She drew back, dark eyes startled, and gave me a fragile smile. “Save it for the shields, please. Dancing will help me.”
I said, “Dancing will help everyone,” and didn’t mean just the troupe. Her smile strengthened and she retreated with what I imagined was a touch more lightness in her step. Moments later they brought the lights down, leaving me alone on a dim stage. I was glad I’d thought to wear dark clothes: they’d help me hide in the wings, where I retreated to put my shoes on and spend a few minutes collecting the dancers’ nervous preshow energy behind shields and releasing it again, as practice.
It was more tiring than I expected. I moved farther back and sat down next to the fly ropes, where I was pretty sure I’d be out of the way. None of the previous night’s performance had relied on wires, just muscle. My own muscles felt watery, like mental exertion was manifesting itself in my body, and Coyote’s warning about the healing I’d performed the night before came back to me. Watching auras didn’t take much, but even something as comparatively low-key as raising and lowering shields was enough to slow me down.
Lucky for me, then, that I had a whole troupe of performers whose entire purpose in dancing was to create psychic energy. I knew, this time, what their focus was, so it wasn’t going to take me by surprise the way it had in the previous concert. I could fill up on some of the first half’s outpouring of strength, and turn it around to keep these men and women safe.
Assuming, anyway, that I didn’t accidentally turn into a flounder while they danced. I stayed where I was, listening to the sounds of the theater preparing to come to life, until I heard the house doors open. Morrison was probably out there somewhere waiting for me, possibly along with Billy and Melinda. I got up and dusted my bottom, then slipped out the same side door Littlefoot had brought me in through, making sure to prop it open with a stone so I could get back in.
All three of them were indeed waiting in the lobby, Morrison glancing at his watch impatiently as I skulked up. He wasn’t as formally attired as the night before, which was a relief and a disappointment all in one, but he still looked sharp in a three-piece suit. Melinda was in a form-fitting black satin gown that made me wonder how I’d ever thought I looked curvy in my green dress. Billy, rather to my surprise, was in a zoot suit of bright blue cotton. He and Mel looked like they’d stepped directly out of the early forties, but since Billy’s idea of formal wear was usually identical to Melinda’s, the outfit made my eyebrows crawl up my forehead. “That’s a new look.”
He brushed his knuckles over his shirt—white silk, to contrast with the suit’s brilliance—with a hint of self-consciousness. “Something changed after Halloween. She’ll always be a part of me, but…”
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.