I climbed the railroad bed and headed east of town, to the vortexes. Magellan had been built on an ancient crossroads, and the vanished tribes that had once populated this place had left petroglyphs that indicated its mystical energy. It had been no coincidence, Jamison had told me, that the railroad had been laid where it had, along a line of mystical energy, and no coincidence that the railway had gone broke and shut down.
The ties and rails had been stripped away decades ago, to leave a long, flat trail from Flat Mesa all the way to the southern end of town. I had no idea how far the bed went, not having explored that far yet.
On the other side of the railroad bed lay the vortexes. I had no intention of luring Jim out here. If he had godlike magic in him, I didn’t want him throwing it around and maybe unlocking one of the gateways; no telling what would come out of one.
I’d come here for a different reason. I made my way down the other side of the railroad bed and climbed to the top of a rise. From here I had a good view of Magellan, the town strung out along the curving highway. Behind me, the desert stretched its emptiness to the horizon. A wash had once flowed at the bottom of the little hill I stood on, but no more. The sides of it had collapsed, and fallen trees lay encased in baked earth where the mud from a terrible storm had dried.
Mick and I had done this, destroyed the wash and sealed the vortex beneath it. I closed my eyes, calmed my mind, letting nothing but the sounds, scents, and feel of the place touch me.
I breathed clean air that bore only the scent of drying grasses and the pungent odor of juniper. Nothing more. No tingle of magic, no shiver of danger.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a crow hopping near my feet. It stopped and cocked a black eye at me.
“She’s still trapped, isn’t she?” I asked it.
The crow didn’t answer. It half hopped, half walked in its ungainly way to the middle of the now-closed wash and pecked the ground with a haughty manner.
“Still trapped,” I said with certainty. Whoever or whatever had brought Undead Jim back to life, it hadn’t been my mother. That relieved me, but it also left open far too many possibilities.
When I turned around, Coyote was standing right behind me.
“Damn it, will you please stop doing that?”
Coyote regarded me with glittering dark eyes, no trace of his usual humor anywhere. “I told you, Janet, not to use the Beneath magic, ever again. Not for any reason.”
Twenty-two
My smart-ass retort died in my mouth. Coyote had made me nervous before, but right now he looked terrifying. There was nothing in his eyes of the Coyote I knew, nothing but deep rage and vast power.
“I had to,” I began. “The dragon—Bancroft—would have died. He couldn’t heal himself.”
“Then he should have died. It’s the natural order of things. Dragons are mortal—they’re hurt, they bleed, and they die.”
“I didn’t have a choice. First of all, I couldn’t stand to see a creature die because of me; second, I needed to do something to keep Drake from killing me; and third, Bancroft seems more reasonable about this trial than the others. I couldn’t risk not having him there.”
“I see. You healed the dragon to save your boyfriend.”
“Not just that. I saved Bancroft’s life to save his life.”
“Even when I told you not to use the magic?”
I regarded him with a courage I didn’t have. “It was necessary.”
“No, it wasn’t. You don’t get to choose who lives and who dies, Janet Begay.”
“And you do?”
“I’m a god. One of the first gods. I’ve existed since the first world. Some consider me the embodiment of all that is evil, but I’m not. I’m just a god, and gods can be capricious.”
No kidding. “I made the best decision I could given the circumstances.”
“You went with your emotions, and you thought me far away, where I’d never know.”
“But you did know.”
A hint of a wicked glimmer returned to his eyes. “Your mirror put on a good show.”
“Hell,” I said.
“You’re a beautiful woman, Janet. You’re passionate, and you’re in love. But you’re human. Leave the god forces alone.”
“But am I truly human? I was conceived by a woman possessed by a goddess, born to a man with Stormwalker magic in his family. My grandmother is powerful enough to project herself as a crow a couple hundred miles from home. I didn’t ask to inherit both powers. I’d have been happy being plain Janet, one with a real mother and father, who found simple joy in walking the land.”
“I once told you that we don’t choose what we are,” Coyote said. “We only choose what we do with what we’ve been given.”
“And I chose to save the dragon’s life. And to help Mick, and those people in Las Vegas. And I’ll choose again to find that undead menace and stop him before he hurts anyone else.”
Coyote gave me a thoughtful look. “You know, Janet, I feel about you the way you feel about Jim.”
“No, there’s one thing different,” I said. “I don’t want to have sex with Jim.”
“Touché.”
“Damn it, I wish you’d stop threatening me and help me. We’ve got to find this guy. Do you know where he is?”
“No. You plan to take away his life?”
“What choice do we have? If I thought he could control the magic in him, then it would be different, but I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“Exactly.”
The way he said the word made my heart squeeze in fear. But I knew that if I ran, Coyote would just catch me. He’d tumble me to the ground, and with one flick of his big paw, he’d kill me. Janet would be dust, floating away on the wind.
“Are you saying that if I give Jim a chance, you’ll give me one?” I asked.
“I’m saying that I’m watching you, and that you don’t have that many chances left.”
I knew he meant it. Coyote held my life between his fingers, and all he had to do was snap them, and I’d be gone.
