Free Urban Shaman by Ce Murphy Page A

isn’t gonna make Morrison feel bad enough not to fire you, Joanie,” the someone said, then lifted his voice. “Forget the ECG, Jimmy. She’s back with us. Looks like the other guy got the worst of it. What happened,” he said, addressing me again, “his gang dragged him off to die?”
    My arm weighed about twenty thousand pounds, but I picked it up and dropped it on my chest, tryingto find the hole the sword had poked in me. I found it by proxy. There was a gash in my shirt, a nasty hole stiffening with dried blood. Beneath it, my rib cage seemed to be unpunctured. I rolled my head to the side, somewhat amazed that it stayed on, and croaked, “Gary?”
    All I could see were feet. I didn’t know what kind of shoes Gary wore, but I was pretty sure they weren’t open-toed blue leather heels, absolutely impractical for Seattle in January.
    “Who the hell is Gary?”
    I rolled my head back to where it had been and tried to focus on the paramedic. “Oh,” I said after a while. “Billy. Cabby.”
    “No, Billy Holliday, sweetheart. You’ve always been easily confused.” He squatted by me again, pushing my eyelid back and inspecting my pupil. “How many fingers do you see?”
    “I don’t see anything, Billy, somebody’s got his damn thumb stuck in my eye. What happened, you get called in early?”
    “How’d you know?” He took his thumb out of my eye and elevated his eyebrows at me.
    “The shoes.”
    Billy Holliday was, as far as I knew, Seattle’s only cross-dressing detective. I’d met him three days after I was hired: dispatch asked me to rescue an off-duty officer whose car had broken down. Dispatch hadn’t mentioned that the cop in question would be wearing a pale yellow floral print dress and had biceps bigger than my head. Billy looked better in a dress than I did.
    Not that I could remember the last time I wore a dress.
    Billy inspected his feet. “I shoved my feet into the first thing I found next to the door,” he admitted. “Do you like them?”
    I decided I was feeling better, and began to sit up. Billy pushed me back down. “I think they’re great,” I offered, and tried to sit up again. The admiration didn’t appease him, and we had a good little tussle going when Gary’s knees intruded in my line of vision. He crouched while I wondered how I recognized his knees.
    “You oughta be dead, lady.”
    I let Billy win and dropped onto my back. “Yeah?” I asked. “What’s Marie got to say about that?”
    “You ought to be dead,” she said from above my head. I tilted my chin up and looked at her foreshortened form through my eyebrows.
    “That’s reassuring.” I closed my eyes. “What happened?”
    I felt Marie and Gary cast uncomfortable glances at Billy. “Billy,” I said without opening my eyes, “go change your shoes, would you?”
    Mortal offense filled his voice. “What, so you can get your story straight? What kind of detective do you take me for?”
    “It’s a little more complicated than that.” I tried to remember where I’d heard that recently. Oh, yeah. Coyote.
    My head began to hurt again.
    I pushed up on an elbow, opening my eyes. “I’m asking as a friend, Bill. Or I’ll steal your distributor cap.”
    He grinned reluctantly. “Friends don’t threatenfriends’ distributor caps. Look, you sure you’re okay, Joanie? You look like hell.”
    “I’m sure. I’m fine. I swear I’ll explain it later.”
    “Arright.” Billy stood up. So did Gary. They sized each other up while I worked on climbing to my feet. Gary nodded tersely, and Billy walked off. It all smacked of some sort of bizarre male testosterone thing. I tried hard to ignore it.
    “What happened?” I asked again. My balance was off. I spread my arms out, trying to find my center. Then it occurred to me that Coyote wanted me to do exactly that, and my head hurt more. I rubbed my temple, then my face, and that didn’t hurt at all. Fascinated, I prodded at my cheek. No pain.
    “You got a