Page 12 of Spirit Dances

“Since last September. We wrap up in May in Chicago.” Littlefoot cast a glance over his shoulder, then looked back at me with his mouth a thin unhappy line. “Or that had been the plan. I don’t know what we’ll do now.”

“Since September.” Dismay coiled through me, cool and loathsome. “So this attack could have be?—”

Littlefoot interrupted, “Attack?” and paled, like he hadn’t thought through all the possibilities behind Naomi’s death.

I said, “I’m sorry,” and turned to my boss. “This could have been months in the planning, Captain. Can we get the list of credit-card purchases for the tickets to tonight’s show? The theater was packed, there must’ve been five hundred people here, but it’s a place to start investigating.”

“Walker.” Morrison drew me back a step, though it wasn’t really an attempt to take me out of Jim Littlefoot’s hearing range. “You already said they’re not going to find anything to provoke a murder investigation. She’ll be autopsied, I’m sure, but?—”

“Are you really going to tell me not to investigate this, boss?” I took a breath, steadying myself. “Do you really think I’ll listen if you do? Because I—I need to, Captain.”

Morrison’s expression softened just slightly. I sort of felt like I’d thrown a low blow, given the circumstances of the day, but I was willing to take any bend I could get.

“Hey.” One of the paramedics lifted his voice, clearly not talking to us, but garnering our attention anyway. I was just as glad: backstage at the theater probably wasn’t the place to argue with Morrison over what my duties as one of Seattle’s only paranormal police detectives entailed. Then the paramedic uttered seven little words that invalidated my concerns about being allowed to investigate.

“Hey,” he said, “don’t you think this looks weird?”

Chapter 7

There were puncture wounds over Naomi Allison’s heart. Five of them in an arc of about two hundred and forty degrees, like somebody had sunk extremely pointy fingernails into her flesh. They got worse as we watched, deepening until her chest started to cave in.

Morrison drew breath to speak and I snapped a hand up, fingers rigid, to silence him. To my astonishment, it worked, though I’d probably pay the price later. But I had a good idea of what he’d been going to say—something along the lines of “No signs of murder, Walker?”—and I was a lot more interested in watching Naomi’s degradation than I was in being scolded.

Besides, I’d been right. When I’d said there were no obvious signs of foul play, there hadn’t been. That, however, had been a whole two minutes earlier, and lots could change in two minutes. I’d gone from being a mechanic to a shaman in that time. Stranger things could happen. Around me, they usually did.

“It’s a physical manifestation of the power drain. Somebody sucked the energy out of her so fast it’s taken a couple minutes for the corporeal damage to catch up. But I bet dollars todoughnuts there’s somebody out there whose visualization on this is ripping her heart out.” I put my fingertips over the wounds, which were now deep enough to start bending around the heart. There was very little blood, given the depth and the fact that I could see torn arteries. Postmortem injuries were like that. No heartbeat to pump the blood, so the best it could do on its own was ooze and pool.

Jim Littlefoot said, “Why?”, the paramedic said, “What the hell are you talking about?” and Morrison, in a low, dangerous voice I’d become accustomed to, said, “Walker…” all at more or less the same time. I ignored the latter two and shook my head at Littlefoot.

“It’s not personal, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s the power you’re generating. Someone wants it, and they’re using the idea of the heart as the soul’s center to focus their desire. They weren’t after Naomi. This would have happened to whoever was the lead dancer tonight.” It was so clear to me I could almost See it, though the Sight itself wasn’t offering much. I was a day late and a dollar short: if I’d chased the black whirlpool of magic when it had fled Naomi’s body, I might have followed it back to the perpetrator.

But it hadn’t even occurred to me. My only thought had been getting on stage and trying to heal the fallen dancer. I was hell on wheels at second-guessing myself, but for once I wasn’t convinced I’d made the wrong decision. Nobody, not even Coyote, had suggested it was within my power to split my focus in two completely different directions, physically attending to a healing while spiritually charging off for a fight. I’d made my choice. I would have to live with it, even if Naomi Allison hadn’t.

