saying, “A stag an’ a cheetah. She kept sayin’ how silly a cheetah was, like that was a young girl’s spirit animal, not an old lady’s,” when Aidan, the son I’d given up for adoption almost thirteen years earlier, came running out of the diner. His mother Ada followed him, and Morrison, now on his phone, came out after them.
Aidan skidded to a stop in front of me, cheeks flushed with excitement. He’d had a hell of a few days. His once-black hair was bone-white and even more shocking in sunlight than it had been in the diner. “What’s going on? What do you need? Are you okay?”
“Information on spirit animals. What do cheetahs and stags represent? What gifts do they offer the people they come to?”
“Stags are strength and virility—” He blushed saying the second word and cast a sideways glance back at his mom, who studiously didn’t notice. Still blushing, he shoved his hands in his pockets and mumbled, “Um, those are the ones I know about mostly. Cheetahs, I don’t know about cheetahs, they’re—”
“Time.” Morrison’s voice sounded unusually deep compared to Aidan’s boyish soprano. “Your dad’s saying that cheetahs offer gifts of speed and time. Not the way your walking stick spirit animals do, he says, but—” He broke off, tilted the phone away from his head to look at it slightly incredulously, then lifted his eyebrows and went on. “Did you know, he says, that cheetahs are one of a few cat breeds that can’t retract their claws, and can’t you see how that gives them the grip to pull someone—”
“—past when she died, Jo,” Gary was saying in my other ear. “She died at 11:53, seven minutes to midnight, doll, I know that right down in my bones, ’cept she didn’t. I’m rememberin’ it different now, rememberin’ how she held on, Jo. She held on until midnight, an’ Cernunnos... I dunno, Joanie. He came outta the light and she put her hands out to him and...an’ that was it. Next thing I knew I was back with the Hunt and I couldn’t remember my whole life right, and we were headin’ back for you. It all didn’t start comin’ back to me until the hospital called and said Annie was...there.”
“How is she?”
“Dying.”
The blunt word hit me like a red dodgeball, smack in the gut. Breath rushed out of me, though I should’ve known that “dying” was the only really possible answer. “How long does she have?”
“They got her on life support, Jo. She ain’t awake. They don’t know if she’s ever gonna wake up an’ they ain’t sure she should. Sounds like they think the only thing keepin’ her alive is that she’s sleepin’.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Hang in there, Gary. I love you.”
There was a startled silence on the other end of the line before Gary’s voice came across one more time, gruff with worry and pleasure. “Love you, too, doll.”
We both hung up. Aidan peered between me, Morrison and my phone, which was fair enough. Five minutes earlier Morrison and I had been being, in Aidan’s assessment, mooshy and gross, and now I was saying “I love you” to men named Gary. I decided to let the kid work that one out on his own, and looked at Morrison.
He handed me his phone. I took it, catching the scent of Old Spice cologne clinging to it, and smiled as I said, “Yeah, Dad, thanks for the help. Um, look, I know I said I was going to hang around, but something’s come up. I gotta go back to Seattle, like now.”
Aidan said, “But—!” and his mother put her hand on his shoulder, which slumped. I made an apologetic face at him and spoke to him and my dad both. “It’s my best friend. His wife is...sick.” Back from the dead was more than I wanted to try explaining, since I barely comprehended that myself. “I’m not even sure I should waste the time driving home. I think I need to fly.”
“Are you willing to leave Petite behind?” Morrison asked.
I snorted, then realized he was serious. “No, what, are you kidding? I thought you’d—I mean, you drove her out here...”
“Walker, do you really think there’s any chance I’m letting you go back to Seattle to help Annie Muldoon without me at your side?”
A rush of embarrassed, delighted, teenage-intense emotion rushed through me and turned my face hot. I wasn’t used to the idea that somebody, anybody, much less a silvering fox like Morrison, wanted to be at my side. And now that he made me think of it, he was the only other person in the immediate vicinity who understood just how alarming it was that Gary’s wife was merely sick. “I guess, I mean, no, when you put it that way....”
“That’s what I thought. So either we’re both flying or we’re both driving.”
“I can’t...drive fast enough. I mean, the record for driving across the States is about thirty hours, and we’ve got most of that distance to cover.”
Morrison flicked an eyebrow again at the fact I knew what the cross-country driving record was, but he didn’t comment on that. He said something far more astonishing instead. “I can call in some favors and get the roads cleared, get us a police escort across the country. How fast can you do it then?”
My jaw dropped. I closed it again, wet my lips, and felt my jaw fall open again. “You have never been as sexy as you are right now.” Aidan, hearing that, looked mortified while I kept gazing in stunned lust at Morrison. “You would do that? What excuse would you use?”
“That I had a critical case and couldn’t fly, which happens to be true. How fast could you make the drive?”
“About...” I closed my eyes, envisioning the route, the roads, and Petite’s top speed before slumping. “Even if I could keep her pegged, which is unlikely, it’d take most of a day, and I haven’t slept since...” I didn’t know when. Drooping, I tried to rub a hand across my eyes. There was a phone in it, which made me realize I hadn’t actually ended the conversation with Dad. I put the phone back to my ear and said, “Did you go get Petite?” and got an affirmative grunt in response. “Okay. I need you to drive her to Seattle.”
Morrison’s eyebrows shot skyward while I tried not to think too hard about what I was asking. Dad had already driven my beloved 1969 Mustang down the mountain to his house, which under ordinary circumstances would be grounds for kneecapping. I did not let other people drive Petite. Except Morrison had driven her all the way from Seattle to bring her—and himself—to me in a moment of need, and now I was telling Dad to haul her big beautiful wide back end across the country again. I could take it as a sign of maturity and of letting go, but really it was more a sign of desperation.
“You, ah. What?” Dad sounded as shocked as Morrison looked, but possibly for different reasons. “You need me to what?”
“Drive my car to Seattle, Dad. You know the road.” A thread of humor washed through that. My father and I had driven all over the country in my childhood. The idea that he might not know the way—which was not at all why he was asking—amused me. Any port in a storm, I guessed.
Dad’s silence spoke volumes. Up until about twelve hours ago, we hadn’t talked to one another, much less seen each other, in years. My doing, because I’d been on a high horse it had eventually turned out I had no business on. We had only just barely buried the hatchet, though, and it was a big thing to ask. A three-thousand-mile thing to ask, in fact. I was trying to figure out another course of action when Dad cleared his throat. “How soon do you need her there?”
My knees
