The doorbell rang.
My social life was not such that the doorbell rang twice in one week, much less twice in five minutes. I stuck my head out, turtle-like, over my omelet, surprise keeping me in the pose for a few seconds. Then, afraid Gary would dump my food if I left it unguarded, I clutched the plate and went to answer the door.
A leggy blond woman and a six-year-old girl stood outside it. The girl noticed neither the bathrobe nor the plate of food I held and squealed, “Ossifer Walker!” before leaping up into my arms with the confidence of a child who’d never been dropped.
Chili-cheese omelet went flying over the door, the rug and the girl as I fumbled the plate while catching her. Her mother looked completely dismayed. “I am so sorry. I thought—it was this morning, wasn’t it? Tuesday, nine-fifteen? We were going to have a tour of the station?”
“Oh, God.” I juggled the girl around until she was sitting on my hip, and gave her a falsely bright smile that she didn’t seem to see through. “Hi, Ashley. You look nice and healthy. Are you keeping hydrated?”
“Yes,” she announced, pleased with knowing the word. “I drink six glasses of water a day.” She held up all ten fingers, demonstratively, and my fakey smile turned into a real grin.
“Good for you. Um, Ashley? We’ve got chili all over ourselves. We should probably get cleaned up.”
“Do we hafta?”
“Yes,” her mother and I said together, and I put Ashley down. I’d encountered her a few weeks earlier, the victim of heat stroke. My power had refused to let me ignore it that time, and once her core temperature was stabilized I’d sent her to the hospital. She’d come away from it with the idea that I was some kind of hero, and that she wanted to grow up to be a “peace ossifer,” just like me. “I’m sorry,” I said to her mother. Allison. Allison and Ashley Hampton. Just the names sounded like they belonged somewhere a lot ritzier than a college apartment turned permanent abode. “I completely spaced it. If you’re not in a time crunch I can get cleaned up and—”
“Wow,” Ashley said dreamily. I wrinkled up my face and looked over my shoulder. Mark, in all his half-naked glory, was leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, grinning. See, when a six-year-old notices that a guy’s gorgeous, you know it’s not just your overactive imagination telling you he is.
“Breakfast, ladies?” He was going to use all the food in my house. “We’ve got omelets and doughnuts.”
“Mommy!” Ashley crowed. “Can I have a doughnut pllleaaaase?”
“You already had breakfast, Ashley,” Allison said automatically. Ashley wriggled all over.
“I know, but plllleaaaaase?”
“Come on in.” A sense of the absurd was blooming over me, forming a stupid amused smile on my face. “Join the party. Mark can feed you,” I said, like that was perfectly normal, “and I’ll get dressed and we can go to the station.” I ushered Allison Hampton into the apartment, leaned on the door and waited for another shoe to drop.
The phone rang, and I laughed out loud. Everyone peered at me curiously as I made my way over chili-stained carpet to pick it up. “Grand Central Station.”
“This is Phoebe,” a woman said. “You’ve been a total flake the last two weeks, so I’m calling to remind you about your—”
“Fencing lesson,” I said with a groan that sounded like a laugh even to me. “I know this is going to shock you, but—”
“You forgot.” Phoebe sounded smug. “That’s why I’m calling. If you’re not here in—” I could imagine her looking at her watch in the pause “—twenty-three minutes,” she went on, “I’m going to come kick your tall skinny ass up and down the Ave. I will never make a fencer of you if you don’t come to practice, Joanne.”
“You sound like my mother,” I said, except she didn’t, because not only did my mother have an Irish accent, but she’d also dumped me with my father when I was three months old, so I’d never had the pleasure, or lack thereof, of being lectured by her. At least, not until after she was dead, which was some more of that lack of normality that I didn’t like about my life. Nonetheless, Phoebe sounded like what I imagined mothers to sound like.
“Twenty-two minutes, Joanne.”
“I can’t make it,” I said with a shrug. Ashley, in the background, squealed with delight. I looked into the kitchen to see Mark flipping an omelet, like he was a real chef or something. “I’ve got company,” I added, although Phoebe knew me well enough she’d never believe it.
“It’s nine in the morning. How can you have company? You’re always saying you have no life.”
I held the phone out toward the kitchen. “Everyone please say hello to Phoebe.”
A chorus of hellos swept over me and I put the phone back to my ear. “See?”
“All right,” Phoebe said in a no-nonsense voice, “but we’re going out clubbing tonight so you can tell me what this is all about.”
“Clubbing,” I echoed. “What, like cavemen?”
“You’re the only person I know who might really mean that. Clubbing as in dance clubbing, after dinner.”
“I see. Are you threatening me into social activities?”
“Yes. And if you say no I’ll beat you up.”
I grinned. “Assuming I ever come to another lesson so you can.” I’d taken up fencing after a sword-bearing god had skewered me. Shaman lessons, those freaked me out. Fencing lessons, those were basically normal. Even I could see the pattern developing. “Okay,” I said, heading off Phoebe’s splutters. “Tonight. We’ll do something. I promise.”
“See you at eight,” she said in a tone that brooked no compromise, and hung up.
The doorbell rang. I turned around and gaped at it. Gary came out of the kitchen, looking as astonished as I did. “I can’t imagine,” I said before he asked, and went back to the door to answer it for the third time that morning.
“Walker.” Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department stood on my doorstep, looking less like a superhero and more like a sunburned, unhappy man than usual. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and the collar of his shirt was loose, neither of which I could remember ever seeing on him before. Even dressed down, he was enough snazzier than me that he took in my moss-green robe and messy hair with a single scathing glance. “Get dressed. Holliday’s in a coma.”
CHAPTER 3
My hangover returned with a vengeance, a brand-new tire iron slamming into my brain along with Morrison’s words. For a moment my vision doubled, so there were two tense-looking Morrisons looming over me. I checked the impulse to stand on my toes so Morrison’s shod state didn’t make him marginally taller than me. Normally we looked each other in the eye, the same height right down to the last half inch.
“What? I just saw him last night. He was fine. What are you talking about? Is Mel okay?” I backed out of the door even as I asked questions, letting Morrison into my apartment.
“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Gary said from the kitchen doorway. Morrison didn’t quite do a double take at the old man, but it was a near thing, his lips thinning and nostrils flaring. “Mr. Muldoon.” Morrison was one of those who thought I had Something Going On with Gary. He transferred his attention back to me, expression saying both, “I knew it,” and at the same time clearly wondering why I wasn’t dressed and ready to go yet. “Melinda Holliday called me this morning to inform me Detective Holliday wouldn’t be in. Sometime after midnight last night he fell into a sleep that he can’t be woken from. She’s all right,” he added a little more gently. “Upset, but all right.”
Panic clutched my heart in quick pulses. Billy Holliday was one of my oldest friends at the department, a big man whose unfortunate name had prompted him to a cross-dressing quirk. At least, that was my theory. I’d never been brave enough, or maybe rude enough, to ask outright why he did it.