Shadow Walker

by Allyson James

  Cassandra was there, the only one. She had a fire going in the fireplace, and she was dressed in the same clothes she’d worn yesterday, though covered with a white fake fur coat.

  I went to the fireplace and held out my hands to the blaze. “Cassandra,” I said. “About your car . . .”

  “It’s insured,” Cassandra replied in her brisk voice. “I knew when it wrecked, because my wards on it alerted me. I called Mick, and he went to find you. The car can be replaced, and I’m happy to see you back in one piece.”

  “More or less,” I said. “I’m sorry you had to spend the night here.”

  She shrugged, her sleek hair showing no sign of her having slept on it. “Even if I’d had a car, I couldn’t have made it home in that weather. Fremont and Maya were stuck here too. Heat’s out, and so is the hot water, but we have plenty of wood.”

  All the rooms, including mine, had been fitted with woodburning stoves or fireplaces in addition to the central heating. Guests liked the extra fire, and desert winter nights could be severely cold.

  “At least we have electricity,” I said.

  “We didn’t even have that, but we have Maya. She got it back on, and she and Fremont are working on the heat. The only guest last night was Ansel, and he doesn’t mind the cold. Good thing—he was the one who brought in all the wood. He wouldn’t let me go out to get it.”

  Ansel would be asleep now, hiding from what little daylight there was. “I never thought I’d say this, but thank the gods for Nightwalkers.”

  “At least for Ansel,” Cassandra agreed.

  “If it wouldn’t drive him to a killing frenzy, I’d open a vein for him myself,” I said. “It sounds like the storm’s pretty much done, though. When it gets lighter, maybe Fremont and Maya can get home. You too. I can handle things today.”

  Cassandra gave me a hesitant look. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “No.” I hadn’t bothered to glance at a clock.

  “Noon,” she said. “You slept a long time.”

  Noon? I did a mental readjustment. “Why is it so dark? Is there another storm coming?” I didn’t feel one, so I knew as soon as I asked that this wasn’t the case.

  For answer, Cassandra crossed the lobby and threw open the shutters. The lobby windows were supposed to look across the parking lot toward the open desert on the other side of the Crossroads, with part of the Crossroads Bar in view.

  I saw only blank white. A bank of snow reached all the way to the top of the windows, cutting out the light.

  It’s handy to have a boyfriend who can wield fire. Mick came down from the roof, where he’d been surveying our surroundings, and melted a path from the front door, across the parking lot, and to the road. We decided to let the snow remain piled everywhere else, because it insulated the hotel and kept it warmer now that we had no central heating.

  I climbed up to the roof, which shared a floor with the building’s third story. I huddled in my coat and looked down at the bank of snow that rose to the second-floor windows.

  Cassandra stood beside me. With her hands in the pockets of her white coat, she looked like a supermodel showing off winter fashions.

  “I heard that half the Navajo Nation is cut off, same with the Hopi,” she said. “Roads to remote areas are impassable.”

  “I believe it.” The highway between Flat Mesa and Magellan, a major road, was blanketed with several feet of snow. Except for where Mick had cleared it, the snow lay unbroken for miles.

  I’d already called my father. He’d assured me that in Many Farms they were cold but fine. They had a pile of snow, but their heat worked, at least, and they had a well-stocked stove in the family hogan.

  Maya and Fremont were in the basement trying to coax the heater back online. We had food, I’d checked, and Ansel’s gallon jugs of blood were still there. Ted hadn’t thrown them away, and I silently blessed Elena for chasing him out before he could.

  I told Cassandra what had happened at Ted’s office, and Cassandra’s brows shot up. “He tried to force you? And he’s still alive?”

  “I hit him hard. He won’t be touching me again.”

  Cassandra’s eyes blazed with outrage. “Men like him can’t be allowed to get away with sexual harassment, Janet. You should report him.”

  I contemplated holding Ted upside down over the sinkhole Nash and I had fallen into until he retracted his demands. Screaming. Much more satisfying than suing him. I sighed. “He’s not worth the hassle. Let me make sure my hotel is safe, and then I’ll ask Mick to have a talk with him.”

