From Jennifer Ashley, With Love

by Jennifer Ashley

  Ansel took a step toward me, and Mick’s large front foot landed in front of him. Ansel laughed, but Mick remained crouching next to us, a giant mass of watchfulness.

  “So,” I said to Ansel. “Tell us about the night you met Laura in Gallup.”

  “That night. Ah, that night.” Ansel smiled at me, showing his elongated teeth. Nightwalkers didn’t have sexy little fangs like they did in fiction—Ansel had the mouth of a monster. “It was a special night. Mmm. Laura and I had sex for the first time.”

  Wind blew across the desert, bringing some coolness but also dust. I coughed. “Are you sure? I didn’t know Nightwalkers could . . .”

  “I assure you, love, we’re fully functional. If your pet dragon wasn’t here, I’d show you.”

  “No, please don’t.” I waved my hand at his Nightwalker body. “Tell me you went to her as Ansel, not . . .”

  “Ah yes, Ansel. Poor, timid chap, finally got his leg over. He’s in love. Can’t imagine what got into the fellow. Oh, yes, I do. That bloody pot.”

  “With its magical properties.”

  “Roused old Ansel out of his antiquities and stamp-collecting mania. I never thought anything could do that. But Laura smiled that cute little smile at him, and he was gone.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “What happened was, I thrust my little man into her sweet, tight—”

  “I meant after that. Shit, Ansel.”

  “After being at it like rabbits for two hours and more, we went out to dinner, and discussed what we should do with the pot. The whole time the magic of it was hammering at me, waking up my blood need. I wanted to eat everyone in the restaurant. The wimpy me told Laura we’d better get out of there, so we went out to Chaco Canyon so Laura could hide the pot. Somewhere between here and there, I managed to bury the part of me that’s Ansel and become what I truly am. Then the dragon came.”

  “Colby.” I fit the pieces together. “Drake sent Colby out to snatch the pot from Laura, and she ran off while you fought him.” Something still wasn’t right. “But when I saw the auras, I saw Laura struggling with a Nightwalker, sensed that she’d been abducted. I now know that Colby didn’t snatch her. So it must have been you.”

  “No, I was fighting that fucking dragon. I knew I wasn’t going to win that fight, but I slowed him down enough to give her time to get away. The Nightwalker you sensed trying to grab her must have been the other Nightwalker.”

  Mick came alert, shoving his face closer to us. I saw in his eyes the same amazement and rage I felt.

  “What other Nightwalker?” I shouted.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ansel looked annoyed. “The one chasing Laura. I got him away from her before the dragon swooped in, and he ran off. He must have been the one who killed the slayer on the freeway, because I certainly didn’t. I wouldn’t be so hungry now if I had. I’d have drained him.”

  Perfect. This was just effing perfect.

  “Do you know the Nightwalker? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know every Nightwalker in the universe. But I think this one is working for Laura’s sister.”

  “Laura’s sister? The one sending slayers after you, because she says you killed Laura?”

  Ansel’s grin widened. “Ironic, isn’t it? How do you think Paige knows about Nightwalkers? I got Laura’s blood on my clothes, because he’d cut her a bit when she tried to get away from him. When I fought him off, and Laura disappeared, the Nightwalker probably told Paige about me and assumed I’d killed or taken Laura. She sent the slayers after me, but to slayers, one dead Nightwalker is as good as any other. The slayer must have gone after that Nightwalker and got ripped open for his pains.”

  Mick raised his dragon head and scanned the open desert. I was suddenly aware of all the empty space around us, and the shadows. “All this time I thought the only Nightwalker I had to worry about was you.”

  Ansel spread his hands. “Sorry, sweetheart. I never remember what I do or who I meet in my blood frenzy. I wonder why Nightwalkers who can control the frenzy don’t remember? Maybe we think that if we remember the horrors, we’ll be so remorseful we’ll kill ourselves. Must be survival instinct.”

