Cassandra started to rise, but I pulled her back down. “Don’t be stupid. If they’ve found you, the safest place for you is here. We have Mick, and I’ll call Coyote—if I can find him—and we’ll get Pamela up here. There’s some damn strong magic within these walls. We’ll defend you. It’s what friends do.”
Cassandra looked pathetically grateful. Mick and Coyote were the strongest magical beings I knew, but my magic is plenty damn powerful as well. Mine is a mixture of earth magic—Stormwalker power that I inherited from my Navajo grandmother—and the crazy, white-hot goddess magic from Beneath.
Beneath is the shell world below this one, where the evilest of the gods got stuck when Coyote and others sealed the cracks between that world and this one. The vortexes around Magellan held gateways to that world, and one of the evil goddesses stuck down there was my mother. I’d inherited the nasty, unpredictable, insanely powerful Beneath magic from her.
I’d recently learned to twine my Diné-inherited storm magic and my Beneath magic to temper both, but earth magic and Beneath magic mix like oil and water. It’s like having a blender inside you all the time. An angry blender.
Cassandra flinched. “No, I don’t want Pamela here. I don’t want her hurt. If they don’t know about her, they can’t use her to get to me.”
Pamela was a Changer, a shape-shifter who could take the form of a wolf. She and Cassandra shared a small apartment in town, and Cassandra had met her here, in my hotel, the day Pamela had tried to choke the life out of me.
“Pamela will be pissed as hell if you keep her out of it,” I said.
“Yes, but that means she’ll be alive.”
“Good point.” I got up. “But I’m calling Coyote. It never hurts to have a god on your side.”
“I’ll reinforce the wards,” Mick offered. “Janet is right; this is the best place you can stay. Plus I can have a phalanx of dragons here anytime I need them. I don’t care how powerful a mage Christianson sends—he can’t work magic if he’s being fried to a crisp.”
Cassandra got to her feet at the same time we did, the emotion in her eyes touching. “Thank you, Janet. Mick. You are good people. I should have told you right away.”
I shrugged. “We all have our secrets.”
Mick, who had more secrets than most, returned my look blandly and said he’d head to the roof to work the wards.
Cassandra and I returned to the lobby, she to reception and I to my office to hunt down my cell phone. I never could remember to carry the damn thing, so anytime the cell rang, I had to race to find it before it went to voice mail. I’ve never made it yet.
I didn’t make it this time, either. Finally locating the thing stuck in the big potted plant that Juana had obviously watered before our adventure upstairs, I was brushing dirt from it when Coyote himself waltzed through the hotel’s front entrance, followed by Maya Medina, my on-call electrician and pretty much my best friend.
Coyote was a tall, broad-shouldered Native American with a long black braid and intense dark eyes. He didn’t come from any specific tribe that I knew of, because he was Coyote—trickster god, being of raw power, and a royal pain in the ass. He wore his usual jeans and jeans jacket, cowboy boots, a button-down shirt, and a big belt buckle studded with turquoise. Maya, on the other hand, wasn’t in her electrician gear; she was dressed to kill in a tight black dress, red lipstick, and stiletto heels.
Coyote halted in the center of the lobby. He threw his head back to study the gallery that ringed the second story, then he laughed, a big, booming laugh.
“I smell a curse,” he said. “A big, bad curse. What are you still doing in here, Janet?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the front door slammed shut behind him. A hurricane-like blast blew through the lobby, ripping papers into the air, shoving pictures off the walls, and shattering glass. Every open window banged shut.
The wind died abruptly, followed by a heavy clanking as the big lock on the front door fastened itself. Then all the lights went out.
As the four of us stood in twilight gloom, the magic mirror’s voice rolled from the saloon.
“Uh-oh, kids. I think it’s showtime.”
Two
Maya ran to the front door, tried to unlock it, failed, and started pounding on the wood. “Hey, let me out of here!”
Cassandra checked the saloon. “Everything’s locked down tight in there.”
