Spirit Dances (10 page)

Oh, what my life had come to, that such a thought even crossed my mind. I laughed—hissed, more accurately—and turned to the silent waiting rattler in my mind. “How do I—aghglt!”

Snakes were not meant to talk in human languages. I
kakked
and hissed and spat the handful of words I tried, then sank down in a giant puddle of embarrassed snake and hid my nose in my coils.

Snaky laughter buzzed through my skull.
Sssilly ssshaman. Ssspeak inssside.

My “Easy for you to say” came out another series of choking hisses and coughs, and I hid my face farther into my coils. They were nice raspy coils, warm with the heat of Melinda’s sanctuary, and I was just as happy to stay there being humiliated by an inability to talk out loud. Plaintively, silently, I asked,
How do I change back?

Ssshed thisss ssskin, too, of courssse. The ssshaman liesss within.

Of course I did, or I’d have probably tried eating Melinda by now. I tried pressing my eyes shut, but having no eyelids made that tricky.
Okay. Before I do, is it always going to be this easy?

My rattler made a sound of amusement.
Nothing is easssy with you, Sssiobhán Walkingssstick. Today, in this moment you are frightened of missstakes, and are unusually ressseptive. Perhaps confidenssse from this transssition will carry over. Perhaps in the future you will fight it. I cannot sssay. Time isss not mine to travel in sssuch a way.

“I gueack—”
I guess I’ll just have to try, then. Thank you, Rattler. This has been…very interesting.

He made another sound of amusement and didn’t disappear, but went quiet inside my mind, clearly waiting to see if I could get back to human shape on my own. Well, not on my own: he was right there to help, as he would presumably always be. I concentrated on the idea of molting again, as the drone of Melinda’s voice bumped over my skin a second time. I couldn’t
hear
her properly—rattlesnakes apparently
didn’t have ears—and hastened my shedding process so I would catch what she had to say.

“—othes. Oh, dear. Too late.” The last words were muffled behind Melinda’s hands, which did nothing to hide the laughter in them.

Nor did I require any kind of translation, as I was lying constricted in my own clothing. Both my arms were inside my shirt, which wasn’t so bad. They were also both inside my bra, which was not meant to be stretched around another dozen inches of width. I wasn’t entirely certain the bra hadn’t come unfastened and that I wasn’t entangled in straps, but I couldn’t quite tell. Either way, the upper half of my body had nothing on my lower half’s troubles, as both my legs were stuffed into one leg of my jeans. The fabric should have, by all rights, exploded. Instead it had stretched to its three-percent-spandex-maximum, and the seams were strained to bursting. The other leg of the jeans flopped to one side like an empty sausage skin. I was afraid to wonder what had happened to my panties. My feet were bare and rapidly going numb from lack of circulation.

I said, “Help?” in a very small voice, and Melinda collapsed on the floor, weak with laughter. I wanted to be annoyed, but my predicament shot straight past irritation into the absurd, and I, too, began to giggle.

Giggling while bound up in denim and underwires had to be one of the least comfortable things I’d ever done, which only made it funnier. I struggled to free an arm so I could wipe my eyes, and succeeded mostly in rolling myself over. My pants leg gave up any hope of molecular cohesion and tore with a sound unfortunately similar to passing an enormous amount of gas.

Melinda’s shriek of laughter covered the denim’s last gasps. I kicked myself free of the shredded fabric, discovering in
the process that the elastic on my panties hadn’t been nearly so stubborn as the jeans and had already given up the ghost. I crunched up to sitting and wormed a hand up to wipe my eyes. Melinda threw a pillow at me. “Cover yourself, woman! You’re indecent!”

I threw the pillow back, but it bounced off the keep-things-in circle. “What’m I going to do! I don’t have any extra clothes with me! And I loved this shirt, well, I guess the shirt’s okay…” I got myself free of it and shook off the remainders of my poor bra, which would never cup another breast in its life. “Apparently shapeshifting is to be done naked.”

“Did I hear somebody say naked?” Billy came down the stairs and I shrieked like a teenager, scrambling to yank my shirt back on.

“Stop! Stop! Don’t come down! Don’t come in here, anyway! I’m naked! My clothes are ruined!” I surged for the pillow, clutching it modestly as Billy appeared in the sanctuary door and peered at me.

“I’ve seen naked women before, Walker. What happened?”

“You haven’t seen
me
naked!” I dragged my ruined jeans toward me, not that there was any hope at all of resurrecting them, and repeated, “Shapeshifting is apparently a skyclad kind of activity.”

