done enough—

This shaman thing was getting to me. I’d almost thought done enough magic there without the idea even making me hitch. I sat down with a shiver and tried to push the thought away. Despite everything, I didn’t like being comfortable enough with the idea that magic was real to just think it casually. Having oatmeal for breakfast was casual. Doing magic was not.

Then, excruciatingly aware of the irony, I relaxed and thought of my garden.

The bottom fell out of the world and I slid into a tunnel, twisting and bumping over earthen ridges, fast enough to make my nose tickle from the vibrations. It reminded me of the defensive driving course at the academy, rattling over speed bumps placed too closely together.

The tunnel shot to the left, leveling out and narrowing. I was aware that, like the tunnel, I became smaller and smaller as I scurried along it. In what little studying I’d done, I’d read that shapeshifting inside one’s own psyche was the first step toward a complete and physical shape-change. The book had talked earnestly about transforming into an eagle, a bear, a wolf—the usual World Wildlife Fund Charismatic Megafauna sorts of creatures. Nothing I’d read ever mentioned people turning into badgers or earthworms.

I realized with a dismayed jolt that the tunnel had disappeared entirely and I was grinding my way through the earth blindly, gnawing on dirt to move forward.

Earthworm. I really needed to learn to be careful about what I was thinking in trance states.

Badger, I thought encouragingly, and a few seconds later burst upward through the earth in a flurry of dirt and strong claws. I scrambled out of my tunnel and shook myself all over, bits of grass and soil plopping to the grass around me.

Everyone has an inner landscape, shaped by the events and thoughts that make a life. The first time I’d been in mine, it had been stiff and parched. Now it looked distorted, seen from only several inches above the ground and in faded grayscale. To the right was a thick, shimmering pool of mercury, ripples wobbling over the surface to break against the shore. Behind it was a tall granite-streaked bluff, too high to easily see the top of from a badger’s vantage point. To the left, a lawn manicured so short it was nearly dead spread out, a handful of dark-leafed hedges sprouting up in asture blocks of green. Stone pathways and stone benches made straight lines through the garden.