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I t 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 astonishing 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?”

“The killer’s aura is hunter-moon orange, and that color just slammed me between the eyes when I looked at you.” I triggered the Sight again as I spoke, wanting to see if guilt or horror surged through Winona’s colors.

Obliterating white smashed into my head again, sending the bells in my ears to new frenzied pitches and making my skin itch until I wanted to score it off.

Orange stabbed through the white, pulses emanating from Winona.

I tried to stalk forward with a commanding air and instead staggered in a circle, holding my head as I turned the Sight off yet again and waited for its after-effects to fade.

I’d had my vision go on the blink before, a physical warning against the wrong mystic path I was charging down, but I couldn’t remember the Sight itself acting up in quite this way.

I had no idea what was wrong with it, but I wished it would stop.

When my vision had cleared again, the dancers had moved.

Some had stepped closer to Winona, supporting her.

Others had fallen back, just as clearly rejecting her, fear greater than friendship.

I gritted my teeth and moved toward her.

“Tell me what happened, Winona. I can’t believe you tried an attack tonight, knowing I was here to shield everyone. ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She backed away from me, her small group of supporters moving with her. “I didn’t kill anybody! I would never hurt Naomi. She was my friend!”

“Winona, I can See it. I can See the hunter-orange blazi?—”

“Joanne,” Melinda said gently, “Winona’s aura is emerald-green with touches of red. There’s no orange in it at all.”

Cold sluiced through me, washing away the anger at my own assumptions and leaving an acidic pit of worry in its place.

Even if I knew hundreds of magic users—adepts; I had to remember to use that word, because I liked it—even if I’d known hundreds of adepts, my temperament would almost certainly leave me disinclined to believe most of them when they made a flat statement. I would want to see it myself.

That was the nature of a Joanne.

Melinda Holliday was one of the few exceptions I could think of to that rule.

If Melinda said it, I believed it, even if my own empirical evidence was to the contrary.

I stopped where I was, teeth and fists clenched, eyes closed so I couldn’t see Winona and give in on the urge to advance further.

I triggered the Sight for a third time, prepared for it to white out the world and set my skin afire, which it did.

I turned my head toward Billy and Melinda, because of everyone there I knew their aura colors, and after long moments spoke.

“Okay. All I can See right now is white, Mel. I can’t even See your colors, so okay, if you say Winona’s red and green, she’s red and green.

But something’s not right. Orange is cutting through the white, and it’s the killer’s signature shade. ”

Melinda, still in the same calm, gentle voice, said, “I don’t see it.

” She wasn’t arguing its existence, just making an admission.

I exhaled noisily and nodded, then turned back toward Winona, my eyes still closed.

A headache was building and I wanted very badly to stop using the Sight, but screwed-up or not, it was providing the only lead I had.

I edged forward and extended a fingertip, trying to locate the very heart of the orange blaze.

When I was almost touching it, I opened my eyes again.

Winona was holding her breath, my finger an inch from her breastbone.

I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, given she was wearing a thunderbird costume.

Long feathers and bright bits of gold adorned her, all of them making a loose flowing outfit that both hid and enhanced her form.

“Have you changed anything in your costume lately?”

She clapped a hand against her chest and shook her head.

“No. It’s Naomi’s costume anyway, not mine.

I—” Her eyebrows furled and she closed her fingers around the feathers just beneath her hand and just beyond my pointing finger.

“Ow. This is supposed to all be soft, not—” She tugged, then came up with a small bone, holding it in her fingertips. “God, what is that, a bird bone?”

Three or four people said, “No,” including me. I went on to add, “It’s not fragile enough. But maybe I can use it as a tracking device, since it’s got the killer’s colors,” as I reached for it.

Melinda said, “Joanne, I don’t think you should touch that,” exactly one second too late.