Billy said, “She said skyclad,” to Melinda in a voice of pure amazement. “I think that’s the official last nail in the coffin on her skepticism. Where’d you even hear that?”

“I read it in one of the magic books. Would you please get me some sweatpants or something? I can’t leave your house like this!”

“Oh, so you’re done and ready to go now?”

“Well, not right now, I’m naked!” At some point I was
pretty certain I’d start to be embarrassed, but my sense of ridiculous was too well defined just yet. Then Billy’s expression, which had gotten more serious, sank in, and I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing to do with you, except it is. That woman from yesterday, Rita Wagner, just called in to report a murder downtown.”

SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 8:48 A.M.

I was suspended from duty, but downtown wasn’t our jurisdiction anyway. Furthermore, Rita had specifically asked for me, so I figured on some level that worked out, and tagged along with Billy. I was still self-conscious walking into the Pioneer Square crime scene, though: I knew I didn’t belong, and plenty of people there were entirely capable of handling a murder investigation.

It was, however, just slightly possible that my self-consciousness was less centered on whether I belonged there, and more concerned with the unusual detail that I was wearing a miniskirt.

It was not a miniskirt on Melinda Holliday. On her, it was a cute fitted black knit skirt that hugged curvaceous hips and followed the slim line of her thighs down to just above her
knees. It looked equally terrific with either knee-high boots or heels, and made a potent reminder that Billy’s wife was a bombshell.

But she was a bombshell who stood nine or ten inches shorter than me, and at least half of that difference was in the leg. The knit fabric ensured the skirt fit me as snugly—and attractively, even if I said so myself—as it did Melinda, but its only acquaintance with my knees was passing over them on the hem’s way to its final resting place halfway up my thigh. It wasn’t precisely the ideal outfit for a self-respecting police detective to show up to a crime scene in. Especially since my bra had exploded during the course of my transformation, a detail which I fully intended to keep well under cover. My jacket was zipped to my collarbones, hiding not only excess jiggle but the fact that my sweater didn’t match the skirt.

It could do nothing about my stompy boots not matching the skirt, either, but I was trying to convince myself the boots were some kind of awesome Goth statement about fashion in the modern era.

I didn’t buy it, and, at a glance, neither did the two detectives, the patrol officer, or the incoming forensics team. For a moment I wished I’d borrowed some of Billy’s clothes instead, but they were as much too big on me as Mel’s skirt was too small, so it was either the Charlie Chaplin look or legs from here to Sunday. In retrospect, though, clownishly large clothes might have been warmer. I’d have to keep that in mind for next time I destroyed my outfit by shapeshifting while wearing it.

“Our witness is this way,” one of the detectives said grumpily. He was middling height and slim, with brown hair worn in a classic cut that could have come from any era from Victorian to present-day. It gave him a bit of age and
gravitas, even if his bad mood hadn’t already. “She doesn’t want to talk to anybody unless you’re here. What are you, her lawyer?”

Derailed from calculating the odds that I’d ruin half my wardrobe by slipping from one form to another, I followed him, mumbling an explanation: “I saved her life a few months ago. She’d been on the street, so she probably just wants a familiar face, somebody she has a little reason to trust. Believe me, Detective…”

“Monroe.”

“Monroe, I don’t want to take over your case. It’s your jurisdiction, your territory. Only thing I’m here to do is facilitate the interview.” Damn. Miniskirt or not, I sounded like a professional.

And miniskirt or not, apparently Monroe thought so, too. He glanced back at me, expression thawing noticeably.

“That’s good to hear. So what’s with the outfit? Working undercover?”

God. I should’ve worn Billy’s clothes after all, if I looked like a pro in Mel’s skirt. “I tore the seams out of my pants this morning and this was the only thing I had to wear. If it doesn’t warm up soon I’m gonna make a break for the Market and buy some pants.”

Monroe gave me a very brief smile. “Don’t get pants. Get some of those leggings to wear under the skirt. It’ll warm
my
day up, anyway.”

There was probably a better response than “Aheh,” but I couldn’t think of it. Fortunately Monroe led me into a café about twenty yards from the cordoned-off crime scene—I hadn’t even gotten a look at the body, though Billy was down by the yellow tape, presumably doing his ghost thing—and pointed me at Rita Wagner. She was shrunk
into a corner, sallow fingers wrapped around a cardboard coffee mug.