  At the moment I didn’t care. “All right, so you fought off the Nightwalker, Colby let you go when Laura ran away, and you lost Laura. What did you do then?”

  “Went after her. Poor little thing wasn’t going to last long on her own with dragons and Nightwalkers searching for her. Didn’t find her though. Sun was coming, and I went to ground. Literally. Had to hide out in a cave. The sleep finished the blood frenzy, and I woke up Ansel, baffled and bewildered as usual. He’s always been a twat.”

  I didn’t know what a twat was, but I could guess. “I like Ansel,” I said.

  “Of course you do. He’s weak, and you can control him. You’re fond of people you can control. Like him.” He jerked a thumb at Mick, whose neck cranked around as he scanned and sniffed the desert around us.

  “I’m fond of people who aren’t trying to kill me every second.”

  “Exactly.” Ansel’s eyes were red as he looked at me around Mick’s talon. “Speaking of that, I’m hungry. Give us a taste, sweetheart. I’ve told you this delicious information, so how about I have a little snack on you? From your groin, maybe? There’s a nice thick artery there.”

  Ansel was fast. The words were barely out of his mouth before he was up and over Mick’s claw, mouth open to that terrifying animal maw, bone thin hands outstretched for my throat.

  In the next second, Mick grabbed him, tore him off me, and slammed him on his back to the ground. Ansel’s head thumped against a small boulder protruding from the dirt, and he went limp.

  “Thanks, Mick.” My words came out on my next exhale.

  Mick backed away into the darkness, and with a crackle of bones and flesh became human. He walked to Ansel, crouched down, and flicked back one of Ansel’s eyelids. “He’ll be out for a while.”

  I was still shaking, the fight-or-flight reaction of Ansel’s attack whirling inside me. My logical brain said that everything was okay; my primitive brain told me to run and keep going.

  “We need to get him home. Blood . . .” I put my hands on my knees.

  Mick touched me, and a tingle of healing magic trickled beneath my skin. “Thank you,” I said again.

  I liked his fingers caressing my neck, but I straightened up and wiped the sweat from my face. “By the way, how did you get Ansel to go frenzied? He was fine when he ran off. You flew him back, and he was blood crazed.”

  Mick chuckled. “Ansel’s afraid of heights. When we were a couple hundred feet up, I started to open my claw and scared the shit out of him.”

  * * *

  We made it back to the hotel just as dawn began spreading its fingers to the east. Summer clouds streaked the sky, the sunrise staining the undersides a brilliant fuchsia.

  Ansel had been out for the entire flight, and now Mick dressed again in the clothes I’d carried for him, took Ansel downstairs, and put him to bed. Ansel sank into his day sleep without regaining consciousness, which for now, was fine with me.

  I had a million things to do and think about, but exhaustion from the long day and night caught up with me. I said good morning to Cassandra—or thought I did—then stumbled to my bedroom, spread my arms, and fell facedown across my bed. A pit of darkness opened up under me, and I didn’t fight sliding into it.

  When I woke, I was alone—no Mick—disappointing. The best way to wake up was to find myself snuggled back into him. I always felt safe, warm, like nothing could ever harm me.

  A side effect of the mate thing, maybe? I didn’t know. I enjoyed the illusion of safety whenever I lay with him, because it was the only feeling of safety I ever got. I’d take it, because I knew that as soon as we got out of bed every morning the danger would come. It always did.

  My clock told me it was a little after eleven. If I were a normal person, I’d spend the day going over details of the hotel with Cassandr
a and Elena, talking to my dad and Gina about their wedding, and conferring with the contractors, and Fremont and Maya about how the saloon rebuilding was going.

  Instead I grabbed a giant muffin from the breakfast buffet in the lobby, climbed onto my bike, and rode into Magellan to Heather Hansen’s woo-woo store to ask her more about Paige. Heather looked up from helping tourists purchasing a map to the vortexes and waved to me.