  “You can take him to court about the inspection. Have the county supervisor make him prove his case.”

  “I would,” I said, “but have you seen the garbage behind my walls? I don’t know how it happened, but everything’s a complete mess. All Ted would have to do is get an independent inspector in here to confirm his report, and we’d be done for. We have to fix it.”

  “I can help—come up with some spells.”

  “I’d appreciate that. I have to wonder whether Gabrielle is destroying my hotel just to prove she can. But I have wards that would go off like crazy if she comes within ten feet of the place. I’d know.”

  “The damage might simply be due to water and dry rot,” Cassandra said. “It happens.”

  “That quickly?” The deterioration was strange, and there had to be an explanation besides the weather and the arid climate. This hotel had been abandoned three times in its life, the owners simply walking away. I wondered if the deterioration was the reason why. But if something magical had caused the damage, we’d have known, wouldn’t we? Between Mick, me, and Cassandra, we had so many magical warnings in place that we’d be able to detect a gnat that had been magicked to death.

  Mick came out onto the roof with us, leather coat pulled closed against the cold, his breath steaming. He gazed about at the whiteness, then put his arms around me from behind. “Looks like we’re not going anywhere for a while.”

  Cassandra smiled at us as she headed for the door. “Wonder what you’ll find to do.”

  She left us alone. I closed my eyes as Mick kissed my hair. All signs of his anger and his white eyes were gone—I could only conclude that he’d taken care of whatever had happened to him.

  “Any sign of Gabrielle?” I asked.

  “Didn’t see any when I went to move Cassandra’s car. I thought maybe my flame had gotten her, but I don’t think so.”

  “She hadn’t come to kill me.” When I reviewed our fight in my head, I realized that Gabrielle had been holding back. Scary thought. “This is the biggest storm we’ve had all winter. She came to see what I could do when I was in the height of my storm powers.”

  “For what?” Mick tightened his embrace. “I don’t like the thought that she’s planning to move against you. If I lost you, Janet, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  This beautiful man with the dragon tattoos and the fiery eyes loved me. I never could believe it. He’d even made me his dragon mate, which meant that other dragons weren’t allowed to have me or kill me. Most of them wanted to kill me.

  “I’d like to know what she wants,” I said. “But don’t worry, I won’t let her win. If my mother sent Gabrielle to best me, I won’t let her win either.”

  We stood in silence, contemplating the snow and the crisp blue sky, now free of clouds. The mountains to the west were stark and clear in the brilliant air.

  With Mick behind me, I didn’t need a heater. Maybe I could get him to create a wall of flame or something inside—one that wouldn’t burn the place to the ground.

  Mick spoke before I could bring it up. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I felt safe with him. Nothing could touch me up here, high above the snow, with my dragon lover holding on to me. I thought of other ways Mick could keep me warm—the two of us in bed under the covers, his naked body cuddled up to mine. I would make sure the magic mirror was shut in the drawer this time. />
  Mick nuzzled my ear. “Among the Diné,” he said, “how does a man approach a woman to ask her to marry him?”

  Nine

  I broke away and swung around, my breath fogging in the cold. “What?”

  Mick watched me quietly, arms folded, eyes dark blue. “I’m interested in human customs and marriage rituals. Tell me about yours.”

  “Why?” I asked in a strangled voice.

  “I’m curious. I’ve never asked you about these things before, and as much as I live among humans, I don’t understand the intricate details of their customs.”

  Why on earth did he have to know about them right now? We had Gabrielle and skeletal hands to worry about, not to mention Ted and my hotel problems. “I’m sure a storyteller like Jamison can tell you better than I can about Diné customs.”

  “But I want you to tell me.”

  He studied me, dragonlike, with his head tilted, his eyes taking on a black gleam. Whenever I let myself be lulled into thinking that Mick was human, he’d look at me with that intense stare, reminding me that he was a couple centuries older than I was, not to mention a giant reptile.

