Winter Moon: Moontide\The Heart Of The Moon\Banshee Cries by Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, C.E. Murphy

From Barnes & Noble

A lunar theme underlies these three fantasy novellas. In Mercedes Lackey's Moontide, a woman in an isolated land bestrewn with shipwrecks makes an ominous choice of allegiance. Tanith Lee's The Heart of the Moon recounts a tale about a warrior priestess who must learn to yield to inner tides before she can be free. Banshee Cries by C. E. Murphy (Urban Shaman) pits a young woman with a special gift against a ritual killer. High tides of excitement.

From the Publisher

Mercedes Lackey
"She'll keep you up long past your bedtime." --New York Times bestselling author Stephen King

In an isolated land where the lure of the "Moontide" leads to shipwrecks, a woman is torn between obeying her father or her king. When she chooses to follow a Fool, she discovers magic she'd never expected . . . at a price that might be too high . . .

Tanith Lee
"Few writers today can match the sheer beauty and inventiveness of Tanith Lee's writing." --Millennium Science Fiction and Fantasy

Struggling under the curse of a dead comrade, Clirando, a warrior priestess unready to face the powers trapped within her, must face "The Heart of the Moon" to reveal what has been hidden . . .

C.E. Murphy
"A swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist, magic, danger -- Urban Shaman has them in spades." --Jim Butcher, author of the bestselling series The Dresden Files

In "Banshee Cries," ritual murders under a full moon lead Jo Walker to confront a Harbinger of Death. Maybe this "gift" she has is one she shouldn't ignore -- because the next life she has to save might be her own!

Publishers Weekly

Fans of romantic fantasy will welcome Winter Moon, which offers three lunar-themed novellas: Mercedes Lackey's "Moontide," Tanith Lee's "The Heart of the Moon" and C.E. Murphy's "Banshee Cries." Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Three talented authors offer a triptych of novellas centering on the image and symbol of the moon. In Lackey's Moontide, Moira returns to her father's keep as a spy for her king but discovers her destiny in the company of a Fool. A warrior priestess labors under a curse to uncover her hidden powers of healing in Tanith Lee's The Heart of the Moon. And in C.E. Murphy's Banshee Cries, a full moon, ritual murders, and a Celtic death omen challenge Seattle policewoman Jo Walker to search for her own form of magic. For large fantasy collections or where the authors have a strong following. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Moontide

Lady Reanna watched with interest as Moira na Ferson took her chain-mail shirt, pooled it like glittery liquid on the bed, and slipped it into a grey velvet bag lined with chamois. It was an exquisitely made shirt; the links were tiny, and immensely strong; Moira only wished it was as feather-light as it looked.

"Your father doesn’t know what he’s getting back," Reanna observed, cupping her round chin with one deceptively soft hand, and flicking aside a golden curl with the other.

"My father didn’t know what he sent away," Moira countered, just as her heavy, coiled braid came loose and dropped down her back for the third time. With a sigh, she repositioned it again, picked up the silver bodkin that had dropped to the floor, and skewered it in place. "He looked at me and saw a cipher, a nonentity. He saw what I hoped he would see, because I wanted him to send me far, far away from that wretched place. Maybe I have my mother’s moonmagic, maybe I’m just good at playacting. He saw a little bit of uninteresting girl-flesh, not worth keeping, and by getting rid of it he did what I wanted." Candle and firelight glinted on the fine embroidered trim of an indigo-colored gown, and gleamed on the steel of the bodice knife she slipped into the sheath that the embroidery concealed.

"But to send you here!" Reanna shook her head. "What was he thinking?"

"Exactly nothing, I expect." Moira hid her leather gauntlets inside a linen chemise, and inserted a pair of stiletto blades inside the stays of a corset. "I’m sure he fully expected to have a half-dozen male heirs by now, and wanted only to find somewhere to be rid of me at worst, and to polish me up into a marriage token at best. He looked about for someone to foist me off on -- which would have to be some relation of my mother’s, since he’s not on speaking terms with most of his House -- and picked the one most likely to turn me into something he could use for an alliance. You have to admit, the Countess has a reputation for taking troublesome young hoydens and turning out lovely women." The ironic smile with which she delivered those last words was not lost on her best friend. Reanna choked, and her pink cheeks turned pinker.