Coyote, damn him, kept laughing. He flicked magic at the windows in the front room, his amusement dying when they stayed firmly shut.
“Come on, Janet,” Maya snapped. “Open the door. There’s somewhere I need to be.”
I shrugged, trying to remain calm. “If you can figure out how to get out, you let me know.”
Maya gave me a disgusted look and marched past me and into the kitchen, where we heard her start beating on the back door.
“So, little witch,” Coyote said to Cassandra, his eyes gleaming in a way I didn’t like. “What have you been up to?”
“Leave her alone,” I said. “What exactly did you mean by a curse, Coyote? I thought this was just a warning spell.”
“Nope,” Coyote said, almost joyfully. “A curse, a hex, very bad juju. You can’t smell it? It stinks like shit, all over this hotel. I’d say you’re in for one hell of a night.”
“So break it,” I said.
Coyote grinned. “Wouldn’t it be more fun to see what happens?”
“No,” Cassandra and I said at the same time.
Coyote just chuckled. I was glad he thought this was so damn funny.
He looked Cassandra up and down, and his laughter died. “I don’t see the connection, though. This might be tough.”
“What connection?” I asked.
“The one between Cassandra and the hex. Could be a general hex, on anyone and everyone near her. Or a blanket hex, on the place she happens to be.”
“Whatever it is, just fix it.” I headed for the kitchen. “We need lights.”
Coyote called after me, “The best spells might need a little sex magic. You game?”
I gave him a signal he’d understand and went on into the kitchen.
Maya at least had stopped banging on the back door. She leaned against it to face me, her slender arms folded, her dark eyes full of rage.
“What the hell, Janet? Every time I come near you, I get battered, taken hostage, held at gunpoint, buried in rubble, or all of the above. And I always, always ruin my clothes. What is it with you?”
“Would you believe me if I said that this time it’s not my fault?”
“No.” Maya uncrossed her arms, gave the door one final thump, and stalked back into the middle of the big kitchen.
It was eerily quiet in here without the appliances humming. My temperamental cook, Elena, hadn’t shown up today. Elena Williams was an Apache from Whiteriver, a culinary genius but given to fits of sullenness. Some days she never came to work at all.
“Whether you believe me or not, can you fix the electricity?” I asked Maya.
“In this dress?”
“You can wear something of mine.”
“You’re two sizes smaller than me, and you only have biker-chick clothes.” Her voice went sad. “I was going to meet Nash.”
“Oh.” Maya’s so-called relationship with Nash Jones, the sheriff of Hopi County, was drama with a capital D. I’d seen them a couple of times together lately, eating sedate meals in the local diner, looking like two people afraid to talk to each other.
“Call him,” I said. “Tell him you’re stuck because of me. He’ll believe that.” My run-ins with Sheriff Jones were volatile and memorable. He blamed me for anything weird that went on in his county, and the trouble was, he was usually right.
“I tried.” Maya’s face went even more glum. “My cell phone won�
��t work.” She fixed me with an accusing stare. “What did you do this time?”
I started rummaging in a drawer. “Why is everyone assuming that I did something?”
“Because you usually do.”
She had a point. I pulled out a screwdriver. “Here.”
Maya sighed, but she yanked the screwdriver out of my hand and headed for the back of the kitchen, where the junction boxes were. I knew that if anyone could bring the lights back, it was Maya. She was the only one currently in the hotel who wasn’t magical, but when it came to electricity, she had talent to burn.
I returned to the lobby to find Cassandra trying to get a signal from her cell phone. I couldn’t get one on mine, either, and my landline was out as well. A good curse would take care of pesky things like phones.
But I had a couple of secret weapons at my disposal. I poked my head into the saloon and looked at one of them. “Mick still on the roof?” I asked the mirror.
“Yes.” It sounded as glum as Maya. “There’s some bad things stirring, sugar.”
“That’s why I want Mick.”
