“I was going to meet some friends in Flat Mesa. But someone told me you’d invited Nash over tonight. I have to wonder why.”
“I have my own boyfriend. I don’t need yours.”
Maya made a show of glancing around the kitchen. “I don’t see Mick anywhere. Is he hiding in the freezer, waiting to pop out?”
Mick was so unpredictable, he might be. “He’s supposed to be here,” I said in irritation. And Coyote. Where were they?
“So why is Nash coming over?” Maya persisted.
She watched me closely. Remembering the kiss I’d shared with Nash, my face grew warm with guilt. “I told you, Maya. I wouldn’t have Nash if you wrapped him in a bow and gave him to me.”
“Thank God for that,” a dry voice said.
Both of us jumped. Nash leaned against the door frame, looking out of place in his civilian clothes—jeans and a button-down shirt and boots.
I should have felt him come in through the wards, especially with a storm dancing around the darkening desert. But no, he’d walked in right through my protective spells without me realizing it. I wondered how much he’d heard.
Maya was obviously wondering the same thing. Nash’s cold gray gaze went to Maya in her tight dress, then to me.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Two women eating sandwiches and talking about men,” I said without blinking. “Would you like roast beef or ham?”
“I meant what is that?” He pointed to the semiautomatic lying on the floor.
Maya and I eyed each other, and I shrugged. “Someone must have left it there.”
Nash retrieved it, unloaded it, and laid the pistol and its magazine on the counter. “This had damn well better be registered.”
“It’s mine,” Maya snapped. “And it is.”
Nash’s gaze flicked to her in surprise. “Since when do you carry a gun?”
“Maya was showing it to me, and I dropped it,” I said.
Nash’s mouth hardened. He didn’t believe me for a minute, but he let it go. “What did you want to see me about, Begay?”
I shoved the plate of sandwiches at him, but he ignored them. “I want you to meet someone who promised he’d be here, but he hasn’t shown up yet.”
“I should go.” Maya slid off her stool. She didn’t reach for the gun or look at Nash.
“No,” I said sharply. “Stay.”
Maya frowned at me, not happy, but she sat back down again. She did look beautiful tonight, the blue dress complementing her dusky skin, black hair, and coffee-colored eyes. If Nash would turn his head and really look at her, he might notice, the idiot.
I heard voices in the lobby, male voices, both rumbling and gravelly. “About frigging time.”
Coyote and Mick entered the kitchen through the lobby. I blinked at Coyote, realizing that in all my encounters with him, I’d never seen him in clothes. He’d braided his black hair into a long ponytail, and he wore jeans, a button-down shirt like Nash’s, a big turquoise belt buckle, and cowboy boots. Maya glanced at him without surprise.
“Oh, hey, Coyote. I haven’t seen you around for a while.”
“Been busy,” Coyote said. “Mmm, roast beef. Don’t have any wild rabbit, do you?”
“Fresh out,” I answered. Mick came around the counter to me, kissed the top of my head, and helped himself to a sandwich.
“You and Maya know each other?” I asked Coyote.
Maya answered. “He used to hang out in the town square, talking to the tourists. Everyone calls him Coyote. I’ve never heard his real name.”
“Coyote’s fine, ma’am.”
Nash was giving him a chill eye. “You don’t seem to have a place of residence here, or in Flat Mesa.”
“I’m not homeless, Sheriff.” Coyote grinned. “Me, I have plenty of homes. Did you drive your SUV tonight? Ever clean the pee off the tires?”
Nash scowled and snatched a sandwich. “Is that story all over town?”
“I didn’t say a word,” I said in a mild voice. I caught Coyote’s eye. “So what do you think?”
“Mmm, not as good as your grandmother’s fry bread, but not bad.”
“I meant about Nash.” He knew that; he was just being a pain in the ass.
Coyote swallowed, then grinned at me again. “I think he’s a null.”
Mick made a look like Interesting, but I had no idea what Coyote meant. “What’s a null?”
