Page 38 of Spirit Dances

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.

Chapter 19

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 myfirst 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 likedon’t trust snakes in your gardenandstart 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 wasless 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 mymagic.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 youneedto 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 thata 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. Andthatwas 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?”

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