energy the dancers had put out, was eager to go where I focused it. I’d never had a target like this one: no more than a handful of cells, lethal pink, unwelcome but unstoppable in the host body.
Habit lingered. It was easy to think of those few sick cells as tiny rust spots that needed sanding, polishing and repainting so they wouldn’t spread to the body around them. The real difference to me was not going through those steps. Once the analogy popped into mind, the work was done between one thought and the next.
What I didn’t expect was the staggering whirl of magic that surged toward the deadly pink cells, obliterating them. But it didn’t stop there. Time tunneled forward like a bad 3-D effect, showing me much paler pink cells, like ghosts of futures yet to come. Those cells multiplied, became blotches, became lumps, became masses, metastasizing and spreading. Healing magic charged headlong into the future-that-could-be, tearing sickness apart and leaving healthy flesh in its wake. It ran all the way through the cycle of disease, destroying it not just now, but all its potential in the future. I caught a glimpse of a double helix, of an off-shoot ladder rung that didn’t belong, and felt my magic gather itself, preparing to fix that, too.
Panic spurted through me and I clawed the magic back. It hesitated, still focused on that genetic anomaly, then rolled back into me, so drained I could barely feel its presence. Time wound backward, landing me back into the here and now, where my knees buckled. The woman’s grip on my hands kept me upright, but she let go, obviously feeling the flux of power. “What the—what’d you do?”
“Removed some rust.” My throat was dry. I coughed and tried again, but shivers wracked me so hard I could hardly focus on the woman before me. Her aura was no longer marred by the scant touch of unhealthy pink, but even my grip on the Sight faded as I reached feebly for something to lean on. She was the only thing available, and to my relief she put her hand out again, strong fingers banding around my arm.
“Are you all right?” Her voice was pitched high with concern.
I managed a nod. The cancer hadn’t spread, but the amount of magic bent to finding and destroying those sick cells offered a warning: potentially terminal illness, even if it hadn’t come anywhere near actually terminal, was not something to mess with lightly. I had the ugly feeling I could have easily killed myself with that unconsidered effort. Walking blithely through cancer wards and laying on hands was clearly not going to be an option.
“What’d you do?” she asked again, this time more mystified than alarmed. “I feel like champagne. Bubbly inside.”
“Do me a favor.” I sounded like I’d drunk a cupful of sand. “Go to the doctor. Get a mammogram. Just to be sure.”
She went white, long rangy lines going rigid. “You don’t think…?”
“No.” Not anymore, but that didn’t seem like a useful thing to say. The image of the distorted double helix popped up again and I crushed my eyes shut, wishing I’d dared try shaving that wrongness away. There were at least two good reasons not to have: one, I didn’t know what the long-term ramifications for her genetics would be if I had, and two, I thought I was lucky to not already be dead. Rewriting DNA was not in the game plan. “Just go to the doctor to be sure, okay? Please? Get one of those genetic tests, if you can, to see if you’ve got a predilection for the disease.”
She relaxed incrementally at the reassurance, then frowned again. “I will. But what did you do? Who are you?”
“I’m a healer.” It sounded absurd, but I was too tired to come up with something clever. No healing I’d done had ever wiped me out so badly. I was going to have to talk to Coyote about tempering the magic so I didn’t kill myself while doing my duties. “I’m a healer, and I think you’ll be okay now, but go to a doctor anyway. Please?”
“A healer.” Befuddlement darkened her eyes and she caught my arm. “Really? That—it sounds like bullshit, but I feel…people like you exist? For real?”
I breathed a tiny laugh. “For real. But you’ll go to a doctor anyway, right? Please?”
“I will.” She didn’t let go of my arm, though, expression searching mine. “But I’d like to see you again, too. Just to be sure. Would that be okay?”
God. It was considerably more bizarre to have someone believe me than not. I smiled, wishing I was more comfortable with being someone’s hero, and nodded. “My name’s Joanne Walker. I work for the Seattle Police Department, so I’m not hard to find. Give me a call sometime, if you want. That would be fine. But, um, don’t noise this around, okay? Faith healing isn’t exactly on my résumé.”
She finally let me go, glancing at her own hands in embarrassment. “Right, no, of course I won’t. And I will call. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be so pushy. I just never felt anything like that before, and now you say I had cancer and it’s gone and—” She broke off, took a deep breath, and repeated, “Sorry. Sorry, Miss Walker. I’ll call you.” She glanced in the direction I’d been trying to go, toward Morrison, and tilted her head curiously. I sort of shrugged, and she got a small, crooked smile. “Nice.”
It was an assessment I couldn’t argue with. I smiled a bit in return, nodded and wobbled back to the theater building where I could lean on a wall.
Morrison joined me, breath drawn to ask a question, but I shook my head. Something was nosing at my exhausted magic, like a dog that had found something interestingly stinky to explore. It was a new sensation, and it withdrew as I reached inside myself to scrape together enough power to create shields. Withdrew, nosed the shields themselves, then disappeared entirely, leaving behind only a fading sense of inquisitiveness and a faint but familiar tugging in my belly, fishhooks pulling me toward some kind of encounter.
Every part of me wanted that sensation to be nothing more than my imagination. Failing that, I liked the idea of it being a good guy recently come to Seattle and just discovering there were other people of power hanging out in town. There’d been no sense of malice or danger from the feeling, just interest.
Nothing in the past fifteen months, though, had given me any reason to believe the happy fluffy bunny scenario. I was dead sure that I’d gotten the killer’s attention.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Talk to me, Walker. You look like a ghost.” Morrison ducked his head so he could catch my gaze and bring it up, which was surprising enough that it worked.
For a second, anyway. The pedantic part of me then couldn’t help looking over myself, wondering if I really did look like a ghost. Not really: they tended to be more transparent and monochromatic than I was, though I had to give Morrison the nod for my color being off. “Sorry. That woman had breast cancer. Healing it wiped me out.”
“You can…” Morrison sounded like he was about to swallow his tongue. “You can do that?”
“Apparently. I’m also thinking it’s not the best idea I’ve ever had, not unless I want to kill myself. There’s probably a better way, maybe if I set up a healing circle, a drum…” I trailed off, letting the building hold me up as I looked toward the theater inside. “Like what they were doing. Creating a controlled center of power. I’ll work it out later. Long-term project.”
One side of Morrison’s mouth curled up. “You’ve changed.”
I blinked back toward him. “Really?” It was a stupid question. I knew he was right. Still, having him come out and say it warranted a slightly incredulous response.
My
