I made it to my feet somewhere in the living room and was rewarded for my monumental effort by barking my shin on the coffee table. I reached for the doorknob and the injured shin at the same time, pulled the door open, and slammed myself in the forehead with the edge of the door. Collapsing onto the floor in a sniveling lump seemed the only thing to do, so I did it. It was only when tears started to unstick my eyelashes that I realized that I not only hadn’t, but couldn’t, open my eyes. I took turns rubbing at my shin and my forehead and my stuck-together lashes. Somewhere up above me, Gary said, “Jesus Christ, Jo. You look like someone ran you over and backed up to see what he hit.”

“Nice to see you, too, Gary.” Not that I could see him. I put a hand over my throat. I sounded like a bulldozer had dumped a load of gravel into my chest. “What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty.” He crouched; I could tell by the location of his voice.

I pried one of my eyes open. “No way. I just went to sleep.” I turned my wrist over and tried to focus on my watch. I couldn’t, but that was okay, since it was wrong anyway. “No way.”

“Yep. Seven-thirty. We’re supposed to meet Marie in half an hour at her place.” Gary straightened up again. I got my other eye open, and blinked tearfully at him.

“Okay. I guess, uh. Let’s go.” I swallowed, trying to loosen my voice up some, and worked on getting my body moving in a direction that felt like ‘up’.

“Uh,” Gary said.

I could only do one thing at a time. I stopped trying to stand and squinted at him. “What?”

“You might wanna think about taking a shower and changing clothes.”

I looked at him without comprehension for a while, then looked down at myself. And, in growing horror, looked some more. After a while, I said, “Oh yuck.”

I wouldn’t have thought sleeping in bloody gory clothes could be beaten for general yuckiness, but adding in a layer of dust over all that made me a fine imitation of a desiccated corpse. “Come in,” I grated. “I’ll shower.” I crawled away from the door without waiting to see if he came in.

* * *

The reflection in the mirror was marginally kinder fifteen minutes later. My hair was clean and slightly gelled into spikes. I was still pale, but only from lack of sleep, rather than from blood, dust and lack of sleep. I’d managed to unstick the contacts from my eyes and was wearing an old pair of glasses, thin gold wire frames with long narrow oval lenses. The gold did cool things to my eyes, or at least it did when I wasn’t still suffering from bloodshot-from-hell eyeballs.

I stared at my reflection, fingering the thin white scar on my cheek. It began just behind the glasses lens, next to the corner of my eye, and ended in the faint smile line above my mouth. It wasn’t exactly detracting, but it sure as hell wasn’t something I was used to. Bumping my fingers over it didn’t make it go away. I finally looked away from the mirror and wove my way into my bedroom to find clothes.

The first T-shirt I found was black, probably the worst possible color to wear when I was one step paler than death, but it was clean, and the V-neck didn’t mess up my hair as I yanked it over my head. Sometimes that’s all a girl can ask for. It would’ve shown off my new necklace well, except I’d had to abandon that until it spent some quality time with silver polish and goo remover. Blood did not go well with silver.

For a girl who didn’t wear jewelry, I felt weirdly naked without the necklace. I dug up the only other piece of jewelry I owned, a copper cuff bracelet my father’d given me for Christmas while I was still in high school. It went on my left wrist, having left the dysfunctional watch on the bathroom counter. The etchings around the outer edges of the bracelet were Celtic knots, which I’d never realized before. For the first time, I wondered if Dad had done that on purpose. I stood there staring mindlessly at the bracelet for far too long, tracing a fingertip over the line etches of various Cherokee-favored animals between the two bands of knots, then shook myself. I was supposed to be getting dressed. I could handle a task like that. Really.

I clawed through my sock drawer and came up with socks, a G-string and the police badge. I threw the badge back in the drawer and pulled the G-string on. Not my favorite kind of underwear, but slightly better than going without. I tugged a pair of jeans on and went out to the living room with my socks in one hand.

Gary was on the couch with one of my secret weaknesses: an entertainment magazine, now four months old. I sat down on the love seat and pulled a sock on. “Are we going to be late for Marie’s?”

“Nah.” Gary looked over the edge of the magazine. “She doesn’t live too far from here. Hey, you don’t clean up so bad.”

It took a minute to work my way through that. “Thanks. I think.”

“Sure,” he said, and went back to the magazine. I got my socks on straight and went looking for shoes. All my favorite pairs were in my luggage, at the airport. I snagged a pair of boots that weren’t too reprehensible, went back into the bedroom, got a pair of skinnier socks that would fit better under the boots, and left the ones I’d had on in the middle of the floor. Such are the joys of living alone. No one can yell at you for doing things like that. “Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

“Just a sec.” Gary didn’t look up from the magazine.

“You can borrow it.” I grinned and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. When I came back Gary was on his feet, waiting.

“Damn,” he said, and looked at my feet. So did I. The boots had heels, nice thick sturdy ones. Cludgy, in fact, but I like cludgy boots. I have big feet and can’t wear sexy skinny little shoes, so I always went for the opposite extreme. In those shoes I was every bit as tall as Gary was, maybe a little taller. I grinned at him.

“Lady, you scare me,” he said, and opened the door for me. I went out feeling pretty good about myself.

* * *

Marie lived barely ten minutes from me. My all-day nap had evidently made a dent, or at least I’d caught another wind, because I took the stairs up to her condo two at a time, leaving Gary behind. “She said it’d be open,” he called as I looked both ways down the hall. “Number one twenty-one.” I took an arbitrary left as Gary caught up, found Marie’s door and did a staccato rap before pushing it open.

“Hey, Marie, it’s us.” The entryway was a short hall with a longer hall to my right and a kitchen to my left. At the end of the entryway, in front of us, was a Nene Thomas print, a woman surrounded by ravens. “I like the print,” I called, and went past the kitchen, past the print and around a corner into the living room, still smiling.

Marie’s very dead body lay sprawled across her living room floor.

I backed up and crashed into Gary, elbowing him in the gut. He grunted, offended. “What the hell was that for?”

“She’s dead,” I whispered.

“What?” Gary crowded me forward again. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure.” I swallowed. Gary did the same, right behind my ear.

Marie lay on her back on the floor, one arm flung above her head, a classic faint. Except it wasn’t a faint. A hole had been torn through her midriff, starting just to the left of her breastbone. It rose up at an angle, and it didn’t take much imagination to envision the heart muscle cut neatly in half beneath the crimson blood. There were no superficial wounds that I could see. It looked like someone had walked in, jerked a knife up through her chest without warning, and walked out again. I rubbed my chest where Cernunnos had stabbed me, nervously. “Where’s that sword?”

“In the trunk of my cab,” Gary whispered back.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if that’s good or bad.”