Shadow Walker

by Allyson James

  “I’m pretty sure Gabrielle wants to have his baby,” I said.

  “His baby?” Maya’s eyes were wide in outrage and fear. “What the fuck?”

  “Nash negates the most powerful magic out there,” I said. “A child from a woman with pure Beneath magic, coupled with the DNA of someone who can absorb all magic, would be damn powerful. My mother—my real mother—wanted that too. She wanted me to couple with Nash and bring her the resulting child.”

  Maya’s already wild eyes went rounder. “What?”

  “I stopped her. Mick and I stopped her.”

  “When the hell did this happen?”

  “Last May. Mick and I made sure she failed, but if my mother has sent Gabrielle in my place . . .” I got to my feet. “We need to find her.”

  Maya slammed herself between me and the door. “Nash never told me this. You never told me this. How could you not tell me?”

  “I’m sorry.” I was truly sorry, because Maya didn’t deserve any of this, but I needed to worry more about Gabrielle right now. “Of course Nash wasn’t going to confess that he was almost raped by a crazed goddess, if he even understood half of what was going on.”

  “What about you?” Her dark eyes flashed pain, betrayal, fury. “What, did you forget that your mother wanted you to get pregnant by my boyfriend?”

  “I didn’t want you to know about it once he was safe. You and Nash have enough problems.”

  “Problems that are none of your business.” She stabbed a slender finger at me. “Don’t you think I deserved to know? What else has gone on with Nash that you haven’t told me? Is he secretly married to someone else? Has he had a sex change? Come on, Janet, you seem to know everything there is to know about Nash Jones, while I—the woman he’s dating , for crap’s sake—know next to nothing.”

  “I know that he’s in love with you and always has been,” I said.

  “Oh, right, Janet. You claimed not an hour ago that I had all the control in my relationship with Nash. Explain to me how I’m supposed to believe that, when crazy magical women are after his sperm? Because of his ability to not do magic? It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I pressed my palms together, forefingers to my lips. “I’m sorry, Maya. I really am sorry. You can hate me later, but right now, I need to find Gabrielle, and I need to warn Nash. He’s thinking that she’s nothing but a petty vandal, but if he arrests her, and she’s in his custody . . .”

  Maya screamed in fury. She shoved her way past me and attacked the papers taped to the cabinet walls. She ripped and clawed, shredding the images of Nash into so much confetti. I should have stopped her, but I didn’t have the heart. Let her get back at Gabrielle as best she could. When I next faced Gabrielle, I didn’t want Maya anywhere near her.

  “Will this help?” I handed Cassandra a folded piece of paper with strands of Gabrielle’s hair I’d taken from the hairbrush in her bathroom.

  Cassandra studied the black threads of hair and nodded. “It will. For both location and binding.”

  Hence why leaving behind traces—hair, nail parings, anything—was a bad idea. Witches can use them to find a person’s essence, or to bind or manipulate the person. I was surprised at Gabrielle’s lack of caution—no wards on the doors, her hairbrush in plain sight. But maybe she simply didn’t know. Beneath magic, which was pure energy, was very different from witch magic, which used the connectedness of all things to work effective spells. I’d known nothing of witch magic before I met Mick, and Gabrielle hadn’t had the training I had.

  Cassandra started her spells in my private third-floor office, and Maya planted herself in the lobby, so she’d be on hand the moment Cassandra located Gabrielle. Maya had never had much faith in Wiccan magic before, but now she resolutely waited for the results.

  I called Nash and told him that by no means was he to approach Gabrielle, and if any of his connections found her, they were to call me first. I told him what I’d found in her room, and I told him why I thought she was stalking him. I’m not sure he believed me, but he sounded a bit unnerved.

  “I know how to do my job, Janet,” he snapped over the phone.

  “Jones, she’s not a perp with a pocketful of meth. You might be able to withstand her magic, but your deputies can’t, and the police in Snowflake can’t. You should call off the warrant before someone tries to arrest her and gets killed.”

  Letting a criminal get away was not in the Nash Jones codebook, but he growled, “For once, I think you’re right. But if I see her, I’ll do my best to make her answer for what she’s done.”