I sat down across from her, a spike of sympathy piercing me. I’d had a long night, but I had healing magic to shore me up. Rita, whose morning had apparently started with a murder, but who lacked my talent, looked small and fragile and hard-used again, like she had in the first moments we’d met. “Hey, Rita. You doing okay?”

She lifted her gaze, film of despondency clearing from her eyes as she recognized me. “Detective Walker. I didn’t think you’d come. I didn’t do it.”

I blinked, first at her, then at Monroe, who hadn’t yet sat down. He shrugged his eyebrows and gestured to the third chair at the table, questioning. I raised a finger to ask him to hold off and turned my attention back to Rita. “This is Detective Monroe, who’s going to actually be handling this case. It’s way out of my jurisdiction, so the best I can do is be here while you tell us what you saw. You mind if he sits down?”

She glanced up at him, shook her head and looked back at her coffee cup as Monroe pulled the chair out, turned it backward, and sat. I downwardly revised my estimation of his age to something closer to my own, especially since upon inspection, there were no gray threads in his brown hair, then focused on Rita, who started talking like she’d been waiting on my cue. What she said, though, had nothing to do with the case: “Was the show good?”

Her expression was so quietly hopeful I didn’t have the heart to tell her what had transpired the night before.

Not that it would be useful to do so during a witness interview, anyway, so I said, “It was unbelievable,” which I thought covered both the amazing performance
and the dreadful aftermath in sufficiently enthusiastic yet noncommittal terms.

I got a hint of her youthening smile as a reward for my discretion, though her gaze went straight back to the coffee. “I helped close up the Solid Ground soup kitchen last night. It’s open late because there are so many homeless down here, so it was after midnight when I left. I stayed nearby—”

“Where?” Monroe was taking notes, and his interruption—though I’d have asked the same thing—was unwelcome. Rita glanced at me nervously and I nodded, encouraging her. She didn’t look encouraged, which made it Monroe’s turn to eye me, in a get-her-talking manner.

“I’m guessing you stayed somewhere you’re not supposed to.” At Rita’s nod, I opened a palm, brushing away her concern. “We’re looking at a murder investigation here, Rita. Nobody’s interested in busting you for an illegal flop-spot. You or anybody else who’s using the place, for that matter. Okay?”

Her gaze shifted between us, guilty. “We—I—stay in the Underground a lot recently. Outside the tourist area, so they don’t have any reason to run us out.”

I nodded, having expected that. Seattle, like half the big cities in America, had burned down once upon a time. When they rebuilt, they’d moved street level between ten and thirty feet higher to help cut down on flooding and backed-up toilets. The old city disappeared under the new, until by the early twentieth century, the only people in the Underground were people like Rita today: homeless, criminals, or both. Parts of it had been reclaimed and made into a tour—I’d gone on it—but there was a lot more Underground than there was safe territory to explore. I personally had no clue how to access the less-safe areas from the outside, but then, I’d never had reason to search for a comparatively safe,
warm place to hide from the elements or the law. There were five or ten thousand homeless people in Seattle. It was a safe bet that a fair chunk of them knew a lot about surviving beneath the city, even if I didn’t.

Rita watched Monroe and me both carefully, waiting to see if we were going to condemn her or her fellows. When neither of us spoke, she exhaled quietly and went on. “So we’re nearby, but not close enough to hear anything. I just know he wasn’t there last night when I left the kitchen, and he was when I went out this morning. I turned him over. I had to, to see if he was dead. I shouldn’t have done that, should I? It means my fingerprints will be on him and I’d be easy to throw in jail. But there was blood everywhere, so I had to see. And then I saw I called you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Her aura was agitated, earthy colors rubbing against each other like static-furred cats, but there was no deception streaking through it. She was just afraid, as I would probably be in her position. “You did the right thing, Rita. Did you know him?”

“His name was Lynn. He was a Vietnam vet, and I don’t know how he ended up on the street. He hardly ever drank, and he liked blues music. He used to hang out at Holy Cow Records in the Market. They might know more about him. I just know he was a nice man. I always thought he could’ve made it, if somebody’d just given him a hand.”

“Any enemies you knew about?”

Rita gave me a look purely the opposite of her youthening smile. It turned her into a bitter old crone, so full of anger at the world that even her aura darkened with it, deep crimson spilling through otherwise gentle shades. “Anybody can be your enemy when you’re living rough, Detective Walker. Even your best friend, if you’ve got booze or smokes or food
he wants. People liked Lynn, but that doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Anyone you know with a violent enough temper to have done this?” Monroe put in. Rita gave him the same look she’d given me, though she shook her head.

