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I steepled my fingers over my mouth, a tight smile half-hidden behind them as my nose and eyes prickled with sentiment.

Billy’s older sister Caroline had died when he was eight and she was eleven, but their bond had been deep enough to keep her spirit nearby—within him, really—for decades.

Once I’d learned that, I’d stopped imagining his cross-dressing quirk was in retaliation against his parents for his unfortunate name, and started understanding that it was at least in part an homage to the sister who’d died as a little girl.

Eventually I’d gotten a good look at Billy in his own garden, his perception of himself at a soul-deep level, and I’d understood even more.

It wasn’t just an homage. Caroline was part of him, a slightly feminizing factor in a big lunk of a man.

The garden Billy dressed more like my partner had been doing lately: softer shirts and well-cut suits, masculine but not butch.

And given the opportunity to dress up, he apparently hadn’t lost any of his outrageousness, just redirected it a little now that Caroline’s spirit had finally moved on.

I whispered, “I think she’d approve,” from behind my compressed fingers, and Billy looked unusually pleased.

Melinda tucked her arm through Billy’s. “So what do you need from us tonight, Joanie? Bill impressed upon me that this wasn’t just a date.”

“Hopefully it will be, but there might be something you can do, Billy. If things go wrong—is it possible to stop a soul from crossing over? Can you distract a ghost?”

Morrison put a hand over his face, which I thought was out-of-proportion funny, and my shoulders shook with silent giggles as Billy’s mouth twisted. “You should have invited Sonata, if that’s what you need. I might be able to, but I’m not in her weight class.”

We all paused to take a look at him, since Billy was out of all our weight classes, and the idea of five-foot-six, hundred-and-thirty-pound, sixty-year-old Sonata Smith throwing down with him and winning was ludicrous. Billy rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, but the image. Anyway, at the very end of the last dance I’ll throw a shield up—Mel, can you see that?”

“Try,” she suggested, and I slipped one up around first Morrison, then Billy, then finally myself. Melinda’s eyes glimmered gold, not nearly the depth of change mine underwent, and she nodded. “Faintly, but yes.”

“I can make it more visible if I have to, but I’d rather not.

” I released all the physical shields and went back to my explanation.

“It should cut the killer off at the knees, but just in case it doesn’t, I think I should be able to bring the lead dancer’s spirit back to her body as long as she doesn’t just cross right over.

I was too late last night with Naomi, but a distraction… ”

Billy shook his head. “You should have called Sonny. I’m good with lingering ghosts, but calling someone back is—” He broke off, mouth tight.

“Yeah, I know, out of your weight class. On the other hand, I’ve been a student of the ‘argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours’ school for the last year, so I feel justified in saying?—”

“Suck it up and try?” Melinda asked archly, when I stopped abruptly.

I cleared my throat. “Something like that, yeah. I guess I don’t feel all that justified in saying it after all.”

To my relief, Billy grinned. “Good thing we found a babysitter tonight, then, so Mel could put words in your mouth.”

“Why,” Morrison said to me, “did you invite me?”

My mouth said, “I didn’t. You invited yourself,” which was perfectly true, but I wished like hell Melinda had put some other words in it.

It didn’t make a damned bit of difference that I wasn’t wearing the coyote earrings, not if I was going to be a hundred percent stupid at the first opportunity.

And besides, Morrison probably hadn’t noticed the earrings, so there was no point to any of it anyway.

I dropped my head, pushed my glasses up and pinched the bridge of my nose.

I wanted to count to ten so I could trust myself to speak, but Morrison’s scent and body heat were already retreating, so I only got to about one and a half before looking up again.

My boss had fallen back three steps in the time it took me to do that, and his expression was full-on Police Captain, all professionalism and no emotion. I wanted to cry.

“Actually,” I said as much precision as I could muster, “I was hoping you would watch the show from backstage with me. You’re the only person I know who consistently brings me back to myself if something goes wrong.”

I wasn’t looking at the Hollidays. I didn’t dare look at them, especially when Melinda gave a tiny pleased squeak, like I’d said something revelatory.

I kept my gaze on Morrison, whose gaze thawed marginally, but not enough to suggest I’d genuinely redeemed myself.

I said, “Please,” very quietly, and after a moment he nodded.

My shoulders dropped about six inches. “Thank you. I’ve got a side door propped open so we can get backstage.

We should probably go. The show starts in a few minutes.

Enjoy it,” I said to Billy and Melinda, and Mel veritably sparkled her eyes at me as they went one way and Morrison and I went another.