  “If you see her, you call me.”

  “Fine.”

  Jones hung up on me. I wasn’t sure if he meant he’d call me first, or if he’d try take Gabrielle down and call me afterward.

  Drake and Colby were still upstairs, Drake honoring his twenty-four-hour window with dragon stubbornness. Dragons never went back on their word, but if I didn’t find Mick and free him in the next eight hours, the same dragon honor would send Drake back to the council to round up a posse to hunt down the witch and kill her, no matter what that did to Mick.

  I had to find Mick before they did. My mind was a jumbled mess, worries clogging my thoughts. Gabrielle and Drake both wanted the witch dead, and neither was bothered much by the fact that her death would kill Mick. I knew I needed to be calm and think, but when I closed my eyes, trying to find the meditation exercises Jamison had taught me once upon a time, they eluded me. I could only feel the weight of the silver onyx-and-turquoise ring Mick had slid on my finger as his pledge to me and wonder if I’d ever see Mick’s bad-boy smile again.

  I studied the ring. Turquoise for protection, healing. Onyx for more protection, and silver for love. The stones flowed around the ring in a pattern for strength, courage, and again, protection.

  I kissed the ring softly, then let my gaze focus on it, reaching again for my meditative state. It cut my heart to study Mick’s beautiful gift to me, but at the same time it made me realize that he was still part of me.

  As I concentrated on the ring, the power of the stones became visible, like heat waves in a desert summer. Linked, intertwining: protection, healing, love, all laced with the tiniest bite of Mick’s fire magic.

  I brought the ring to my cheek, closing my eyes again. Mick’s magic, the merest touch, kissed my skin, and I opened my eyes and looked at the ring.

  Mick had given me this right after both Maya and Pamela had reported seeing him with Vonda, just before he’d had to go to her. Some part of him had known, even if his conscious mind hadn’t remembered his encounters with her, that he was being taken. He’d given me a ring filled with protective magic, and laced it with a tiny bit of dragon magic.

  I took off the ring and examined it closely, pouring my concentration into the stones. Had Mick left clues for me in it? Maybe a piece of his name or an idea where to find it?

  If he had, I wasn’t able to unlock the secret, no matter how much I probed and concentrated, no matter how deeply I tried to meditate. I found no music that might be a dragon name, no part of Mick to tell me where he was, or even if he were still alive.

  Damn it. I balled my fist, brought it down on my desk, and left the office.

  I went back to the bedroom and started going through the drawers that held Mick’s belongings, looking for clues, anything. Like Gabrielle, Mick traveled light, having nothing more than spare jeans and shirts, socks and underwear, hairbrush, toothbrush. Nothing that he’d poured his true name into to sing to me as soon as I touched it.

  I made the mistake of lifting one of his T-shirts to my nose. It smelled first of the laundry but then of Mick, his scent, his fire. I sank to my bed, hugging that shirt and burying my face in it.

  I would get him back. I would lie in this bed with him again and wrap my arms around him while he smiled down into my face and made my body sing. I didn’t care what I had to do or what kind of magic I had to use. I would bring him home.

  “Janet.”
<
br />   Pamela stood in my doorway, and I didn’t even question that she was back in the hotel. Where Cassandra went these days, so did Pamela. “Cass said to tell you she made a breakthrough.”

  I folded Mick’s shirt carefully and put it back into the drawer before following Pamela out into the lobby. Maya tossed aside the magazine she’d been pretending to read and went upstairs with us.

  Cassandra sat cross-legged in the middle of my third-floor office, a map of Arizona and New Mexico spread before her and strewn with black sand. Cassandra looked out of place on the floor in her business suit and no shoes, slim legs folded, smudges of black on her silk blouse. Her eyes were tired.

  “You’re not going to like this,” she said as I entered.

  “Why not?”

  “I found her, and she’s still there.” Cassandra pointed at a red dot on the map.

