Spirit Dances (18 page)

“You’re welcome. Did I, ImeanIguessIdidIhadtohavebut did I hit you, miss? I was drivingtoodamnedfast I’msorry
it’slateI’mtired justtryingtogethome Ididn’tnoticethelight you should be
dead
—!”

I stared over his head toward the traffic lights. There were cameras on all four crossbars above each street, making it almost certain that the whole wreck had been filmed. Everything, including my transformation from coyote to woman. For a moment, I longed for a world in which magic wasn’t something that could be caught on camera, but I knew from personal experience that it could be. Somebody—probably my periodic nemesis, news reporter Laurie Corvallis—could make a big stinking story out of this.

Except Laurie wouldn’t. Not after what had happened with the wendigo. Maybe I could get her to tread on a few toes and make sure nobody else turned it into a story, either. Or maybe I could get somebody in traffic control to accidentally wipe a magnet over tonight’s traffic tapes, or whatever the modern equivalent thereof was. That would be better all around.

“I’m not dead.” Interrupting Kobe’s squeaking, alarmed rant felt better than it probably should. “Obviously you didn’t hit me. I’d be dead if you had.”

His jaw flapped, but there was a certain infallible logic to my statement, and relief started creeping across his thick features. “I’m probably just some crazy woman,” I went on. “Out crossing the street naked in the middle of the night. Probably your truck’s impact against…” I looked around, trying to find something the truck had actually hit, and settled on the median strip. “…against the median had enough concussive effect to knock me off my feet and down the road a bit.”

“That…must’ve been what happened…” Kobe’s forehead sank into deep wrinkles, and I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost. Not quite sorry enough to go try to straighten
out the witnesses’ stories, for example. My largesse ended with climbing stiffly to my feet—the paint job that cleared my rash up hadn’t dealt with the pain of muscles abused by bouncing down the street—and patting Kobe’s shoulder. “If you ever drive tired or above the speed limit again, God Himself is going to come down on you like a load of bricks. Trust me. I have connections.”

I left him there looking like I’d put a gypsy curse on him, and not feeling one little bit bad about it as I limped down the street. I was exhausted, but I was alive, and that was good. I suspected I’d been through some kind of rebirthing, that Rattler’s frantic scraping off of my old skins to reveal new, fresh, healed ones had probably done something profound, and that once I understood fully what had happened, I would have my feet under myself a whole lot more solidly. That was also good. By all rights, I should be happy.

But I had by now lost any hope of tracking the hunter-orange killer, and that was not good at all.

Under anybody’s definition of normal circumstances, a six-foot-tall woman walking barefoot down a city street wearing only a smelly lightweight coat would attract an impossible amount of attention. Moreso when she was leaving the scene of a wreck while more or less everyone else was running toward it.

It being me, though, I turned one of my oldest tricks to my advantage. Typically bending light around me to render myself essentially invisible was pretty easy. It took a little concentration, a little envisioning light waves just sort of washing on by without bouncing off me with any real enthusiasm.

Walking down the street and keeping myself relatively unseen was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. It took a quite literally staggering amount of concentration. I kept
weaving around, sometimes bouncing off passersby who had no idea what had hit them.

I wanted specific passersby. I wanted Billy and Melinda, or failing them, Jim Littlefoot, though the Hollidays were by far my first choice. Unfortunately, my phone was back at the theater with my clothes, and I wasn’t expecting happen-stance to put them in my path. Odds were Billy was already hunting for Morrison, and that Melinda was either helping or on her way home. The passing fancy that I could retake a coyote form and search for Morrison myself struck me.

My knees collapsed at the idea, thigh muscles squealing in protest as they tried to keep me from falling to the sidewalk. They succeeded, just barely, and I lurched to a nearby tree, holding myself up until my legs were trustworthy again. Coyote had said shapeshifting didn’t hurt. He hadn’t mentioned it left a person completely fricking exhausted. Someday I was going to write that Shaman’s Handbook that no one had seen fit to give me. It would be full of useful information like
don’t trust snakes in your garden
and
start and end your shapeshifting adventures at home, so you don’t lose your clothes and so you can collapse into sleep for twelve hours.
Although now that I thought about it, that first one was a bit Biblical and I was, in retrospect, even dumber than I’d realized. The second part, though, was helpful.

Way back in the recesses of my mind, like I’d summoned him with the power of thought, Coyote said, “Joanne?” in a very quiet worried voice.

“Am I in a trance? How can you even be talking to me? Are you telepathic now?” Startled passersby looked at where I wasn’t, and I cleared my throat. Invisible cloaks apparently didn’t work on vocal cords. Oops.

“You’re using some kind of magic,” he said gently. Cautiously. “It puts you in the right mindset to be receptive to
someone calling to you from the astral plane. Are you all right, Jo?”

“Mostly.” I started toddling down the street again, on the dubious logic that a moving voice coming out of nowhere was less alarming than a stationary one. “I think I’m going to need therapy after this is over, though.”

A hint of a smile came into his voice. “Physical therapy?”