I kicked the stone out of the side door and closed it behind us, warned Jim Littlefoot that Morrison would be backstage with me and showed Morrison my hiding place next to the fly ropes, where we were well out of the way and surrounded by darkness.

He waited until the performance began and there was no chance at all of, “Bring you back to yourself?” being overheard before he spoke.

“You saved my life at least once.” My shoulders hunched again, rock solid with tension, and I kept my gaze locked on the stage.

“The morning I found Cassandra Tucker in the locker room, I went chasing after her spirit, and I couldn’t get back to my body.

Phoebe kept trying to wake me up— yelling at me, shaking me—but she couldn’t.

You, though. You just put your hand on my shoulder and I woke up.

Right before a monster ate me. It’s happened a couple other times, too, besides last night. ”

My poor boss was magnificently silent a moment. “And you didn’t think to mention this?”

“It was awkward.”

Morrison snorted laughter. “Unlike the rest of our interactions.”

I said, “You’re a very confusing man,” under my breath, and did my best to focus on the dance performance after that.

Its impact was lessened by dint of being on the sidelines rather than in the audience.

A few things—the thunderbird’s entrance, flying across the stage as she did, for example— were even more dramatic, because she came straight at us.

But mostly, I couldn’t see the structure of the dances building to the shapeshifting climax, and that helped me retain a degree of control.

The dancers still buzzed with, and built, enormous energy, but it was directed outward, not into the wings, so instead of being body-slammed by it, I could just siphon off dregs.

The atonal music, the drums, the heat of stage lights—impressive even from the wings—made my skin tingle, lifting me out of myself in a gentle, reverent way.

I was held to my body by threads, a double-existence I’d only experienced a few times before.

It had never been so comfortable, or filled my chest with so much delight.

For the first time I could remember, I was happy to hold myself in two planes of existence.

I was aware of my body, of the heat and the smell of makeup and sweat, of my sweater’s soft nub and the rougher cotton denim of my jeans.

My feet felt heavy in their bulky shoes, and I found the idea that they anchored me amusing.

As long as I kept my shoes on, the dancers couldn’t take me away.

But the detached-from-my-body self watched them with a shaman’s eyes.

I Saw the creatures they made themselves into instead of the human forms throwing themselves across the stage.

Their auras were extraordinary: even tinged with grief—or possibly because they were saturated with it—they leaped high and wide, a metaphysical echo and prediction of what the dances themselves did and would do.

It took effort not to join them, spiritually if not physically, but my presence would mar the patterns of light and power they built.

I felt magnificent, much better than I had since the healing the night before.

This was what Coyote had tried to impress upon me, about ritual and drum circles and sweat lodges: power combined and shared and focused was much more effective than anything I could draw on by myself.

Passion like this could be drained, of course, but it also renewed itself by its very nature.

The fact that the dance troupe had lost a member less than twenty-four hours earlier, and were still able to waken and share depths of magic from within themselves, was existential proof of that.

Morrison touched my shoulder very lightly.

I turned toward him, pleased I retained sufficient bodily awareness to do so even when floating just outside of myself, drawn to the dancers.

He tapped a finger beside his eye, indicating—indicating what, I wasn’t sure.

That my eyes were gold, probably, but that was practically standard operating procedure now.

Oh. No. He was asking if he could see what I Saw, a revelation which came like a heady thunderbolt.

God, we’d changed, both of us. Maybe we’d even changed since last night, given that it didn’t seem likely the man I’d thrown a shoe at would be asking for a repetition of the performance leading to the shoe-throwing.

On the other hand, I couldn’t see me from the outside— well, actually, I could if I wanted to, but looking at Morrison was more interesting—and I suspected I was sort of flushed and joyous and possibly like everything was going to be right with the world.

If I was standing next to someone who looked like I felt, I’d want in on some of that happy juice, too, and Morrison knew I could share if I felt like it.

I didn’t bother with the silly rhyme, this time. I just tugged him close, his feet on mine, and put my hand on top of his head as I whispered some of that replenished power out of myself and into my boss.

Right then, the first act ended. A tremendous surge of shifting magic flooded from the dancers, hitting me in the spine and crashing through me in waves. It was intensely, exotically erotic, and I ducked my head against Morrison’s shoulder, trying to keep my breathless laugh silent.

I got a nose full of fur. I jerked back, sneezed and came face-to-face with an armful of silver-furred, blue-eyed, deeply bewildered wolf.