"Lovely women who use bodkins to put up their hair!" she exclaimed. "Lovely women who--"

"Peace," Moira cautioned. "Perhaps the moonmagic had a hand in that, too. If it did, well, all to the good." An entire matched set of ornate silver bodkins joined the gauntlets in the pack, bundled with comb, brush, and hand mirror. "There can be only one reason why Father wants me home now. He plans to wed me to some handpicked suitor. Perhaps it’s for an alliance, perhaps it’s to someone he is grooming as his successor. In either case, though he knows it not, he is going to find himself thwarted. I intend to marry no one not of my own choosing."

Reanna rested her chin on her hands and looked up at Moira with deceptively limpid blue eyes. "I don’t know how you’ll manage that. You’ll be one young woman in a keep full of your father’s men."

"And the law in Highclere says that no woman can be wed against her will. Not even the heir to a seakeep. And the keep will be mine, whether he likes it or not, for I am the only child." Moira rolled wool stockings into balls and stuffed them in odd places in the pack. She was going to miss this cozy room. The seakeep was not noted for comfort. "I will admit, I do not know, yet, what I will do when he proposes such a match. But the Countess has not taught me in vain. I will think of something."

"And it will be something clever," Reanna murmured. "And you will make your father think it was all his idea."

Moira tossed her head like a restive horse. "Of course!" she replied. "Am I not one of her Grey Ladies?"

Moira’s midnight-black braid came down again, and she coiled it up automatically, casting a look at herself in the mirror as she did so. As she was now -- without the arts of paint and brush she had learned from Countess Vrenable -- no man would look twice at her. This was a good thing, for a beauty had a hard time making herself plain and unnoticed, but one who possessed a certain cast of pale features that might be called "plain" had the potential to be either ignored or to make herself by art into a beauty. Strange that she and Reanna should have become such fast friends from the very moment she had entered the gates of Viridian Manor. She, so dark and pale, and Reanna, so golden and rosy -- yet beneath the surface, they were very much two of a kind. Both had been sent here by parents who had no use for them; daughters who must be dowered were a liability, but girls schooled by Countess Vrenable had a certain cachet as brides, and often the King could be coaxed into providing an addition to an otherwise meager dower. Especially when the King himself was using the bride as the bond of an alliance, which had also been known to happen to girls schooled by the Countess. Both Moira and Reanna were the same age, and when it came to their interests and skills, unlikely as it might seem, they were a perfectly matched set.

And both had, two years ago, been taken into the especial schooling that made them something more than the Countess’s fosterlings. Both had been invited to become Grey Ladies.

It sometimes occurred to Moira that the difference between girls fostered with Countess Vrenable and those fostered elsewhere, was that the other girls went through their lives assuming that no matter what happened, no matter what terrible thing befell them, there would be a rescue and a rescuer. The Grey Ladies knew very well that if there was a rescue to be had, they would be doing the rescuing themselves.

There was a great deal to be said for not relying on anyone but yourself.

"You’re not a Grey Lady yet," Reanna reminded her, from her perch on the bolster of the bed. "That’s for the Countess to decide."

A polite cough beside them made them both turn toward the door. "In fact, my dear, the Countess is about to make that decision right now."

No one took Countess Vrenable, first cousin to the King, for granted. And it was not only because of her nearness in blood to the throne. She was not tall, yet she gave the impression of being stately; she was no beauty, yet she caused the eyes of men to turn away from those who were "mere" beauties. It was said that there was no skill she had not mastered. She danced with elegance, conversed with wit, sang, played, embroidered -- had all of the accomplishments any wellborn woman could need. And several more, besides. Her hair was pure white, yet her finely chiseled face was ageless. Some said her hair had been white for the past thirty years, that it had turned white the day her husband, the Count, died in her arms.

"You are a little young to be one of my Ladies, child," the Countess said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. "However, this move on your father’s part holds . . . potential."

The older woman turned with a practiced grace that Moira envied, and began pacing back and forth in the confined space of the small room she shared with Reanna. "I should tell you a key fact, my dear. I created the Grey Ladies after my dear husband died, because it was lack of information that caused his death."

She paused in her pacing to look at both girls. Reanna blinked, looking puzzled, but too polite to say anything.

