Melinda got to her feet and put her hands on her waist. Or she would’ve if she’d had a waist, but pregnancy precluded that. It also precluded her from looking all that threatening. She looked a bit like a deranged penguin, really, what with the tuxedo and the tummy. “You just want me to mellow out,” she snapped. “You know if I sleep on it I’ll wake up knowing you made the right choice, even if I hate it.”

Billy crooked the tiniest grin I’d ever seen. “I’m counting on it, baby.”

Mel said something along the lines of, “Mrgnnmnmm grr grr grr,” and waddled over to hug Billy hard. “You’re a wretch.”

“Yeah, but you love me.” He got off my couch and tucked Melinda against his side, kissing her hair before looking at me. “There might be one thing you can do.”

I said, “Anything,” without thinking, but once I’d thought, it didn’t matter. Anything barely began to cover what I’d do to help Billy or Melinda.

“Ever shared energy with someone? It’s—”

He didn’t have to finish explaining. I’d done it frequently with another friend, popping a bit of healing energy into a heart that’d been magicked into an attack. I stepped forward and put my hand over Billy’s heart, calling up power.

Cheery blue-silver fireworks spat energy and comfort into his depleted aura. I’d drained myself damn near dry a couple of times early on in the year, but I got the impression that the more I accepted it, the deeper and more fundamental my magic became. If I had to go up against something huge, I might need to call in help from outside again, but even with the long night, I had more than enough juice to rev Billy’s engi—

I really needed to get some different metaphors.

Fortunately, Melinda couldn’t hear my thoughts, and Billy’s colors strengthened, which released me from having to think anymore about how to describe what I was doing. I shot another pulse of energy into him, essentially imagining it as refilling a fuel tank, and he exhaled gratefully. “Thanks. I don’t feel so worn down.”

“You don’t look so worn down,” Melinda said with satisfaction. “The gray’s fading out of your aura. You sure they don’t have enough foothold to take over when you sleep?”

“I’m sure now.” Billy hugged her shoulders, then nodded to me. “See you in the morning, Joanne.”

“It’s already morning. See you later. And not enough later, either.” I gave Mel a quick hug and shooed them out the door before thunking my head on it.

To the best of my ability to count—and for all my various faults, that much I could still do—this was the third time Billy’d gotten into hot water thanks to me and my magic. I didn’t know what his daily paranormal experiences were, but I was willing to bet banshees and comas and ghosts, oh my, had never been on the roster.

On one very practical hand, it made sense: Billy belonged to the Mulder subset of humanity. He wanted to believe, and because he did, he was usually on hand when the weird went down. That put him in a position of strength if he was dealing with his own particular branch of Other, but it made him vulnerable when he was dealing with mine. Realistically I couldn’t keep him out of harm’s way, but one of these times I wasn’t going to be able to figure a way out of the crazy before he really got hurt. I either needed more friends to spread the risk around to, or fewer so I took all the scary stuff onto myself.

Billy would give me a swirly for even thinking that way. I gave up on trying to figure out how to save the world and went to bed.

Sunday, October 30, 11:57 a.m.

Somewhere out there in the big brave world there was an extra-grande amaretto coffee with my name on it. All I had to do was get through the three minutes until it was technically lunchtime, and I could break free of my desk and go in search of that beautiful, luscious cup of coffee.

I’d been a homicide detective for four months now. I was never in any way keen to put my detecting skills to the test, but for the last few hours, I’d have almost given my eyeteeth for a nice eventful murder. The morning had been filled with paperwork, some of it follow-up on a couple of cases we’d closed the week before, but more of it focused on trying to find anything about Halloween murders over the last hundred and fifty years in Seattle. I’d protested. I didn’t think there’d been anything in Seattle that long.

Billy sent me to Wikipedia, where I learned that it’d been a Native American settlement forever. Well, okay, I’d known that, what with the whole Chief Seattle thing, but I hadn’t known that white people had been there since the 1850s. Having been educated, I wondered if we should go back more than a hundred and fifty years. Billy said I was welcome to locate criminal records kept by a people who didn’t have a written language, and wished me luck with that.

Pointing out that we didn’t have any records that indicated people who did have a written language were being murdered on Halloween didn’t go over especially well. Billy, who was as tired as I was, stomped off, and I’d started craving my amaretto-flavored coffee right about then. That had been almost two hours ago. I glanced at the clock. Ninety seconds. I could survive another ninety seconds.

A short slim man in a business suit and with an air of determination about him came through the door and stopped at the receptionist’s desk, which was, by default, simply the one closest to the door. Technically, as the newest detective on the force, it should’ve been mine, but I’d bribed my way to three desks back and one to the left by doing expensive and time-consuming vehicle repair jobs for free. The guys I’d bargained with had saved a collective thirteen and a half grand, which had earned me two months’ respite from the junior desk on each of their behalfs. I had another three months of no-desk-duties stored up, and a tingly hope that Morrison would hire another detective before my time ran out. Even if he didn’t, at least I’d insinuated myself into the team and had gotten a chance to learn the ropes without being interrupted every thirty seconds by somebody coming in the front door.

Speaking of thirty seconds. I let out a sigh of relief and grabbed my coat off the back of my chair. It would take thirty seconds to walk to the clock and punch out. I could get my coffee. I’d even bring one back for Billy. God, I was swell.

“Detective Walker?”

The officious little guy called my name as I stepped away from my desk. My shoulders hunched around my ears and I pretended not to hear him. I made it two more steps before one of the guys whose car I’d fixed helpfully bellowed, “Hey, Walker!” making it impossible for me to sneak away.

I was going to pour sugar in his gas tank. I turned around with my best expression of seething discontent, hoping to both castigate the bellowing detective and scare off the suit.

Neither worked. The detective looked way too pleased with himself, clearly knowing he’d just ruined my lunch hour, and the fellow in the suit looked like nothing short of thermonuclear war would put him off the trail. He put a briefcase on my desk and reached over it to offer a hand in greeting. “Detective Walker? I’m Daniel Doherty with First Ally Home-state Insurance. I’m here to talk to you about your vehicle.”

There are words which, when spoken, are intended to strike fear into the hearts of men. Anything involving the phrase “We need to talk” is gut-clenching territory, and when it comes from an insurance adjudicator, it’s worse than that. My knees stopped working and instead of shaking Daniel Doherty’s hand, I caught myself on the edge of my desk and admired the cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. The only reason I was sure I’d caught myself was that I wasn’t on the floor: my hands were so icy I could’ve missed the desk entirely and I wouldn’t have felt it. My heart hung between beats, and foul air filled my lungs with agony before I forced out a whispered “Is she okay?”

My inherent drama probably would’ve been better suited to hearing about a child’s injury, but Petite was my baby. She’d been fine four hours ago when I parked her outside the precinct building. Short of a bulldozer rolling through the parking lot, I couldn’t really imagine what might’ve happened to her, but I had visions of terrible things. Worse than tires slashed or roofs split open by swords or being helicoptered out of an earthquake zone, all of which were bad, but only the first hadn’t happened to my poor car in the last year. We’d had a rough year, Petite and me.