“I mean, really bad, sweetie. I’m having a bet with myself how fast you’ll replace me if I die.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. You’re a magic mirror. You can’t die.”
It sighed. “I can be melted into slag, ground to powder. And then I’d never see your beautiful ass again.”
I ignored it. Besides, even a melted magic mirror could be re-formed with no loss to its power. “Are you still tied in with the mirrors at the compound in Santa Fe?”
“The place with Bancroft and Drake and their hottie houseboy? I might be.”
I had the feeling my mirror had been training his magic eye on the twenty-two-year-old human who did errands for Bancroft, a member of the dragon council. The houseboy’s name was Todd, and his job was to make sure that the needs of the dragons’ guests were met. Each and every need.
“Drake owes me one, he and Bancroft both,” I said. “Stand by to contact them if we need help. If we need it, that is. I don’t want Drake out here giving Mick hell if it’s not necessary.” Drake worked for the dragon council, and he was more arrogant than the three council members put together. But I couldn’t ignore his potential as an ally.
“I’ll stand ready, sweet cakes.” The mirror paused. “Could you show me your beautiful bod, one more time? Just in case . . .”
I made a disgusted noise and left the room. I was surrounded by perverts, but they were powerful perverts, and I couldn’t afford to do without them.
I ascended to the second floor, took the back stairs to the third, and opened the door out onto the roof. Mick was there, gazing out over the desert beyond the Crossroads—what the locals called the T-intersection of two highways. My hotel and the Crossroads Bar sat on desert east of the T, but the Crossroads was also a mystical crossroads, I’d learned, where magic and reality could blur. A railroad had been built here once but had gone bust nearly a century ago, the empty railroad bed and a derelict hotel the only reminders of its aspirations to glory.
I paused on the roof a moment to appreciate the fineness of my boyfriend. Mick’s body was broad, hard, and strong, the muscle shirt and jeans he wore, despite the chill, showing it off in a good way. Wind tugged at his wild black hair, which he usually tamed into a short ponytail. Tonight he’d left it loose, and it was all over the place. I wasn’t sure why Mick had hair at all, or why it was always that length, but he never changed it. I didn’t mind, because his hair was wonderful to run my fingers through.
Mick had been my first lover—my only lover—though we’d spent five years apart before we’d both ended up in Magellan. He was the only being who could tame my Stormwalker magic when it threatened to overwhelm me. Thoughts of how he did it started wicked fantasies bubbling inside me.
The dirt parking lot I shared with the Crossroads Bar was filling with motorcycles as the sun set in splendid glory to the west, silhouetting the distant San Francisco Peaks.
Mick turned as my boot scraped on the roof, but he’d known I was there. Mick always knew where I was.
He gave me the smile that turned my heart inside out. “Hey, baby.”
I silently damned whatever mage had tracked down Cassandra. Stupid curses. Mick and I should be making love up here under the blaring sunset, the red light touching our skin, not discussing malevolent magic.
“Coyote says it’s a hex, not a spell,” I said as I approached him. “All doors and windows are locked downstairs.” I looked around. “So why doesn’t it apply to the roof?”
“Who says it doesn’t?” Mick picked up a pebble and tossed it upward as hard as he could. About fifteen feet above our heads, the pebbled exploded into dust.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“Funny, that’s what I said.” Mick dusted his hand on his pants. “If I change to dragon up here, and my body expands . . . zap.”
Terrific. There went my hope that Mick could spread his dragon wings and fly away, maybe go for help or find whatever mage was chanting the curse and fry him.
“How did this get by you?” I asked. “This is the best-warded building I’ve ever been in. You must have felt someone trying to cast a spell. How did it get by me?”
“Like Coyote says, it’s a curse, not a spell,” Mick said. “Different thing.”
“Oh, right.” Wiccan magic isn’t really my thing. Mick had taught me to work minor spells such as those for healing or protection, but my true power is more raw and basic. Instinctive. Mick was the one with the encyclopedic knowledge of magics.