The Countess smiled. "Yes, my children, to most, he died because he threw himself between an assassin and the King. But the King and I realized even as he was dying that the moment of his death began long before the knife struck him. We know that if we had had the proper information, the assassin would never have gotten that far. Assassins, feuds, even wars -- all can be averted with the right information at the right time." She passed a hand along a fold of her sable gown. "My cousin has kept peace within our borders and without because he values cunning over force. But it is a never ending struggle, and in that struggle, information is the most powerful weapon he has."

As Reanna’s mouth formed a silent O, the Countess turned to Moira. "Here is the dilemma I face. There is information that I need to know in, and about, the Sea-Keep of Highclere and its lord. But conflicting loyalties--"

Moira raised an eyebrow. "My lady, I have not seen my father for more than a handful of days in all my life. I know well that although my mother loved him, he wedded her only to have her dower, and it was her desperate attempt to give him the male heir he craved that killed her. He cast me off like an outworn glove, and now he calls me back when he at last has need of me. I have had more loving kindness from you in a single day than I have had from him in all my life. If he works against the King, it is my duty to thwart him." She met the Countess’s intensely blue eyes with her own pale grey ones. "There are no conflicting loyalties, my lady. I owe my birth to him -- but to you, I owe all that I am now."

What she did not, and would not say, was a memory held tight within her, of the night her mother had died, trying to give birth to the male child her father had so desperately wanted. How her mother lay dying and calling out for him, while he had eyes only for the son born dead. How he had mourned that half-formed infant the full seven days and had it buried with great ceremony, while his wife went unattended to her grave but for Moira and a single maidservant. She had never forgiven him for that, and never would.

The Countess held herself very still, and her eyes grew dark with sadness. "My dear child, I understand you. And I am sorry for it."

Reanna sighed. "Not all of us are blessed with loving parents, my lady," she said.

The Countess’s lips thinned. "If you had loving parents, child, I would be the last person to remove you from their care," she replied briskly, and Moira suddenly understood why she felt she had joined some sort of sisterhood when she came to foster under the Countess’s care. None of them had been considered anything other than burdens at worst, and tokens of negotiation at best, by their parents.

Which makes us apt to trust the first hand that offers kindness instead of a blow, she thought. Which was, of course, a thought born of the Countess’s own training. The Countess taught them all to look for weaknesses and strengths, and to never accept anything at its face value, even the girls who were not recruited into the ranks of the Grey Ladies.

But then her mind added, And it is a very good thing for all of us that milady is truly kind, and truly cares. Because she had no doubt of that. The Countess cared deeply about her fosterlings, whether they were Grey Ladies or not.

But it did make her wonder what someone with less scruples could accomplish with the same material to work on.

"Would that I had a year further training of you, Moira," the Countess said, frowning just a little. "I am loath to throw you into what may be a lion’s den with less than a full quiver of arrows."

"I am thrown there anyway," Moira replied logically. "My father will have me home, and you cannot withhold me. I would as soon be of some use." And then something occurred to her, which made the corners of her mouth turn up. "But I shall want my reward, my lady."

"Oh, so?" The Countess did not take affront at this. One fine eyebrow rose; that was all.

"Should I find my father in treason, his estates are confiscated to the Crown, are they not?" she asked. "Well then, as we both know, your word is as good as the King’s. So should information I lay be the cause of such a finding, I wish your hand and seal upon it that the Sea-Keep of Highclere, my mother’s dower, remains with me."

Slowly, the Countess smiled; it was, Moira thought, a smile that some men might have killed for, because it was a smile full of warmth and approval. "I have taught you well," she said at last. "Better than I had thought. Well enough, my hand and seal on it, and if you can think thus straightly, I believe you may serve your King." And she took pen and parchment from the desk and wrote it out. "And you, Reanna -- you may hold this in surety for your friend," she continued, handing the parchment to Reanna, who waved it in the air to dry. "I think it best that you, Moira, not be found with any such thing on your person."

Moira and Reanna both nodded. Moira, because she knew that no one would be able to part Reanna from the paper if Reanna didn’t wish to give it up. Reanna -- well, perhaps because Reanna knew that the Countess would never attempt to take it from her.

"All right, child," the Countess said then. "I am going to steal you away from your packing long enough to try and cram a year’s worth of teaching into an afternoon."

In the end, the Countess took more than an afternoon, and even then, Moira felt as if her head had been packed too full for her to really think about what she had learned.

