Crossroads Burning

by Nash, Layla

  “Of course.” The fake smile remained frozen on my lips, even as I talked. “Are those charges still pending against Lucia and me?”

  Hazel inhaled a little too sharply for normal, but neither of us looked at her. Whitehouse took his time answering, picking a piece of lint off the sleeve of his sport coat. He finally leaned back and spread out, taking up far more of the chair than Gran ever could. “Potentially. We are still investigating some of the circumstances.”

  Just excellent. It was a good thing I’d put my pie plate down, otherwise I might have chucked it at his head. The sheer fucking audacity of him walking into my house and telling me the charges were still being investigated impressed me just a bit. Even Lucia could learn something from him in that respect. “Great. Let me know when you’ve straightened it all out.”

  “Rest assured we’ll be in touch.” He pressed his fingers together in front of his chin, steepling them and studying me in silence for a good long while. I’d just about resolved to get up for more pie when he spoke, that eerie green gaze pinning me to the chair. “As Hazel was no doubt explaining to you, your family is somewhat unique in the way you use magic. The bureau will be staying in Rattler’s Run to monitor and study how and what you do. I’ll be leading the team that remains.”

  The team that remained. Which meant some of the teams would go. I refused to react, since there was something about his tone that made me think it was a test—whether I’d ask about Lincoln, or tell them all to leave, or to stay. I thought maybe I couldn’t react, since that cold hollow place from Nona’s death took up most of my insides. Faking a reaction might have worked better, but I couldn’t muster the energy. So I waited. I’d learned from Gran, too.

  As the silence stretched, Whitehouse’s smile spread. “Well. Smarter than you look, it seems.”

  Hazel started to frown. “Sir, perhaps—”

  His fingers twitched on the arm of the chair, barely more than a flicker, and her teeth clicked shut. Whitehouse leaned forward slowly, the chair creaking under his weight, and stared at me as if he could see clear through to my soul. “I don’t know what you are or who made you, Anastasia, but I will find out. And I will get to the bottom of what happened here. I won’t leave until I do. So if you want me gone, it would behoove you to cooperate to the fullest, tell us whatever we want to know, and demonstrate whatever Hazel requests. Otherwise I will be forced to bring in different teams, more experienced in... questioning reluctant witnesses. You do not want that. Believe me.”

  I did. I could read between the lines, and with as annoying and scary as Heathrow was, there had to be far worse. Far, far worse. But that hollowed-out part still took up most of my insides, and I couldn’t muster the emotion or energy to give a fuck. And I hoped he could see it. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” he repeated, the barest hint of disbelief in his voice. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

  “Okay, thanks?” I tried. I lifted my hands in the kind of shrug that took the least amount of effort. “Okay, have a nice day?”

  His eyes narrowed as he frowned. “Ms. Luckett, you are not taking this seriously. Let me assure you, this—”

  “Let me assure you,” I said. I forced that plastic smile back to my face, and wished that Lucia would wake up to rain some hate down on the man. All the rage from Nona’s death simmered out of the emptiness and boiled over, since she might have lived if that asshole controlled his people and Heathrow hadn’t let Ronan escape. “It behooves me to do whatever I want. It behooves me to not give a fuck until you’ve got real questions or real problems. It behooves me to get another piece of pie and hike my happy ass back to bed. And yes, I know I’m not using that word right, and no, I don’t care. Rest assured.”

  “Luckett,” Hazel said, trying once more to make peace. “We’ll talk and come up with a plan, and—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Hazel.” I gripped my knees until my fingers ached. “I’ve spent my whole life being talked down to, insulted, harassed, and ostracized by this town. This guy isn’t even in the same league.”

  I pushed to my feet, my back aching and all of my joints popping, and stretched to make sure everything still lined up. Whitehouse rose as well, and Hazel jumped up to edge a little between us. Whitehouse reached for my arm. “We’re not done yet, Anastasia.”

