Color Weaver

by Connie Hall

  She had been so upset she had hopped the fence and run across the field to get to him. She’d ridden in the ambulance and held his hand while an E.R. doctor sewed up his face. She had kept reminding him how much she loved him. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “Did you hear me?”

  The sharp question brought her back to the present. “What?”

  His heavy eyelids added a deceptive languor to his expression, the kind of bedroom eyes that could lure anything out of a woman. But she wasn’t taken in by them. When he was aggravated or angry, his irises turned the color of a stormy sea at night. And right now they blazed purplish black and looked right through her. She watched a swollen vein pulse in his temple.

  “Did you know Brad Lacy?” he asked.

  “No. I already told you that.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Never heard of him. Who is he, anyway?”

  He shuffled some papers and read a report. “Lived in Richmond, the Brackets’ nephew. The pants belonged to him, and he’s been missing for eight hours.”

  She knew the Bracket family. They lived a mile from her cottage. “Never saw him or met him.” That was the truth and Summer hoped it came across as that.

  “Was he ever inside your home?”

  “No, why would he be?” He was goading her, trying to trip her up. She wasn’t falling for it. She kept an even voice and said, “You searched it, did you find any evidence he’d been there?”

  He didn’t answer her. The pulse in his temple throbbed faster. “The M.O. from twelve years ago matches his disappearance. Bloody clothes dumped near you. Admit it, you had something to do with this latest murder.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know why the abductor tried to frame me with the bloody clothes. I had nothing to do with the disappearances years ago, or this latest one. It’s just as much a mystery to me as it is to you.” She stared at his sheriff’s badge gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights.

  “You’re lying.” A frustrated scowl inched across Reese’s whole forehead, tugged at his brows, thinned his lips. The vein continued to pulse in his neck. In that moment Summer detected the worry lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. This wasn’t the boy from high school sitting before her, but a much older man with a lot of responsibility to shoulder. The biggest one: charging her with three murders.

  She couldn’t stand this badgering any longer. She leaned across the desk and grabbed the edge. “Then you need to prove it. I’m done here. I know my rights. You have to give me a phone call. And I’ll clue you in—it’ll be a lawyer and I’ll be out of here like that.” She snapped her fingers and cut her eyes at him.

  He said nothing for a full two minutes. Their gazes locked and battled. He narrowed his eyes at her. She watched his heavy lids drop a fraction. His thick lashes hooded those shrewd and unsettling dark eyes. By sheer will, she forced herself not to glance away. He wasn’t going to win this battle.

  After what seemed like years but had only been thirty seconds, he said, “You can go, but don’t leave the area.” He leveled a warning glance at her.

  She stood too fast. Feeling dizzy and light-headed from anxiety and lack of sleep, she lost her balance.

  Abruptly a pair of strong hands grabbed her around the waist.

  She stared up into his face. How he’d leaped around the desk so quickly and caught her, she’d never know. Maybe the quarterback in him sprang to life. Either way, they were so close his hot breath brushed her face. Their lips were inches apart. Her right hand was trapped against his hard chest and her own body. She could feel his heartbeat pounding against her palm.

  Her own heart quickened and matched his. Sensations of overpowering maleness wrapped around her. Weightlessness floated in her belly, a familiar feeling that she had always experienced when he held her. She could almost believe the past twelve years had vanished, and they were still dating, still in love….

  He frowned at her as if he were uncomfortable with the contact, then he stepped back as if he’d been stung. “You okay?”

  Reality rushed back to her. What had she done? Almost made a complete fool of herself by clinging to the past, that’s what. She felt a blush rise up her neck and into her cheeks. “Thanks, just a little dizzy, is all,” she said, her voice trembling.

  A quick knock on the door boomed inside the small room, startling Summer. The door slowly opened, and Steven Creasy stuck his head through the gap. “Hey, Summer.”

  “Hey.” She knew Steve. He and Reese had been on the football team together. That’s how they had met in high school. He shared Reese’s affinity for law enforcement, and had been on the force for seven years.

