Page 11 of Spirit Dances

Which he probably could, actually. He’d done it before. But given that I was in full agreement with him as to the importance of skedaddling, I thought this time I could do us both a favor and use my nice long legs to run like hell.

I ran all the way out of the Dead Zone, and awakened slumped over Naomi Allison’s unmoving body.

The worst partwas watching hope fade from everyone’s eyes as I looked up. Some of them were already crying. Others had been hanging on until I shook my head, and emptiness filled their faces. I said, “I’m sorry. She was already gone,” very quietly, and at more or less the same time people in the background began shouting about paramedics and please get out of the way and emergency action.

I got up awkwardly. My knees were bright red from kneeling on the floor, and though I didn’t think I’d been there very long, my feet had gone to sleep. I opened a thread of healing power within myself, trying to encourage blood flow to return, then had to clench a hand in the nearby curtain to keep myself from doing a dance ofoh, God, ow, my feet are waking up ow, ow, ow.

One of the paramedics frowned at me, which was question enough. He wanted to know what a theater patron was doing backstage bending over the dead woman. He obviously hoped I was a doctor.

I said, “Police.” His expression cleared and he turned his full attention to Naomi, shooing the dancers back to give his coworkers room to do their jobs. I watched bleakly, hoping for a miracle I was quite certain wouldn’t manifest.

“Walker?” Morrison appeared at my side and I had the weary impulse to bury my face in his shoulder. Maybe there was some universe out there where I was five foot six and that would’ve been charming, but as it was, I’d have to stoop. Even if it weren’t professionally inappropriate, it would just look wrong.

“They’ll have to call it heart failure,” I said softly. Very softly, because I didn’t want anyone else to overhear me. “I don’t know what else they can call it. But she was murdered, Captain. I’m sure of it. And I’m probably the only person who might have a chance at figuring out by whom.”

“What about Holliday?”

My partner, after all, was the one who saw ghosts. Murdered ghosts, which would make Naomi Allison a prime target for him to talk to, if she hadn’t already scurried off to the Great Beyond. I shook my head. “He’s good with violent deaths. This was close enough to natural I don’t think her soul even considered sticking around. I’m sure he’ll be able to help, but…”

Morrison sounded like he’d rather be shouting. “Murder is never close to natural, Walker.”

“Tell that to King George.” I sighed as Morrison’s ears turned red, sure sign he was working hard not to yell. “George the Third of England may have been poisoned with arsenic so slowly over so many years it looked like a natural descent into madness and death. His spirit wouldn’t have known to hang around hoping to be avenged any more than Naomi Allison’s might’ve.”

“How do you know this, Walker?”

I wasn’t sure if it was exasperation or incredulity in Morrison’s voice. “How do I know about King George or how do I know ab?—”

“About King George!”

“I don’t know, Morrison. I read it somewhere. Saw it on the Discovery Channel. Something. The point is?—”

“The point is you tried to help Naomi.” A third person interrupted, the man from the troupe who’d carried Naomi’s body offstage. He was, at a glance, more Native American than me, with coppery skin tones and dark brown eyes. He was also wound as tightly as anyone I’d ever seen, exacting enormous control over his emotions. I wanted to hug him, just to offer him a release, but I doubted he’d appreciate the effort right then. He was probably doing his best to hold himself together for the troupe. “Thank you for that. I’m Jim Littlefoot.”

I couldn’t help it. I looked at his feet. He made a sound that said everybody did that, and offered his hand as I looked back up. “Naomi’s older sister Rebecca and I founded this troupe afew years ago. She’s the one holding Naomi now. You said you were a healer.”

“Not much of one today,” I said unhappily. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Littlefoot. She was gone before I could do anything.”

“She was gone before you got to her,” Littlefoot said very steadily. “We all felt it, Ms….?”

“W-w-wah, Walk. Er.” I knew my last name. I really did. It was just that the one on my birth certificate and the one I used in day-to-day life weren’t the same. I had, over the past decade, chosen to use the former about six times, and I was in no way prepared for the impulse to use it now. “Uh. Walker. Detective Joanne Walker. This is, uh. This is my boss, Captain Michael Morrison of the Seattle Police Department.” I gestured to Morrison, who stared at me so hard I thought my hair might light on fire. He knew the other name, the one I’d inherited from my Cherokee father, and he clearly recognized I’d just had the impulse to use it. I was going to get grilled later for that. Fair enough. I kind of wanted to grill myself. Maybe with a nice teriyaki sauce.

Standing eight feet from a dead woman while talking to someone who’d been closer to her was not the time or place to notice a growing hunger in my tummy. Jim Littlefoot shook Morrison’s hand, but turned his attention to me.

“What kind of training do you have?”

“Shamanic. Your first act nearly turned me into a coyote.”

Wow. I hadn’t meant to say that, either. I hastily withdrew into myself for a moment, imagining my greening garden, then reinforcing the shimmering silver-blue shields that kept it safe from outside intruders. With no offense meant to Mr.

Littlefoot, people who made me blurt details about a magic I preferred to keep quiet could be highly dangerous. I’d found that out the hard way. It wasn’t a road I wanted to go down again.

A mixture of curiosity and apology came into Littlefoot’s eyes. “It’s meant to prepare the audience for a transformative experience in the second act, not literally change people. I’m sorry.”

“I know. It wasn’t your fault. It’s just the amount of po…” My brain caught up to what he was saying. “So it’s deliberate. I mean, it had to be, with the amount of power you were generating, with the focus, but—but you do know what you’re doing. What you’re creating.”

A fleeting smile crossed his face. “We do. We spent nearly two years perfecting these pieces, getting the right dancers, before we took it on the road. Even one cynic among the troupe can destroy the synergy. It hasn’t been an easy program to develop.”

“How long have you been touring?”

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