The escort that her father had sent had been forced to cool its collective heels until the Countess saw fit to deliver Moira into their hands. There was not a great deal they could do about that; the Countess Vrenable outranked the mere Lord of Highclere Sea-Keep. The Countess was not completely without a heart; she did see that they were properly fed and housed. But she wanted it made exquisitely clear that affairs would proceed at her pace and convenience, not those of some upstart from the costal provinces.

The Heart of the Moon

The moon’s face is cold, but her heart is full of fire -- how else could she give such light?

Lightning

The night that lightning struck the Temple of the Maiden -- that was the night she found them. Clirando would never have suspected the warrior goddess Parna of such harsh melodrama. Though justice, of course, was partly her province. It seemed she had wanted Clirando to see and to know. Perhaps she had expected Clirando to behave differently after it had happened.

The narrow streets of Amnos were moon-and-torch lit, and people were shouting and running up toward the Sacred Mount, where stood the temples of the Father and Parna the Maiden. Smoke and a thin flame still sizzled from her roof, and the sea-washed air was full of the reek of scorching stone.

But by the time Clirando reached the lower terrace, men were already on the tiles, girls, too, from the various female warrior bands. Clirando saw two of her own command, Oani and Erma, busy there.

She shouted to them. "Are you safe?"

"Yes, safe, Cliro. But come up--"

One of the men, no less than the architect Pholis, swathed in his bed gown, called down, "Use the stairs! No more swarming on ropes here, the roof is damaged."

So Clirando and several others ran up the final terrace and in from the side court. There were guest rooms off the court. Priests and others used them, if they were on duty that night at the temple.

Almost everybody had come out. They stood around the tank of crystal water under the fig tree, talking, shaking their heads, some offering prayers.

Two people were late, however, leaving a room.

As Clirando walked into the court -- yawning, she afterward recalled, for the levin-bolt had woken her from sleep like most of the town -- she saw them. One was Araitha, her closest friend. The other dark-haired Thestus.

Clirando knew them both so well that for a long moment it did not startle her to see them there. She was pleased, very probably. Her best friend, as well as her lover, Thestus, both of whom would be excellent at assisting on the roof.

Even with his hand slipping from Araitha’s shoulder . . . even with the way Araitha suddenly drew aside from him, her eyes blank with far too many emotions to show.

And his rasp of guilty laugh.

"Ha -- Cliro. Are you going up, too? That was a strike and no mistake. A wonder the temple withstood--"

Behind, the two of them, the curtain of the little room had been drawn back, to show a disheveled bed, narrow but still wide enough for the pair of slender and hard-muscled figures who had chosen to couch there together. A flagon of wine stood on the floor. In the grey-red moon-and-torch mixing of the light, it gleamed in a horrible way, blinking and winking at Clirando like the center of an evil eye: Didn’t you guess, girl? it seemed to say. Didn’t you know?

Clirando walked past the water tank and met Thestus and Araitha at the door of the cell, and pushed them both back inside. They let her do this, not resisting.

Thestus was taller than she, but Araitha was her own height. Araitha with her beer-brown eyes and long, dark golden hair. Thestus had always honestly praised that hair. And other things. Araitha’s warrior skills, her musical gift with lyra and tabor. Clirando, Araitha’s sister-friend since they had been six years old in the training courts of the temple, was always happy when others praised Araitha.

As for Thestus, he had come to the Father Temple, a warrior, with his own band of twenty men, only two years before. He had singled Clirando out inside three days, as she had him. Since the Spring Festival they had been lovers. Parna never minded such liaisons. Her warriors were also allowed love, and to make children, if they wished.

Clirando shook her own long brown hair over her shoulders and looked at him. Then she looked at Araitha.

Neither of them spoke.

Thestus’s mouth locked shut as if a key had turned behind his lips.

It was Araitha who laughed now and said, scattering her words light as beads, "Oh, Cliro. It means nothing. We only -- only for a moment. That was all."

"Liar."

"Cliro -- what could it matter? We both love you. Do you--" she threw back her head, defiant "--grudge me a little pleasure?"

Always her way. Attack was defense to Araitha.

"I grudge you this."

Thestus opened his locked lips and spoke to Araitha.

"Don’t try to reason with her. We both know what she can be like when she loses her self-control."

Cliro turned and slapped him stingingly across the mouth.

