LITMIR.BIZ

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than I thought those words could be said. “It had to happen eventually. Still, when Morrison comes over here to kill me, I’m putting you between us so I can run. He won’t kill you. You’re not his employee, and he respects his elders.” I didn’t know if that last part was true, but it seemed likely.

      Gary chuckled. “You’re real thoughtful. So what’d you see over there?” He jerked his chin toward the crime scene.

      “Bigfoot.” It was as good a name for whatever had left the claw marks as anything else. I looked over my shoulder toward my apartment building, where my bed lay cold and abandoned. “It’s Tuesday. I’m not even supposed to be at work today, but somehow I’m out chasing yeti at seven in the morning.”

      “It’s a great life, innit?” Gary split a broad grin full of white teeth and I laughed despite myself.

      “You have a demented sense of great. Hey! Billy!” I lifted my voice and waved as my partner ducked under the police tape. He crunched through snow turning to slush and joined us, rubbing his gloved hands together for warmth. “Morrison just gave us orders to go study Melinda’s power circle, right?”

      “What you really want to know is if you can use that as an excuse to get out of here before Corvallis finishes with him and he comes to tear you a new—”

      “Yes,” I admitted hastily. “Please. I’m trying not to think about my impending doom. Can we go?”

      “You think he’s going to be any less pissed if he has to wait to yell at you?”

      “I think if I’m really lucky we’ll come up with something and distract him from yelling.” I pushed away from Gary’s cab, looking between it and him. “I’d invite you along, but you’re covering Mickey’s shift.”

      “Think you can handle it without me?”

      That was actually a surprisingly good question. I glanced at Billy, who shrugged his eyebrows. “Mel can pull up that power circle by herself, if that’s what you need.”

      I turned back to Gary, knocking my shoulder against his. “Okay, so probably, if I’m just looking for residue.” I sounded confident. I wished I felt half as certain. “I’ll call if something comes up, okay?”

      “Arright, doll.” Gary lumbered into his cab and I leaned over the open door as he buckled in.

      “Look, Gary, in case nobody else says it. Thank you. You caught us a break here this morning.”

      He gave a dismissive snort, but his eyes were bright with pleasure as he pulled the door closed and drove off. I waved after him and turned to Billy with a smile still on my face.

      My partner had his own smile, smirkier than mine, though there wasn’t any meanness in it. I puffed up, indignant without knowing why. “What?”

      “Nothing.” Billy’s amusement expanded as I huffed. “I swear, nothing! You’ve changed a lot in the last year, that’s all. Gary’s good for you.”

      “Oh, don’t you start that, too.”

      “Nah, that’s not what I meant.”

      “Then what did you mean?”

      “Nothing. Get in the car.” Billy, grinning unrepentantly, herded me toward the minivan, and I went, muttering dire but unmeant imprecations on the way.

      Tuesday, December 20, 7:42 A.M.

      My pique at Billy couldn’t withstand the warm fuzzy feeling I always got at seeing his sprawling house, which said home to me in a way nowhere I’d lived ever had. A new front porch boasted Christmas decorations and colored lights, and a plastic snowman dominated the front yard. Two much smaller actual snowmen flanked him, the larger wearing a winter hat I recognized as belonging to Billy’s oldest son, Robert. He was pushing twelve, old enough to start thinking about looking cool over being cold, and I doubted the hat would be rescued before spring.

      Billy’s wife, Melinda, appeared on the porch in the midst of a rush of children. Most of them converged on the van, yanking the doors open hard enough to rock the whole vehicle as they spilled in with a cacophony worthy of a marching band. I picked out a demand from Clara to be brought to school and squeals of delight that I’d come to visit, followed by howls of dismay as six-year-old Jacquie realized she couldn’t both visit me and go to school. It made me feel loved, and somehow made up for the ear full of jam-slathered toast courtesy of Erik, the three-year-old.

      Billy did an excellent impression of a roaring bull elephant, and ten seconds later the older kids were buckled in and I was standing in the driveway with Erik on my hip and strawberry jam in my hair. Melinda minced down the steps to join me, and we all waved goodbye, though baby Caroline—not quite two months old—required her mother’s assistance to do so. Billy pulled out of the driveway and I turned to Melinda, sagging in astonishment. “I honestly don’t know how you do it.”

      Erik caroled, “With meeee!” and smeared some more jam across my face. I wrinkled my nose, trying to get the itchy, sticky stuff to retreat, and Melinda laughed aloud.

      “Yes, with you. You’re mama’s helper, aren’t you? How about Joanne puts you down and you run inside to get us all a washcloth? Look how messy Joanne is! Silly Joanie!”

      “Siwwy Joanie!” Erik squirmed down my side, depositing crumbs, butter and jam as he went, and ran for the house.

      Melinda looked me up and down. “I’d lend you something clean to wear while I threw those in the wash, but all of my clothes would be too small and all of Bill’s would be too big.”

      I rubbed a bit of jam off my cheek. “It’s okay. I just expect you to peel me off the walls if I get stuck to them.”

      “Fair enough.” Melinda herded me inside the house as if I were one of her children, and I went without complaint. Erik met us in the front hall bearing a soaking wet washcloth, which his mother wrung out and applied to me with the same brutal efficiency she turned on her son a moment later. I stood there trying not to laugh, and a moment before Erik’s cherubic smile came clean, she realized what she’d done and turned to me with cheeks pink from mortification.

      I held on to solemnity with every ounce of my being and thrust my jam-sticky hands out for her to scrub. Melinda hit me with the washcloth, and I threw my head back and laughed. “You’re the best mom ever, Mel. Woe betide any mess that gets in your way.” I went to wash my hands, still laughing, and Melinda turned her ruthless washing back on her son. Half an hour later he was involved with a complex game of “pile up blocks and knock them over” in the playroom, and Melinda and I slipped into the room off it that was hers alone.

      The only time I’d been in there previously, it had been a place of ritual lit by candles. It was dramatically less mystical with floor lamps turned on and light pouring in from the playroom, but the wide power circle painted on the concrete floor remained the same. A sister circle marked the ceiling, and I’d seen how power could flood between the two of them, making a column of living magic. Caroline unfolded a hand from within her sling and grasped for the upper circle, burbling with dismay when it didn’t come closer. I found myself eyeing the baby, then her mother, who lifted a hand, palm out, to deny me. “She can’t talk. I’m not even sure she can see as far as the circle.”

      “They all saw the Thing in the kitchen.” “They” were Melinda’s kids, and the Thing had been a terrible, enormous serpent: a monster made manifest in the Hollidays’ home. It, in fact, was the reason there was a new front porch; half the house had been stretched and torn in getting the serpent out of there.

      Melinda gave me a flat look. “The Thing in the kitchen was real. Anybody would’ve seen it.”

      “Robert knows when magic’s being done. He says the dead make hospitals cold. And he says Clara senses things, too.”

      “Does that really surprise you? Given Billy? Given me?”

      “Mel, the day this all stops surprising me is probably the day I wake up

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