“Can you tell who’s responsible?” Littlefoot’s voice, like Morrison’s, was low, but not with warning or anger. With despair, and I had no good answer for him.

“I’d be looking for someone overflowing with power, but anybody in the theater—” I broke off. If the ghost dance had worked properly, if Naomi had been permitted to release the magic into the audience, then everyone would be glowy and happy, but she hadn’t. Only the spirit thief would be boiling over now, assuming he was in the theater at all. I looked at Morrison, who shook his head, but turned and left the backstage with purposeful strides. It was almost certainly far too late already to corral the audience so I could look them over, but he was going to try. I thought of the woman with the lump in her breast and a wave of sick concern broke over me, even though it was so far out of my control that worrying about it was ludicrous.

That was probably why it bothered me. Easier to focus on the details or the impossible than what was right in front of me. Hell, I’d spent half the day doing that deliberately. I said, “Stop anybody you can at this point, okay? I’ll take a look at them, and if we can get the credit card sales, well, at least it’s someth…” to Morrison’s retreating back, and “Oh. Oh, God, gross,” to the dead woman in front of me.

Naomi’s heart shuddered, sharp tooth marks tearing flesh, and an entire bite disappeared as we watched. Then another, then a third, and the heart was gone, gulped away. I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, gagging. The paramedic didn’t fare so well, and lurched a few feet away to empty his stomach. Naomi convulsed once more, then went still. Littlefoot turned an unblinking gaze on me, tears draining down his cheeks. All I could do was whisper, “I’m sorry. It’s over now.”

That much, at least, I was sure of. The bodily attack had finished catching up to the magical, as if time had slid slightly out of sync. I didn’t think that was it, not really. It was just that the psychic attack was so virulent it had taken Naomi’s life before the physical could have its turn. At least there’d been noagony, this way. It had been over the moment power whirlpooled out of her.

Littlefoot nodded, lips tight. “Can you find what did this?”

“Yeah. I’ll find it, and I’ll stop it.” I had no idea how, but I was pretty confident I could. “Your people all look exhausted, Jim. They won’t want to, but make sure they eat, okay? What happened to them is a lot more than coming down after a show. All that energy they were supposed to throw out to the audience should have come back to them in a way, and instead it’s been stolen. Even if your friend hadn’t died, they’d be a lot more drained than usual. A drum circle wouldn’t hurt, something to replenish them a little. In fact, I’ll come back later to lead one, if you want.”

I had no idea who I was, making an offer like that. The Joanne Walker of fifteen months ago wouldn’t have thought of it, much less genuinely meant it. Littlefoot made a motion of agreement, but asked, “Later?” in a way that put a lot more questions into the word than seemed possible.

“I need to check whatever’s left of the audience, just in case the killer is here. If he’s not, I want to take a look over the city and see if I can find a flare where there’s too much power. And I have to figure out what did this, if I can. I haven’t seen anything quite like it before.”

Littlefoot started to speak, then let it go in a rush of breath. The second try worked better: “We’ll gather a drum circle. Don’t feel obliged to come back. I think you have enough to do already.”

I got to my feet, touching his shoulder as I did so. It was rock solid, dancer-trained strength knotted into tension. I gathered a pulse of healing power, magic warm and comforting in my belly before I released it into Littlefoot. Experience said he should relax, at least a modicum; that the influx of strength and calm would help even if he wasn’t aware it had arrived. I might as wellhave been trying to heal a rock, for all the difference it made in his anxiety levels. That didn’t actually bode so well for me helping out in a drum circle, so although I meant it when I said, “It’s not an obligation,” the feeling of obligation lessened some.

He nodded and I stepped back, finally giving him and ultimately his people the space they were going to need. “If any of you know anything about shielding, that would be best. Keep what you do internal, just for the troupe. You usually only do one performance a day, right? So if whoever’s behind this has been watching you, he’s probably not going to be looking for a second hit right away, but there’s no sense in offering him an easy target.” Not when I had every intention of offering up a much harder target.

Me.

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