“It means there’s nothing there. He’s like a black hole. Nothing and something at the same time. Like he doesn’t really exist.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nash dropped his second sandwich back to the plate. “I exist. I’ve lived in Flat Mesa all my life, I was in the army, I served in Iraq, and I’m the sheriff of Hopi County.”
Thunder rumbled, the electricity in the atmosphere tingling on my skin.
Coyote looked Nash over. Nash was a big man, but Coyote was bigger, standing half a head taller. “When Janet poured every bit of storm magic into you, you didn’t even flinch,” Coyote said. “Not even when she kissed you. That should have been the kiss of death.”
Maya’s beer bottle fell from her hand and shattered on the tiles. Mick calmly bent to clean it up, but Maya remained stiff on the chair, her fury almost knocking me over. I wondered if she’d shove Nash aside and go for the gun.
Nash went red. “I don’t know what happened that night. I didn’t feel anything.”
“You absorbed her magic and stayed upright, that’s what happened,” Coyote said. “If she’d thwacked me with that kind of power, even I’d go down. Janet also told me you broke a protection spell like it was powder.”
“And Mick’s light spell,” I said. “The little ball bearing you took from me. I saw it spark, and I thought it malfunctioned. But Mick felt it go off. I bet anything you set the thing off without knowing it and sucked down the spell.”
Nash looked at me, Mick, and Coyote as we eyed him speculatively. “You are all insane.” He turned away, saw Maya, and scowled again. “Where are you going dressed like that? You look like jailbait.”
I wouldn’t have blamed Maya if she’d decked him. I wanted to deck him.
“Fuck you, Nash,” she said. “I go where I want to.”
A vein started throbbing in Nash’s neck. I saw firsthand what Fremont meant about Maya being able to rile him up. Nash looked ready to explode. “Who are you going to meet?” he demanded.
“None of your damned business.”
“It is my damned business. I’m not letting you go to Flat Mesa looking like a working girl for one of my deputies to arrest.”
“Who says you get to let me do anything at all?”
“Are they always like this?” Mick asked me, putting the broken pieces of beer bottle in the garbage.
“Fighting or fucking,” I said under my breath.
“I heard that,” Maya shouted.
“Children.” Coyote held up his hands. “Kill each other later. Right now, I want to know about Nash. How’d you get to be a null? Were you born that way, or did something strange happen to you in the Middle East?”
“Like a building falling on you,” I suggested. “Or maybe you survived the collapse because your magic canceled out the danger.”
Nash got off the stool. “Janet, you’re crazy. I don’t go in for your Navajo woo-woo shit. I told you.”
“I’m not Navajo.” Mick’s quiet voice cut through the room. “You might want to move, Maya.”
Coyote grinned and stepped out of the way. Maya took one look at Mick’s face and vacated her stool in a hurry.
“No,” I groaned. “Mick, don’t you dare. I just got everything fixed in here . . .”
Coyote jerked me out of the way as Mick’s eyes burned black. The man I loved raised his hands and let fly a stream of molten fire.
Nash didn’t have time to duck or run. The full blast of fire, hotter than a flamethrower’s, hit him. Maya screamed as Nash’s body went up in flames, engulfed in a white-hot infern
o.
Maya ran at Nash and shoved him to the floor, trying to beat out the fire. The flames burned her instead, and she screamed again.
The fire flared up, and imploded. The flames dove straight into Nash’s torso, and then as suddenly as they’d appeared, they vanished.
Nash sat up, breathing hard. Maya cradled her right arm, her pretty dress streaked with black. Nash’s clothes weren’t even singed.
Maya was crying, tears tracking down her soot-streaked face. Nash tried to get her to let him look at her arm, and I knelt on her other side. “You should take her to the ER.”
“I’m fine,” Maya snarled. “It barely touched me.”
“You’re not fine,” Nash said. “We’re going.”
“Let me see.” Coyote bent over the group and lightly touched Maya’s arm. She flinched in pain, then her eyes widened as the blistered, red skin unblistered, fading to smooth, creamy brown.