My mind went dirty places, just like it was probably supposed to, and I got a little more spring in my step. “Yeah, maybe. No, mental therapy. Something happened, Coyote. Something…” Words failed as I let myself peek, just a little, at the difference I felt within.

It felt like somebody had taken a loofah to my psyche. To my
magic.
Like it had been exfoliated, scrubbed, scraped, pared, polished and finally put away to rest. Like it had shed layer after layer of nasty old snakeskin that had dimmed its potential, and now it was ready to consider what it could actually do.

At the moment, that wasn’t much. Newborns weren’t often capable of great feats; being born was, after all, hard work, and it took some time to get used to the bright, loud, cold world. Right now the core of my power felt like it was doing exactly that. All the things I’d learned to do over the past year or so were still accessible, but not at full strength, or what I’d come to assume was full strength.

“Something big,” I finally said to Coyote. “Something too big to think about right now.”

“If it’s big you
need
to think about it, Jo—”

“No.” I actually held my hand up to stop him, not that he or anybody else could see me right now. “Look, just no, Cyrano. This isn’t burying my head in the sand, okay? I’ll deal with it. I just can’t right now. A nice homeless lady
wants me to look into some missing persons, I lost the ghost dance killer’s trail and Morrison’s been turned into a wolf. I cannot cope with anything else right now.”

“Morrison’s been what?” Coyote managed a vocal knife’s edge balance between horrified and thrilled.

I crossed the street into the theater’s parking lot, muttering an explanation that made confused arts patrons look around in search of the body providing the voice, and finished with, “I’ll call you back later, okay? I have to get dressed and try to salvage this mess.”

“You’re naked?” That went a lot more toward thrilled, and I snickered through my weariness.

“Naked but invisible. I’ll talk to you later, Cyrano, okay?” Dropping a psychic connection was harder than hanging up a phone, and I got a mental echo of his goodbye for a few seconds before shaking it off and going in search of my clothes.

Billy and Melinda were backstage, the latter with my clothes neatly bundled in her arms. She said, “You dropped these,” and handed over my copper bracelet and glasses. I pressed a hand to my throat, astonished to discover my mother’s silver necklace hadn’t ruptured when I’d shifted form. I was pretty certain my coyote-neck was thicker than my own.

Then again, the necklace hadn’t fallen out of place when I’d changed into a snake earlier, either. I was absolutely certain I’d had greater circumference as a rattler than my neck typically did. I slunk into the changing rooms with my clothes, stopping to frown at myself in the mirror when I was dressed.

Cernunnos, Horned God of the Wild Hunt, had recognized the necklace. Had, more importantly, recognized its
maker: Nuada of the Silver Hand, who was an elf king or a small god or something of that nature. Not human, and not as powerful as Cernunnos himself, but a silversmith of literally legendary proportions, regardless of his ranking in the esoteric echelon. Even I’d heard of him before Cernunnos mentioned his name, and my repository of magical knowledge was still far more limited than it should be. My mother had bequeathed to me a necklace of great history and possibly enormous power without one word of explanation. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that a minor detail like retaining its position around my throat wasn’t beyond its capabilities.

Frankly, if I ever got over being surprised by things like that, I would consider myself way too jaded and go sit on a mountaintop and meditate until some of the wonder came back into the world. And
that
was such a far cry from where I’d been a year and a half ago that I left the dressing rooms with far less trepidation than I might have, given that the Hollidays’ continuing presence at the theater suggested something had gone wrong.

The dancers were gathered on stage behind the closed curtains. Jubilation and sorrow sparked from them as they embraced each other, obviously still coming down from the high of the performance. Two or three were carrying drums, though they hadn’t begun to beat them. A weary selfish part of me wished they would: I got a little buzz from the energy they were still radiating, but I needed a whole lot more than that. Or a good solid night’s sleep, which didn’t seem likely to be on the agenda.

Winona was at the center of everything, passed from one dancer to another, congratulations and thanks murmured to her with each hug. It looked like they’d been doing the same thing since the curtain came down, but I imagined they
could keep it up a while yet. She’d gone above and beyond the call of duty, and everyone knew it. Whatever had happened to keep Billy and Melinda here, at least I hadn’t failed the troupe.

I exhaled, tension sliding free on the breath, though my shoulders sagging reminded me again that my whole body ached. “So what happened?”

Melinda smiled. “You were perfect, that’s what.
They
were perfect. I’ve never seen a performance like that one.”

“Me, neither. But so why are you still here?”

“Why are
you?
” Billy demanded. He was still pissed I hadn’t gone after Morrison, which was only unfair in that even with my phenomenal cosmic powers, I couldn’t be in two places at once.

At least, I didn’t think I could be. I gave the shining kernel of new-forged power inside me a prod to see if it agreed. I got back a sensation very like a mother’s disapproving look, and barely restrained myself from giggling aloud. Billy’s expression darkened and I wiped all laughter from my face, which was less difficult than it might have been. “I got hit by a semi while trying to cross the road. I lost the killer’s trail and I have about as much shamanic energy as a…a…” I couldn’t think of something with insufficient amounts of power to even finish the sentence, but it didn’t matter. Pissed or not, Billy went white and Melinda caught my arm as if assuring herself I was still alive.

