Billy tapped on Petite’s window, catching me wriggling around trying to get my stupid little skirt far enough under my butt and thighs to provide some kind of barrier between bare skin and clammy leather seats. Petite was a beautiful car, the unquestionable love of my life, but she had a definite opinion about somebody wearing the kind of outfit I had on and sitting in her. My back stuck to the seat, too, and sent goose bumps all over me. I peeled away and rolled the window down. “Was I speeding, Officer?”
“It looked like you were doing something a lot more illicit than speeding, but Johnson’s still inside. You heading home?”
“I think I’ve had enough partying for one night.”
“I’d agree, except for two things.” Billy leaned against Petite’s roof and looked down at me. “First, I want to be there when you go checking for ghost riders, because you’re not equipped to deal with them. They’re more my specialty.”
I opened my mouth to argue, considered his point and skipped the argument. “Fair enough. And?”
“And Phoebe’s already gone, so Mel wanted me to make sure you realize that means you’re the only host left for this party.”
I put my hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead for a minute. “I hate my life.”
“No, you don’t.” Billy pulled Petite’s door open and offered me a hand. “C’mon. Mel and Johnson and I will stay late and help you clean up, and then we can get you cleared for duty.”
“Everybody’s going to stare at me if I go back in there.”
“They’d stare at anybody who was as much of a long tall drink of water as you are in that outfit.”
I cricked my neck and eyed him. “Did your wife send you out here to flatter me, Mr. Holliday?”
“My wife sent me out here to take whatever measures necessary to make sure she wasn’t the one left cleaning up your party alone. Flattery first. Next I throw you over my shoulder and carry you back in. Your choice.”
“All right.” I kicked long bare legs out of the car and stood up. Hey, if he was going to make tall-drink-of-water comments, I was going to admire myself a little. “But if anything else out of the ordinary happens, I’m leaving. I’ll just pay the damn fee for having the owners clean the place tomorrow.”
I should have defined out of the ordinary.
It turned out worrying about my behavior had been pointless. Apparently most people thought leaping up onto the cauldron to help the dancers was kind of heroic, and enough alcohol had been imbibed that the light show around me had been largely written off as just that: a light show. There was a lesson to be learned from that, though by now I should’ve already learned it.
People were good at explaining away things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Over the summer I’d been worried that I was foisting magic onto a world that didn’t want it, but really, the handful of people who did want it believed, and the rest let themselves forget. A newly born waterfall at the end of Lake Washington had been given the name Thunderbird Falls after half the city’d seen, well, a thunderbird fall into the lake. By the end of August, though, if anybody mentioned the gigantic golden bird at all, they remembered the astonishing cloud formations and sunset that night. I shouldn’t have worried, not then and not now.
By midnight nearly everyone had come back to the party, even Phoebe, who ran a masquerade competition as if nothing untoward had happened. I won a “Best Abs” prize that I don’t think had been on the original list of awards to be given out, and the department-heavy attendees made Morrison walk the stage three times before razzing him off with cheers and laughter. A bunch of people told me I’d done good, trying to help the dancers, and a bunch more dragged me onto the dance floor or stole me away from Thor for the space of a song. The booze ran out before the music did, and there were maybe fifty people left, almost all of them dancers not quite willing to go home, when Morrison tapped Thor on the shoulder and asked to cut in.
See, I knew I should’ve defined out of the ordinary. Thor bowed out and tried to steal Phoebe from a natural blonde who didn’t want to give up her dance partner. He ended up sandwiched between both of them, and I grinned before Morrison put his hands on my waist and took up all my attention.
He said, “Sorry,” perfunctorily. “I could’ve waited for faster music, but I wanted to talk to you.”
I flailed a bit and put my hands on his shoulders, which were considerably more covered than my waist was. In fact, although I hadn’t thought anything of it when Thor’s hands had been in the same place, I suddenly wanted to hitch my skirt up off my hips and settle it safely around my waist, where a proper skirt belonged. Except then my very short skirt would have become completely indecent, which wasn’t a win at all.
Or maybe it was. I guess it depended on who you asked.
In an attempt to shut my brain up, I stuck my jaw out too far and bared my lower teeth, making a llama face. It was sufficiently embarrassing to take my mind off my skirt, so after holding it a couple of seconds I trusted myself enough to say, “No problem. What’s wrong?”
Up. I should’ve said what’s up, not what’s wrong. Still, pretty much any time Morrison wanted to talk to me, something was wrong. His hands were warm, warmer than Edward’s, and he smelled good. Like Old Spice, which I doubted was a Miami Vice cologne. And I was taller than he was, which reminded me of the clowns with their noses in my cleavage, although Morrison would have to look down to do that.
I made another llama face.
Evidently weird faces weren’t enough to throw my boss off his game. “What happened earlier?”
“A bunch of angry ghosts spilled through the cauldron and tried to take over those kids.” I said it without missing a beat. Somewhere along the line I’d decided to play it straight with Morrison. He didn’t like my powers any more than I did, but he accepted I had something extraordinary going on, and if he couldn’t deny it, he could at least do his best to make use of it. He’d made me a detective and partnered me with Billy so we could deal with abnormal cases when they came along, and what he was really asking right now was whether one had just fallen into our laps. “I don’t know how or why. I think Billy and I chased most of them off, but he’s still got some stubborn ones hanging around him and I might’ve let some latch on to me. We’re going back to my apartment after we clean up here to check and give me the all-clear.”
A bunch of minute things happened in Morrison’s expression. Most of them had to do with tension and resignation, and said he’d asked and therefore deserved to get whatever outlandish answer I gave him. My face crumpled with apology. “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got. Billy didn’t seem to know what was happening, either, so—”
Morrison said, “Walker,” making it sound very much like Billy’s shut up from earlier, so I did. Morrison nodded, and that quick array of tiny changes flashed across his face again before he said, carefully, “Holliday’ll watch out for you.”
“Sure, he always does. I mean, I don’t know, I guess…” I frowned at Morrison’s brown hair, caught up in logistics. “It’s going to be four in the morning before we get out of here. I can’t really call Gary and ask him to drum me under, but Billy never has, and besides that he’s going to have to go with me. I guess Mel, but—”
Morrison said, “Walker,” again, and I clued in with a physical lurch that turned my ankle. Morrison’s hands tightened on my waist. For an instant we were frozen in an awkward noir pose, the sort where the hero seizes the heroine’s arms and pulls her close before kissing her like she’s the most exasperating woman on earth. Except I was much too tall to be a noir heroine, even bent awkwardly while I tried to get my foot back under me, and for all the intensity of those old-movie poses, they never seemed to really have much in the way of bodies pressed together. There was body-pressing going on here. There had to be: Morrison’d braced me against himself so I didn’t topple over entirely.