I woke up sitting upright amongst a host of dancers.
I felt better. I felt so much better it wasn’t even funny, but it seemed a lot more like feeling good for standing my ground than pure replenished energy. That was improved, too, but it wasn’t quite enough to justify the weight having been lifted from my chest. I leaned forward until my forehead almost touched the mat, and smacked the floor in time with the drummers, finally really enjoying the music and rhythm going on around me.
The stage was brightening, my awareness heightened and comforting. Billy and Melinda were in the wings, strong butter-yellow dominating Melinda’s aura as relief for my recovery caught her in its grasp. Billy was a bit more stolid, like he was playing a bit of the tough-guy alpha male standing strong beside his worried mate, but the more I added a counterbeat to the music, my palms pattering against the floor, the more vivid his aura became, too. The dancers were responding, too, delight flexing into the energy they extended: they recognized I’d come through some kind of sea change, and were more daring in the energy and wildness of their performance.
Raven, who knew a party when he saw one, hopped around me, cawing and kloking and quarking with pure excitement. He whacked my ribs, my extended hands, my head, my spine, my tailbone, any part of me he could reach as he danced around. It felt like an oddball massage technique, enlivening my very skin with the short sharp impacts. Rattler, a bit more dignified, stayed out of Raven’s way but did his own sinuous dance, coiling up against me, stretching away, lifting himself impossibly high onto his tail and dropping back down as if to prove his own remarkable physical prowess. I chortled and sat up, tipping my head back so my throat was long, and let go a high tonal undulation.
It cut through the theater like a shockwave, making me realize no one had made any sound until then, not beyond footsteps and drumbeats. Usually either the dancers or the watchers yipped and called out as they were moved to as expressions of enthusiasm or camaraderie. Even the theater audience had succumbed to the impulse a few times, which made the dancers’ silence even more unusual.
But my cry was like permission being granted. Answering calls rolled back at me, lifting me to my feet. One of the men began to sing, finally adding a melody to the drums, and though I was by no means a dancer myself, I spun around, then fell into a three-beat step that brought me around the whole dance circle. I stopped to greet every dancer, following their leads in movement, and when I got to the drummers I bowed, acknowledging them as well as the four-spoked circle they’d built around me. I even danced my way out of the circle, grabbed Billy and Melinda, and hauled them inside until the three of us were a laughing, dancing triangle at the heart of the power circle.
I had no idea how long we danced for. Until my feet were numb from pounding against the floor. Until my hands were red and swollen from clapping, and until Melinda and Billy were pink with exertion. Until the dancers’ auras were a whirling, brilliant pool surrounding all of us, and until at some shocking, unspoken command, every single one of us came to a stop at once. Voices, drums, footsteps, even the stage lights all went away, leaving the theater a silent dark sanctuary.
I flung my head back, threw my hands wide, and gasped as power exploded through me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It felt—almost sorta kinda—like the moment when I’d invited the entire city of Seattle to hit me with its best shot. Except that had been untempered power, and I’d been a raw newbie, desperate for a surge that would help me knock down a demi-god. This was focused, and all I needed it for was replenishing a magic I’d become accustomed to using. I’d been topped up by drum music before; I knew how it was supposed to go.
Feeling like a bottle of liquid soap had been poured into a fountain was not generally how it went. Bubbles popped through me, toe to skull, palm to palm, and I expected to see them drifting from my fingertips like I’d become a giant Joanne-shaped bubblemaker. It tickled ferociously, but giggling seemed wholly inappropriate, so I breathed through my nose until it became a series of perfectly horrible snorts that were too funny to ignore. The lights came back up as more bubbles erupted in my nose, and I did giggle, then laughed out loud at the smiling, bemused faces around me.
Last time I’d done this—when Seattle had overloaded me—I’d accidentally become an end-times sign for the Navajo Nation. My silver-blue power had changed to colors of the whole rainbow, power strong enough to last all day. I was much more contained now, radiating blue and silver, but not so out of control that I went full-spectrum. That was an enormous relief. Even with Rattler and Raven on my side to help smooth things over—and they’d disappeared with the burst of power, their job here evidently done—I didn’t need a second round of explaining to a god that I was merely incompetent, not intentionally dangerous. Happy, even gleeful, I triggered the Sight so I could thoroughly enjoy being punched up to full throttle.
The theater went white as a flash-bang erupted in my vision. I howled, clapping my hands over my eyes, which was about as useful as holding my nose when magic was providing a visual component. I could See through my eye lids and fingers, though the only thing to See was the as tonishing whiteness. My head rang with it, which was all new; the Sight had never had a soundtrack before. Not that it was much of a soundtrack, just a high-pitched squeal that could’ve been the result of leaving a rock concert. Except this was much, much louder, like I’d gone to every rock concert in creation at the same moment, and my skull was vibrating with the aftermath.
So was my skin, for that matter. It felt like someone had run a zillion needles over it, leaving invisible but painful scores. My hands tingled, my cheeks burned, my stomach cramped, all of it making me seem more alive, somehow. Too alive: people weren’t supposed to feel at this level, not if they wanted to retain their sanity. I wanted to escape myself, leave my overloaded body behind and get somewhere safe.
For most people that was nothing more than a nutty wish. In my case, I slipped free the surly bonds of flesh and rose up into the whiteness. It surrounded me, too harsh to be comforting, and I spun around in search of yet another way to escape.
Hunter-moon orange, violent in its contrast against the brilliance, seared through me. I flung my hands up again, even more uselessly in my disembodied state, and clawed the Sight back, trying to turn it off. It faded reluctantly, leaving behind pinprick tingles and ear-ringing. I rubbed my eyes, trying to erase the flaring white edges of everything I looked at, and finally scraped enough brain cells together to focus on where the orange shard had pierced my vision.
Winona, Naomi’s replacement, stood right in front of me, confusion writ large on her delicate features. A sense of the absurd bloomed in me. I’d automatically assumed an outside force attacking the dance troupe. It hadn’t even occurred to me to look for a devil within, much less to look at the individual who would gain the most, careerwise, from Naomi’s death. Some detective I was.
But then, from a self-castigating perspective, it was a little odd that Morrison hadn’t thought of it, either. That left me with three possibilities: either my boss was losing it, the snake within the troupe’s grass was running a look-elsewhere spell, or my shamanic instincts were dead on target and it was somebody else entirely. Of those three, the first was the least likely, and I had to admit that given my track record, the third didn’t seem all that likely either. I was all light-voiced and hollow as I asked, “Did you kill her?”
Winona paled, a fair trick for someone of her already-porcelain complexion. “Why would you even think that?”