  “Hey, Janet. Ya-at-eeh. Janet is Navajo,” she explained to the interested ladies in hiking clothes. “She was here for our very successful séance the other night. We contacted the spirit of a woman’s sister. It was amazing. Wasn’t it, Janet?”

  “Yes,” I said carefully. “It was pretty amazing.”

  The women looked at me as though surprised I could speak English, but Heather’s enthusiasm impressed them.

  While I waited for Heather to finish at the register, I became aware of another presence in the store. I walked quietly across the creaking floor to the book section, where I found Bear perusing a book on Hopi pottery.

  “It is a ritual we have been performing for centuries,” Bear said without looking up from the book. “When we first met, I would not let him into my hogan until he proved his worth to me.”

  I leaned my arm on the shelf next to a book called Tantric Rituals Throughout the Year. “A tough way to prove himself.”

  “We are gods. It is not the same.” She closed the book, her bracelets clinking as she placed it back on the shelf. “Humans give each other gifts or exchange tokens. Gods show they are willing to sacrifice themselves, or what they love, for the other. When Coyote first tried to force his way into my life, he loved nothing better than himself.”

  “And now?” I asked. The Coyote I knew cared for people—Julie, Mick, the residents of Magellan, and even me.

  Bear smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Now we enjoy the game.”

  “Rough game.”

  “Coyote is so difficult to hurt that he gets cocky. Our game reminds him how to be humble.”

  “Humble? Coyote?”

  Bear’s smile grew. “As I have heard young humans say, humble-ish.”

  I shrugged. “You two do what you want. I’ll stay out of it.”

  Her wise eyes told me she didn’t believe my indifference. “I know it was very hard for you to see. I am sorry about that. But Coyote and I will have our little courtship, and then I will leave again.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly unhappy. “No, don’t. Stay a while.”

  Bear watched me a moment, then she gave me a grave nod. “I will think on it. Did you come here today, like me, to puzzle out what happened at the séance?”

  “I’m trying to find out where Paige is living, but sure, I’m interested in that séance. What have you found out?”

  Bear glanced to the front of the store, but Heather was still talking with her customers. Bear led me down the short hall in the back, opened the door of the séance room, and led me around the table to where Paige had been sitting. She lowered her large body to a crouch, her skirts spreading, and she pointed under the table.

  I got down on my hands and knees beside her. The wood on one of the struts of the table had been slightly gouged and splintered, and a sticky piece of duct tape clung to it.

  “A small device was taped there,” Bear said. “Something that could make us hear Laura’s voice?”

  “A digital recorder, sure.” They could be tiny but loud, with good-quality sound. “All you need is a recording of her voice and voice software—you cut out the sound waves of each word and paste them back in a line to make a sentence. Play the file back on a digital player, having it say whatever you want it to say.” One of my nieces had showed me that. “Add a little muffling effect so it sounds like she’s whispering from the spirit world, which might also cover up any inconsistencies in her speech pattern. And as I remember, Paige asked Laura all the questions, and her voice faded before Heather could say anything.”

  Bear leveraged herself up from the floor and went to the window that had blown open. “I think Paige has not had the time to come and retrieve her props. She was able to tear away the recorder before she left, but she did not have a chance to get this.”

  Bear pointed out the window. I saw a heavy spring and what looked like a small gearbox, plugged into an outside outlet. “What is that?”

  “I believe it is used to open garage doors. She had a remote control in her pocket or perhaps also taped under the table, and pushed it to make the window open. There was wind last night, so she only needed to open it a little before the wind took over.”

  “What about the cold breeze? It’s pretty easy to open a window, but make the summer wind feel like winter?”

  Bear looked amused. She beckoned me to follow her back down the short hall and around a corner to the small bathroom. A customer looking at the books stared when both of us walked into the one-toilet bathroom together and shut the door behind us.

  An air conditioner rested in a space cut in the wall above the toilet. The sagging wall around the opening had cracked long ago, letting in light from the summer morning.