“You’ll laugh, but we try to police ourselves in the Underground. It’s warm and safe down there, and we keep watch at night. We’re trying to get by,” she said fiercely. I squelched the urge to pat her arm in reassurance, and she went on, focus bright and angry on Monroe. “Nobody down there could’ve done this. I’m not even sure anything human could have done it.”

She didn’t look at me when she said that, but my stomach lurched anyway. All of a sudden I didn’t know if she’d asked for me because she wanted someone she trusted on her side, or if she had a deeper understanding of just how I’d saved her life a few months earlier. More important, I also realized I had no idea how the vic—Lynn—had died. It was a lousy time to ask, but the question was on my lips when Monroe said, “Then why’d you call it in as a murder?”

Rita had a whole repertoire of scathing looks. “Because there’s blood everywhere, but no paw prints, and if a dog was hungry or desperate enough to attack a man, wouldn’t it have done more than rip his throat out?”

I swallowed a squeak. Ripped-out throats were a new exciting kind of violent death for me, and I was torn between terrible urges. One: run home and hide under the bed. Two, and much stronger: run outside and see if Billy had found a ghost to talk to. I pushed my chair back, preparing to do that, but Monroe fixed me in place with a glare worthy of the Mighty Morrison, and turned his next question on Rita: “Can you describe what you saw when you approached?”

She put her face into her hands and sighed, words muffled
behind her palms. “The sun was just coming up, not high enough to be daylight yet, just lightening. There wasn’t anybody else around right then. That’s unusual. There are usually joggers out that early.” She lifted her head to show lines drawing deeper around her eyes and mouth. “Do you think one of them saw something and decided not to get involved? I can tell you what some of the regular ones look like. Homeless people see more than you think.”

Monroe actually looked pleased. “That would be very helpful. I’ll get our sketch artist to come talk to you. Go on.”

“I don’t sleep a lot, so I was up early to go help the kitchen get started. Saturdays are busy. I saw him at the corner, just lying on the sidewalk facing the wall. I thought he’d fallen asleep there, and that he was lucky it was one of us and not a cop who’d seen him first, so I went to wake him up. When I got closer I saw the sidewalk was wet around him, but it hadn’t rained, nothing else was wet. It just looked dark, not red, until I got closer. And then I saw, and I rolled him over, and he was dead. He looked terrified. Death isn’t supposed to come on you like that. You’re supposed to be able to just close your eyes and slip away.” She sounded like she wanted to believe it and knew better. She
should
have known better: she’d almost died violently not so very long ago.

“What else?” Monroe wasn’t pushy, but he wasn’t going to let her be distracted, either. I’d been in that position myself, finding ways to draw details out of a witness happier to dwell on something else.

Rita folded her hands around her coffee cup again. “He was already cold. The blood was thick on the sidewalk. I tried not to step in it. I didn’t try to take his pulse or anything. I just ran for the pay phone. I left bloody footprints and that’s what made me think of the paw prints. That’s
why I said it was a murder. And that’s why I asked for you, Detective Walker. I thought you’d believe me.”

I was not about to screw up somebody else’s murder investigation by assuring Rita that I did believe her, even though I did. “I’m glad to be able to help, Rita. Look, I need to go talk to my partner, if that’s all right with you two.”

“Not a problem.” Monroe stood up and gave Rita an acceptably genuine smile. “Thanks for your help, Ms. Wagner. If you want to stay here another few minutes I’ll get you another cup of coffee and send an artist to talk to you about the regular Saturday morning joggers.”

Rita looked into her cup and shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“All right. Sit tight, I’ll get the artist in here right away.” Monroe left. I, who’d instigated the little party’s breakup, went and got myself and Billy giant cups of coffee, and got Rita one and a pastry, too, despite her refusal.

And, despite that refusal, she took both. I sat down again, curiosity prodding me to ask, “Is our relationship the only reason you asked for me?”

She gave me a funny smile. “Relationship?”

I made a face, feeling silly. “Cop talk. It’s one of those words that carries a lot of weight in civilian terms but is easier than finding more delicate ones on the force. Acquaintance, if you like.”

“I thought you’d believe me,” she repeated, then made a long, silent observation of her pastry before finally adding, “and I think it’ll take a miracle to find Lynn’s murderer. You’re the miracle that saved me.”