Page 49 of Spirit Dances (The Walker Papers #7)

I bucked upright, smashed my head against the low ceiling, howled with outrage and came down again saying, “What the fuck? ” mostly to the voice inside my head. “ Melinda? ”

“Melinda?” Billy looked around in alarm and I snapped a fist closed like I was snatching the sound from the air.

“Since when is your wife telepathic, Billy? Melinda? Melinda!” I finally tried Melinda? inside my head, and got startlement back in response. Melinda, what the fuck?

Impatience shot through her answer: “For heaven’s sake, Joanne, I don’t know how long I can maintain this. Wherever you are doesn’t have cell reception and this is important. Get somewhere you can call me before they decide to shoot Michael.”

I bent double—not that it was far to bend—and beat both fists against the ground, swearing and swearing and swearing. “They found Morrison. I have to go get him.”

Rita’s protest was as sharp as my own astonishment. “You can’t leave! You can’t—that thing, it’s, it’s a, a…”

“I don’t have much choice, Rita. We know where Tia is, at least generally.

I’ll come back for her, but if I don’t go get Morrison he’s probably going to get killed and—” I broke off, because that sentence finished with and I would rather let every single person down here die than let that happen.

I wasn’t sure it was a lie, but I was very sure it was the wrong thing to say.

“Are there other ways in and out of here?”

“Probably, but I don’t know! I’ve never been this far!”

Well, the first tunnel we’d chased our golden goose through had been dug out by hand, not one of the old city streets.

I arbitrarily chose to believe that meant it was the main, perhaps the only, access point, and started backing up.

“Billy, shit , you don’t even have your gun, do you?

” I knew he didn’t, not any more than I had one.

Worry was making me ask stupid questions.

“I don’t usually bring it to theater performances, no,” he said tightly. “What about Melinda?”

“She’s fine, she’s just talking in my head. ” I was feeling a little over-emphatic, but it was the only way I could keep from shouting everything I said. “Is that normal?”

After a careful pause he said, “No,” which suggested to me it wasn’t entirely abnormal, either, but I wasn’t in the mood to get into it.

“It must have something to do with the dance tonight. Look, if we retreat to the chamber we first saw her in, can you hold the fort until I get back?”

“Me and what army?”

“Ours,” Rita offered, sounding determined if not absolutely certain. “Wolves avoid people, right? Normal wolves? So if I go get some of the guys to join us, maybe just having so many people there will keep her trapped.”

It was dark and the tunnel was cramped, but Billy and I both turned toward her, lights flashing to illuminate her wide-eyed face. “That,” I said in genuine approval, “is a great idea. Thank you, Rita. You’re a hell of a woman.”

“And you owe me a hell of an explanation.” She turned around more easily in the tunnel’s confines than either Billy or I could do, and scampered back the way we’d come.

Shamanic powers did not come invested with super-strength, so getting Billy, particularly, out of the chamber we’d first seen the wolf woman in was something of a challenge.

Fortunately, I was tall and broad-shouldered, if not superheroic, and once I’d boosted him up he was able to haul me up without much trouble.

Rita, who weighed about ninety pounds, was no problem, though it was she who said, “We’ll bring a ladder next time. ”

I let her explain about the golden-furred predator in the tunnels when we got back to the campfire group, and was pleasantly surprised that half a dozen of them agreed, not even grudgingly, to come keep an eye on the chamber.

I didn’t remember seeing another way out of there, and suggested they didn’t even need to go into the chamber itself, but their friend Lynn was dead, others were missing and their attitude had something of a witch hunt to it.

I hoped Billy could keep them from going after the wolf, but I had to trust him to it: every minute I stayed below was another minute Morrison could get killed in, and I didn’t care how disorganized the homeless mob was when I left them.

It took less time to get back to the mosaic and ladder than it had taken to get away from it.

It was one of those fixed truths of the universe: the road back was always shorter, presumably because then I knew where I was going.

I scrambled back to the surface and ran for the parking garage, because, like a moron, I had left my phone in Petite.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d run more than a block, much less a whole damned mile.

I had an agonizing stitch in my side by the time I collapsed into Petite’s bucket seat, lodging dirt and muck in the leather, and frantically dialed Melinda.

“Well? Where is he? And how do you even know?”