“Hexes can fasten themselves like leeches or barnacles to a person or a place and then spread,” Mick explained. “They can be cast on one target, like a building, a car, or even a whole town if the caster is strong enough. An expert witch can slide the curse onto protective wards and use the wards themselves to sink the curse into the building, kind of like an infection.”
Great. A magical bacteria.
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans. “So how do we get rid of it? Can we infuse the wards with defensive magic, kind of like sending in antibiotics?”
“Possibly. Or we could take down the wards altogether, but that might be exactly what the mage wants. Hexes are tricky. Let me think about it. In the meantime, we need to minimize casualties.”
Minimize casualties. Just what I wanted to hear.
I raised my gaze to the mountains in the west that were quickly fading into the dusk and said a prayer. The gods of my people lived in those mountains, and so did the kachinas, the Hopi spirits who were watching me, not always in a friendly way.
“This was not how I envisioned spending my evening,” I said.
“No?” Mick’s smile heated my blood. “And how did you envision spending it?”
I traced the reddish dust on the rooftop with my boot. “Since I haven’t seen you in a couple of days, how did you think?”
“I can guess.” His smile widened. “I have a couple of new things I want to try.”
“New things?” I gave him a mock-innocent look. “You mean there’s more?”
“So much more.” Mick came to me and drew the knuckle of his forefinger down my cheek. “I want to teach you everything, Janet.”
Believe me, I wanted to learn. I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Maybe a little Tantric magic would loosen up the curse?”
Mick’s growl wasn’t human. “I wish, but we can’t trust the hex. It might make some seriously bad shit happen.”
Like things falling off, maybe? Figures. I had the feeling the hex wasn’t going to let us have any fun.
Mick brushed his thumb over the corner of my mouth. “It would be a hell of a way to go, but I’m not ready to lose you yet.”
I wasn’t ready to lose Mick, either, especially when I still w
asn’t really sure I had him. I raised on my tiptoes and kissed his lips.
“Let’s go minimize casualties,” I said before I could turn the kiss into something more satisfying. “But when this is done . . .”
Mick slanted me his bad-boy smile. “When this is done, I won’t hold back.”
I returned the grin. “Good. I’m looking forward to it.”
***
We walked inside together, hand in hand. “Who’s in?” Mick asked as we started down the stairs.
I considered. “Maya, Coyote, Cassandra, me, and you. Fremont. Juana walked off the job, and Elena never showed up. I only had three rooms filled, and one couple left after the curse played the little trick with the blood. I don’t know whether the other guests have come back for the night . . .” I stopped in my tracks. “Crap.”
Mick and I looked at each other, realizing at the same time. “Ansel,” we said together, and we took the stairs at a run.
Three
Just the question to make my day bright—what effects will a very powerful mage’s curse have on a Nightwalker who’s trying to stay on the wagon?
The door of room 2, where Ansel had taken up lodgings a few weeks ago, was firmly closed, and no sound came from behind it. Usually I wouldn’t have let a Nightwalker into my hotel, but Ansel had seemed so alone and morose the night he’d arrived that I couldn’t turn him down.
He’d so far kept to himself and been far less trouble than some of my human guests. I’d learned to have cow’s blood on order for him, but I wasn’t certain of our supply. I’d left a note for Elena the cook to check, but of course she’d decided to not come in today.
I grabbed a flashlight from my office and headed to the kitchen while Mick stayed in the lobby to both check the wards and keep an eye on room 2.
When I reached the kitchen, I could just make out Maya in the back, her long legs a pale smudge in the darkness. The occasional curse in Spanish floated to me.
I yanked open the walk-in refrigerator and quickly splayed my flashlight over the shelves. The refrigerator was depressingly bare, but I relaxed a little when I spotted a plastic gallon bottle full to the top with blood. Good. One of those usually kept Ansel going for a couple of days, so he would be all right. The rest of us might get a little hungry if the doors stayed locked for too long, but at least we wouldn’t be Nightwalker food.
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