I closed my eyes. I thought of the voice that spoke within me every time the magic stirred, the evil it urged me to do. Could I stop the whispers? Could I somehow kill that part of my power and channel the rest to do what I bade it? Or would the Beneath magic simply consume me in the end? My mother was evil, and that evil was in me. Coyote, the dragons, my grandmother—none of them were wrong about that.
I heard voices, human ones, and opened my eyes, exhaling in relief. Naomi Kee and Jamison, with Julie between them, were climbing down the railroad bed to make their way toward us. Julie broke from her mother and started running with the long-legged, coltish lope of an eleven-year-old. She reached Coyote and threw her arms around him, and he spun her off her feet.
“Hello, Julie.” Coyote’s voice was gentleness itself as he set her down.
“Hello, Coyote.” Julie both spoke and signed at the same time. “What are you doing way out here? Are you and Janet walking to Chevelon Canyon? That’s where we’re going. Can we come with you?”
I didn’t really want to see Jamison, but he gave me a not-unfriendly nod when he and Naomi reached us. I wanted to hug him, to apologize over and over for what I’d done.
Coyote gave me a look over Julie’s head that told me I’d passed some kind of test. “Sure, Julie,” he said. “I’ll come with you. But Janet, she has things she needs to do.”
I took the hint. I stood back and watched as the three adults and Julie walked off into the desert, the sun haloing Julie as though she were a sacred being.
Mick was still with Colby when I reached the hotel again. I didn’t want to listen to Colby going on about my prowess in bed, so I got on my bike and told Cassandra I was running errands. I really did have errands to run—I was behind on so much—but I used them as an excuse to get away from the things that unnerved me.
I had to either convince Coyote that I was in full control of my magic and would use it only when entirely nec
essary, or give in to what he wanted and stop using it altogether. I wasn’t certain I could do either.
I stopped at the tourist board to arrange to have my new brochures displayed there. The office was about to close, the sun already setting, but I got in just in time. Then I visited the tiny suite behind the post office where a woman who printed cute maps for the tourists accepted my money to list my hotel on one of the maps. Advertising was a never-ending game.
I decided to grab some food at the diner, and that’s where Assistant Chief Salas found me. Still in his police uniform, he slid into the booth with me and ordered coffee when the waitress brought my usual cheeseburger.
“So what’s up with Maya?” he asked.
I lifted my brows and my cheeseburger at the same time. “She turned you down?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry.” I did feel bad for him, because Emilio was a nice guy. “She’s still hung up on Nash. Give her time.”
“No, I mean, I went to see her this afternoon, and she barely opened the door. She just said through the crack that she appreciated me asking her out, but she didn’t want to go.” Salas thanked the waitress for the coffee but toyed with the cup instead of drinking. “I only went over there to see if she was all right. You know, after the shit that went down last night.”
“You mean when I got abducted? I’m fine; thanks for asking.”
Salas’s cheekbones stained red. “I know you’re okay, Janet. Lopez told me Nash brought you home; plus you’re pretty tough, and you have Mick looking out for you. Maya...”
“Is a delicate flower?” I grinned at him. “You have it bad, Emilio.”
“I’m just worried about her. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all, almost like she was sick. And she slammed the door in my face without even saying good-bye.”
“She saw someone be sliced in half on her front lawn,” I said. “Nash said she was pretty hysterical.”
“I know.” Salas leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “And I hate to say this, but it kind of smelled in there. Like rotting food or something. That’s not like Maya. She’s usually so . . . prolijo. What is it in English? Fastidious.”
I dropped my burger. Ketchup and grease splashed out and hit Salas’s coffee cup, and he jumped. “You all right, Janet?”
“Yes, fine. I just remembered something I have to do. Finish the burger if you want it.”
I slapped ten bucks on the table and hustled out of the diner, leaving Salas staring after me in concern.
Maya didn’t live far from the diner, but I rode my bike the block or so through the darkening streets, making a lot of noise so she’d know I’d arrived. The shades were down over her front windows, though a light glowed behind one, the flowers in her little garden still smashed where Drake had stepped on them.
I went to the porch and knocked on the door. Maya didn’t answer until I’d started knocking the third time. She switched on the porch light, opened the door about two inches, and looked out at me.
I saw what Salas had meant. Maya’s face was pale and drawn, her dark eyes burning in sunken hollows. Her hair was a mess, her T-shirt stained with coffee. I couldn’t see beyond her, but Salas had been right about the smell. It was not the stench of death, as I’d feared, but more like someone hadn’t taken out the garbage in a while.
“Janet,” she said in a clipped voice.
“Hey, Maya. I came to see if . . . if you still wanted to go shopping with me tomorrow.”
Maya didn’t blink. “No. Sorry, I’m too busy. I have a lot of cleaning up to do.”
She opened the door another inch until I could see the kitchen sink piled with dishes. Far too many dishes for one person, even if she’d gone on a cooking spree.
Without turning her head, Maya flicked her gaze down the hall. She had two bedrooms back there, her own and one she used as a den and guest room. Both doors were closed.
“That’s all right,” I said loudly. “How about if you call me later?”
“My phone’s still broken.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, come over when you have time.”
“Sure.”
