Stormwalker

by Allyson James

  I slid one arm from under the covers and beckoned to him. Fremont took a few steps into the room and stopped, averting his eyes.

  “Tell Salas to go away,” I said, barely able to form the words.

  “He needs your statement about what happened.”

  I figured. “Tell him I’ll talk to him later.”

  Fremont weighed the decision whether to tell Salas I didn’t want to see him or to insist I get up, which might involve me revealing more than my bare arm. Modesty won. “I’ll tell him. You rest.”

  He backed out and closed the door. What I wanted was for all these people to go away and leave me alone. I didn’t want to be awake, because then I’d have to think about Mick, and reassess every single thing I’d ever assumed about him, about our relationship, and about how I felt about him. I didn’t want to get up, because I’d have to talk to Salas about the fight and the dried blood all over my saloon, and I’d have to make decisions about what to do with the hotel.

  Swimming in the back of my mind, just out of reach, was the memory of Nash Jones kissing me. I could still feel the imprint of his lips, the burn of unshaved whiskers against my skin, the taste of his mouth.

  Even more troubling was the fact that he’d absorbed my magic without flinching or even feeling it. He didn’t believe in my magic, but I’d fed Nash enough to kill him ten times over. And yet he’d lived.

  Another part of me hoped that if I lay here quietly, all my problems would go away. As a little girl I’d thought that if I sat still enough and let the world flow around me, everything would get better on its own. I decided to try the trick by staying firmly under the covers in my bed.

  I dozed off and on, and when I finally woke up all the way, the window was dark, the hotel out front mercifully silent.

  I was stiff and sore, but my resilient body had recovered from the fight. Because Nash had drained off the storm magic, I was relieved of my magic hangover. No storms tonight. I knew even before I looked out the window to see the eastern horizon dark and clear, stars out in profusion.

  I showered again, dressed, and wandered to the kitchen. Sure enough the bikers had smashed the new appliances while the Nightwalker had been busy feasting on me behind the bar. My shoulder still ached, even though the bite marks had closed. I had no fear that I’d turn into a Nightwalker, because that took spells and careful, dark magic, not just a hungry Nightwalker getting a blood fix.

  My rented SUV stood intact in the parking lot—amazingly. Avoiding even looking at the Crossroads Bar, I got in it and drove into Magellan. The diner next to Paradox was full, but I managed to slide onto a counter stool and tiredly order a burger. When it came, I ate it quickly, surprised at how hungry I was.

  I was aware of stares as I ate. The looks were mostly sympathetic, but I still wasn’t ready to talk about the incident. I stayed hunched over my burger, not meeting gazes or encouraging conversation.

  I felt much better once I finished eating. A big milk-shake cleared my brain, and I left to drive two blocks to the brightly lit liquor store. I made my purchase and drove another few blocks to the quiet street I’d driven down yesterday, which now seemed a million years ago.

  Maya’s living room window glowed with light. I parked and walked to the front door, pressed the doorbell, and waited.

  The TV went off in the living room, and after a few seconds, Maya wrenched open the door. She glared at me with red-rimmed eyes, her unbound black hair straggling down her back.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  I held up the bottle of tequila I’d bought at the liquor store. “To share this with you. We can either drink it straight or mix it with ice and lime and pretend we’re having margaritas. Either way, we’re going to get drunk, and you’re going to tell me everything you know about Amy McGuire.”

  Nineteen

  We did use glasses, but we drank it straight. Maya closed the blinds, and we sat on the couch side by side, the bottle and two glasses resting on the coffee table in front of us.

  “Amy. I hated the bitch,” Maya said after the second glass.

  “You told me that before. Because she was perfect?”

  “So perfect she made you sick. She had everything—supportive parents, high grades, praise from her church, tons of friends, good looks, you name it.”

  “She doesn’t sound real,” I said.

  Maya gave me a dark look. “She was real. Some people are just born lucky, you know?”

