Page 27

Story: Spirit Dances

“Just tired.”

Evidently I wasn’t convincing, because she came down the aisle and sat behind me, hunched forward so I could see bits of her image in the mirrors. I half expected her to rub my back, simply because she always shook hands with somebody when they came into the room, so being greeted without some kind of physical contact was unusual. “You haven’t dropped by lately.”

“Missing Persons gives me the creeps.”

“And yet you work Homicide. So what’s wrong?”

Jenn, like everybody else I had a passing acquaintance with at work, had long since recognized Morrison and I had some kind of Not A Thing going on. I was reasonably certain it was a topic of gossip that managed to stay mostly out of earshot, but once in a while I’d said something about Morrison and gotten a resounding, “Ah,” in response, the sort of “Ah” that said, “Well, everything I suspected has now been confirmed.” Jenn had used that kind of “Ah” on me. So it would be perfectly reasonable for me to tell the truth, and have a nice little vent about totally failing to understand men in general and that man in specific.

So of course I said, “Is it even possible to file missing persons reports on the homeless? I mean, does it do any good at all?” instead.

Jenn’s reflection turned its head to arch an eyebrow at me. She’d gotten glasses recently, and I thought they made her look saucy, since she was a little too strong of jaw to be quite cute. “Not much,” she said after a moment. “The handful of homelessactually reported as missing tend to turn up again as homicides or suicides. But the population’s itinerant and even though Seattle’s winters are mild—or they used to be—there are plenty of people who head south and never come back. Do you need me to look somebody up?”

“Maybe tomorrow.” I frowned. “No, wait. It’s Saturday. What’re you doing in?”

“I forgot my gym bag here last night.” Jenn got up, patting my back after all. “If you’re fretting over the guy who gave you the earrings, stop fretting and go for it. Life is short.”

Oh, yes, I was so very sneaky I’d slid that right under her radar, all right. I touched the coyotes dangling from my earlobes, then looked over my shoulder at her. “What if I’m fretting about somebody else?”

She got that “Ah” look in her eyes and smiled. “Then wear a different pair of earrings next time you see him.”

And for some reason, that made perfect sense.

Chapter 13

Jenn gave me a ride back to Petite, and I drove myself home with the vague intention of getting some sleep. But for the second time that day, the mirror arrested me when I went into the bathroom. I wasn’t accustomed to noticing myself so often: mostly my vision of me was a quick glance to make sure my hair wasn’t actually frightening, and then I went out the door. But I kept seeing the sliver of a scar on my right cheekbone. Someone had opened my face with a butterfly knife the day I became a shaman, and the injury had preferred not to be completely healed. The scar was a subtle reminder that I’d left my old life behind.

So were the pieces of jewelry I’d slowly taken to wearing over the past year. My mother’s silver choker necklace, embedded with traditional Irish symbols, and the copper bracelet with pictographic animals rushing its circumference that had been a gift, years ago, from my father. Even Coyote’s earrings, not just the dangling ivory coyotes themselves, but the stylized gold ear wraps, one a snake and one a raven, which my short hair could never hide. They were all outward signs of the path I waswalking, things that not so long ago I’d refused to wear because I so fervently disliked where they were pointing me.

Oh, how the mighty had fallen. I turned the shower on and stood there staring at myself until steam clogged my view, then stripped off my clothes and climbed in to sit in the bottom of the tub. Moody introspectiveness was not a headspace I wanted to fall asleep with, and showers were wondrous for either clearing my mind or waking me up. Either would do just fine.

Patty Raleigh’s pale, shocky expression planted itself behind my eyelids as soon as I got under the water. I made a fist and hit the tub, not hard, but muttered, “Okay, fine. I’ll go see her when I’m done showering. Subtle much?” to my brain.

Astonishingly the image faded, though it was replaced with Naomi Allison’s collapsing form. This time I smacked my temple, exasperated. Taking a shower did not constitute avoiding responsibilities. I knew that, but my brain was apparently eager to keep me on point, which would have been more helpful if I could instantaneously step it up in the magical tracking department. Short of miraculous improvements in that regard, I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Maybe try to contact Coyote again and ask for more guidance in the shapeshifting realm, but my mentor was clearly unhappy with me. Besides, if my experiment with the rattlesnake was any indicator, I didn’t really need Coyote’s help. I just wanted his reassurance.

I flashed on the idea of the rattlesnake as a hunter, wondering if the fascinating heat-sensing ability could be turned to a magic-sensing skill. That was something Coyote probablycouldhelp me with, if he was so inclined. I just didn’t figure he was inclined.

“You really do have the most peculiar mental processes,” he said mildly. I surged backward with a yelp, scraped my back on the tub faucet and howled a mix of genuine pain and utterindignity as my mentor cocked a pointy ear at me. “How was your shapeshifting lesson?”

I folded a washcloth behind my back to daub at the scrape, then peered at the cloth miserably, convinced by the shock of pain that I’d find gushing blood. Disappointingly, there was just a bit of dead skin. “I know I’m not asleep this time. What are you doing here? I’m in the shower! And what is it, you can read my mind? How come I can’t read yours? It’s not fair.”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you in the shower before, Jo.”

That was true enough to make me blush, although the first several times he’d seen me in the shower it had been just like this, with him a spirit-guide coyote and me in some kind of uncontrolled trance. Which shouldn’t be happening, at this stage in my shamanic career.

“You’re right. It shouldn’t be. The odd thing is your shields are up, which they never were back at the beginning. They’re just very weak. What have you been doing?”

“Nothing. Reading auras, that’s it. Shapeshifting this morning, but that was really easy. Rattler helped, and it didn’t feel like it took a lot.” I couldn’t see the scrape on my back no matter how hard I twisted. Sullen, I laid a paint job touch-up image over it, and the pain faded. “Canyou read my mind?”

“When your shields are this weak, yes.” Coyote paused, then did a doggy shrug. “All right, most of the time, for that matter. I’ve known you a long time, Joanne.”

I curled my lip and hunched forward, arms wrapped around my shins as water beat a rhythm down my back. “I’ve known you just as long. How come I can’t read your mind?”

“Maybe you want me to read yours.”

That seemed deeply unlikely, a thought which made Coyote quirk a challenging eyebrow. I muttered, “Oh, shut up,” and put my head on my knees. Coyote wasn’t really there, for all that I felt entirely awake. He’d be soaking wet by now if he was, whichimage cheered me enough to say, “I’ve been wrung out since the healing last night. Maybe it’s screwing with my shields and my…dimension-hopping abilities.”

“Planes. They’re planes of existence, not different dimensions. I shudder at the thought of you hopping dimensions.”