One of the cops, bemused, said, “You sure you’re in charge?” and I flapped my phone hand at him, patting myself down with the other as I searched for my badge.
Which, of course, I didn’t have. I wheezed an obscenity, then waved my phone more urgently. “North Precinct. Detective Joanne Walker. Not on duty, but in charge. Dial Morrison on the phone for confirmation.” Morrison obviously wasn’t going to answer, but the call would go through to his cell, which identified him as the North Precinct captain. I hoped that would be enough.
The cop took my phone and made the call as I leaned on the building, catching my breath. He looked about fourteen, though he couldn’t have been less than twenty-one, only seven years my junior. I hoped he wasn’t fresh enough out of the Academy to be determined to do everything absolutely by the book, since Morrison wasn’t going to answer. After a few seconds he took a breath like he was about to speak to someone, then let it out as he waited on the brief, clipped message announcing Morrison wasn’t available right now. He mouthed, “Not picking up,” to me, and said, “This is Officer Donald King with the West Precinct. I was calling to confirm Detective Joanne Walker’s jurisdiction in the case of a wolf sighting at Pike Place Market. You can reach me at,” and gave a number I promptly forgot. Then he hung up, handed me the phone and said, “It’s the biggest damned wolf I’ve ever seen. It’s gotta be four feet tall at the shoulder. You want to be in charge, you got it. What can we do?”
“Point me toward it and whatever you do, just. Don’t. Shoot it. In fact, just point me toward it and stay up here to guard the door. Don’t let it out, if it runs.”
Young Officer King gave me a dubious look, but nodded. “How’re you gonna catch it, ma’am? You don’t have a tranq gun or a net….”
“Through force of personality.” I had my breath back, and pushed off the corrugated steel door I’d been leaning on. “All right. Let me in, let me in, by the hairs, by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.”
King gave me another uncertain look. “That story didn’t end up so well for the wolf, ma’am.”
Like I needed a fairy-tale pedant at my back. “Good point. What level’s he on?”
“Down next to the comic shop,” the other cop said. “Or he was last time we got a look at him. He got backed up against one of the internal gates, so we closed the next one up and called in.”
I didn’t know how Morrison had gotten that deep into the Market in the first place, but I counted small blessings that he’d gotten stuck, and jogged through the single open door.
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 1:39 A.M.
Most tourists knew the Market from the ubiquitous fishmonger images: cheerful guys flinging whole fish at one another while maintaining outrageous, loud conversation and flirtations. That was the Market’s public face. But in the middle of the night, all that was left of the daytime bustle were concrete floors and the distinct, cold scent of fish. I broke to the left, heading for wood floors and slopes and stairs that offered only emergency lighting and exit signs to see by. In daylight, the Market was quirky, loud, entertaining and slightly impossible to navigate, since its floors didn’t necessarily match up with each other. It was less fun in gloom, though halfway to the comic shop I realized the Sight could take care of that little problem, and braced for brilliance as I kicked it on.
The impossible brightness didn’t hit me, this time. I was getting better at tempering the new power. That was good. It showed me warm flashes of human auras that said a couple people slept in shops, which surprised me. The owners had to know about them: homeless people came into the Market to get out of the weather, but I doubted many of them ended up behind the counter in the bead store or under a café table once the businesses closed down for the day. The Market’s hours were varied, with restaurants staying open fairly late and farmers opening early, so with restrooms handy and tacit permission from a store owner, it probably wasn’t a bad place to flop for a few nights. Certainly safer than being on the street, in a pinch.
Except for the occasional dire-size wolf running around after hours, anyway. The Sight pinpointed Morrison as easily as it had noticed the sleepers: he was one floor below me, and judging from the comparative calm of his aura, no longer terrified. Not happy: there were red spikes through the purple and blue, indicating agitation, but at least he wasn’t going every which way with panic. I ran downstairs, trying not to thump too loudly.
Apparently I thumped loudly enough, because instead of a content wolf curled up in a corner with his tail over his nose, which is what I was hoping for, I got a bristly wolf with his back to a corner and his teeth bared. He’d come as far as he could within the Market; there wasn’t enough room for him to clear a jump between the gate behind him and the ceiling above it. Of course, I didn’t know how he’d gotten through locked front doors, either, so I wasn’t absolutely certain the jump was insurmountable. I had the hopeful thought that he’d decided to stop running and wait for me to show up and rescue him, but the snarling muzzle didn’t support that theory.
I stopped a good forty feet from him, wondering if making myself smaller would come across as non-threatening or vulnerable to his wolfy mind. Non-threatening was good. Vulnerable, not so much. Instead of trying I said, “Hey, boss,” as softly as I could. “It’s me, Joanne. Everything’s going to be okay, all right? I just really need you to come with me.”
I’d read somewhere that dogs had the cognitive power of a two-or three-year-old human child. A two-year-old would almost certainly understand what I’d just said. Whether he’d agree to come along was a whole different matter. That was the price of being two: old enough to comprehend and old enough to be stubborn. Morrison’s ears flattened, and I had the distinct impression if he’d understood, he was going to be stubborn. I’d gotten him into this mess. There was probably a certain wisdom in not entirely trusting me to get him out of it, especially since I didn’t know how. My best bet was bringing him back to the dance troupe and using the first half of their performance to power his transformation back to humanity. “Snap your teeth once if you understand me.”
He growled, which I didn’t think was close enough to count. I scowled at him a moment, then sighed and sat down anyway, not caring if my sudden smallness made me vulnerable. I could only think of one way to communicate with him, and trying it while I was on my feet was likely to lead to me falling over. I took one deep breath, and prepared to flee my body.
I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
Actually the problem was it was way too easy. I fled, all right. Under normal circumstances, I’d have fled into some kind of familiar territory, often digging up through the earth to enter Morrison’s garden. That was how I saw the human souclass="underline" as a garden, with their general mental health reflected in how sparse or lush that garden was. Gary, my septuagenarian best friend, didn’t just have a garden: he had a whole jungle, warm and inviting and fantastic to explore. My own, though an awful lot healthier than it had been fifteen months ago, was still pretty spartan, with walls and straight lines and only a few bits where things were starting to get overgrown and develop some personality.
The first time I’d intruded on Morrison’s garden, I’d expected it to be tidy and rigid, like mine, which went to show just how well I knew my boss. The psychic reflection of his soul was way toward the Gary end of the spectrum: a mountainous, rugged landscape with vast pollution-free skies and raptors carried on the wind. That was where I expected to end up this time, too.
Instead I shot skyward, fresh new uncontrolled power boosting me to realms I never intended to visit. Air thinned as the sky paled, blue fading until stars sparkled through it. I left behind mountains I’d climbed once, a long time ago: mountains that dwarfed the Himalayas, their sharp peaks stabbing at the cool sky. The sun hung much too far away, so far I doubted I should be able to feel its heat, though the unfamiliar world below me was clearly not frozen.