Interest glittered in the reporter’s eyes. “And you weren’t pressed into service, given the situation?”

I tipped my chin down and looked up at her through my eyebrows. “A lot of people are out on sick leave, Ms. Corvallis, but we usually do get paid for sick leave. The department doesn’t have a lot of money for overtime. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Corvallis pursed her lips, looking as though she was in fact disappointed. “You’re lying to me, Officer Walker. You said you had to get to work, when we spoke in the parking lot.”

I stared at her. First, how she remembered exactly what I said was beyond me. Second, “Do people typically say, ’Please excuse me, but I’ve got to run inside and talk to a couple of people before I leave and go about my day’ to you when they’re heading into their work building, Ms. Corvallis?” Sure, I was lying now, but now I had a moral high horse that made it easier.

“People often find being very specific in what they say to a news reporter is a good idea.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said in genuine, pointed incredulity. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Corvallis, I’ve got some personal business to take care of.” I clipped the words off and she smiled at me.

“I hope you’re telling me the truth, Officer Walker. I’ll find out if you’re not.”

“I’m sure you will.” I bared my teeth at her, which was as close as I could get to a smile, waved goodbye at the driver, who lifted the half-eaten burger in salutation, and backed out of the parking lot to drive home with shaking hands.

Wednesday, July 6, 2:20 p.m.

By the time I got there I at least had a plan. I had no illusions that it was a good plan, but at least it was a plan, and that was better than sitting around with fast-food coffee going sour in my stomach, worrying about Billy and Mel and a whole lot of other friends. I turned my computer on and prayed the gods of the Internet would have some answers for me.

They didn’t. Mystical sleeping sicknesses and the Net turned out to have little in common, although I did learn more than I ever wanted to know about African trypanosomiasis. The only references that covered both sleeping sicknesses and mysticism were stories about African evil spirits who’d turned into the mosquitoes that carried the disease. It was a long shot, especially since there just weren’t that many mosquitoes in downtown Seattle parks. On the other hand, these evil spirits were evidently sensitive to topaz, so if I got really desperate I could always start collecting topaz and hand it out to people.

Actually, that didn’t sound like a bad idea, which in and of itself made me wince. I hoped I wasn’t going to turn into one of those New Agers with the frizzy hair and the gypsy skirts. I punched in a search on topaz’s inherent qualities and came up with an Indian—the subcontinent, not the Native Americans—belief that it helped bring good dreams and peaceful sleep. Between that and the evil spirits, handing out chunks of it sounded like an actively good idea. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen so far, and at the same time I was incredibly relieved to come across something that might help.

I took a deep breath, accepted my doom and Googled “magic sleep,” which turned out to be just the ticket for a Dungeons & Dragons cleric in search of spell statistics. I put my forehead down on the keyboard, depressing keys until they started a long painful beep.

The sound was enough to send me shoving away from my desk purposefully, gripped with the determination to do something, even if it was stupid. I drove Petite down to East Asian Imports, the incense-filled shop I’d met Faye Kirkland at only three weeks earlier, and bought every piece of topaz they had. Half an hour later, my pockets full of rocks, I marched into the precinct building, a woman on a mission.

Morrison was the first stop on my mission, and he wasn’t there. That took the wind out of my ambition and I stood there staring at his desk for a while, relief warring with disappointment. He was the hardest person to talk to, so I wanted to get it over with. On the other hand, more sympathetic ears might make it easier to work my way up to him. I went back to Missing Persons, a flawed piece of stone clutched in my hand.

I didn’t like the Missing Persons office. It always seemed cold, even in July, and the door stuck, making a draft that riffled all tidy rows of photographs and vital statistics that lined the walls. I thought it sounded like the lost whispering for help, and found it overwhelmingly depressing. Homicide was bad, with all its raw violence floating at the surface, but Missing Persons was worse. It had the tang of hope sullied by desolation, the knowledge that every day a case wasn’t closed meant it was that much less likely there would ever be a happy ending. Murder was concrete; it made an end to things. Hope could hang on like a bitch.

“You always get that look when you come in here.” Jen Gonzales, the woman I was in search of, came out from one of the inner offices, offering her hand to shake. I put mine in it automatically, her fingers startlingly warm in the perceived chill of the office.

“Hi, Jen. What look?”

“Makes your eyes sad, and no offense, Joanie, but a lot of the time you don’t have the happiest eyes, anyway.” Jen had a faint Spanish accent and always shook hands when people came into her office. It’d finally struck me that doing so might give her a better sense of the people she was meeting, and their emotional state, than anything else could. The one time I’d asked she’d brushed it off.

But she’d been one of the people who had known how to focus her energy and offer it up like she’d been trained in it when I’d faced down Cernunnos in the precinct’s garage. I rubbed my thumb over the topaz, watching it more than her. “This sleeping thing,” I said after a minute. “It’s not a virus or anything. It’s…” I gritted my teeth and scowled at Jen’s knees, working myself up to what I needed to say. “You’ve got the same kind of talent Billy does, the ability to focus your energy.”

I dared a glance through my eyebrows to find Jen ghosting a smile at me. My shoulders relaxed marginally and I sighed. “Yeah. This thing hit Billy first, and then Mel before it started spreading like wildfire. I don’t know what this morning’s explosion’s about, but I think it might be a good idea for people who’ve linked up with me to keep their heads down, if they’re still awake.” I presented the piece of topaz, my hand palm-up. “The only thing I’ve been able to find so far that might help is topaz. It’s supposed to be protection against non-viral sleeping sicknesses.”

That was playing fast and loose with the truth on a lot of levels, but Jen probably didn’t need to know about the evil African spirits, and it was a lot easier to say “non-viral” than “mystical.” Even as I said it I felt like I was trying to cheat my way out of admitting what was going on. I wondered if it’d ever be easy for me to admit, “Yeah, it’s magical in origin,” and didn’t know if it’d be better or worse if it was easy. I lifted my hand a little, offering Jen the topaz. “I don’t know if it’ll help, but you might want to hang on to this.”

Jen picked the stone up without touching my skin, lifting it to examine its clarity. There wasn’t much; smoke and scars filled the golden stone, which was the only reason I’d been able to afford a box of the stuff. As far as semiprecious jewels went, topaz wasn’t expensive, but gem-quality rocks would’ve put me back more credit than I had. Just watching her fold it into her pocket made me feel a little better. The stones had only been in my possession a few minutes, but I really wanted them to offer some protection, and maybe that in itself would do some good. So, I thought, would the bearer believing in its power.

The bearer. God. All the people I’d mocked for getting weird with language when they got into otherworldly stuff deserved an apology. It really did do something to the brain, because now I was doing it.