"There probably won't be an avalanche involved, but…" The missed call was from Billy. "But yeah, it's likely."

"Then do me a favor," Mandy said. "Don't answer until you're out of my car."

I closed my phone and leaned my head against the window, feeling the rift between myself and the rest of the world all the way back into town.

Wednesday, December 21, 4:55 P.M.

I didn't even bother to listen to Billy's message, just went straight to the station after returning Mandy's hiking gear to her. Billy wasn't technically at work today, not any more than I was, but if something new and horrible had gone wrong, he'd almost certainly be at the precinct building to tell me.

I ran into Ray just inside the doors, more literally than I would've liked. He stayed planted where he was, like a fireplug, and I bounced off with a grunt. "Ow. What do you do, eat hubcaps for breakfast?"

"Plate mail," he said unexpectedly, and looked pleased when I laughed. "That woman yesterday, she's okay. Even agreed to go into a sponsored dry-out program. Guess getting her balls busted with a busted bottle showed her the light."

I spent way too long working out the busted bottle balls, then shook myself all over and smiled. "That's great. Sorry for siccing Corvallis on you. How'd that go? I swear, that woman's a betta." I was doing it again, comparing her to vicious fish. At least bettas, like Corvallis, were pretty. Cold and scaly, but pretty.

Surprise dug deep wrinkles into Ray's forehead. "You think? I always liked her on the television, the way she doesn't take crap from anybody. A real reporter, not like most of 'em on TV now. Anyway, it went great. We're going out to dinner tonight."

I scraped my jaw off the floor soon enough to stutter, "Have fun," before he stumped out the doors, and stood there in the blast of cold air marveling at philosophies undreamed of.

A cynical worm crept into my thoughts, wondering if Corvallis had only agreed to go out with Ray as a way to gain inside information into the department and, by proxy, me. Then the worm began eating its own tail until it disappeared into a plonk of nothingness inside my brain, because Ray could most certainly handle himself. I didn't envy Corvallis trying to pump him for information he didn't plan to share.

That brought an unfortunately suggestive image to mind. I clutched my head, trying to shake it—both head and image—loose, and went upstairs to see if Billy was around, or if anybody had details on what else had gone wrong.

To my dismay, Billy was there, which meant something had gone wrong. I sat on the edge of his desk and waited silently for him to look up, but I wasn't expecting the haggardness in his face when he did. I slid off the edge of the desk into the chair beside it, ice forming inside my stomach. "What happened?"

"What happened? My partner disappeared all day and I've been sitting here with my gut turning to acid waiting for her to get back. And to keep my mind off it I've been going over the files of a dozen people eaten alive over the past six weeks, and coming up dry. What the hell do you mean, what happened?"

I slumped in the chair, relief turning to a burp that I inexpertly hid behind one hand. "Sorry. From your expression I thought maybe somebody else was dead. Our gambit kind of worked. We flushed the thing out, but it started an avalanche and got away." I related the relevant parts of the day, ending with, "I don't know what it was, Billy. I know what it wasn't. It's not a god. It didn't have that kind of power. It's not even a sorcerer, but it's not exactly human, either."

Billy was taking notes and muttering, "Not quite human, eats human flesh, invisible but physical spirit form…you do that."

"What?" I cranked my jaw up for the second time, a guilty blush burning my ears. "Oh. God. Yeah, I guess I do." There was no guess about it. Very early on I'd learned to bend light around myself to make a mirage, to suggest I wasn't there. It was a matter of changing perceptions, which was one of the basic precepts of shamanism, and nobody had to know I'd gotten the idea from a comic book.

I'd looked at my reflection once when I'd pulled that cloak around me, and I had the sudden disturbing realization that Billy was right: what my opponent had done that morning had looked a lot like my trick. "It's another shaman?"

That was disturbing on a lot of levels. One, and rather obviously, shamans weren't supposed to go around eating people, except maybe symbolically. A shaman who went bad wasn't a shaman anymore, but a sorcerer, at least in a lot of Native American myths. But my admittedly limited experience with sorcery had a different feel to it: seductive, rational, sacrificial….

I was starting to notice a lot of nasty things came across as seductive. Not blatantly so—no women in red dresses, no rain of wealth from the sky—but seductive nonetheless. Good didn't seem to be quite so charming, which I kind of thought was a mistake on the home team's part. Enlightenment and altruism weren't actually that common, as far as I could tell. People tended to want things, and evil tended to offer those things.

"Is that even possible?"

I rattled myself out of considering good's ineptitudes and frowned at Billy. "I don't know. I mean, it wouldn't be a shaman anymore, but I don't know if a sorcerer still has the same bag of tricks. Virissong was never trained as a shaman, and he's the only sorcerer I've ever met."

"Okay, how about other shamans you've met?"

"They've all been dead." I sounded pretty lost and miserable when I said that, and cleared my throat like it would make me bigger and stronger. "Really. The only other living shaman I've ever spoken with was Coyote, and…"

"Yeah." Billy sighed. "I'm sorry, Joanie."

"Me too." I scrubbed my hands through my hair, itching my scalp and hoping invigorated blood flow would awaken some kind of deep understanding in my soul. "Okay. This is what I know. That thing—" I straightened up suddenly. "Billy, I want to try something. Can astral projections have physical manifestations?"

To my chagrin, Billy threw his head back, laughed aloud, then settled back in his chair with a broad grin. "I can't believe I just heard you say that. A year ago you'd have been snorting in your sleeve and rolling your eyes if you'd heard me say something like that. And here you are, full of confidence and completely serious when you ask about physical manifestations of astral projections."

A little blossom of embarrassed pleasure burst in my chest. I hunched my shoulders and looked down, but shot Billy a glance through my eyebrows. "You know I think that's the first time you've given me even a little bit of shit about any of this?"

His grin got even wider. "I guess I figured you could take it by now." Some of the teasing slipped away, though the smile stayed just as big. "Don't get me wrong, there were times I wanted to say I told you so, but…"

"But you're a much better person than that, and you thought sending me off in a sulk would be counterproductive?"

"Something like that, yeah." Billy grunted as I scooted my chair forward to lean over and give him a hug. Normally I reserved that kind of soppy behavior for Gary, but just this once I thought we both deserved it.

"Thanks, Billy. Seriously. For putting up with all the crap I ever gave you, and for not rubbing my nose in it when I got hit in the teeth with your world. I owe you a lot."

"You can fix my car for free for the rest of your life in repayment."

"I do anyway."

Billy shrugged, still smiling. "Guess that works out, then. All right, Walker. What was that about physical manifestations of astral projections?" He started laughing again, and I couldn't blame him.