He swung aside with a curse, was already reaching for the dagger lying in its sheath on the floor. Araitha made a noise. Cliro kicked Thestus’s hand away, then kicked Thestus full in the chest so he fell back bruisingly on his well-formed butt.

"No," said Cliro. "Soon but not yet, sweetheart."

"Cliro--" said Araitha.

Clirando no longer liked the sound of her name from her friend’s beautiful mouth. The mouth was very red and swollen from Thestus’s kisses tonight. Maybe that was why the name of Cliro sounded wrong.

"Be quiet, you bitch. Both of you. I’ll issue the challenge now, so you know. In seven days at first light, before the Maiden. First you, I think, Thestus, for the shorter time I’ve known you -- if ever I knew you at all. A little later for you, Araitha, you filthy slut."

"I am no--"

"You are a slut. You are a traitor. To me. Him I hate. But you I hate the most. I called you friend."

Araitha began to cry, like any soft merchant’s wife.

Clirando turned, her own eyes burning. She stalked out and across the court, where the others standing there, who had seen most and heard all of it, murmured together.

She knew that anyone, other perhaps than some great sage, would have felt shocked pain and anger. But aside from her personal hurt, this very publicly witnessed betrayal showed her own judgement up poorly. No one could fail to be aware she had been in ignorance until tonight. Clirando was a commander. In no respect could she be seen to have been stupid.

She thought now, in horror, that, blind to their antics, she might well have trusted them beside her in battle -- and possibly been unwise in that, too. Had their desire proved so irresistible, honor demanded they should have told her to her face. But they had deceived her as if she were some silly woman reared only for the house.

Clirando did not go up to the lightning-blasted roof.

"Forgive me," she said to the goddess, in the private shrine beside the main hall. Amber lamplight starred the goddess’s calm face. Polished marble etched and dressed with gold, her eyes were two green stones. Clirando also had green eyes -- Thestus had said they were green as leaves of the bay tree. "I can’t help mend your roof, Maiden. I’m shaking like some fool before her first skirmish. Pardon me."

The calm face looked down at hers.

"I will meet both Araitha and Thestus individually in the war-court. Before the whole town. I think you allowed me to see what those two had done to me, to find them out. I’ll punish them. Oh, not a fight to the death. But I’ll shame them both. They’ll lose their places in Amnos and go far away. Where I need never look at them again. Do you allow it, Lady?"

Above, there came a faint rushing -- tiles dislodged -- and then cries and a crash as they plummeted onto the terraces below.

"Is that disapproval, Lady?"

Parna did not answer. But Clirando had never known her to. It was a formality to ask. Clirando’s human course was already set.

She had long thought, though one must respect the gods, one could not expect understanding from them. They gave favors or hurts according to some indecipherable law of their own.

And I am hurt, she thought. Struck in the heart.

She would make them pay, her lover, her sister. There was no other road now to peace.

Arguments among the warrior-priests of Parna and the Father were often settled in the war-court, in public duel.

Generally it was two men who fought. Women tended to settle their disagreements with only their bands to witness. Rarely did a female warrior demand satisfaction of a male in the court, though there had been cases now and then. Clirando had known that aside from the officials and certain priests bound to attend, a lot of Amnos would crowd into the public seats to see.

It had occurred to her, many people had known about Thestus’s liaison with Araitha. Some even came to her, subsequent to her finding out, and confessed -- among these was Erma from Clirando’s own band.

"I never knew if I should tell you, Cliro--"

"You should have."

"I know. But--"

Clirando forgave Erma, who was holding back her tears. She was still young, only fifteen, five years younger that Clirando. Tuyamel, on the other hand, offered to skin Thestus for Clirando. "I wouldn’t want the skin, thanks, my friend," Clirando said. Tuy had laughed. "Fair enough. I shall leave it to you then."

The morning was fine, the sun just torching the east, when Clirando stood on the war-court and faced her former lover across the clean paving.

All around, the crowd sat in respectful silence. There was none of the shouting or merriment that went on when ritual games or war exercises took place here. This was a solemn, fraught occasion.

Clirando had to steel herself, too. She had fought beside Thestus only once in battle -- against pirates last fall, blood raining among red leaves at the edges of Amnos’s forested shores. But often he and she had exercised together. They knew each other’s moves perhaps too well.

She had thought he would try to surprise her. She judged correctly.

