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“I thought we’d established I’m a cop, not a medicine woman.”
“You’re wrong.”
I started to get annoyed again. Why did he have that effect on me? Maybe because he kept telling me what I was and who I should be.
“You think I wear this charming outfit because it flatters my ass?” I indicated the ugly brown uniform that bagged at the breasts and sagged in the butt. I didn’t have a bad body, but you’d never know it by looking at me in this rag, which was probably the idea.
“You might be a cop,” he said, “but you’re a medicine woman, too. Even if you don’t know the way. You were born to be who you are, and who you are is the great-granddaughter of Rose Scott.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again. “I’m sheriff of Lake Bluff. That’s who I was born to be.”
In truth, my dad had expected one of the boys to take over, but they’d hightailed it out of town the instant they’d turned eighteen. Good old Grace, who’d been begging for an ounce of Daddy’s attention her entire life, had stayed and assumed the position when he died.
I didn’t mind. I liked my job; I was good at it. Besides, there wasn’t much call for medicine women these days.
“You’ll discover your power one day.” He tilted his head and the white of the eagle feather caught the sunlight and sparkled. “One day soon, I think.”
I remembered how the small shaft of moonlight had glanced off the feather just last night. “What were you doing in the forest during a storm?”
“Is that a crime?”
“Not unless I can arrest people for stupidity, and as much as I’d like to, lawyers tend to frown on that.”
“Lawyers frown on everything. Considering your accident, it was lucky for you that I was stupid.”
“I’d have been all right. Why did you disappear?”
“I had things that needed to be done.”
Before I could point out how uninformative that was, my cell phone buzzed. One glance at the display and I sighed. “Excuse me.” I accepted the call. “What is it, Cal?”
“You okay?”
“Peachy. Cut to the chase.”
“Sounds like you’re back to normal. Nose broke?”
“I have no idea.”
“Grace—,” he began.
“My nose works. It’s in the center of my face, and I can smell just fine with it.” Against my will my eyes were drawn to Ian Walker, whom I’d been smelling far too much of.
“We’ve had a lot of calls since last night,” Cal continued.
“I’m shocked.”
Cal ignored me. He’d learned fast. “A lot of them were about birds.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Flocks of really big crows swooping low over cars. Birds flying into windows. Down chimneys.”
“Is there a Hitchcock revival somewhere in the vicinity?”
“Very funny.”
I hadn’t been kidding. Every time a scary movie played in the area we had a rash of complaints that mirrored the plot. With every new Friday the 13th release— would they ever end?—people saw Jason all over the place.