  “I knew someone like that in high school,” I said, remembering. “She won beauty contests and ribbons for horseback riding and barrel racing plus scholarships galore. Everyone loved her. But when you got to know her, she was hard as nails. She tricked people into thinking she was sweet. Even her own parents were afraid of her.”

  Maya shook her head. “Not Amy. She really was nice, all the way through. Went to church every Sunday because she liked to. She was a good person. That made it even worse.”

  “Because it was hard to justify hating her?”

  Maya scowled. “Exactly. Now, you I can hate, because you really are a bitch. Strutting into town, thinking you’re all important because you’re renovating the hotel and trying to find Amy. Beautiful Navajo girl in your leather chaps. Nash can’t keep his eyes off you.”

  I raised my brows, hiding a twinge of guilt at the remembered pressure of Nash’s mouth on mine. “Funny, when I walked in here yesterday, Nash was in your bed, and he didn’t look unhappy to be there.”

  “What were you doing barging into my house anyway?” she demanded.

  “I saw your door open, and I got worried. Dead bodies turn up around here and girls go missing. I hadn’t seen you in a couple of days.”

  Maya drained her glass and reached for the bottle. “You wouldn’t care if I disappeared. One less problem to worry about.”

  “Not true. You’re a damn good electrician, and I need you. Don’t think I give you money because I like you. You can out-bitch me any day of the week.”

  “Fucking Indian.”

  “Latina ho.”

  Maya trickled tequila into her glass and took another big swallow. “At least you don’t pretend to be my friend and then stab me in the back.”

  “Is that what Amy did?”

  “What do you think? One minute she’s telling me how it’s only a matter of time before Nash asks me to marry him; the next, I see her holding hands with him at the diner. Nash drove by my house every day on his way to hers, and I got to watch him drive out again the next morning. I lay awake every night, knowing he was down there in bed with her.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “I’d call that stabbing me in the back.”

  “You and Nash broke up before he went out with Amy, right? I heard you two had a big fight.”

  “What, so now it’s my fault?”

  “That’s not what I said, and you know it. I’m trying to get the facts straight. Nash and you were still together when he came back from Iraq. Then you had a fight and broke up.”

  “We always had fights. We fought about everything. We stormed out on each other all the time, but one of us always came back. But not this time. He left, and Amy sweet-talked him into staying away.”

  “I heard that your last fight was because he wanted to run for sheriff.”

  She didn’t ask me how I knew. “Partly. I didn’t think he could handle it because of his PTSD.”

  “Chief McGuire told me he went through stretches when he couldn’t remember anything.”

  Maya nodded, miserable. “That happened a couple of times. He’d do things and not remember them at all. I wanted Nash to see a doctor, and he wouldn’t do it, stubborn pain in the ass. He said his problems would go away, and that I was making too much fuss and didn’t trust him. But it was killing him.” More tears, but she glared through them. “Turns out Nash was right, wasn’t he? He didn’t need a doctor. He just needed Amy to spread her legs.”

  I remembered Fremont telling me Amy had been good for Nash, soothing. Maybe Nash had been able to tell Am
y what he couldn’t tell anyone else, and she’d smiled that prom queen smile and patted his hand. My relationship with Mick had been similar, him encouraging me to tell him everything, smiling at me like he adored me.

  “Men are bastards,” I said.

  “You got that right.”

  I finished my second glass, noting that my tongue felt warm, my mouth loose. “Have you ever thought about being gay? Maybe giving up men altogether is the answer.”

  “No.” Maya refilled my glass, then hers. “A woman would probably just dump me too. Plus my mother would never speak to me again. She’s already pissed at me because I haven’t given her any grandchildren.”

  “Mothers.” I drank deeply. “Can screw you up.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No, tell me about Amy. That day she disappeared. Were you home?”

  Maya’s gaze went remote. “Yeah, I’d finished a job in Show Low the day before and decided to stay home, doing laundry and stuff. I didn’t go out all day.” She spoke in a monotone, repeating the exact words that I’d read in the file.