The instant the signal came to begin, he dropped onto the ground and came rolling at her like a human hedgehog. As she leaped aside, his short sword whipped out. It cut one of her sandal thongs. Only her reflexes had saved her from much worse.

She tore off both sandals and he, having stood up again, watched her mockingly.

There was contempt in his face. Maybe that was only a mask. Or maybe his looks of love had been the mask.

She had tried very hard not to examine why he had used her as he had, and played her false. Now certainly was not the time for analysis.

Clirando wondered if he had other tricks, and he had. Having allowed her space to undo her shoes, he lounged idly, paring his nails, so a slight amusement rippled through some of the audience, only to be shushed as improper.

He would not move again to meet her.

She stood waiting.

He stood idling. He began to whistle a popular tune of the town.

"Come on," she said. Her voice carried.

"I’m here if you want me. You come on."

She knew it was another trick.

Clirando moved toward him slowly, then suddenly very fast, running as if straight into him -- veering at the last second. A fine pinkish powder spurted from his left hand, clouding the air between them. He must have taken it out with the paring knife. It would have been in her face, her eyes, if she had dodged less effectively. Play dirty then. A bitter smile touched her mouth. He must be scared of her.

From veering, she swung and cut him across the left shoulder. Blood burst like a flower.

With a roar he turned on her.

To her he seemed heavy now, graceless. He had not bothered to prepare for this, only his tricks. She had been practicing every day.

He was a poor warrior. Brave and strong, cunning sometimes. But his skill was not so great. She had thought more highly of him when she loved him, seeing him through lover’s eyes, wanting him to shine.

Inside six minutes more, she had scored him lightly across arms and chest, thighs, and even his back as he went skidding down from a sidelong blow. She did not aim to cripple him. He would need his fighter’s trade where he was going, out into the wide world far from Amnos.

But by then he was a mess, and losing blood, his face pale and congested, ugly, frantic. He was bellowing at her, oaths and blasphemies for which the priests would be setting him a penance. He told her, also, and told the crowd, why he had lost his sexual interest in her. She was too cold, he said. Cold as Moon Isle with its heartless crags. She was too masculine. She had no feminine gifts to match her male ones.

Banshee Cries

Sunday March 20th, 2:55 p.m.

Cell phones are the most detestable objects on the face of the earth. Worse than those ocean-variety pill bugs that grow bigger than your head, which were on my personal top ten list of Things To Avoid.

My life had been a lovely, cell-free zone until nine weeks, six days, and four hours ago. Not that I was counting. On that fateful day I got an official business phone to go with my bulletproof vest and billy stick. I’d even been given a gun to go with my shiny new badge.

I wanted those things about as much as I’d wanted to bonk my head on the engine block I’d sat up beneath when the phone rang. I rubbed my forehead and glared at the engine, then felt horribly guilty. It wasn’t Petite’s fault I’d hurt myself, and she’d been through enough lately that she didn’t need me scowling on top of it all.

The phone kept ringing. I rolled out from under the Mustang and crawled to her open door, digging the phone out from under the driver’s seat. "What?"

Only one person outside of work had the phone number. As soon as I spoke I realized that a politer pickup might have been kosher. The resounding silence from the other end of the line confirmed my suspicion. Eventually a male voice said, "Walker?"

I turned around to hook my arm over the bottom of the car’s door frame and did my best to stifle a groan. "Captain."

"I need you--"

These were words that another woman might be pleased to hear from Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department. Then again, if he was saying them to another woman, there probably wouldn’t have been the slight tension in his voice that suggested his mouth was pressed into a thin line and his nostrils flared with irritation at having the conversation. He had a good voice, nice and low. I imagined it could carry reassuring softness, the kind that would calm a scared kid. Unfortunately, the only softness I ever heard in it was the kind that said, This is the calm before the storm, which happened to be how he sounded right now. I crushed my eyes closed, face wrinkling up, and prodded the bump on my forehead.

"--to come in to work."

"It’s my weekend, Morrison." As if this would make any difference. I could hear his ears turning red.

"I wouldn’t be calling you in--"

"Yeah." I bit the word off and wrapped my hand around the bottom of Petite’s frame. "What’s going on?"

Silence. "I’d rather not tell you."

"Jesus, Morrison." I straightened up, feeling the blood return to the line across my back where I’d been leaning on the car. "Is anybody dead? Is Billy okay?"