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I’m still recovering from all that work I did, saving the town and the country from a bunch of werewolves, and covering for both your teams of experts who came out here to handle it. I’m still waiting to see or hear a fucking speck of gratitude from you. When I see it, we can continue this conversation and maybe sort out some of the business that remains. Until then, I think you remember where the door is. Have a nice day.”

  I hobbled out of the living room and through the kitchen, almost wishing he’d grab my arm or try to make me stay so I could hex him or just smack him, but Hazel’s low voice seemed to head all of that off. Which was just as well for all of us, really. I still didn’t quite know what Whitehouse was, and until I did, it wasn’t prudent to pick a fight with him. I barely made it up the stairs before I fell asleep.

  Chapter 65

  I woke up in bed again, which I took as a good sign, since I wasn’t in bad witch jail on Whitehouse’s orders. The sky outside was gray with early light, and no one else in the house stirred. I cherished the silence and wanted to revel in it, so instead of staying in bed I got up and padded quietly down to the kitchen. I made a mug of hot tea and crept out to the porch, grabbing one of the heavy fleece blankets from the back of the couch as I went.

  The porch furniture had all been fixed, probably by Nelson and Mason as they searched for more chores, so I didn’t worry about sitting in the rocking chair that Gran’s great-grandfather made for his Luckett bride. The blanket and tea kept me warm as I watched the sun rise, breathing in the chilly air and trying to orient myself to the new world. Everything felt unfamiliar or at least off-kilter.

  I sipped the tea and sat with my feelings and only the voice in my head. Just me. There had been so much noise and movement and anger swirling around every time I woke up that I hadn’t had a chance to think through what had happened and figure out how I felt about it. The bad feelings still sat heavy and aching in my chest, keeping my lungs from inflating and my heart from beating, but some room grew around them that created the possibility of moving forward. The possibility of waking up one morning and not feeling like I’d failed the entire world and my family and Nona. Maybe someday. Someday it wouldn’t hurt so sharply.

  Or so I hoped.

  The ache that followed after Gran’s death and my aunts’ hadn’t felt the same as when Ma passed away. My mother’s death hadn’t been a surprise, at the end, but it flared up unexpectedly into searing pain when I remembered all the milestones she’d miss and during quiet moments when I thought I smelled her perfume or saw her favorite flower. She, at least, still visited me in my dreams.

  But Nona... I clutched my mug of tea until it burned my palms, and the pain distracted me a little from the hollowness in my heart. The suddenness, the violence, the guilt... It was so… final. The Luckett ancestors came back as ghosts, but I didn’t think coyotes could do the same. She was gone forever and it was all because of me. How the hell could I move past that? Although I missed her desperately, I’d made peace with the fact that my mother passed away too soon from cancer. How could I make peace with Nona’s death, and my role in it, when her murderer was still walking around in front of me?

  I could have killed Ronan, maybe, out there at the Crossroads. I’d been close. I could have done it. I’d thought about it. But there had been that voice in the back of my head telling me not to. Maybe it had been Temperance, maybe it had been my own conscience... It didn’t really matter. I wasn’t a murderer. Even for Nona, I wasn’t a murderer.

  The thought made my sinuses prickle and my vision blur, because I’d wanted to be a murderer. I’d wanted to avenge Nona and Temperance and her love and their family and my
family and everyone Ronan ever hurt. I didn’t care about the price. I didn’t care about the blood on my hands or the magical cost and karmic debt of taking another life. I’d already done it with the werewolves before I knew they could have been turned back.

  What was broken had been joined. What was taken had been returned. What was lost had been found.

  Except for us. We’d been broken, my sisters and I. We’d had things taken from us. We’d been lost. I’d wanted to kill Ronan for us. To account for everything he’d done and everything that we’d still have to deal with because of his actions. Whitehouse sat in my house and judged me, and it was because Ronan drew his attention, dragged the feds out to Rattler’s Run permanently, and further endangered the turned werewolves.

  But standing over Ronan as he lay prone and bound, it would have been so easy to use a hex to stop his heart as he looked right at me...