  “So you would have been on hand to see who drove in and out,” I said, then asked what I’d come here to ask. “Did you see Nash?”

  Tears streamed from Maya’s eyes. The drink had loosened her a long way, and she sobbed. “Dios, Janet, I think he killed her. He killed her and took her body away and dumped her in the desert, and he doesn’t remember.”

  “Did you see him do all that?”

  “No. But I saw his car, his own car, not the sheriff’s one. He drove down and drove out twenty minutes later, going very fast.”

  No one else had seen this, according to the files, or at least, no one else had admitted it. “That’s not in the report,” I said.

  “Because I didn’t want to tell anyone. I didn’t know what to do. If you tell, I’ll kill you.”

  She was crying, shaking all over. I sat still, unthreatened. I’d keep it to myself, because I didn’t think Amy was dead. I’d love to know what Nash had been doing at her house, though.

  “Think, Maya. Why would Nash hurt Amy if she was so good for him?”

  “He might not have meant to. He’d go crazy sometimes—talking to people who weren’t there, seeing things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Mostly that building that collapsed on him in Baghdad. He’d think he saw the roof coming down, and he’d drag me flat on the floor, no matter where we were. He did it in the diner one day. Then he’d get upset when he realized he’d been hallucinating. And then, the next time I’d see him, he’d act like he’d forgotten all about it.”

  “So you think he killed Amy, accidentally maybe, while he was having one of his episodes?”

  “Maybe he thought she was an insurgent coming to kill him or something. He’s strong; he could have strangled her or broken her neck. Like I said, when I saw him that day, he drove out in a hurry.”

  “No one else saw him?”

  Maya shook her head. “So I kept quiet. If he did it, it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Maya, if you thought he killed Amy, why did you jump into bed with him yesterday?”

  She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t help it. He kept asking me questions about that damned woman in your basement, and I was upset. He started yelling at me about it, and I yelled back at him—I hate it when he treats me like a suspect. All of a sudden his arms are around me, and I’m crying on his shoulder. And then he started kissing me, and . . .” She spread her hands. “You know.”

  “One thing led to another?”

  “Yes. Until you interrupted. Then I threw him out. Maybe I should be grateful to you.” Maya scowled. “No, wait. I’m still pissed.”

  “I don’t think Nash killed Amy,” I said. “Even accidentally, even during a hallucination.”

  “No? How the hell do you know?”

  “Because I know things. Amy didn’t die in her house. There was no sign of a struggle.”

  “But Nash could have covered that up. He’d know how.”

  “There was no psychic sign of a struggle either. Nash wouldn’t have known how to cover that up.”

  “Oh, please. You’re not a psychic.”

  “No, I’m a Stormwalker. It’s different, but I do have the ability to see ghosts or at least specters of violence. Amy’s house is clean and peaceful. No one has died there.”

  “Then where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We fell silent while I watched the light dance on what little liquid was left in the bottle.

  “This question is going to piss you off,” I said slowly. “But I have to ask it.” Maya didn’t look at me; her eyes were glassy, and I wondered if she’d even be able to answer. “Was Amy pregnant?”

  Maya put her hand to her stomach and turned a slight shade of green. “I don’t know. She never said anything, but she and Jones were going to get married, and she was so excited . . .” Her face crumpled, and she got off the couch in a hurry. “I’m going to puke. Damn skank, look what you do to me.”

  Maya got to the bathroom before she started to heave. I sat on the sofa, cradling my glass, trying not to listen.

  Poor Maya. How awful it must be for her, thinking the man she loved had killed the woman she’d hated. I had no doubt that Maya still loved Nash. It must have scared the shit out of her when Nash hadn’t come forward to say he’d gone to see Amy that day. That little tidbit had been kept out of every report.

  While Maya cleaned herself up in the bathroom, I switched to look at things from Nash’s point of view. I had the feeling that Nash thought Maya had killed Amy. Maya had never kept her anger at Amy secret, and I was willing to bet Maya hadn’t taken the breakup well.

