Page 43 of Spirit Dances

Chapter 22

Ihad, in my short career as a shaman, run across quite a few non-human beings. Melinda was not one of them. Of that, I was absolutely sure. But the woman standing over me was clearly Melinda, and just as clearly touched by the gods, a phrase I did not use lightly. Her eyes were as gold as mine had ever been in the midst of power throes, and there was a radiance to her I’d never before seen embodied by anyone. Not even Cernunnos, ancient and terrible god of the Hunt, had glowed the way Melinda did. It was as if someone had taken her already generous and gentle spirit and hooked it to a star, until barely-contained grace and power shone through her fragile, mortal skin.

That power was more than enough to trump mine. I could See properly again, Melinda’s talent blotting out the whiteness in an effervescent glow. Wisps of color floated round her like she might be lifted into the air by them, their delicate dance mesmerizing until Melinda knelt beside me, concern in her gaze.Deepconcern, more than a human, even a good friend, could contain. My heart missed a beat and hurt when it started up again, though I had no idea why. I inhaled to risk a question,then jerked my hands upward, making sure they were, in fact, hands.

They were, no trace of shapeshifting left on them. I exhaled all the air in my lungs and let my eyes close with the breath, taking an instant to not care that I didn’t understand and to revel in my gratitude for Melinda’s interference. Then I opened my eyes again. Melinda was still brilliant, the stage lights far above somehow dull by comparison. There were traces of someone unfamiliar in her features, like someone else was looking out through her eyes. Disconcerted, I turned my head away, glad I hadn’t asked that question after all. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who or what was within my friend.

Billy’s shoes intruded on my vision, reminding me of the day I’d gotten a sword stuffed through my gut. He had been there then, too, seen from the same angle. He’d been off duty that morning, and wearing a killer pair of high-heeled blue pumps. Tonight they were spats, every bit as theatrical but in a whole different way. I smiled at them, then cautiously offered the smile to the Hollidays.

From their expressions, my smile was more of a horrible grimace than an expression of pleasure. I stopped doing it, and they looked grateful. Melinda, still in the same gentle voice she’d been using for some time now, said, “Are you all right, Joanne?”

I croaked, “Yeah,” then swallowed a couple times, trying to loosen my throat. “What just happened?”

“Your energy was being torn apart. I shielded you.” Melinda’s tone held the slightest hint of reproval, which was a whole lot less than I deserved. Part of me wanted to address that fact.

The other larger, nosier part of me said, “You can do that?” in genuine astonishment.

She said, “I can at the moment,” which I suspected also needed addressing, but instead of pursuing it I transferred my gaze to the high stage lights and chose to admire how I wasno longer writhing in misery. Melinda had done that somehow, and while curiosity killed the cat, I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. After a moment I gathered myself enough to say, “Good news is, I think I can safely say we’re dealing with a shapeshifter.”

Melinda’s voice went wary: “And the bad news?”

“He’s better at it than I am.” There was a terrible scent of burnt feathers in the air. I held my breath as discreetly as I could, looking for the smell’s source.

Winona was just beyond the Hollidays, gaping at me. Gaping at my hand, specifically. I lifted it, wondering what was so interesting.

My fingertips were blackened, the charred remains of a tiny bone still clutched in them. I considered that a while, then frowned at Winona. A small round burn mark marred her breastbone, exposed by melted fabric. The feathers adorning her costume were singed, and her expression was stricken, like she was hurt but too shocked to fully realize it. I got to my feet carefully and put my palm over her breastbone, calling up healing power.

Blue-rimmed silver ricocheted out of me, so brilliant the entire troupe gasped. It waspossiblefor my magic to have a visual component, but it didn’t normally. Then again, it didn’t normally make my eyes cross or my knees buckle, either. Billy saved me from collapsing as Winona stepped backward, staring at her own chest before raising her gaze to mine. Her brown eyes were silver-shot, my own residual power coloring them. It faded quickly, but left her glowing with health and strength, no sign of grief or the performance’s exertions weakening her.

I, on the other hand, said, “Wooga,” and let Billy take more of my weight than a self-sufficient independent woman should rely on a guy to do. My vision tunneled, then righted itself, andI stood up with a whisper of thanks. Only then did Winona say, “What was that?”

“A talisman.” I turned the blackened bit of bone in my fingers. “A focal point. Something that belonged to the killer, something he could focus his power through to attack the troupe. He, um. Shouldn’t be able to again. Unless it’s just a way to make it easier, and given the thrashing he just gave me, that’s poss…” I could tell from Winona’s expression I should have stopped with “shouldn’t be able to.” My shoulders slumped. If there was a PR department for shamans, I needed their help. I mumbled, “Never mind. Obviously when I touched it he used it to focus on attacking me, but now it’s burned up and that really should render it powerless.”