  I leaned closer and saw that the dot lay next to the words “Flat Mesa.” The dot pulsed. Cassandra moved her hand, and that bit of the map enlarged outward, as though she used the zoom function on a computer. The streets of Flat Mesa separated and became distinct, even showing houses and trees and cars. Cassandra stopped the map on a long, low ranch house set back from the road with a black F-250 parked in front of it.

  Maya made a noise of anguish and ran out of the room. I lunged after her, but my cell phone rang. For once I had it with me, and the caller ID readout said “Jones.”

  I slammed it to my ear, but I heard a woman’s voice, not Nash’s.

  “Hey, big sis. You need to get over here right now and bring your wicked Wicca. Better hurry, or Jones and I will go one on one.” A click, and she was gone.

  Twenty-two

  We had a hell of a time convincing Maya and Pamela to stay behind. I didn’t want volatile Maya anywhere near Gabrielle, because Gabrielle might simply kill her without blinking. Pamela wouldn’t have a much better chance.

  I finally convinced Pamela that she needed to keep Maya safe, and Colby, also chafing because he couldn’t leave the house without Drake, agreed to keep an eye on both of them. All three of them watched us go, not happy, Pamela growling and swearing under her breath. But muscle wouldn’t help us against Gabrielle, only magic, and I wasn’t certain even Cassandra and I together would be strong enough.

  We took the rental car Cassandra was using to Flat Mesa. Cassandra drove, and good thing too, because she drove calmly and kept the car on the road. I’d never have been able to.

  Darker clouds were gathering to the north and east, dimming the light. A storm would give me some advantage, though it might not be enough.

  Nash’s house looked quiet enough when we reached it. He’d cleared his driveway and front walk, the yard looking neat even draped in snow. We walked to the front door without bothering with stealth, found the door unlocked, and entered the house.

  Nash was sitting on the bench of his exercise machine when we walked in. A handcuff enclosed one wrist; the second of the pair was locked around an upright support bar of the machine. Gabrielle sat on a bar stool at the breakfast bar, eating a sandwich and looking at one of Nash’s gun magazines.

  “This looks nice,” she said, holding up a picture of an automatic rifle. “What does it do?”

  “Guns drive me crazy,” I said, moving to her. I rested my arm on the breakfast bar and squarely met her gaze. “If you don’t fire them right, they kick, and the chemicals and metal interfere with magic.”

  “Really?” Gabrielle turned a page, studied another weapon, and closed the magazine. “That’s interesting. You brought the witch. Good. I need you to do something for me.”

  “Let Nash go, and we’ll discuss it.”

  Gabrielle smiled. The silly look she’d affected around Nash during our previous encounters had vanished. She was hard and dangerous and no longer played. “Nash is mine. He’s my reward for all the trouble I’ve gone to.”

  “Your reward will be me letting you live,” I said. “Maybe.”

  I purposely didn’t let my magic build—actually, I beat it down as it rose with my panic. If Gabrielle thought me ready to fight, to kill, she might hurt Cassandra and Nash. Gabrielle couldn’t harm Nash magically, but she could blow up his house or shoot him with one of his many guns.

  Cassandra whispered rapidly under her breath. She’d caught me off guard with a powerful binding spell last year, and she let fly one just as powerful at Gabrielle.

  Gabrielle casually held up her hand. The binding spell hit whatever force Gabrielle shoved in front of it, and the spell rushed back toward Cassandra with blinding speed. Cassandra gasped and snapped off the spell the instant before its returning web could touch her.

  Damn. Why couldn’t I do things like that?

  “I didn’t ask you to bring the witch so she could bind me,” Gabrielle said in a hard voice. “I need her to do a locator spell, to find Vonda Wingate.”

  Cassandra tucked back a wisp of hair that had escaped during her spell attempt. “Don’t you think I’ve been trying? I’ve been doing locator spells on her for two days. She’s shielding herself, and doing it very well.”

  “Plus she has Mick’s magic to help her,” I said. “Mick knows amazing defensive spells.” Spells he’d showed to me. I wanted to die with grief.

  “I know that Vonda has Mick,” Gabrielle snapped. “And she will pay—oh, she will pay for going behind my back like this.”

  “I’m starting to not much care what you do to her.” I sounded so calm I amazed myself. “But I won’t let what you do hurt Mick.”