“You got hit by a
semi?
”

“I was a coyote, he ran the light, I…look, I’m okay. I’m just a little flat in terms of power reserves. The last day has been like a yo-yo with that.”

“You’re more than a little flat.” Melinda pursed her mouth prissily, looking me over like a side of meat. “I’ve never seen your aura so low, not since before last January, anyway.”

Distracted, I said, “You looked before then?”

Melinda shrugged. “Bill had told me what the little ghost girl said about you. Any time a clairvoyant mentions someone is unusual, I’m interested. So I’d looked, yes.”

I remembered the girl in question, Emily Franklin. I’d been a mechanic at the time, not a cop. The only reason I’d encountered her—or hadn’t, more accurately, since she was dead—was I’d been out with Billy, trying to hear a hitch in his vehicle’s engine, when he got the murder call. Emily, victim of a violent death and a budding clairvoyant, was lingering and had seen me waiting for him. Besides what she’d told Billy about her own murder, she’d mentioned I had no visible past beyond the twenty-six short years of my life. She’d never seen anyone like me.

None of that was something Billy could have told me at the time, some three years ago now. I’d have laughed at him, to say the least. But apparently he’d told Melinda, and I’d had even more people looking out for my eventual arcane awakening than I’d known. Not for the first time, I mumbled, “I don’t deserve friends as good as you.”

Melinda smiled. “You only say that because you’ve never seen Bill’s expression of smug ‘I told her so’ when he’s spilling the details of your adventures to me.”

Billy looked guilty enough to make me chortle tiredly. “You had to be saying it to somebody. You were incredibly restrained with me. Okay. So yeah, I’m flat. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to transform again, and even if I did, I’m not sure I could pick up the trail. It was like a heat trail, fading fast, so I’m back at goddamned square one. So anyway, why
are
you guys still here?”

Whatever humor Billy’d manifested fled. “I was hoping you’d be calling with some kind of information about Morrison. I thought this would be the place to start from.”

“That’s it?” This time relief, not exhaustion, made my knees buckle. “Nothing went horribly wrong with the dancers?”

Billy wrapped a hand around my elbow, supporting me. “It looks like the only person something’s gone wrong with is you.”

“Detective Walker’s been injured?” Jim Littlefoot appeared like he’d been summoned, worry creasing his forehead. “Are you all right, Detective? Everything went so well on stage…”

“It was nothing to do with you,” I promised. Billy’s hand around my arm was more helpful than I wanted to admit to. In fact, I kind of wanted to flop over and lean on him, or possibly just to sit down in a lump and stay there until I was about a hundred and twelve. “I wasn’t able to track the killer. I’m sorry, Jim.”

Disappointment flashed through his dark eyes, replaced almost instantly by resolution. “We have one more performance.”

“Ha.” I didn’t mean to laugh, but the sound popped from my throat. “You people are insane. Insanely brave. Insanely…insane. Tomorrow, I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow is good. I’m just so
tired
right now.”

Onstage, somebody smacked the heel of his hand against the drum he carried. The vibration rippled through the air and caught me in the belly, a
twang
so deep and profound my knees buckled again. This time, despite already having a grip on me, Billy didn’t manage to keep me on my feet. I flumped to the floor, sitting cross-legged and pushing my glasses up so I could cup my face in my hands. A few more drumbeats thumped through me, each one like a physical, palpable hit. I was used to the magic inside me coming alive in response to a drum, but it just took the beats like body
blows, shockwaves hitting me from within. I curled down even farther, hands folded behind my head like I could protect myself from the music.

Melinda crouched and put her hand on my shoulder. Worry pulsed through her touch, so strong I didn’t need the Sight to know it flowed toward me. I wanted to explain how Rattler had shed my skin a million times, stripping me down physically, emotionally and magically in order to save my life. I wanted to tell her about the peculiar feeling I’d been reborn, and Rattler’s apology about how it wasn’t supposed to have happened that way, like I’d gone through not just a rebirth, but a premature rebirth. Telling somebody those things seemed important, and Melinda, who had five kids, might just understand.

All I did, though, was whimper, a tiny pulse of sound every time the drum was hit.

Melinda withdrew her hand and stood, her voice calm and quiet above me. “Bill, Mr. Littlefoot, could you bring Joanne onto the stage, please?”

Normal people would have asked why. Normal people would have said
what the hell?
and fussed about it, which was what I wanted to do. Instead the two men shared a few seconds’ silence in which I imagined they at least exchanged
what the hell
glances. Then Billy slid his hands into my armpits and uncurled me a little. Jim Littlefoot took my knees, and they carried me onstage and put me back down. They didn’t try to rebalance me on my butt: they just tucked me down on my side, and I curled up a little smaller, fetal position.