  “Traditionally?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “If you want.”

  I drew a breath. “Traditionally, among the Diné, when a girl reaches marriageable age, her father goes out looking for a good match. He approaches the father and uncles of young men of other clans who are ready to marry. Fathers and uncles negotiate. There’s a lot of talk, a lot of bargaining, before the couple in question even meet. But that’s traditional. When my cousin April married, she simply accepted her boyfriend’s proposal. Knowing April, I’m pretty sure the whole marriage thing was her idea. Her husband looks perpetually confused about how he came to be part of my family.”

  Mick listened, smiling a little. “What if the eligible bachelor is alone in the world? No family?”

  “That’s rare. Most Diné, even orphans, have some family—aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. Family is more than parents and children.” I had so much family I couldn’t turn around without tripping over them. That was my father’s doing. I was his illegitimate daughter, mother unknown to all but him, but my usually quiet and subdued father had refused to give me up. The family had accepted me—grudgingly, but they’d done it.

  “Among dragons, it’s more common to be alone,” Mick said. “We need so much territory, and when humans overran the world, there wasn’t a lot of room left for us. We’ve been dying out for centuries.”

  Mick didn’t talk much about his dragon background, only occasionally feeding me bits of information. He’d once told me about a lady dragon he’d planned to take as mate, long ago. She’d been stolen from him by another dragon, and she’d later died. He’d been alone since.

  The dragon council, a triumvirate who enforced dragon law, had assigned Mick to watch over me. The original assignment had been to kill me, but Mick had turned things his own way. He was still watching over me.

  “Dying out?” I repeated.

  “Slowly. Nothing to worry about. Dragons live a long time.”

  “Maybe, but do Stormwalkers?”

  Mick’s smile vanished, and I saw a deep and ageless pain in his eyes. “I don’t know. That’s why I want to enjoy every minute I can with you.”

  I knew what he meant. He would watch me age and die before he changed much himself. He knew he’d lose me, and he was already preparing himself for it.

  “You should find a lady dragon,” I said, trying to make my voice light. “Someone who can be with you for another couple of centuries, someone who can live inside a volcano with you.”

  Mick laced his fingers through mine. “A lady dragon hasn’t snared me. You have.” He leaned to me, his eyes darkening. “Mate isn’t just a word to me, Janet. It never has been. I want you as my mate in all ways, in bed and out of it. I want to give you all I have, all that I am.”

  A breath of freezing air swept over the snow and made me shiver. “Maybe we should talk about this later.”

  “When? There’s always something crazy happening around you, around us. I have to talk about this when I can catch you alone for five minutes.”

  That was true enough. “Mick . . .”

  Mick closed on me again, hands cupping my shoulders. “What are you afraid of?” he asked. “Me?”

  I wasn’t sure. Obligation to be the perfect wife, which I was convinced I never could be? Fear of producing children with the touch of evil I inherited from my mother?

  “Everything,” I said. “I’m afraid of everything.”

  “I know. I want to make sure you’re never afraid again.”

  Gods, he’d break my heart. The fact that Mick wanted to be with me and me alone stunned the hell out of me. But all my life I’d been watched, restricted, controlled. Things had happened to me in the last year that I hadn’t quite come to terms with, one of them being having Mick back in my life.

  “I love you,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I love being with you, believe me. And I love knowing you have my back. I love that you claimed me as your dragon mate to protect me from the other dragons. We’re partners, lovers, best friends.” I closed my hands on his hard ones. “Right now, that’s enough for me.”

  Mick’s eyes turned blue again, the human eyes that had persuaded me to give him my virginity years ago. He reached out and traced my lips. “But it’s not enough for me,” he said.

  He released me and walked away, his boots grating on the sanded roof. Mick went back inside, and I was left alone in the white, icy world with tears that froze on my cheeks.

  No big surprise that by the time I went back downstairs, Mick had gone. Snowed-over roads wouldn’t stop a dragon—he’d probably flown back to his Pacific island to bask on the beach while we froze our butts off here.

