Dismay and confusion spasmed across Morrison's face, leaving his blue eyes darker than usual. The color he'd put in it at Halloween had grown out of his hair, leaving it short and silvering, the way I liked it, and the whole package made for a handsome man in need of some reassurance. Or at least explanation, if I couldn't offer the other. The best I could do was step away and look up at the roof.

No monsters. There were tracks, cold trails through the air visible with the Sight, but my prey had run away. I whispered, "Maybe it decided I was tougher than it was," without much hope, and glanced toward the ambulance.

Two paramedics were still checking Mandy over. A third stood with Jake at the vehicle's tail end. They had her on an IV already, and I figured it wouldn't be more than another minute before they brought her to the hospital. I wondered if they'd let me in to see her, and if I could be any help if they did, or if I'd be better off trying to track the thing that had attacked her. But I hadn't spoiled the marks this time, so its trail wasn't going to get any colder, and there was something I really had to do before trying to either follow it or help Mandy.

It took everything I had to look back at Morrison and say, "This is my fault, boss."

Every shred of warmth fled the captain's face, turning him back into the nemesis he'd been for years. A short jerk of his chin said "Keep talking."

I did, through knots of anger and guilt. "She volunteered," wasn't much of an excuse, and I knew it as I told him what Mandy Tiller and I had done that morning. "I never imagined it might come after her once we were off the mountain. I should have," I said before he could. "I should have, and I didn't. I completely fucked up. I'm sorry." Sorry didn't begin to cover it, but language was badly suited to expressing handshaking chills of misery and a hollow feeling burning my eyes in a single word. "Sorry," inadequate as it was, had to do the job.

"You got a civilian involved in a dangerous case that the media is all over, and now she's hospitalized and you're sorry?"

"This one's on me, Captain." Billy put himself between me and Morrison. "I asked Mandy to give us a hand."

"Why?" Morrison erupted like a bull seal, and Billy, who was bigger than either of us, somehow seemed to absorb the captain's rage and expand a little with it. "There are dozens of officers who could have—"

"Two reasons, sir," Billy said very steadily. "One is that Walker's original plan was to use herself as bait—"

"Which she would have needed permission for!"

"Not," I mumbled, "if I did it off duty. Which I did." I was sure I wasn't actually helping the situation, but sometimes I talked when I knew I should shut up. It was a character flaw.

"And the other," Billy went on as though neither of us had spoken, "is that this is getting worse fast, sir, and even under the best of circumstances, going through the department on this would have added another twenty-four hours to the search. Getting permission from you, possibly having to wait for a green light from your superiors, getting volunteers, getting equipment…this was faster."

"That wasn't your decision to make!"

"No, sir, it wasn't, and I regret my error in judgment." Billy, stiffly, reached into his coat, withdrew his badge and gun, and offered them to Morrison.

Who stared at them, then at Billy and me, and then said, "Shit," more violently than I'd ever heard him speak before.

All three of us knew he had to take them. Involving civilians in police business, even surreal police business like the stuff Billy and I handled, was bad enough. Getting a civilian hospitalized, maybe killed, was at the very least a suspension offense, and would likely have both of us up on charges. I fumbled for my own badge and gun, because I couldn't let Billy take the fall for me even if he was technically right. I was still the one who'd gotten Mandy Tiller hurt.

Morrison saw what I was doing and made a very sharp, short gesture and pitched his voice bone-scrapingly low: "You have until the nine o'clock news to find a way to make this right. If I get called before then, if I have to make a statement, I'll do it with your badges in my hand. Do I make myself clear?"

My knees went weak and I nodded feebly. "At least Corvallis is at dinner with Ray right now, so she's probably not going to be breathing down our necks for a couple hours."

Despite his fury, Morrison got an expression very much like the one I'd had when Ray had announced his date for the evening. He eventually said, "Ray Campbell?" like the department might have sprouted another Ray recently that he didn't know about.

I nodded, and Billy whistled. "Takes all kinds, I guess." He put his badge and gun away very carefully, offering a quiet, "Thanks, Captain."

"Don't thank me. If we get away with this I'm stringing you both up by your toes. If we don't, I'm crucifying you."

I'd been skewered more times than I cared to think about, which gave me an uncomfortably visceral idea of what crucifixion might feel like. I looked over Morrison's shoulder, not wanting to read any truth in his eyes. The ambulance crawled out of the Tillers' driveway and stopped a few yards down the street, blocked by a black-haired man standing in its path. The driver leaned on the horn, then rolled down the window to shout at the man, who smiled apologetically and shrugged, but didn't move.

A tiny smile of my own was born somewhere around the fine muscles of my eyes, not even getting close to my mouth as it spilled golden happiness, rich and sweet as warm honey, all the way through me. It neutralized the worry bubbling in my belly and revitalized the tiny shred of hope I'd felt at seeing Mandy was alive. I thought my heart was likely to burst, and my chest filled with breathless giggles that I didn't dare let out. Even my hands felt wrong, but in a good way, as they alternated between thrums of thick aching heat and icy coldness with every pulse-beat. For the first time in six months, in a year, maybe for the first time in my whole life, the overwhelming confidence that everything was going to be all right filled me.

The ambulance driver swung his door open, angry words a wash of meaningless noise to my ears. The self-imposed obstruction raised his hands placatingly, then shot me a direct look, one eyebrow elevated in amusement. My itty-bitty smile crinkled my eyes enough to turn my vision all blurry with tears, and finally made it to my mouth. I couldn't breathe, not at all, but I felt so light I thought I might be able to fly.

"Walker, crucifixion isn't a threat that should make you smile." Morrison sounded justifiably annoyed, like I'd taken the wind out of his melodramatic sails. I wanted to promise that I had no doubt at all he meant he'd crucify us, professionally if not physically, but the little smile he was complaining about blossomed into this huge, foolish, jubilant thing that I laid on him like a blessing.

Then I was running just like an ingenue in a bad movie. Running across a snow-covered yard, vaulting the Tillers' low fence, and sliding across the slush-slick asphalt street to crash, joyfully, impossibly, wonderfully, into Coyote's arms.