  “Whatever. She enslaved him so she could use him to kill me. Well, guess what? Vonda’s not taking me out, I’m taking her out. She’s not getting her hands on my prize.”

  We both looked at Nash, who scowled back. “Janet, get me out of these cuffs. Now.”

  “Do it and I kill Cassandra,” Gabrielle said.

  I folded my arms. “If you kill Cassandra, she won’t be able to do your locator spell.”

  “Then I’ll find another witch,” Gabrielle said impatiently. “Cassandra’s here because she’s handy.”

  My blood heated. “Is that how you see people? Handy for when you need something?”

  “Don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer, not liking the nasty feeling that she might be right.

  No. I shoved the thoughts aside. Gabrielle was trying to get under my skin.

  “Let Nash go, and we’ll help you find Vonda,” I said. “I want to find her myself.”

  Gabrielle grinned again, the smile wrinkling her nose. “We’ll get her, sis. Don’t you worry. If Cassandra does well, I’ll let her go. But Nash stays with me.”

  “I won’t bargain with my friends’ lives. They go free, no matter what.”

  Gabrielle’s eyes hardened. “I came to this county for one reason, and one reason only. That reason is Nash. Vonda is busy fucking things up, and I need to stop her, but sorry, Nash belongs to me.”

  “You can’t bind Nash, Gabrielle. You can’t fight him. He can resist anything magical you do to him. You can’t win this one.”

  Gabrielle gave me a patronizing look. “I can threaten his lover, can’t I? Nash will do anything to keep that Hispanic bitch safe. Anyway, it isn’t him I need but his seed. So I can give Mother the child she truly wants.”

  Nash stopped rattling the handcuffs and stared, his gray eyes like chips of ice. “What the hell?”

  “Gabrielle,” I said. “Listen to me. You don’t need to worry about pleasing our mother. She’s locked behind the vortex anyway. You can’t get to her—she’s no longer a part of us.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Janet. She’s not dead, and we certainly can get to her. You and I are powerful enough to open the vortex together, whenever we want. I’ll take Nash and our child to Mother, and this time, she won’t turn me away.”

  In the heavy pause that followed, I heard the wind pick up outside, not with the might of a storm, but in a nice, steady, chill breeze.

  “She turned you away?” I asked, forcing mys
elf to sound unruffled. “I hadn’t realized you’d met her.”

  Gabrielle nodded. “It was four years ago, in your little town of Magellan, at that stupid Ghost Train festival the wannabe Wiccans have at Christmas. I was thrilled to finally meet her, but you know what?” She stopped, the hurt in her eyes vast and troubling. “Mother didn’t want me. I hadn’t turned out right, she said, because what she needed was a daughter with a combination of Beneath and earth magics. That’s what it takes to open the vortexes. My father, she said, had only pretended he’d had shaman powers. He’d tricked her. And so I was useless to her.”

  Four years ago. And four years ago, Gabrielle Massey’s parents died in an accident on a lonely highway. “Is that why you killed them?” I asked softly.

  Gabrielle couldn’t meet my gaze. “I was so angry. I finally knew why I was different, why I had all this incredible power inside me, but Mother didn’t want me because the man whose seed I came from lied to her about being a shaman. Massey lied to her so he could have sex with her—while he was already married, by the way, to Anna, a very kind woman. I went home and told him what I knew. The stupid drunk. They were on that road because he was running away from me. He was terrified of me. I didn’t flip the car. When I stepped out in front them, he couldn’t stop, and they went off the side. I never touched them.”

  The pain in Gabrielle’s eyes was worn, yet still fresh, as she relived a memory that had never lost its sharpness.

  “I’d always hated him,” she said in a broken voice, “but I’m sorry about my mom. His wife, I mean. Anna couldn’t have children, and she raised me, even though she didn’t understand what I was.”

  Cassandra and Nash watched us, their stillness filling the room. I couldn’t help picturing Gabrielle standing on the dark road, watching in horror while the car rolled down the mountainside, seeing the people who’d taken care of her since babyhood suddenly wiped from her life.