Spirit Dances. C.E. Murphy
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 no agony, 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 well have 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.
Morrison had done a hell of a job corralling the audience, given the late start he’d had. There were probably three hundred people still in the lobby, and security guards at the doors chitchatting politely with men and women who didn’t seem too terribly eager to escape, anyway. Human nature, I guessed; they probably wanted to be among the first to know what had happened, all the better to gossip about in the morning.
Lots and lots of them turned my way when I came out of the theater, their auras spiking with curiosity. With the weight of their interest, I realized that between my height, the form-fitting green dress and the fact I’d run up on stage seconds after Naomi collapsed, I was probably pretty recognizable. Sneaking out a side door or up to the mezzanine floor to peek at the crowd might’ve been smarter, but smart wasn’t so much my stock in trade.
Not mostly, anyway. I was smart enough to not say “She’s dead,” which was sort of my first impulse. Even when people started asking, I kept my mouth shut and just looked over them, grateful that the strappy heels meant I could see virtually everybody.
Nobody had the mark of a killer. Auras were rife with nosy interest and concern, with boredom, with amorous intentions and chilly brush-offs, but no one was burgeoning with the kind of energy the killer had stolen. I sighed, singled Morrison out of the crowd—he was at one of the doors, badge on display as he smiled at a redhead at least ten years older than he was—and made my way through the gathering to his side. “Can I talk to you privately, boss?”
The redhead’s expression flashed from a downright sulk at my interruption all the way to smug delight as I finished with the word boss. She actually tucked a card into his lapel as he backsided the door open and gestured me through. I couldn’t help stealing another look at her as Morrison followed me, and my big mouth said, “You like redheads, huh?” without consulting me on the topic first.
Morrison looked back at her, too, then at me. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, Barbara Bragg was a redhead, and now her. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Rita Wagner had asked if I believed in God. I thought a kind God would probably strike me dead right then just to save me from myself. Since nobody did, I chalked one up in the “not so much” column, and tried to shrug off the conversation causally.
Morrison was amenable enough to shrugging it off, though he said, “Maybe redheads like me,” before a considerably more relevant, and much more Morrison-like, “What happened after I left?”
“Whatever attacked Naomi ate her heart.” I was horrified at how steadily that came out.
Morrison’s eyes popped. “What is it with you and bodies getting eaten lately, Walker? Is it another wendigo?”
“No.” I had plenty more to say than just a categorical denial, but it struck me again that Morrison had been bizarrely normal all day. Normal like a normal person, not normal like my boss, which was a much more antagonistic kind of normal than normal-normal was. I knew why: he was going easy on me because of the shooting, which meant he really didn’t think I’d screwed up. I was glad of that, but he was shooting so straight I thought