  Nash was a shithead. He’d dumped Maya for another woman, got Maya to sleep with him again yesterday, then kissed me the same night. I wished I could put another thousand volts through him, not that the first thousand had done much damage.

  Maya staggered back into the room. Her face was gray, but her eyes snapped. “You can get out of my house now.”

  “I think I’m spending the night. I’ve drunk too much to drive safely.”

  She flopped back down on the sofa next to me. “I drank more than you. You did that on purpose. Bitch.”

  “I’m a lightweight. And if I’m responsible for getting you drunk, I’m staying to make sure you’re all right.”

  “You’re not sleeping with me. I heard you when you said you wanted to try being gay.”

  “I don’t think it works like that. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “Whatever.”

  I didn’t say anything for a while. She was right; I’d gotten her drunk on purpose, because I figured that was the only way she’d talk to me. I was actually starting to hope that Maya and I might become friends one day. She was complicated and interesting, I was lonely, and she deserved better than to be jerked around by Nash. Also, I knew the difference between someone being belligerent because they were inherently bad and belligerence born of anger and fear. Maya had a lot of anger and fear inside her. If I and tequila could help get it out, so much the better.

  “Was Amy religious?” I asked after we’d sat in silence for a while. Outside all was quiet, save for a few coyotes yipping in the distance and a neighborhood dog barking in response. “You said she liked going to church, and she sang in the choir.”

  “Yeah, she loved church. She wasn’t manic about it, but she was all about God loving you, and sunshine and roses.” Maya frowned. “Although it’s weird, a couple of weeks before she disappeared, she missed one Sunday. That was so unusual that I heard people talking about it, wondering if she was all right.”

  “What church did she go to? Was she Catholic?”

  “Lutheran. In Magellan, you’re either Catholic, Lutheran, or LDS. Or you go to church in another town.”

  “Maybe she did go to church in another town that day.”

  “I doubt it. She was devoted to Trinity Lutheran. Gre
w up in it. Although she did ask me once about being Catholic. When I asked if she was thinking about converting, she laughed and said she wanted to know because Nash was Catholic.”

  “Is he?” Nash didn’t strike me as the religious type. “I thought being sheriff was his religion.”

  “Nash is devoted to his rules and regs,” Maya said. “If Nash told Amy he was Catholic, he was feeding her a load of crap. Nash has never gone to church in his life.”

  “Maybe she’d been trying to get him to the Lutheran church with her, and he was looking for a tactful way out.”

  “It wouldn’t have done him any good. He’d have had to start going when they got married. Amy was the type to drag her husband to church, so their kids could go to Sunday school and sing in the choir, just like her.” Maya finished bitterly, “I have to be honest with myself. When Nash decided he needed to get married, of course he’d pick the white-bread, goody-goody girl, not the crazy Latina. It only made sense, especially if he was going to be sheriff.”

  “Shut up.”

  “What?” Maya glared at me, color flooding back into her face. “Did you just tell me to shut up?”

  “Shut up about Nash not wanting you. Of course he wanted you; he was just mad at you, and Amy slid in when he wasn’t paying attention. It’s a good thing he didn’t marry Amy, because she’d have bored him senseless. Nash needs someone who can stand up to him.”

  “Like you?”

  “No, you moron. Like you.”

  Maya spread her arms. “Do you see him over here? Do you see him running to the door with a bunch of flowers? Amy’s been gone a year. He hasn’t showed up with a ring and gotten on his knees.”

  “Because he doesn’t know what happened to her, does he? The woman disappeared. He’s not going to think, Oh well, my fiancée’s gone; let me go back to Maya like nothing ever happened. Rules and regs, remember? Nash won’t come back to you until he finds out whether Amy is dead or alive, whether she left because she wanted to or against her will. Give him a break.”

  “Since when are you his best friend?”