"The apartment building felt like you. You've lived here a long time, haven't you?" His smile broadened a bit, too. "I'll let you drive the Chief the minute you hand over Petite's keys."

I raised my hands and stood up, defeated. "You drive. Except not in this weather. C'mon, we're going to have to move him inside. You're lucky it didn't snow last night."

"Inside? Do you have a storage unit?"

I wrinkled my eyebrows. "No, I have an apartment. We can bring him over to Chelsea's garage tonight, and our beloved but impractical-for-winter vehicles can keep each other company until the weather breaks." Or until Coyote went home, but I didn't want to think about that just yet.

He said, "Your apartment will smell like gas and oil if we store him in there," but he was heading for the bike when he said it.

I beamed. "Yeah. It'll be great."

My apartment building was mostly filled with college students—Coyote was right; I'd lived there a long time, since I was one of them—and the few who were up at eight in the morning clearly thought nothing of someone wrestling a classic motorcycle into the slow-moving elevator, nor of wheeling it down the building hallway on the fifth floor. The Chief looked a lot bigger inside my apartment than it had in the parking lot, and we had to move my computer desk and the smaller couch to fit it in, but he was safer and warmer inside, so I was satisfied. Of course, doing that took all the extra time we'd bought by getting up early, and the bus delivered us to the precinct building ten minutes late. It wasn't the optimum way to start a day when I needed a favor from my boss.

Billy was already at work, head down over a stack of files, and though he glanced at his watch when we came in, he didn't say anything. Possibly he didn't say anything because it was we, and not just me, who came in, but I counted my blessings anyway, and made the introduction I'd failed to yesterday: "Coyote, this is my partner, Billy Holliday. Billy, this is Coyote. Cyrano. Cyrano Bia." I noticed I was holding Coyote's hand, and let go so he and Billy could shake.

Billy looked like he was swallowing back seven or eight hundred questions as he shook Coyote's hand. "It's good to meet you. I'm glad you're all right. Joanie's missed you a lot."

Coyote mouthed, "Joanie?" at me, and aloud said, "Good to meet you, too. She thinks a lot of you. Sorry about the melodramatics yesterday. Have you heard from Ms. Tiller?"

"She sent an e-mail late last night. She and Jake are home and okay. Looks like the news didn't pick up on her adventure. Morrison still wants to see us."

Some of my good mood drained away. "Us, or me? Because this wasn't really your fault."

"Us, and it was as much mine as yours."

I started to argue, then subsided. We were both in trouble, and Billy apparently wasn't going to let me be the fall guy. "When's he want us?"

"About ten minutes ago."

I pulled a hand over my mouth, turned to Coyote, said, "Crap," turned back to Billy, then walked in three little circles while trying to figure out what to do with myself. "All right. He's going to kill me either way. I guess I should go get it over with. Hang tight, okay, Coyote? I'll be back soon, if I'm not dead."

"We don't have a lot of time, Jo. The wendigo knows there's someone of power hunting it now."

"Oh, it more than knows. It checked me out while we were at Mandy's." I bet that was an important detail I should've mentioned earlier. I tried for an apologetic smile, managed a grimace, and added, "But it ran away," hopefully. "Maybe it didn't think it could take me."

Coyote's expression suggested I definitely should have mentioned this earlier, and that I was probably also a moron for having made the hopeful suggestion. "If it's already retreated, Joanne, it's going to be all the harder to find. And it'll get worse the longer we let it run."

"Right. So I better go talk to Morrison." Who was going to kill me. Rightfully. I gave Coyote an impulsive kiss and scurried out of Homicide.

Billy caught up, looking between me and where we'd left Coyote so sharply I thought he'd give himself whiplash. All he said, though, was, "'Jo'?"

My face wrinkled up entirely of its own accord. "Yeah. I didn't used to like it, so everybody calls me Joanie. Everybody but Gary. He started calling me Jo and I guess I got used to it."

"Cyrano," Billy said, as if he was afraid he was pointing out something dangerous, "isn't Gary."

The stupid little smile cranked the corner of my mouth up again. "I know."

Billy said, "I see," and any further commentary was lost because Morrison flung his office door open and we slunk in.

The captain left us standing there long enough that my feet began to itch from holding still. Under almost any other circumstances it would have started to be funny, and I would've turned into a smart-ass, but I was vividly aware that I wasn't the only one in trouble. I was afraid to look away from Morrison, though I didn't much want to look at him, either. I fixed on his right shoulder, judging it close enough to meeting his eyes. I could certainly still see his face, which was florid.

"I don't know what to do with you two," he finally said. "I'm used to Walker being an idiot, but this is new territory for you, Holliday."

A modicum of wisdom suggested this was not the time to defend myself. Besides, it was a legitimate statement. I'd spent quite a bit of time making an idiot of myself in front of Morrison.

For some reason that made me think of Coyote, and I smiled, which wasn't really the smartest thing to do. Morrison snapped, "You think this is funny, Walker?"

"No, sir." I honestly didn't, except possibly in a "the tension is getting to me, I must either laugh or scream" way. I had the presence of mind—barely—not to say that. And to bite my cheek when another dippy smile started to come out of nowhere. I was hopeless.

That, at least, was a sentiment Morrison would agree with. "The only reason you're not both suspended is Mandy Tiller is alive and well. I should suspend you anyway." But there was a killer out there that only his paranormal detective duo was equipped to find, so he couldn't afford to draw attention to us or the department by suspending us from a case we pretty much had to work on anyway.

He didn't say any of that out loud. He didn't need to. Instead, he snapped, "You'd better goddamned well consider yourselves on probation. You will do nothing without clearing it with me first, and I mean nothing. I don't want you taking a coffee break without my permission."

Billy, sensibly, said, "Yes, sir." I, less sensibly, said, "Aw, hell, Captain, look, in that case I need permission to go haring off into the woods for a few days, because I'm going to anyway."

Morrison's eyebrows shot toward his silvering hairline, and I had the distinct impression Billy was trying to run away without actually moving a muscle. "You what?"

"This thing, the wendigo, Coyote and I are going to have to hunt it, but it's not a city creature. I can't stay here and report in and still do my job." There was a certain irony to that, but Morrison didn't look like he was buying.

"You're not going anywhere, Walker, and if you were, it wouldn't be with a stranger who's not on my force. I don't care how well you think you know this guy. All I know is he's showed up in the middle of a serial murder case claiming to know things about the killer that, frankly, I'm not sure he could know if he wasn't involved."

I laughed. It was bad form, but I laughed. "Are you serious?"

Morrison's ears turned red. "Walker, you told me your mentor was dead. And now this guy with all the answers just happens to show up, wrapped in a package only you can recognize? You tell me if that isn't suspicious."