  Steve looked disconcerted that he had to greet her in the interrogation room, then he glanced at Reese. “Uh, Sheriff, sorry to interrupt, but my shift is ending. You said something about waiting until you’re done with Summer. You want me to stay and process her?”

  “Not enough evidence to arrest her, at the moment.”

  “You want me to give her a ride home?”

  “I’m taking her.” It wasn’t a response, but an order.

  “Right.” Steve nodded an uncomfortable farewell to Summer, then hurriedly slid out the door, closing it behind him.

  Summer inhaled deeply, fighting a need to get as far away from Reese as possible. “Look, you really don’t need to drive me,” she said.

  “I brought you here. I’ll take you home.”

  “I can call someone.”

  “No.” His deep voice held a soft lethal authority aura that brooked no argument.

  Oh, Lord! She didn’t want him anywhere near her house, or her person. He was in danger. The wendigo could strike again. Not to mention she’d just made a cake of herself when he’d kept her from falling. This was horrible, but she knew how stubborn he was. Arguing with him now would only make him more determined to take her home.

  She turned and hurried out the door, feeling his overpowering aura hot on her heels. This would be the longest car ride of her life.

  Summer decided the only good thing about the ride home was the sunrise and the clear blue sky stretching before her. A perfect morning following a horrible night.

  Thankfully, Reese hadn’t spoken to her since they’d climbed into the car. His fingers gripped the wheel in a white-knuckled grasp and he gritted his teeth so tight that the tendons in his neck protruded. The friction in the air between them felt like sandpaper against her body.

  She listened to the radio dispatcher talking to another deputy on duty as she glanced at the mobile computer and stand that separated the seats. High-tech equipment for a county sheriff’s car, but she guessed it was standard issue nowadays. An officer could run plates and warrants on the spot. Made life easier for the cop on a traffic stop but not so for a criminal. Was she a true criminal? She might as well be. She was the Color Weaver in her tribe, and she had the ability to bring things to life through her drawings. Somehow she had drawn the wendigo into existence. But how? Ever since she found out about her gift she’d been very careful about what she drew. But not last night. She remembered falling asleep on the couch and waking up in front of the easel.

  A miserable queasiness pulled at her and she squeezed her eyes closed.

  “You okay?”

  His deep voice startled her. She rubbed her eyes and said, “Just tired.”

  “You hungry?”

  She felt the car slow as they neared Katie Bo’s, a little restaurant on Route 30, only open for breakfast and lunch. Panic at having to share a meal with him caught at her as she said, “I’m not hungry. I want to go home.”

  He pulled into the lot, anyway. “Well, I am.”

  Just peachy! She had to watch him eat now.

  Moments later they walked into Katie Bo’s and sat at the counter. A young waitress took their order and poured them coffee. Summer was glad they weren’t sitting in a booth and she wasn’t forced to face him. But there was no escaping his wide shoulders. He dwarfed the stool and his arm a
lmost touched hers. Tension sizzled in the few inches separating them.

  He added four packets of sugar and two creams in his coffee and stirred it. “What do you know about wendigos?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  The question took her by surprise. She lost her composure. For a second, she bit her lip and gripped her coffee cup.

  When she could speak, she said, “You and I both know they don’t exist.” She had tried to add a cavalier inflection to her words, but it didn’t sound convincing at all. “What do you know about them?” she tossed back at him, trying not to shift under the weight of those dark eyes boring into her face.

  His expression closed down and she knew he wouldn’t divulge anything. “I asked the question first.”

  She sighed and said, “Let me think. Wendigo. I think it’s a malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural being. Has great spiritual power among some American Indian tribes. Tends to be on the emaciated side. Sightings are usually in the winter, a time associated with death and starvation. Am I close?”

  “Close enough. Would you agree they look like that creature in your drawing?”

  No use lying about this one. He’d taken the drawing to the station as evidence. “Yes,” she said.

  His brow wrinkled in a frown as he said, “You drew a wendigo holding the pants, standing right outside your studio. Why?”

