I exhaled, tension sliding free on the breath, though my shoulders sagging reminded me again that my whole body ached. “So what happened?”
Melinda smiled. “You were perfect, that’s what. They were perfect. I’ve never seen a performance like that one.”
“Me, neither. But so why are you still here?”
“Why are you?” Billy demanded. He was still pissed I hadn’t gone after Morrison, which was only unfair in that even with my phenomenal cosmic powers, I couldn’t be in two places at once.
At least, I didn’t think I could be. I gave the shining kernel of new-forged power inside me a prod to see if it agreed. I got back a sensation very like a mother’s disapproving look, and barely restrained myself from giggling aloud. Billy’s expression darkened and I wiped all laughter from my face, which was less difficult than it might have been. “I got hit by a semi while trying to cross the road. I lost the killer’s trail and I have about as much shamanic energy as a…a…” I couldn’t think of something with insufficient amounts of power to even finish the sentence, but it didn’t matter. Pissed or not, Billy went white and Melinda caught my arm as if assuring herself I was still alive.
“You got hit by a semi?”
“I was a coyote, he ran the light, I…look, I’m okay. I’m just a little flat in terms of power reserves. The last day has been like a yo-yo with that.”
“You’re more than a little flat.” Melinda pursed her mouth prissily, looking me over like a side of meat. “I’ve never seen your aura so low, not since before last January, anyway.”
Distracted, I said, “You looked before then?”
Melinda shrugged. “Bill had told me what the little ghost girl said about you. Any time a clairvoyant mentions someone is unusual, I’m interested. So I’d looked, yes.”
I remembered the girl in question, Emily Franklin. I’d been a mechanic at the time, not a cop. The only reason I’d encountered her—or hadn’t, more accurately, since she was dead—was I’d been out with Billy, trying to hear a hitch in his vehicle’s engine, when he got the murder call. Emily, victim of a violent death and a budding clairvoyant, was lingering and had seen me waiting for him. Besides what she’d told Billy about her own murder, she’d mentioned I had no visible past beyond the twenty-six short years of my life. She’d never seen anyone like me.
None of that was something Billy could have told me at the time, some three years ago now. I’d have laughed at him, to say the least. But apparently he’d told Melinda, and I’d had even more people looking out for my eventual arcane awakening than I’d known. Not for the first time, I mumbled, “I don’t deserve friends as good as you.”
Melinda smiled. “You only say that because you’ve never seen Bill’s expression of smug ‘I told her so’ when he’s spilling the details of your adventures to me.”
Billy looked guilty enough to make me chortle tiredly. “You had to be saying it to somebody. You were incredibly restrained with me. Okay. So yeah, I’m flat. I don’t think I’ve got it in me to transform again, and even if I did, I’m not sure I could pick up the trail. It was like a heat trail, fading fast, so I’m back at goddamned square one. So anyway, why are you guys still here?”
Whatever humor Billy’d manifested fled. “I was hoping you’d be calling with some kind of information about Morrison. I thought this would be the place to start from.”
“That’s it?” This time relief, not exhaustion, made my knees buckle. “Nothing went horribly wrong with the dancers?”
Billy wrapped a hand around my elbow, supporting me. “It looks like the only person something’s gone wrong with is you.”
“Detective Walker’s been injured?” Jim Littlefoot appeared like he’d been summoned, worry creasing his forehead. “Are you all right, Detective? Everything went so well on stage…”
“It was nothing to do with you,” I promised. Billy’s hand around my arm was more helpful than I wanted to admit to. In fact, I kind of wanted to flop over and lean on him, or possibly just to sit down in a lump and stay there until I was about a hundred and twelve. “I wasn’t able to track the killer. I’m sorry, Jim.”
Disappointment flashed through his dark eyes, replaced almost instantly by resolution. “We have one more performance.”
“Ha.” I didn’t mean to laugh, but the sound popped from my throat. “You people are insane. Insanely brave. Insanely…insane. Tomorrow, I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow is good. I’m just so tired right now.”
Onstage, somebody smacked the heel of his hand against the drum he carried. The vibration rippled through the air and caught me in the belly, a twang so deep and profound my knees buckled again. This time, despite already having a grip on me, Billy didn’t manage to keep me on my feet. I flumped to the floor, sitting cross-legged and pushing my glasses up so I could cup my face in my hands. A few more drumbeats thumped through me, each one like a physical, palpable hit. I was used to the magic inside me coming alive in response to a drum, but it just took the beats like body blows, shockwaves hitting me from within. I curled down even farther, hands folded behind my head like I could protect myself from the music.
Melinda crouched and put her hand on my shoulder. Worry pulsed through her touch, so strong I didn’t need the Sight to know it flowed toward me. I wanted to explain how Rattler had shed my skin a million times, stripping me down physically, emotionally and magically in order to save my life. I wanted to tell her about the peculiar feeling I’d been reborn, and Rattler’s apology about how it wasn’t supposed to have happened that way, like I’d gone through not just a rebirth, but a premature rebirth. Telling somebody those things seemed important, and Melinda, who had five kids, might just understand.
All I did, though, was whimper, a tiny pulse of sound every time the drum was hit.
Melinda withdrew her hand and stood, her voice calm and quiet above me. “Bill, Mr. Littlefoot, could you bring Joanne onto the stage, please?”
Normal people would have asked why. Normal people would have said what the hell? and fussed about it, which was what I wanted to do. Instead the two men shared a few seconds’ silence in which I imagined they at least exchanged what the hell glances. Then Billy slid his hands into my armpits and uncurled me a little. Jim Littlefoot took my knees, and they carried me onstage and put me back down. They didn’t try to rebalance me on my butt: they just tucked me down on my side, and I curled up a little smaller, fetal position.
The troupe, who were not especially loud, got much quieter as I was carried out. The drum stopped, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, the weight of their gazes. I thought probably they should be offered some sort of explanation as to what one used-up shaman was doing lying center stage shortly after their dance performance.
Melinda, however, was going to have to offer that explanation, because I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that the rubber dance mat was unexpectedly comfortable, and that the stage lights from the wings were warm enough to make my bones start melting. In fact, despite my ventilated jeans, I thought I’d start sweating pretty soon, which would have been a more dismaying prospect if I wasn’t distantly aware of the already-pungent scent of dancers. I’d fit right in, smelling up the place.
Three people hit drums at the same time, abrupt enough that despite my weariness, I flinched. Footsteps ran across the stage, quick light sounds that changed to more solid thumps as whoever it was reached the nonpadded wings, paused, then came rushing back to spring across the mat. The next drumbeat came from four instruments, low rumble of quick beats which moved clockwise around me until the dancers and the drumming alike came to a sharp stop. I had a dizzifying vision as if from above, of the four musicians slotting into place on a power wheel, one taking up a position in each cardinal direction. And then I knew why Melinda had put me onstage, and what the troupe themselves instinctively understood.