"Holliday’s fine. Can you get over to Woodland Park?"

"Yeah, I--" I tilted my head back, looking at the Mustang’s roof. Truth was, I’d been futzing around under the engine block because I couldn’t stand to look at the damage done to my baby’s roof anymore. A twenty-nine-inch gash, not that I’d measured or anything, ran from the windshield’s top edge almost all the way to the back window. From my vantage, thin stuffing and fabric on the inside ceiling shredded and dangled like a teddy bear who’d seen better days. Beyond that, soldered edges of steel, not yet sanded down, looked like somebody’d dragged an ax through it.

Which was precisely what had happened.

A little knot of agony tied itself around my heart and squeezed, just like it did every time I looked at my poor car. The war wounds were almost three months old and killing me, but the insurance company was dragging its feet. Full coverage did cover acts of God -- or in my case, acts of gods -- but I’d only said she’d been hit by vandals, because who would believe the truth? In the meantime, I’d already spent my meager savings replacing the gas tank that somebody’d shot an arrow through.

My life had gotten unpleasantly weird in the past few months.

I forced myself to find something else to look at -- the opposite garage wall had a calendar with a mostly naked woman on it, which was sort of an improvement -- and sighed. "Yeah," I said again, into the phone. "I’m gonna have to take a cab."

"Fine. Just get here. North entrance. Wear boots." Morrison hung up and I threw the phone over my shoulder into the car again. Then I said a word nice girls shouldn’t and scrambled after the phone, propping myself in the bucket seat with one leg out the door. Bedraggled as she was, just sitting in Petite made me feel better. I patted her steering wheel and murmured a reassurance to her as I dialed the phone. A voice that had smoked too many cigarettes answered and I grinned, sliding down in Petite’s leather seat.

"Still working?"

"Y’know, in my day, when somebody made a phone call, they said hello and gave their name before anything else."

"Gary, in your day they didn’t have telephones. Are you still working?"

"Depends. Is this the crazy broad who hires cabbies to drive her to crime scenes?"

I snorted a laugh. "Yeah."

"Is she gonna cook me dinner if I’m still workin’?"

"Sure," I said brightly. "I’ll whip you up the best microwave dinner you ever had."

"Okay. I want one of them chicken fettuccine ones. Where you at?"

"Chelsea’s Garage."

Gary groaned, a rumble that came all the way from his toes and reverberated in my ear. "You still over there mooning over that car, Jo?"

"I am not mooning!" I was mooning. "She needs work."

"You need money. And snow tires. And more than six inches of clearance. You ain’t gonna drive it till spring, Jo, even if you do get it fixed up."

"Her," I said, sounding like a petulant child. "Petite’s a her, not an it, aren’t you, baby," I added, addressing the last part to the steering wheel. "Look, are you gonna come get me or not? It’s even a paying gig. Morrison called and wants me to go over to Woodland Park."

"Arright." Gary’s voice brightened considerably. "Maybe there’ll be a body."

Morrison glared magnificently when I arrived with Gary in tow. The two of them facing off was wonderful to behold: Morrison was pushing forty and good-looking in a superhero-going-to-seed way, with graying hair and sharp blue eyes. Gary, at seventy-three, had Hemingway wrinkles and a Connery build that made him look dependable and solid instead of old, and his gray eyes were every bit as sharp as Morrison’s. For a few seconds I thought they might start butting heads.

But Morrison pointed at Gary and barked, "You stay here." Gary looked as crestfallen as a wet kitten. I actually said, "Aw, c’mon, Morrison," and got his glare turned on me. Oops.

"It’s arright, Jo." Gary gave me a sly look that from a man a few decades younger would’ve had my heart doing flip-flops. "I bet there’s a body. You can tell me about it at dinner. You need a ride home?"

"I’ll take care of it," Morrison said in a sharp voice. Gary winked at me, shoved his hands in his pockets, and sauntered back to his cab, whistling. I choked on a laugh and turned to follow Morrison, tromping through a truly unbelievable amount of snow. It had started snowing in mid-January and, as far as Seattle was concerned, hadn’t stopped in the two months since. Even the weathermen merely looked stunned and resigned, mumbling excuses about hurricane patterns in the South having unexpected consequences in the Pacific Northwest.

"What is it with you two?"