“You did more than that.” Billy had a deeply unfocused expression, like he was looking at something far beyond what normal people could see. Farther beyond than usual, even, since he generallydidsee things normal people couldn’t. His voice was unusually light and soft as he said, “Only one person has ever died in this theater, Walker. I can see her now. Do you need to talk to her?”

My stomach lurched, all that fresh new magic suddenly worried. There were a dozen reasons Billy shouldn’t be seeing Naomi Allison’s ghost. First, though it had been murder, she’d gone so fast she had no idea she’d died brutally. He didn’t see ghosts from non-violent deaths. Second, though technically it was within his two-day window for seeing ghosts, I knew very well that Naomi had danced right into the Great Beyond, and Billy had always only ever been able to communicate with the dead who remained on this side of that divide.

Okay, that was only two reasons, but two was close enough to a dozen for my purposes. The point was, it took a medium of much greater psychic stature than Billy commanded to speakwith the dead who had shuffled off this mortal coil as thoroughly as Naomi had.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one undergoing a surge of power. I doubted very much the troupe had intended to boost my friends, but I’d drawn them into the center of the circle. Even if the dancers had been focused on me, residual energy had left its mark on the Hollidays. Melinda had always insisted she was a blip on the radar, nothing much in terms of adeptitude, and Billy had been comfortable with his talent’s limitations as long as I’d known him. I wondered if they were going to have to adapt the way I had—though no doubt much more graciously—and then because I wasn’tthatstupid, I said, “Yeah, I’d like to talk to her if it’s possible.”

“So,” came Jim Littlefoot’s emotion-harsh voice, “would we.”

I’d only participatedin one or two séances in my life. Billy and his bright blue zoot suit would have struck me as an extremely unlikely medium had the first séance-leader I’d met not worn hippie skirts and violent comic-book T-shirts. Much of my life appeared to be a lesson in not judging books by their covers.

The dance troupe apparently already knew not to. None of them looked even slightly suspicious of Billy’s ability to bring their friend back across the Great Divide. Then again, if I did nightly what they did, I’d probably be fairly confident in people and their ability to breach other realms, too. In fact, I was getting there.

Sonata Smith, the medium who’d run the séances I’d attended, had been a bit on the mystical gooshy side of things for me. Billy only asked that everyone sit—not verbally, but by patting his palms toward the floor—and let a flicker of appreciation dart over his features as the troupe joined hands without prompting. They’d already made a power circle withtheir dance. The physical link between their bodies only shored it up, creating—to my eyes, anyway—a visible rippling wall which I very much doubted Naomi would be able to cross, should she be of a mind to.

Melinda and I, like Billy, remained standing. I did it because I was going to have to ask some questions and wanted to be on equal footing, as it were. I suspected Mel was mostly too busy being agog at the depth of Sight she was encountering to think of sitting. Either way, Billy didn’t ask us to, only said, “We’re ready for you now, Naomi,” in the same extraordinarily gentle voice I’d heard him use before, when speaking to lost spirits.

Powerful stage lights did ethereal bodies no favors at all, though at least they also disguised any physical damage her ghost might have shown from her untimely death. But my brief impression of Naomi Allison had been of a vibrant woman full of passion and physical strength. Most of that passion was lost with the amber lights pouring through her, stripping away any color or vitality she might have shown. I had the impulse to run offstage and see if I could find a switch to dim or darken them, so she might seem more real. I didn’t, partly because I wasn’t sure what would happen if I broke out of the circle, and mostly because I thought it might be even harder for her friends and family if the woman they’d lost became any more real than she was at the moment. I wasn’t the world’s most sensitive sensitive, but I was getting better.

Naomi was completely focused on Billy. The rest of us might not have existed, and for all I knew, from her perspective, we didn’t. She hadn’t been pretty: she was too thin and too muscled from dancing, without enough softness to her features, for prettiness. Her intensity on stage had drawn the eye, though, and she showed a similar intensity in how she observed Billy. It made her interesting, even attractive, despite a lack ofconventional beauty. And despite being dead, which was the much more disturbing thought.

“I have someone here who’d like to ask you some questions,” Billy said to her, “and some others who would like to say goodbye. Is that all right?”

Naomi tilted her head, gaze sweeping the circle, though nothing suggested she took note of any of us. She nodded, though, as she came back to Billy. He gestured me forward, muttering, “Keep it short, Joanie. I’ve never connected with someone this far gone and I don’t know how long she’ll stay.”

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