  “I didn’t know what I was drawing. I did it in my sleep.”

  “Sleep?” His eyes narrowed with disbelief, his long thick lashes looking like brown lace. Frustration seemed to roll off of him in waves. It came through in his voice as he asked, “You expect me to believe that you got every detail of what happened down to the holding of the pants and you did it in your sleep?”

  “Are you telling me you believe in wendigos?” she fired back.

  “All I know is a person has disappeared again and you’re the only suspect I have.” Tension moved along his clenched jaw, stiffened his neck and shoulders. His neck veins pulsed and matched the one in his temple. He looked like a man carrying a grudge and a bruised ego, and all his enmity was directed at her. He took her measure over his coffee cup.

  She nervously folded one of the empty sugar wrappers into a tiny square and rolled it between her fingers as she said, “It’s horrible, and I hate it, but a wendigo isn’t responsible. They don’t exist, right?”

  “Right.” Sarcasm filled the word. “But something unnatural is carrying people off and you seem to be at the center of it. Just like last time.”

  She knew he was thinking about the two disappearances twelve years ago, one of them his own father’s. And he held her responsible for them, but no more than herself. She had drawn the wendigo into existence. She wished she could unburden her soul and tell him that. But what could she say, “Oh, by the way, I’m the Color Weaver of my tribe. The white magic that generates my talent also turns whatever I paint into reality.” Yeah, that would go over big.

  She appreciated the creative gifts that accompanied being the Color Weaver, but it came at a high price. She had to be extremely careful of her subject matter. She also couldn’t use her powers for her own gain or she would lose them. No mansions, rooms full of money, diamonds or sports cars. She never wanted any of that, anyway. All she wanted was to paint abstract art, teach art to indigent kids and assist Fala if she ever needed Summer to combat evil. But the white-magic powers bestowed on the women of her tribe always had a catch. No one knew that better than she.

  If only she knew why the wendigo had suddenly reappeared. How much did he know about the wendigo? He at least knew it existed. Had he seen it last night? She wrapped her fingers around the hot coffee cup, hoping to dispel the coldness creeping down through her very soul.

  “You never let me say it, but I am sorry about your dad.” After his father had disappeared, Reese had ignored her, wouldn’t answer her calls. He abandoned her in high school like all of her other friends, but she had thought he loved her. Obviously, not enough to believe her.

  “If you were, you’d tell me the truth now,” he said. “Tell me where to find his remains.”

  “There’s nothing to tell other than I painted a picture in my sleep.”

  The waitress set a plate of pancakes, eggs and hash browns in front of him, the country breakfast. She had only ordered coffee.

  He shoved the plate back, tossed a twenty on the counter, then said, “Come on, we’re going.”

  “I thought you were hungry.”

  He glared at her, dark eyes heavy and blazing. “Not anymore.”

  Summer thought she had beaten herself up all she could about the disappearance of his father, but she could still feel a knife twisting in her chest. All the buried emotion rose up to choke her. Tears blurred her vision as she followed him to the car.

  Thankfully, they said no more until he dropped her at her cottage. It looked completely normal, the sun gleaming off the tin roof, as if the wendigo hadn’t dropped Brad Lacy’s bloody pants at her door last night. The only sign of the tragedy was the crime-scene tape stretched along the fence near her studio door.

  When he pulled to a stop, she got out. Before she shut the door, he said, “I know you are involved somehow in these murders and I’ll prove it.” His deep voice held a deceptive calm but it was edged with animosity.

  “I thought you of all people would know me and know I’m not capable of something so horrid. But I guess I was wrong. I’m sorry you believe the worst. But do what you need to. We both will.” She slammed the door and hurried to her house

  She heard the crunch of gravel as he backed the cruiser down the drive. She was certain Reese would keep his word and connect her to this latest death—there, she’d finally admitted it. She had always hoped it wasn’t death, but she could no longer cling to that hope. The wendigo surely had killed three people, one of them Reese’s father, a man she had come to love as a father. Reese wasn’t the only one who had suffered in all of this.