"So what’s going on, Captain?" We spoke at the same time, leaving me blinking at Morrison’s shoulders and starting to grin. "What is it with us? Me and Gary? Are you serious?"

"He answers your phone." Morrison was talking to the footprints in the snow in front of him, not me. My grin got noticeably bigger.

"Only the once. That was like six weeks ago, Morrison. And who told you that, anyway?" I wanted to laugh.

"I’m just saying he’s a little old for you, isn’t he?" Morrison’s shoulders were hunched, as if he was trying to warm his ears up with them. I grinned openly at his back and lowered my voice so it only just barely carried over the squeak and crunch of snow as we walked through it.

"All I’ll say is, you know how they say old dogs can’t learn new tricks? Turns out old dogs have some pretty good tricks of their own."

Morrison’s shoulders jerked another inch higher and I laughed out loud, the sound bouncing off tree branches black with winter cold. Snow shimmered and fell off one, making a soft puff and a dent in the snow below it. Morrison flinched at the sound, head snapping toward it as his hand dropped to his belt, like he’d pull a weapon. My laughter drained away and I followed him the rest of the way to a park baseball diamond in silence.

He climbed up snow-covered bleachers, making distinct footprints in the already walked on snow, compacting it further. I put my feet in precisely the same places he’d stepped, fitting my sole print to his exactly. We had the same size feet, and in police-issue boots his prints were indistinguishable from mine, at least to the naked eye. A forensics officer could probably tell there was a weight difference between the two of us -- in Morrison’s favor, thank God -- but for the moment I enjoyed the idea of stealing along behind the captain, invisible to anybody trying to track me.

Morrison stopped on the step above me and turned so abruptly I nearly walked into him. I rocked back on my heels, one step below him, my nose at his chest height as I frowned up at him. "Thanks for the warning." I hated looking up, physically, to Morrison: we were the same height, down to the half inch that put us both just below six feet, and any situation that made me look up to him made me uncomfortable.

Of course, the reverse was also true, and I’d been known to wear heels just so I’d be taller than he was. No one said I was a good person.

"Tell me what you see."

Assuming he didn’t want me to describe him -- which, had he not been so antsy about the snow falling from the tree a few moments ago, I’d have probably done just to annoy him -- I turned away, looking over the baseball diamond.

It was buried beneath two feet of the wet, heavy snow that had made my jeans damp from tromping through it. I shook one foot absently, knocking snow off my boot. I’d lived in Wisconsin for a winter, so snow wasn’t entirely new to me, but this was ridiculous for Seattle, and I said so. Morrison huffed out a breath like an annoyed bull and I puffed my cheeks, muttering, "Okay, fine. I see snow."

Well, duh. Clearly Morrison wanted more than that. "Snowmobile tracks. I didn’t even know people in Seattle owned snowmobiles. Um. Footprints around the diamond, like people’ve been playing snowball." I thought that was pretty clever. Snowball, like baseball, only with snow, right? Morrison didn’t laugh. I sighed. Poor, poor put-upon me.

"There are cops, there’s some teenagers over there, there’s--" Actually, there were a lot of cops, now that I was looking. Picked out in dull blue under the gray sky, they worked their way around the baseball diamond and stumped their way through the outfield. "There’s, um." I frowned. "I don’t hear anything, either. There aren’t any people around. Dead trees . . ."

"No," Morrison growled, full of so much tension that I looked over my shoulder at him, feeling my expression turning worried. "What do you see," he repeated, and suddenly I got it. A drop of ice formed inside my throat and spilled down into my stomach, like drinking cold water on an empty belly. I folded my arms around myself defensively, shaking my head.

"Shit, Morrison, it doesn’t -- it doesn’t work like that. I mean, I’m not, like, good enough to make it work, I don’t know how, I don’t want to--"

"God damn it, Walker, what do you see!"

I turned back to the field, stiff as an automaton, my lower lip sucked between my teeth. One of my arms unfolded from around me completely of its own will, hand drifting to rub my sternum through my winter jacket.

There was no hole in my breastbone, no scar to suggest there’d ever been one. But I found myself pulling in a very deep breath, trying to rid myself of the memory of a silver blade shoved through my lung and the bubbling, coppery taste of blood at the back of my throat. I’d nearly died eleven weeks ago, and instead found that buried within me was the power to heal myself, and maybe a great deal more. More than one person had called me a shaman since then. I didn’t like it at all.