But on the other hand, my mother had just sacrificed her immortal soul to save my life, my father was missing, and my son had come a hair’s breadth from getting eaten by a soul-devouring monster. I’d had very little sleep and insufficient emotional support. I was perfectly willing to admit my timing was terrible, but given the all-or-nothing crisis my life tended to be, it wasn’t like there was going to be a good time to throw my hat in and say, “Go away, the next few hours belongs to me.”
So I shoved guilt into a box and booted it to the curb. “Les, this is Captain Michael Morrison of the North Precinct Seattle Police Department. Morrison, this is Sheriff Lester Lee. We’re all on the same side here.”
Les gave me a look that said obviously Morrison was a lot more on my side than he himself was, and that he, rationally or not, resented that. Morrison read the look as clearly as I did, and I could all but feel him file that one away to ask about later. Les didn’t exactly put it aside, muttering, “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t arrest you for fleeing the scene of a crime,” with half-credible threat in his voice.
“Because you know perfectly well I didn’t kill those people, and because I’m guessing if there are any prints scorched into their foreheads, they match up with the bodies who were already in the room.”
He muttered incomprehensibly, then with slightly more volume said, “For public displays of indecency, then.”
He had me dead to rights on that one, even if we were up on a mountaintop and he was the only public around. I was still smart enough to change the subject. “What’s going on down there that you’re up here?”
His expression went black. “The news media picked up last night’s deaths. When you called I was already arguing about whether this had to become a federal case, but with the second wave the FBI has taken over. Murder on the Qualla. Six months from now it’ll be a movie of the week. Sara’s taking point—”
“Really? This isn’t her jurisdiction.”
“It’s her or let somebody who’s got no business here at all come in. At least she knows what’s really going on.”
I winced. Sara had already taken a mystical case in the teeth because of me, when the serial killer she was hunting turned out to be a man-eating monster called a wendigo. I doubted she was even done clawing her way out of that trail having gone cold, and now she was going to be leading another investigation that would have no satisfactory answers. Personally I was grateful it would be her leading it, and not some stick-up-the-ass white man who had no use or respect for the Cherokee culture. Professionally, I wished it was the stick-up-the-ass white guy, because two cases like this in a row could destroy Sara’s career. “So, what, she sent you up here to...?”
“Find out where the hell you’d gone, and why.” Les glared at Morrison again. “She’s going to love the answer.”
“There are two bodies over there,” Morrison said in his mildest ever voice. Then I did feel guilty, because I’d totally forgotten the magnificent arrival had meant Morrison had needed to shoot some people. On the other hand, they hadn’t been very people-like anymore, and I was reasonably certain that if he’d been all torn up about it, we’d have ended up discussing the case and what exactly he’d just had to do, rather than falling into my car like a couple of hormone-addled teenagers. Guilt went away again. I was beginning to like this new, stable, grown-up me.
Les said, “There are?” through his teeth, and whatever mild-manneredness or calm Morrison and I had been sharing evaporated. We exchanged glances, then peered over Petite, beyond Les, to where Carrie Little Turtle and the other wight had fallen.
There were no bodies. There were empty clothes and white dust smears on the red earth, but there were no bodies. After a brief, loud silence, Morrison said to me, “The zombies didn’t do that.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “No. No, they didn’t. Les, they were...the...they...” Even talking to a believer didn’t mean it was easy to say, “Apparently they disintegrated after Morrison shot them,” though after another try or two I got that out.
Les’s voice dropped an octave. “He shot them?”
“Les, they were undead. Wights. Revenants. Something, I don’t know. I’m calling them wights. Their hair was white and their eyes were red and they sucked the life out of the people keeping vigil and they were trying to do it to me. I tried fighting them with magic and it was like fighting fire with gasoline. They slurped it right up. So although I’m very, very sorry I’ll have to tell Danny there is no body for him to bury, I am frankly very glad Morrison showed up and shot a couple of them. So you go tell Sara it’s all gone horribly wrong, and I’ll go into the mountains and stop these things.”
“Not without me, you won’t. You said yourself you’d get lost.”
I had. And I’d also said I’d let Aidan be my guide, which seemed like an even worse idea now than it had at the time. “Sara needs to know—”
“You have her phone number.”
That, while true, was a detail that had slipped my mind. I stared thoughtfully at the Impala. “Ever read a mystery novel set in the ’80s and thought, ‘Man, if they’d had cell phones this book would only be twenty pages long?’ No? It’s just me? Okay then.” The point I was really trying to make was it had also probably been easier to send people on important but time-consuming errands when the whole world hadn’t been carrying space-age communicators in their pockets. I got the phone and called Sara, who told us all in no uncertain terms to get our asses back down to town. “You,” I said to Les when I’d reported this, “may be obliged to take that as a direct order. Me, I’m not even law enforcement anymore—”
“Thank God,” murmured Morrison, which made me grin even as I kept talking.
“—and Morrison is, um. On vacation?”
“Emergency family leave,” he said, and my heart flip-flopped.
“And if you go up in the mountains by yourselves we’re going to have four people missing instead of just two.”
That kept being a valid argument. I took a breath, but Morrison said, “I know you can’t track with the magic, Walker, but I’ve Seen what you See. Can’t you just use the Sight to get yourself pointed back at civilization? Towns look different than wilderness, don’t they?”
I shut my mouth. Les shut his. After a minute I said, “So we’ll go wight-hunting now, then, okay?”
“Aidan will never forgive you.”
“That,” I said firmly, “is a risk I’m willing to take. He’s twelve. He really doesn’t need to be putting himself in the line of fire. So if you’ll go report in to Sara, Morrison and I will go hunt these bastards down the old-fashioned way.” With shotguns and salt, but Les didn’t need to know that.
He scowled, but he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I was certain Sara wouldn’t inform her superiors that the local LEOs were being uncooperative, because she wouldn’t want any more publicity than necessary, either. On the other hand, the local populace was likely to be uncooperative, and Les’s presence would smooth things over. He couldn’t really stay, even if it was his personal preference. He finally jabbed a finger at me. “You keep me informed.”
“I will.” I meant it, though he didn’t look like he believed me. After another minute of glaring, he got in his car and went away, leaving me and Morrison to exhale loudly. I said, “This is a mess,” as I put my phone in my pocket and collected the shotgun from where I’d tossed it.