  She just couldn’t tell him the truth about her powers. Even if he believed her story, it would only confirm his suspicions that she had used her powers to control the wendigo. Somehow she had to find out why and how the wendigo had reappeared and destroy it for good this time—that is, before Reese arrested her.

  She opened the door, turned around and found Reese glaring at her as if she had just stuck a knife in his chest, then he sped away. Tears blurred her vision as Sampson nuzzled her hand to be petted. His white-and-brown coat melted into muddy tones of tan as she stroked his head and ears and let him kiss the tears off her face.

  She looked for the cats to greet her, but only Binky came to say hello.

  All of a sudden, her studio blazed with light, brighter than sunlight. Summer jumped and shielded her eyes.

  “Do not be afraid, my child.”

  Summer recognized Meikoda’s voice. It sounded distant, like coming from a long tunnel. The light weakened and pulsed, and Summer blinked at Meikoda’s image. It hovered three feet off the floor, a ghostly figure surrounded by a blinding yellow-and-white aura.

  Meikoda was Summer’s great-aunt and she had recently turned over the reins of Guardian to Fala, her granddaughter. The Guardian of Summer’s tribe was the most powerful shaman on earth and maintained the balance between good and evil. Though she was an ex-Guardian, Meikoda was still a formidable shaman in her own right and feared by many. One of her numerous powers was astral projection, which could be disconcerting if you weren’t expecting it.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Summer said, not feeling so alone anymore.

  “I sensed the wendigo’s return. I know all that has happened to you.”

  Summer wasn’t surprised. Meikoda had an uncanny ability to see things that others could not. She sat down at the drawing table, suddenly aware if she didn’t sit she might fall down. She kept her eyes from Meikoda’s image, for the light was still too intense to look directly at her for more than a second.

  “Why is this happening to me again?” Summer asked in desperation.


  “I know not. I thought I dispatched this wendigo to middle dimension when it last beset you.” Meikoda’s voice rarely gave anything away, but there was an audible hint of self-recrimination there that was hard to miss.

  Middle dimension was Meikoda’s nice term for hell. Summer wished the wendigo back there. “I thought so, too.” She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in the palms of her hands. Her head felt like a boulder on her body and it was getting heavier by the moment. “How did it return?”

  “I believe it used the recent Nonack Ipawaw to gain entrance to earth.”

  The Nonack Ipawaw was the Patomani name for a rare lunar eclipse that occurred every eight hundred years. Since the Dawning, the Warrior Bear Maiden, known only to humans as the constellation Ursa Major, had always been the totem of Summer’s people and the gateway to the source of their white magic. When the Nonack Ipawaw occurred, the moon’s center aligned with the Maiden Bear’s eye. It opened a magic portal that connected with the moon’s dark side. The rift of powerful energy almost always stirred up malevolent forces. Summer just wished the wendigo hadn’t used the energy to return and plague her.

  “So why find me again?”

  “That remains to be seen.” Meikoda’s voice held a contemplative ominous note.

  Summer shivered and said, “But we destroyed all the drawings I’d made of the wendigo in elementary school.” She remembered that project, a display for folklore month. She’d drawn a poster of a wendigo for her display and written a paper on them. It won a blue ribbon. Little did she know it would destroy her life later.

  “We must have missed one.”

  “What I’ve never understood is how the sketch of the wendigo I’d drawn in elementary school came to life when I was in high school? Nothing I painted back then turned into reality. You know I didn’t get my powers until my twenty-eighth birthday, like all those in the Guardian’s army. Why did the wendigo plague me when I was seventeen?”

  “I believe there was an outside source at the core of that first assault in high school. A demon or warlock must have somehow discovered you were to become the Color Weaver. Perhaps this demon hoped to have you firmly within his domination so he could systematically threaten and terrorize you, then enter your dreams and eventually take over your body and manipulate your spirit, reaching his ultimate goal to control your powers. And it connected the wendigo to you through the sketch you had innocently drawn in elementary school. That way it controlled the wendigo and you.”