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I had never had occasion to greet someone who had spent several hours as a wild animal thanks to my screw-ups. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he got up, remarkably dignified for a man draped in a blanket, and went to find clothes.

Saved from having to address the topic of his shapeshifting, I mumbled, “I need to borrow your phone,” to his retreating back, and did so without actually getting permission. He came back in jeans and a tank top like the one he’d worn in his garden just as I was hanging up. My brain slipped a notch and I stared at him in drawn-out silence, wondering just what that choice of wardrobe meant. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. After a good solid minute of us both just standing there looking at one another, I decided somebody had better saysomething.

“I need some time off,” was unquestionably the wrong thing to say, but my mouth said it anyway. Morrison’s expressiondarkened and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What I really mean is?—”

“You don’t have any time off, Walker.”

Contrary to the end, I said, “Yeah, I do, a couple weeks. I still get my vacation, don’t I? Even if?—”

“Fine. Take it. Get out of my hair.” He brushed by me, scowling, and went into the kitchen, where he began making a pot of coffee. If he was anyone else, I’d say he began slamming things around to make a pot of coffee, actually, but that would be far too emotional and temperamental for my boss.

I stomped after him. “Captain, listen to me. I?—”

He growled, “I thought I said you could have your time off. What the hell do you need now?” in a credible wolf imitation.

I stuck my jaw out and stared at the ceiling, willing patience into my voice before I dared look at him again. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone.”

His nostrils flared. I mashed my lips together, glaring as he snapped, “Your mother dying again?”

I was going to kill him. That was new. Usually I figured he was going to kill me. I snapped, “No, but maybe she’s sending me messages from beyond the veil. You know. The usual,” right back.

Flippancy was the wrong approach. Morrison started yelling. Overall, he probably had every right to: he’d had something of a bad night, and it could all be laid at my feet. I, however, just kept talking beneath the shouting. It wasn’t that I had any expectation that he’d hear me. It just helped me not listen, which I didn’t want to do. Eventually my explanation ran out, but Morrison’s head of steam didn’t.

I sighed and said, “Captain,” to no avail. After a few more seconds, I tried, “Boss?” but that went over like a raindrop in a thunderstorm, too, so I moved on to, “Morrison!”

It was like talking into outer space. His outrage swallowed anything I had to say, but if I waited for him to wind down on his own, I’d still be there an hour after I was supposed to be at the airport. I put my shoulders back, drew a deep breath and bellowed,“Michael!”

The silence that followed was so complete the coffee pot’s sudden burble sounded like a jet engine exploding. Morrison gaped, florid color fading.

“What do you suppose we would do,” I said conversationally, “if we ever had sex? I mean, what would we call each other? Captain and Walker? Morrison and Detective? Or would we just find excuses to not call each other anything?”

Morrison’s eyes bugged. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to shut up or if I was enjoying the left field my brain had gone out to. I hadn’t been previously aware that I’d spent subconscious time on this subject, but given the way I was running off at the mouth, it seemed I had. “It’s not that Michael isn’t a nice name,” I went on blithely. “It’s just that you look like you’re having an apoplectic fit at being called by it, and I can only remember you calling me by my given name once.”

“Siobhán.”

The world went out from under my feet. When you live in the altered state of reality I’d gotten used to, that sort of phrase was dangerous to use, because it could be literally true. In this case, I was pretty sure it wasn’t, but it sure felt like it. My knees went weak, my vision tunneled, and I felt all floaty, like Wile E. Coyote right before he noticed the road had been painted over thin air. I had to try twice to wet my lips, because someone’d taken sandpaper to my throat. “…I meant Joanne.”

A very faint light of triumph glittered in Morrison’s eyes, and the brief smile he offered made my stomach turn into a round stone of alarm before it sank toward my still-floaty feet. I could feel the color Morrison had lost starting to flood my own face,and now I wished very much that I’d shut up a long time ago. Possibly years ago. Morrison left the counter to come stand toe to toe with me. I had shoes on and he was in stocking feet, so I had a slight height advantage, but I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Morrison didn’t appear to be having that problem. I thought it was probably a bad sign for the home team that the competition was still breathing when all signs pointed toward me being dead. On the other hand, dead had to be better than standing there in Morrison’s kitchen working up to enough heat for self-immolation.

“Overlooking,” Morrison said from about three inches away, and so quietly a fly on the wall wouldn’t be able to hear a thing, “the sheer inappropriateness of this conversation, I try to leave work at work as much as possible. I prefer to be called Michael in bed. Was there another point to this discussion, Detective Walker?”

I couldn’t blush any harder, but there was one worse thing I could do. My eyes betrayed me, filling with stinging tears. I told myself it was embarrassment, which was true, and that it wasn’t gut-wrenching disappointment at the rebuke ending in my formal title instead of my name, which was so patently untrue I didn’t think anybody in the entire universe would believe it. I rolled my jaw forward until the joint hurt, trying to counter emotional pain with the much, much less agonizing sensation of physical pain, and averted my gaze.

That was a mistake. Moving my eyes made the tears spill over. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood instead of letting myself lift a hand to wipe them away. Maybe Morrison wouldn’t notice, if I didn’t draw attention to them. Maybe a meteor would smash through the ceiling and end my humiliation, too. I wasn’t counting on either.

My throat was so tight that the words I forced out actually hurt, thin scrapings in the air. “I’m sure there’s paperwork Icould fill out for a sabbatical or a leave of absence, but any way you look at it I effectively took one of those eighteen months ago when my mother died, so I figure I’m probably screwed in that department.” The unfortunate choice of words hit me a little too late, but since ritual suicide sounded like a better option than trying to correct myself, I just kept talking. “I’ve got to go to Ireland. I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone, and I don’t even know what I’m going to be like when or if I come back. So what I’m really trying to say, Captain, is that you win. You win. I quit.”

“Well, thank goddamned God,” Morrison said, and took my face in both hands to guide me into a kiss.

On a listof Things Joanne Was Expecting, that one hadn’t even been penciled in. In the unlikely event it had, I would have imagined it as the possessive, frustrated kiss that impatient film noir heroes give the aggravating women of their dreams.

Morrison kissed me like he was apologizing for making me cry. Thumbs on my cheeks, brushing tears away over the thin scar, and he traced that scar like it meant I was fragile. His mouth was warm and soft and tasted a little bit like coffee, but once I’d noticed those things I didn’t seem to be able to quantify anything anymore, and besides, the floor had fallen out from under my feet again. I really thought I might be floating, so wrapping my legs around his waist seemed like a very sensible thing to do.

One or the other of us ran out of air before I got that far, though, and we broke apart, me with an astonished gasp and Morrison with that glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes again. I wet my lips two or three times and searched for something more intelligent to say than, “Buh,” and Morrison’s grin turned first sly, then slightly embarrassed. The embarrassment gave mesomething to hang my hat on, and I squeaked, “Speaking of sheer inappropriateness?”

“I’m—”

I clapped my hand over his mouth. “I swear to God, Morrison, if you sayI’m sorryI will break your nose.” I thought I was more likely to knee him in the crotch, but men never think that threat is funny. Broken noses, funny. Bruised dangly bits, not funny. Morrison’s eyes crinkled a little and he took my hand away from his mouth to reveal a crooked smile.