I unfolded to my feet. Mick stood on the other side of the counter, big hands resting on it, the only one of us unperturbed. “Sorry,” I told him.
He’d pinpointed the fire so accurately that not a spark had touched my new appliances and repaired walls. I remembered how, when he’d been a dragon, he’d sent a focused burst of fire that had fried the skinwalker with pinpoint precision.
Mick nodded, accepting my apology. “Everyone all right?”
Nash stood up fast, facing Mick. “What the hell did you do?”
“Hit you with dragon fire, enough to melt you. And you didn’t feel it, did you?”
“Dragon fire. Right.”
Coyote looked amused. “Nash Jones, the notorious Unbeliever. You should be nothing but charred remains. Not even enough left for a barbeque.”
“He absorbed it,” Mick said. Nash’s angry glare didn’t faze Mick; he studied Nash as though he thought Nash an interesting insect. “He didn’t deflect the fire and didn’t turn it back to me. He absorbed every molecule and rendered it null.”
“A walking magic void,” Coyote said. “Could be very useful.”
“Useful how?” I asked.
“We could stand him in front of the vortex while you open it. He could suck all the vortex energy into him and negate it. End of worry about those Beneath.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “We can’t be sure he doesn’t have a limit. That much energy might kill him.”
“Maybe. But those Beneath would be finished. Worth the sacrifice of one human being.”
“No,” I said.
Coyote cocked his head to study me, then he burst out laughing. “I love you, Janet. If you’d stood there calmly and said, ‘You’re right, let’s sacrifice him,’ I’d have been sorely disappointed and probably would have had to kill you. But you’re not your mother. You care, even for a man you want to deck.”
“Please stop reading my mind.”
“I don’t have to. I can read your face.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not in the room,” Nash snapped. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Neither do we,” Coyote said. “You, Nash Jones, are an enigma. I’ve never met a null before.”
Maya struggled up from the floor. Her hair hung in tangles, and her dress was ripped, but she faced Coyote with her head high, eyes snapping. “Leave him alone. All right, so magic is real. I felt my arm heal, and it hurt like hell, if you care. But that doesn’t mean you can bombard him when he doesn’t understand what’s going on. You aren’t going to use Nash for anything.”
Nash put his hands on her shoulders. “Maya, why don’t you go home?”
Maya jerked to face him. “Don’t be condescending to me, you son of a bitch. I’m only saying what’s right.”
I saw the pulse beating in Nash’s neck again, his growing anger on top of confusion. I did the best thing I possibly could for him. I grabbed Mick’s hand and told him and Coyote that I needed to talk to them out front.
I closed the kitchen door behind us as Nash’s and Maya’s voices rose. The saloon outside was peaceful in comparison, a haven from anger.
“What is it, baby?” Mick asked me. His warm voice sent shivers down my spine, the answering storm magic rising inside me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I want them to be alone so they’ll fight it out.”
Coyote laughed at me. “I like the way you think, Begay. I’m out of here. Have things to do and places to go before morning. Be careful.” His voice dropped to serious tones. “Things are dangerous, and your time is coming.”
He swung around and walked out, his boots grating on the tile floor.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Cryptic is one thing, but he’s just spooky.”
“I agree with him. I’m still not sure I understand why you wanted to come back here, now that you found Amy.”
“I have to stop her, Mick. She’s dangerous, and I’m the only one who’s been able to get away from her—as far as I know.”
“And what makes you think you can fight her?”
I ran my hands up the insides of Mick’s arms. “I have you.”
His kiss breathed new life into me. I’d been avoiding him since we’d returned from Tucson, and we’d retreated somewhat into the shells we’d worn before. I’d buried myself in details of the hotel, and he did whatever it was he did when he wasn’t here protecting me.
But I’d realized on our trip to Tucson how much I needed him. Whatever Mick’s motive for manipulating our first meeting, whatever his motive for protecting me, he’d done more than simply keep me alive. He’d showed me how to live.
Mick had allowed me to become more than Janet the misunderstood, misfit child, or Janet the woman running away from her terrifying origins. Being with Mick had been more than about sex, more than about riding together. Mick had given me life itself.