  I shuddered, peering into the tea in the hopes it would reveal some secrets. The soft creaking of the rockers against the porch hid the hush-hush of footsteps in the grass, so I didn’t even hear Luke’s approach until he cleared his throat, standing right there on the porch steps.

  My heart stopped and I froze, staring at him. He had dark circles under his eyes and looked as if he’d lost twenty pounds in under a week, his clothes hanging from him and his cheeks gaunt. He didn’t have his coyote skin on, and he carried a backpack by one strap over his shoulder. We looked at each other for a long moment, then I choked on a breath and started crying and slopped the tea out of my mug as I tried to point him toward a chair.

  Luke smiled and dropped the backpack and wrapped his arms around me, and we stood there for a long time as the sun rose and the birds woke and the world kept moving, but none of it brought Nona back. I pressed my face to his shoulder until my tears soaked into his shirt, and still his arms didn’t ease. He rested his cheek on my head and rubbed my back, and still the world didn’t right itself back to how things should have been.

  When I finally pulled myself together and wiped the tears from my cheeks with the tail of the fleece blanket, Luke stepped back but still held my shoulders as he watched my face. “You okay now?”

  “No,” I said, miserable. “I don’t think I’ll ever b-be okay. Luke, I’m so sorry. I know there’s nothing I can say or do that can make up for what happened, but I’m sorry and I just—”

  “Hold on, Sass,” he said. He shooed me back to the rocker and limped to take the chair next to it, his grip gentle on my wrist. “What are you talking about?”

  For a split second, I wondered if maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing and Nona wasn’t dead and it had just been a nightmare. The blinding hope just created more of an ache deep in my gut. Because it wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a dream. It had happened. And nothing would ever change that.

  “N-Nona,” I said. My voice shook and cracked, and I gripped the arms of the rocking chair until the pain in my hands almost distracted me from what I had to say. “She’s dead because of me. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been out there, if I’d been paying attention, she wouldn’t have—”

  “Stop, Sass.” Luke ran his hands through his hair, suddenly shoulder-length instead of far longer, and looked even sadder. “Sister, listen to me. I miss her. I will always miss her. But it was not your fault.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, Sass. I know that’s hard for you.” He smiled, catching my hand and lacing our fingers together. “Breathe. Listen to me. Hear me.” He waited until I managed a shaky nod, then squeezed my fingers and went on. “It was not your fault. People make choices. I don’t believe in fate; most of my people do not. I believe in choice and freedom, but freedom of choice does not mean freedom from consequences. We make our choices and we deal with the outcomes. Right?”

  I nodded, miserable. I’d made my choices and everyone else paid the price.

  Luke made an exasperated noise, even though he had to clear his throat a few times before the words came out. “She made her choice, Sass. She knew if she went that she wasn’t coming back. She saw it in her dreams a few nights ago, so she knew. And still she went. Because…because this place is important to her. It matters. The Crossroads and our sacred land matter, particularly when we have to defend it against the kind of evil that Ronan represents. You asked for help. We heard you. You needed help and Nona knew that what was taken from us could be returned. That mattered. And you mattered to her.”

  I covered my face as the hollow feeling inside me filled up with guilt and regret and hurt. “Luke, please don’t. I don’t think I—”

  “You meant a lot to her, Sass.” Luke sighed and leaned back in his chair, letting me hide, though he reached for my hand. “You did. She loved you. And when she saw a bit of what happened in her dream... She wasn’t going to risk you. Nona said she’d lived a long life, a good life—that she’d done a lot of good for our people and the community and, ahem—the men of this town. And the men of the oil fields. And the ranches.”

  I laughed, even feeling misty-eyed. Nona had been quite a hell-raiser and figured her extracurricular activities would expand the gene pool so more coyotes could be born without being inbred. It still felt wrong to laugh, but she’d been a walking, running scandal for decades. She’d still been completely comfortable in her own skin, and didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought or said about her.