  Someone had fixed a thin, flexible hose into the air conditioner’s grill. Bear showed me how it snaked outside through one of the cracks around the air conditioner, then bade me follow her back to the séance room where she opened the back window.

  I leaned out. The bathroom and this room shared a wall, and I could see the AC unit sticking out. The tube wound down the wall and had been fixed under the window with more duct tape.

  “Paige was the first to arrive, that night,” Bear said. “I would guess she asked to go to the bathroom to prepare herself. She turns on the unit, setting the thermostat as low as she can, closes the door, goes to the private room, tapes the digital machine under the table, and is sitting quietly when the rest of us enter.”

  “And she probably had put the motor and the pipe in place, maybe in the dark before she came in, or the night before,” I concluded. “If Heather heard any noises, she’d assume it was the ghost of the little girl she thinks haunts here.”

  “The window opens, the cold air streams in, and we hear Laura’s voice.”

  “Crude props,” I said.

  “But we weren’t expecting them. You and I both thought we’d see, hear, and feel nothing. Small illusions can be deceptive.”

  That was true. I’d watched magicians in Las Vegas lounge acts perform simple tricks without stages, lights, costumes, and special effects. They’d used their quick hands, distraction, and patter to disguise what they did. These people had no real magic, only their wits, and I loved watching them, trying to catch how they deceived me. I never could.

  “That is the true reason humans hold séances in the dark,” Bear went on. “Easier to fool us when we are all holding hands and have our eyes closed.”

  “Julie knew it was a trick,” I said.

  “Julie is a perceptive little girl.”

  “What about the lights in the desert? Did she fake that?”

  “No.” Bear looked out the window at the bright sunlight, the huge sky, and the wide land beyond the town. “I think that was true magic. From a vortex maybe. Or a mage working magics at the same time.”

  Another thing I’d have to discover. I turned away from the window and the bright heat of the day. “The question is—do we tell Heather?”

  “She seems very excited by her success.”

  We looked at each other, both debating whether it would be kinder to tell Heather the truth or to let her believe she’d conjured the voices of the dead.

  We left the séance room without a word, but we’d both drawn the same conclusion. Let Heather have her moment.

  I took advantage of Heather having no customers at the cash register to ask her if she’d tell me where Paige lived. I could have obtained the same information from someone like Emilio Salas, who knew everything about everyone in town, but I didn’t want to alert the police to the fact that I wanted to talk to Paige. In
light of Laura’s disappearance, Salas would feel obligated to report to his chief.

  Heather willingly gave me the address, telling me that Paige had rented a small house in Magellan.

  When she told me which house, a chill went through me. The house Paige had rented was one belonging to the Magellan’s Chief of Police, where his daughter Amy had once lived. I’d investigated a supernatural crime there, trying to find clues to Amy’s disappearance. I realized that, in a small town, with few places available for short-term rent, Paige couldn’t have had much choice, but the fact still unnerved me.

  Bear and I left the store as Heather turned to new customers, then both of us sneaked around the store to the tall desert grasses in the back, and dismantled Paige’s setup. That a woman of Bear’s bulk could move without sound or drawing any attention at all fascinated me. She was much better at stealth than I was.

  We quietly returned to the parking lot and stashed Paige’s accoutrements in my saddlebags. Bear declined my offer to let her ride behind me before I even said it, saying she’d meet me at the house.

  I turned down the road to the McGuire’s rental, passing Maya Medina’s small house with its neat garden full of summer flowers on the way. The last house on the road that dead-ended into desert was as pretty and charming as I remembered. I’d avoided this place since I’d finished the investigation, though there was no real reason I should. There was nothing wrong with the house itself.

  Bear waited for me under a large cedar that split the yard between Paige’s house and the one next door. I didn’t waste time wondering how she’d arrived before me.

  I parked my bike, took the accoutrements out of my saddle bags, and walked with Bear to the house.

  When Paige answered the door, I shoved the stuff at her and said, “Nice try. Where’s your pet Nightwalker?”

  Chapter Twenty