Spirit Dances

CHAPTER THIRTY

The cavern, which I had by and large failed to pay any attention to, was filled with enough smoke to provide me some degree of modesty. Not that I knew where Billy or Morrison were, and not, at the moment, that I particularly cared if everybody got an eyeful of Mostly Naked Joanne. I found my shredded sweater and nearly gave up on even trying to wear it, but shapeshifting, it turned out, didn’t heal all wounds, and I was too tired and much too dull-witted to heal myself right then. I stripped my T-shirt off, wrapped it around the worst of my injuries, discarded another blown-out bra and yanked my sweater on. It wasn’t quite as revealing as nudity, so I called it good and shoved around for my jeans.

They were in wretched condition, torn up from Morrison’s antics at the theater, and then from me shifting in them again. But, like the sweater, they were slightly better than parading around naked. My shoes, at least, were unscathed, and I found the copper bracelet Dad had given me, though my glasses had disappeared entirely. Still, once dressed, I was afforded some degree of decency, which was about as much as I could ask for. Only then did I look around, trying to think what else needed to be done, now that the werewolf was neutralized.

It took a moment to realize there was no more fire. Smoke, yes, lots of it, but the fire itself had blown out. Not because of lack of oxygen, though given the cave’s dimensions and the fire’s size, that would’ve been my first guess. The way I wasn’t lying on the floor choking for air, however, suggested something else had happened, and it seemed likely the something had been me. Even the wholly internal magic of shapeshifting had whooshed enough power over the room to almost obliterate the flames once. For all I knew, building my power circle—which still shimmered around the cave—had sucked up the fire’s energy and converted it to something less harmful. Maybe Billy had a better idea of what had happened, or maybe I could reconstruct it once I sat down to clear my head. Either way, it fell under yet another thing I didn’t have to worry about at that red-hot second, which was all that really mattered.

The wicker man was next. I sluffed back toward him with half-formed intentions of pulling his branches apart by hand if necessary, and arrived at one of his hollow thighs to find it unoccupied. That made no sense, so I went to the next one, which was empty, too. Not burned, not full of dead men, just a bit broken apart and empty. So, when I tilted my head back, were the cages and the wicker man’s torso. I couldn’t wrap my mind around that, but Tia was still screaming, which gave me something else to do. I crossed to her, crouched, and said, very gently, “If you don’t shut up I’m going to disconnect your vocal cords, Tia.”

My magic gave a disapproving thump that turned the world white with its emphaticness, but Tia didn’t know that. When my vision cleared again she was enraged but silent. I patted her cheek and stood up, knowing I was a world-class asshole and absolutely, utterly unable to give a shit.

Billy, from about a million miles away, said, “Joanne?”

I turned around, waving my hands in the air to clear smoke, and the world began to resolve in a manner which made sense again. My partner was mooshed up against the boundary of my power circle, wolfy Morrison on one side of him and five goggle-eyed homeless guys on his other side. I should have known he’d deal with the rescue while I dealt with the werewolf. That was just basically the kind of person Billy was.

“We’re stuck,” Billy said cautiously. “Something’s holding us in.”

“That’d be me.” I was a little afraid to bring the power circle down. I’d leeched magic from the very walls of the cavern to build it, and I was uncomfortably aware that the cave was a magical creation itself. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I dissolved the circle, particularly with the way my power was exploding in and out. In theory, the circle’s magic would just melt back from whence it came, but theory wasn’t working out so well for me right now.

“I’m going to shield you,” I said after a minute. “I think the shield will let you walk through the power circle unscathed. Then just get out of here, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”

Nobody on earth would believe that line, including my partner. He gave me a very hard look, but nodded. I pulled up my favorite pearlescent Star Trek style shield idea and wrapped all seven of them in it, whispering encouragement to the circle that while it was a keep-things-in circle, my magic could and should be let out. Then I nodded at Billy, who edged forward, rolling the shield with him. It bumped against the circle, which hesitated, sighed, and let him out. The five guys he’d rescued hurried after him.

Morrison, damn his wolf eyes, stayed. The shield popped around him as the others got farther away, and he just sat there, waiting, his expression patient.

“I can’t change you back while we’re down here, Morrison. I mean, I think right now I could, but you’d be naked.”

His ears flattened and he looked at himself in such a Morrison-the-man way that I surprised myself with a laugh. “It’s a long walk home, naked. You might as well go with them. Get Billy to drive home…” Not that Billy could, because he’d come downtown in Petite with me, and I was still in the round room beneath the lake with no absolute sure method of escape. “Okay, get Billy to call Gar…shit.”

Morrison’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, wolfish amusement, and he lay down where he was, obviously and irritatingly content to wait on me and whatever final dramatics I had up my sleeve. I groaned and finally turned back to Tia. “Well, what am I going to do with you.”

Her face contorted in a furious sneer. “Kill me.”

“Mmm. No. I’d have done that already if I was going to. Look, boss. For once I’ve actually caught the killer alive and well. I bet we can even get her up on kidnapping charges. Those guys Billy’s helping sure saw her face. I don’t see how we’re going to make Naomi’s and Lynn’s murder charges stick, but we can probably manage attempted murder for what happened down here. The forensics team is going to hate this. Is it even our jurisdiction?” I was talking to hear myself, because Morrison couldn’t answer and I didn’t want Tia to. In fact, what I wanted was to keep talking until I was certain Billy and the men whose names I didn’t know had gotten far enough away that I was sure bringing down the power circle couldn’t hurt them.

That, however, had seemed like a better plan before Morrison decided to stick around. I was willing to risk my own neck, and even willing to risk Tia’s, since I didn’t like her very much, but Morrison was a different kettle of fish. Or pack of wolves. Something animal analogy, anyway. And I’d obviously run out of words, so I sighed, knelt at Tia’s side and said, “C’mere, boss. I need you right beside me if this goes pear-shaped.”

He got up, trotted over and lay back down again. I put one hand in his ruff and took Tia’s hand with the other, building a shield around all three of us. A visible one, for once: I wanted Morrison to understand why he shouldn’t go dashing off, and for him to be able to see the limits of where he could dash to if he was seized by an irresistible urge to do so. Though, really, that sounded much more like something I’d do than Morrison.

“This, Joanne,” I said under my breath, “is procrastinating.”

Very cautiously, I powered down the circle.

An unkindness of ravens exploded within the confines of my skull.

It wasn’t my Raven: these were three, and they beat wing around a tall, slender, dark-haired woman who stood with her back to me. She wore midnight-blue robes: certainly nothing modern, which left her arms bare. Strong arms, both biceps banded with knotwork tattoos defining a curve of muscle that said whoever she was, she’d spent a lot of time at hard physical activity. A silver link circlet glittered against her hair, and when she turned toward me, I recognized it with a shock: it was my necklace, triskelions breaking apart silver tubes, with a delicate four-spoked power circle as its pendent/centerpiece.

And it was seated above a face which flashed from fresh-faced maiden to grim warrior to death’s skull, each one glaring at me in expectant challenge.

The incessant fishhook tug in my belly turned to a fist, knotted around me and yanked.