I wound my arms around his neck, and opened my mouth for his kiss. My braless breasts ached, the nipples tingling where my shirt rubbed them.
Mick lifted me and set me on the bar. I wrapped my legs around him, letting us contact, groin to groin, through our clothes. He moved his hands under my shirt, cupping my breasts.
The magic mirror drew a shuddering breath. “Oh, sweet-hearts, normally I’d die before I interrupted this stimulating little scene, but . . .”
“What?” I asked it in irritation.
The mirror’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s here!”
Mick whipped around, but there was nothing behind him. Outside the window, emptiness filled the dark parking lot, with the glow of the Crossroads Bar beyond it. Behind that, on the western horizon, forks of lightning fingered the earth.
From the kitchen, I heard a clear, light voice. “Nash?”
Mick and I looked at each other again, Mick’s eyes holding knowledge and fear. We nodded in silent agreement, then he released me, and we did what we needed to do.
Twenty-six
Amy McGuire stood inside the back door of the kitchen, the screen rattling in the wind. She wore the same plain blouse and skirt I’d seen her in down in Tucson, and the fluorescent light glinted on her close-cropped hair.
Nash and Maya had been locked in an embrace, Maya against the counter in a position almost as erotic as the one Mick had put me in. Maya was a vibrant contrast to Amy, all color and brightness, while Amy was a pale ghost. Only Amy’s eyes held any color, irises burning bright green.
“Nash?” Amy repeated, looking from Nash to Maya. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand,” Maya said. “You went to find God. I stayed with Nash.”
Amy gave Maya a glower of vast annoyance. “You are the Whore of Babylon, Maya Medina. Look at you, dressed to seduce. I’m surprised you didn’t come riding in on the Beast.”
“The Beast.” Mick’s smile was more intimidating than I’d ever seen it, his eyes darkening to midnight black. “That would be me.”
“Ah, so that’s what you are.”
Nash broke in. “Amy, what are you doing here?”
Amy flicked her green gaze back to Nash. “I came to see you. To explain what I’d done and why.” She moved nearer. “To touch you again. To taste what we had. And I find you here with this slut. May God forgive you.” She laughed. “Because I won’t.”
“What is wrong with you?” Maya asked. “You think you can waltz back here like nothing ever happened? You deserted him without so much as saying good-bye. Did you desert the nuns too? What did they ever do to you?”
Amy smiled, and I recognized the smile. “They gave me teeth,” she said.
Before Nash could move, Amy had gone for a knife, the big, long chef’s knife I’d been using to slice tomatoes for the sandwiches. I grabbed the pistol that was still on the counter and jammed the magazine into it.
Nash remained frozen and so did Mick. Only Maya knew I wasn’t joking and dove for the floor. Amy rushed at Maya, knife raised, and I shot Amy, three slugs, straight into her shoulder.
Amy went down, eyes glazing, blood rushing out of her to pool on my newly cleaned ceramic tile floor. Maya rolled away from her, gasping.
Nash rounded on me, gray eyes lit with fires of wrath. He had the pistol out of my hand and me slammed facedown into the counter before Mick could move to stop him.
“What the hell did you do?” Nash screamed at me.
“It’s not her,” I shouted into the counter.
Nash yanked my hands behind my back, and I felt the cold steel of handcuffs. “You have the fucking right to remain silent. Anything you say I’ll make damned sure is used against you . . .”
He went on, but I had bigger things to worry about. My mother would desert Amy’s body now that she was down, which left the question—where would she go?
“Mick, get Maya out of here!”
Mick was hustling Maya out before I finished the command, figuring out the problem the same time I did.
“Don’t you go anywhere. Call an ambulance!” Nash shouted. “I’m hauling you to jail, Janet Begay, and I’m going to make damn sure you never see the light of day again.”
“Nash . . .”
“Shut up!” He grabbed towels and pressed them to Amy’s shoulder, Amy’s face pale and drained. I heard Mick’s bike starting up, the loud throbbing dying into the distance.
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