“I’ve been listening to Billy’s police scanner,” she said without the slightest repentance. I wanted to kiss her for the breach of protocol. “He got himself into the Market somehow, Joanne. They’re still chasing him around it.”

“The Market? What the hell is he doing downtown? And aren’t half the internal passages blocked off by gates?” I slammed Petite’s door, locking it, and was running again before I’d finished the questions.

Melinda gave a very unladylike snort. “I’m not sure how much locks and gates matter to shapeshifters, Joanne. That would be your area of expertise.”

“Like telepathy is yours?” I wanted to keep her on the phone. It was easier to run if I could huff and puff and bellow questions to take my mind off the fact that I was in no condition to sprint around downtown Seattle. I promised myself I would take up jogging Monday morning.

Mel’s voice stiffened a little. “It’s hardly an area of expertise.”

“Oh, come on, Melinda!” I skidded out of the garage, got my feet under me again and headed west on Pine Street as fast as my breathless body could take me.

“You’re the most understated adept I’ve met!

You’ve been in a coven, you say you’re just a wise woman, I mean come on, what does that mean?

” It would have been a more impressive interrogation if I’d gotten the questions out that smoothly, but I was gasping for air about every third word.

Melinda’s stuffiness faded into mild amusement.

“I told you covens didn’t suit me. I have a certain amount of empathic talent, and the better I know someone, the more at tuned I become.

A full coven is too large—there are always a few people whose thoughts and ambitions are distasteful, so I decided a long time ago to take my grandmother’s path, and remain mostly apart from the magical world. Those who need me, find me.”

“And the whole thing tonight? You were talking in my head!” I crashed into a wall, bounced off and hauled ass around the corner toward the Market’s main entrance, bellowing, “Detective Joanne Walker, I’m the one here to handle the animal!

I repeat, I am in command of this situation, please fall back and report to me! ” as I went.

A couple of downtown cops I didn’t know appeared, looking somewhere between relieved and outraged. Neither, to my huge relief, had their guns unholstered. Apparently someone had actually listened when I’d demanded the wolf not be shot.

“I take it you’re there,” Melinda said in my ear.

I wheezed, “Yeah,” and heard her smile through the phone.

“Then go find Michael, Joanne. Certainly that’s more important than learning about me and my quiet little magics.

” She hung up. I bent over, coughing what tasted like iron filaments from my lungs.

One of the cops, bemused, said, “You sure you’re in charge?” and I flapped my phone hand at him, patting myself down with the other as I searched for my badge.

Which, of course, I didn’t have. I wheezed an obscenity, then waved my phone more urgently.

“North Precinct. Detective Joanne Walker. Not on duty, but in charge. Dial Morrison on the phone for confirmation.” Morrison obviously wasn’t going to answer, but the call would go through to his cell, which identified him as the North Precinct captain. I hoped that would be enough.

The cop took my phone and made the call as I leaned on the building, catching my breath.

He looked about fourteen, though he couldn’t have been less than twenty-one, only seven years my junior.

I hoped he wasn’t fresh enough out of the Academy to be determined to do everything absolutely by the book, since Morrison wasn’t going to answer.

After a few seconds he took a breath like he was about to speak to someone, then let it out as he waited on the brief, clipped message announcing Morrison wasn’t available right now.

He mouthed, “Not picking up,” to me, and said, “This is Officer Donald King with the West Precinct. I was calling to confirm Detective Joanne Walker’s jurisdiction in the case of a wolf sighting at Pike Place Market.

You can reach me at,” and gave a number I promptly forgot.

Then he hung up, handed me the phone and said, “It’s the biggest damned wolf I’ve ever seen.

It’s gotta be four feet tall at the shoulder.

You want to be in charge, you got it. What can we do? ”

“Point me toward it and whatever you do, just. Don’t. Shoot it. In fact, just point me toward it and stay up here to guard the door. Don’t let it out, if it runs.”

Young Officer King gave me a dubious look, but nodded. “How’re you gonna catch it, ma’am? You don’t have a tranq gun or a net….”

“Through force of personality.” I had my breath back, and pushed off the corrugated steel door I’d been leaning on. “All right. Let me in, let me in, by the hairs, by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.”

King gave me another uncertain look. “That story didn’t end up so well for the wolf, ma’am.”