“Huge. Twice the size of a normal wolf. Silver fur, blue eyes. It may be wearing a suit jacket.”
The operator started giggling. I couldn’t blame him, although I also wanted to kill him. I waited for his laughter to die down, which happened very abruptly after about twenty seconds when he said, “911 just had a call about a gigantic wolf in that area.”
“Tell the 911 crew that the animal isn’t dangerous unless it’s engaged and that everybody should leave it the hell alone. That Animal Control is on its way. Get the message on the radio, on the news, whatever it takes to get the word out. Did the call say anything about a suit jacket?” I’d begun walking as I talked, still mechanical, and I broke through a tangled thicket of branches as I asked the question. Maybe, maybe, if I’d kept running, I’d have caught Morrison, because he’d taken a moment there in the brush to scrape the tie and coat off. I took the tie, particularly, as a positive sign: a paw print on the neck suggested he’d worked a foot between throat and tie to loosen it, which had to require some vestigial form of human thought. The coat and shirt’s seams were torn, savage tooth marks ripping at cloth, but tellingly, the collars were hooked on a brambly branch. It looked like he’d managed to back out of them, much like he’d squirmed free of me. I picked up the coat in a fist and buried my face in it, inhaling Morrison’s cologne and a distinctly more animalistic scent. Not quite dog; not quite anything I’d ever smelled before. Wolf, or maybe just shapeshifter. I didn’t know. “Forget the suit jacket. Just a silver wolf, about a hundred and ninety pounds. That’s about twice the size of your average wolf. Tell people to stay away and that it’s not dangerous unless provoked.”
I hoped to God that was true. The dispatch guy agreed to do as I said, probably more because of incoming 911 calls than any confidence in my sanity, and I left the copse with a fistful of Morrison’s clothes.
Billy, Melinda and Jim Littlefoot were waiting for me beside the theater. I said, “I’ve fucked up beyond all possible belief,” still very calmly as I approached them, but from the Hollidays’ expressions, Littlefoot had already come to, and shared with them, a reasonably accurate conclusion of the scenario.
All Billy said was, “What do you want us to do?”
“Call Sonata. Get her to contact anybody in Seattle who knows anything about shapeshifting or tracking and tell them they’re looking for a man who’s been shapeshifted into a wolf.”
Melinda, clearly feeling she was on dangerous ground, said, “There’s a name for that, Joanne….”
I closed my eyes and turned my face skyward, like I could find strength or answers from the motion. Barely twenty-four hours earlier, I’d told Morrison that there was no such thing as a werewolf. “I shapeshifted into a rattlesnake this morning, Melinda. Am I a weresnake?”
“Of course not. That was—”
I reversed my gaze and pinned her with it. “Then Morrison’s not a goddamned werewolf. Werewolves are monsters controlled by phases of the moon, and I don’t want anybody getting the idea this should be solved with a silver bullet. Morrison’s been inadvertently shapeshifted and that needs to be made clear to anyone who might be able to help.” There was a cold place inside me, so angry at myself that it wouldn’t let much of anything else through. Drill sergeants were friendlier than I was coming across as. But if there was one thing in my favor, it was that the hard cold place could evidently plan, which wasn’t normally my strong suit. I was much better at rushing in where angels feared to tread.
Billy had his phone out as he asked, “What’re you going to do?”
I pointed toward the theater, hating myself for my response and knowing I’d hate myself just as much for any other. “I’m going to go back in there and make sure nobody dies tonight, just like I said I would.”
Billy obviously didn’t like that answer any more than I did. He folded up his phone and stepped toward me, voice dropping. “Joanne, this is Morrison we’re talking about. You can’t…”
“I can’t what? I can’t trust he’s going to have to be smart enough not to get hit by a car? I can’t let him run amok through Seattle while I lark off doing something else? Billy, there are a couple dozen people you and Sonata know who can maybe help find Morrison and, if not change him back, at least get him somewhere safe until I can get there and try to help. But as far as I know I’m the only person in Seattle who has a chance of protecting the troupe and getting a bead on whomever attacked them last night. I’m sorry, partner, but I don’t see a choice here!”
Billy, thunderously, said, “You’ve changed,” and opened his phone again to make the calls.
I rolled my jaw and looked at Melinda, whose expression was less condemning than her husband’s. I was grateful, though the cold, scared place inside me knew that in the end it didn’t matter. Littlefoot, hanging back a few feet, looked a whole lot more appreciative than I deserved. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing noble or sacrificing about the choice I was making. For once I knew I was right, no matter how much being right sucked. “Mel, I’m going to need you and Billy to go ahead with your part like I asked earlier. If nothing goes wrong—” which seemed pretty flipping unlikely at this juncture “—Billy can leave right after the curtain call to go help look for Morrison, if that’s what he wants.”
“And I can’t?” she asked with the faintest trace of humor.
I wished I had some of that humor to spare, but it hit me like a flat iron. “That’s not what I meant.”
She put her hand on my arm. “I know, Joanne. It’s all right. Michael will be fine.”
Possibly, but as I watched them retreat to the theater, Billy’s shoulders knotted with angry tension, I wondered if he and I ever would be again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I did not enjoy the second half of the performance one little bit at all. I’d wrapped shields around myself until I could barely breathe, just so I wouldn’t be a scar of angry frustration on the psychic plane, but my heart rate spiked every time I remembered Morrison, which was constantly. After twenty frustrating minutes, I started a deep breathing practice, which was as close as I got to meditation. It almost certainly wouldn’t hurt my long-term prospects to get much closer than that to meditation, but for the moment, it had to be enough. Once I got my heartbeat slowed down, the music helped, drums drawing me into a different state of mind whether I wanted them to or not. And to be fair, I did. I just also wanted to be in two places at once, which I didn’t think even the limits of my talent would provide for.
Winona looked very small and fragile out there on the stage, centerpiece of power that she was. That actually helped, too: she was a smaller person than Naomi had been, and her physical delicacy made her seem that much more vulnerable. It drove home both just how open to disaster, and how extraordinarily brave, she was. I focused on her, and by the time the last dance began, I’d reached the same semi-detached state I’d been in during the first act. I tingled with magic, filled up by the drums and the dancers. I glanced at my hands, unsurprised that my skin held a familiar translucence that showed silver and blue power running through my veins like blood. I didn’t glow: it wasn’t something anyone who didn’t have the Sight could see. In fact, my shields were so solid that even to a Sighted person, my accumulating power shouldn’t be more than the faintest blip on the radar. But to my own eyes, I was alight, and the potential for disrupting a dark magic felt good.
I wanted very badly to pry and prod at the theater, to see if I could edge the killer out of the shadows. If he was there, if he was watching, waiting for the moment to pounce on the troupe’s outpouring of power, then he almost certainly would have some kind of psychic presence. As flush with energy as I was, I thought I should sense it if I went looking.