  “If I hadn’t saved Ronan, none of us would have been in that kind of trouble. She wouldn’t have sacrificed herself.” My legs trembled and set the rocking chair to moving again, and I didn’t dare release Luke’s hand.

  He heaved another sigh and propped his feet up on the battered coffee table, staring out at the early dawn. Somewhere far away, a bird chirped and trilled. The sun began to warm some of the bite out of the air, and I let the blanket slip a little. Luke’s thumb smoothed over the back of my hand.

  “Yeah, but you’re not a murderer, Sass. You had to stay true to yourself, which meant saving who you thought was an innocent victim. You tried to help him. The fact that he turned out to be a complete shit isn’t your fault. Sometimes we can’t choose who we save, and that’s probably for the best.”

  The ache settled into my heart, though it wasn’t quite as sharp as it had been. His calmness and reason normally irritated the hell out of me, although it was a comfort when facing the future without Nona.

  “She wanted her death to mean something,” he went on. “She didn’t want to slip into eternity in her bed. She wanted to go out fighting. And she did. She went protecting her people and her friends and her family from great evil. It’s all we can hope for, right?”

  I’d never thought there was a good way to die, but I couldn’t argue with Nona’s logic. Except for the actual dying. Not dying would have been infinitely better. “She avenged more than she knew. Temperance’s ghost, in the cave, said she loved a warrior from your tribe, way back in her time. One of the medicine men descended from Coyote. Ronan killed him and a lot of your people before he trapped Temperance in the cave.”

  He hmmed a bit, then glanced over at me. “If I told you I already kind of knew that, would you hate me forever?”

  I sat up and stared at him, dropping his hand. “What?”

  “Yeah.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a near-smile. “It’s part of our history and lore, Sass. We didn’t know which of the Lucketts started this all off, but we knew there was a man who massacred one of the clans within the tribe. And periodically one of us would have a couple of kids with a Luckett. It’s been a couple generations since that happened, which was why Nona always wanted us to get together.”

  My brain couldn’t process what he said. “Wait…what?”

  Luke chuckled and leaned back in his chair, looking out at the yard once more. “The tribe has a long tradition of oral storytelling. We don’t write anything down so people like Heathrow and his friends can’t steal our history and use it against us. I’m the keeper of the family history now, Sass. But we all know that the first Luckett
married one of our people and brought trouble to us, although she also tried to save us from it.”

  I wrapped my hands around the empty mug, wishing I had the strength and energy to magic fresh coffee into it so I didn’t have to get up. “Is that why we’re not allowed on the reservation?”

  “That... requirement was from several generations after the first Luckett. They forgot their links to the tribe that the first Luckett forged, and it was a time in history where a great deal of ugliness was directed at my people.” Luke glanced over at me, his dark eyes smiling. “And then the ban became tradition. Well, the Lucketts believed it was simply a requirement of stewardship over the Crossroads. And we didn’t mind, so we never corrected that perception.”

  I smacked his shoulder. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  His white teeth flashed and he turned his attention to the roof of the porch, as if he didn’t want to laugh at me but had a hard time resisting. “It’s been a great joke for many years. But still. It’s been four generations since someone in my line and a Luckett found themselves together, and Nona feared that the coyotes would be gone in a generation if we did not bring the Luckett blood back into our line. She believed, as did most of my ancestors, that the Luckett magic—whatever it is—strengthens our magic and keeps us tied to the Crossroads. It gives us stewardship of the magic, adding to our stewardship to the land. Diversity made us stronger once, when your ancestor joined with mine, and so we expect that diversity to strengthen us again.”

  “I can’t believe you never told me,” I said, shaking my head. “Or that Nona didn’t tell me. We used to walk for hours and she never found the opportunity to mention that? Or what about when you were here and Ronan was talking about shit and…couldn’t you smell it on him?”

  “Nona knew something was wrong.” Luke ran a hand through his shorter hair, and I wondered why he’d cut it. “Something was wrong with him, I mean. And more than him being a racist, misogynist tool.”