She started closing the door. I wished I could tell her something to reassure her, to make some gesture that I understood, but her life hung on a breath, and I didn’t want to say or do the wrong thing.
I let her close the door, and I made myself walk calmly to my bike, put on my helmet, start the engine, and ride away. I rode steadily as I passed the diner, in case Salas was looking out the window. I didn’t want him getting worried and hurrying down to Maya’s house again.
Around the next curve was the gas station and Hansen’s Garden Center. I pulled into the empty lot of the garden center and took out my cell phone. When I reached the Hopi County Sheriff’s Department, Lopez told me, amazingly, that Nash had gone home to sleep.
“Anything I can do for you, Janet?” Lopez asked.
My heart hammered as I dithered. If I behaved as though this was the emergency it was, Lopez would send cars down and alert the Magellan police. If that happened, who knew what kind of chaos would erupt? One thing was certain—Maya would be the first to die. This had to be dealt with quietly.
“No,” I said. “I just wanted to ask him a question.”
“All right, good night.” Lopez hung up.
I parked and walked around the garden center and through Naomi’s backyard, which abutted it. Jamison’s studio was locked, Jamison nowhere in sight. Julie answered the back door with delight, and Naomi greeted me from the kitchen. Jamison was there, leaning on the breakfast bar, watching Naomi cook. If I hadn’t been so panicked, I would have enjoyed soaking up the coziness.
Julie started telling me about the walk they’d taken with Coyote and the petroglyphs he’d showed them: whirling stars, strange-looking men, and what he’d said were coyotes. Naomi sensed my hurry and told Julie to save the stories until I could stay longer. She didn’t have Nash’s number, she said, but she gave me directions to his house in Flat Mesa.
I could tell that Naomi and Jamison were curious, but my dear friends didn’t ask. For that I’d return and let Julie talk to me for hours about anything she wanted.
My hands sweated inside my gloves as I drove through the rest of Magellan at precisely thirty-five miles per hour. The stars were out by the time I hit the town limits, and I opened it up on the road to Flat Mesa.
Sheriff Jones lived in a modest neighborhood in a house built about a century ago. It was one-story, long and low, with a porch that ran the length of the front of the house. The peaked roof had been built to let the winter snow slide from it and also to cast deep shade over the porch in summer.
Nash’s sheriff’s SUV was parked in the driveway, and I remembered that he’d not yet recovered his new pickup stolen in Death Valley. It was probably in Mexico by now, and unrecognizable.
Nash came to the door in sweatpants and a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt. He had a bottle of water in one hand and a towel in the other, and did not look happy to see me.
“Let me in,” I said in a calm voice. “Close the door, and keep your voice down.”
Nash’s lips pinched, but he did as I asked. Even Nash could be perceptive.
He closed the door behind me and locked it. Nash’s house was very much a bachelor’s—his living room held an all-in-one weight machine and not much else, and one stool was drawn up to a breakfast bar. His reading material, stacked neatly on the breakfast bar, was magazines, mostly about guns. Nash’s own gun was nowhere in sight; being Nash, I had no doubt he kept it responsibly locked away.
Nash drank some water and wiped his face with the end of the towel. “What?”
“I know where Jim Mohan is.”
Nash froze, the towel at his face. “Where? Tell me now.”
“He’s at Maya’s.”
Nash stared at me for a stunned moment, his pupils dilating to darken his light gray eyes. Then he exploded past me, and it was all I could do to get to the door before he did.
Twen
ty-three
Nash was damn strong, but I was desperate enough to jam my hands against the doorframe and resist his attempts to charge out of the house.
“Nash, no! If you go running in there, he’ll kill her. He will even if he doesn’t mean to.”
Nash stared at me in fury, but I saw his instinctive rage recede and terrible fear take over. He swung back into his living room and slammed his fist onto his exercise machine. Metal cracked.
Shaking out his hand, Nash strode swiftly down a long hallway that ran behind his living room. I caught up to him in a small, dark room with a gun safe. Nash removed his nine-millimeter from it and slapped in a magazine.
“Nash!”
“He won’t hurt her if I kill him first.”
I blocked his exit. “Jim is already dead. If two men pummeling him with bullets didn’t take him down, that little gun won’t either. I don’t care how accurate you are.”
From the look Nash gave me, I was surprised he didn’t shoot me then and there. He’d happily step over my dying body and race off to save the woman he loved.
“All right,” he said, his jaw rigid. “All right. Damn it.” Nash snatched up a shoulder holster and buckled it on, jamming the gun inside it. “I have to believe you. This guy can rip people inside out; I’ve seen that. What can we do against him?”
“We can’t. I can. But there’s a reason I came to get you.”
“Because I can absorb and negate magic.”
I nodded. “You are the only one who might be able to take his attack and survive.”
Nash’s mouth tightened. “And he’s in there with Maya.”
I no longer needed to ask whether Nash cared for Maya. It was in his eyes and in every line of him, the terror that she’d be hurt, killed, no longer in his life.
He pulled out and loaded another pistol and tucked it into a second shoulder holster. Nash’s gun cabinet held about ten handguns, all neatly lined up in their cases. He didn’t offer one to me.
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