  At least Maya had gotten the heat working. Cassandra and I cheered when a blast of hot air came out of the vents, but we kept our coats on until the place warmed up. Fremont and I scrounged through the pantry and freezer and put together brunch. Maya could cook like a dream, but she’d already done enough work coaxing the heat pump back on, so I was happy to make cornmeal pancakes and let her rest.

  We toasted Maya with orange juice and fell to eating. I was hungry after my battle with Gabrielle and my wild night with Mick. I tried not to think about Mick and the way he’d walked away from me, because that way led to hurt and confusion.

  “I called Nash,” Maya said. “He got stuck at the sheriff’s department overnight.”

  “Nash’s dream come true,” I said. “Not being able to leave work must be heaven for him.”

  “I’m still pissed off at you for driving him in yesterday,” Maya said. “He needs to rest.”

  I pointed a pancake-filled fork at her. “You should thank me for saving your relationship. If you’d forced him to stay home much longer, he’d have thrown you out. You know it.”

  “I know.” Maya ate glumly. “He doesn’t like being taken care of.”

  “Bullshit. He likes it, but he needs to think it’s his choice.”

  Maya thought about that, and she started to smile. “So if I told him I’m done with babying him, he might find a way to keep me around?”

  “Maybe.”

  Fremont chuckled. “Jones has to be crazy. If a woman wanted to move into my house and spoon-feed me, I wouldn’t say no. I bet if you wore sexy lingerie while you fed him, he’d change his mind real quick. And if you want to model it for me first, I won’t stop you.”

  Maya made a face at him, but I could see she didn’t think Fremont’s suggestion of putting on skimpy lingerie to nurse Nash was a bad one.

  By two, the snowplow from Magellan had made its way to the Crossroads, which lay two miles north of the town, then headed up to meet the plows from the county. Magellan had only one plow, which was driven by one of Fremont’s many cousins. The cousin stopped at the hotel and warmed himself with a cup of coffee before driving on, releasing us from our snowy prison.

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nbsp; Maya and Fremont could get home now, but that would leave Cassandra and me stranded without vehicles. Cassandra said she didn’t mind staying at the hotel while we worked on it, and I let Fremont give me a ride into town so I could run errands and stop by Cassandra’s apartment to grab her some clothes.

  Cassandra lived with a Changer, a shape-shifter who could turn into a wolf. Pamela had dark hair and Native American features, was tall, as most Changers were, and had dark eyes except when they turned gray like a wolf’s. Those wolf eyes peered at me in suspicion when she opened the door a crack, then flicked back to brown when she saw who I was.

  I was never sure where I stood with Pamela, but she tolerated me because Cassandra liked me. When we’d first met—if you could call it that—Pamela had tried to choke the life out of me.

  “If Cassandra’s staying at the hotel, so am I,” Pamela told me bluntly. “I’ll pack a bag for her.”

  “I don’t have a cook or a maid up there right now. I might have to close until I get things straightened out.”

  “I can make my own bed, and cook in a pinch. By the way, Janet, I saw your boyfriend talking to a woman yesterday afternoon.”

  I gave her a blank look. “And?”

  “A woman I’d never seen before. She was blond and beautiful, wispy, in the ‘I’m a helpless female and I need a big, strong man’ kind of way. I saw them behind the library, and she was doing a lot of talking.”

  Something tightened in my chest. Mick hadn’t bothered to mention this woman to me, but maybe he’d been too busy blowing my mind talking about marriage.

  I’d never met a fragile blonde in Magellan or Flat Mesa. Most women in Magellan were hardworking and knew how to cater to tourists. There wasn’t much for a helpless female type to do here. The fact that it was a blonde chilled me a bit. My mother liked to possess blond women, and my heart beat a little faster. But my goddess mother was still sealed into the vortex, contained. Mick and I checked all the time, and so did Coyote. It couldn’t be her. I prayed it wasn’t her.