Thunder Moon

by Lori Handeland

  “Is Quatie here?”

  “No. She went—” The young woman waved a hand toward the trees. “You know how she is.”

  I did. Even though I’d asked her not to wander, I’d known she wouldn’t listen. At least there was someone here now who would go searching for the old woman immediately if she didn’t come back.

  “I’m Dr. Walker.” Ian stepped forward, waiting pointedly for her to introduce herself.

  I silently thanked him for that. I hadn’t wanted to admit to the girl that Quatie had never mentioned her until this week. I’d had enough instances of that in my childhood, when I’d met acquaintances of my father’s who’d been very familiar with the names of his sons but had no inkling he had a daughter at all.

  She smiled at Ian the way all women must. “I’m Adsila.”

  “ ‘Blossom,’ “ Ian translated.

  “Yes.”

  She did resemble a blossom, all fresh and new. But she also looked like Quatie around the eyes and the mouth, which made me warm to her right away.

  Adsila came down the steps and crossed the grass, holding out her hand. Ian took it and shook, but when he tried to release her, she held on.

  “I have to thank you for helping my grandmother.”

  “Not a problem. I enjoyed meeting her.” He tugged on his hand; she didn’t let go.

  My eyes narrowed. He couldn’t be tugging too hard.

  “You must be very good,” she murmured, her voice low, almost suggestive. “At everything you do.”

  I wanted to shout, Hey, I’m right here! but she obviously didn’t care. I was certain this kind of thing happened to Ian all the time. Combine his face, that body, and a medical degree ... He was kind of asking for it.

  “I do my best.”

  “I bet your best is amazing.”

  Ian coughed, or maybe he choked. My warm, friendly feeling cooled. She might just be grateful because he’d helped Quatie feel better; I know I was. But if Adsila thought she was going to show him her gratitude the way that I’d been showing my gratitude...

  I cleared my throat. They both glanced in my direction, and Ian succeeded in retrieving his hand. Adsila smiled, shrugged as if to say, You can’t blame a girl for trying, and stepped back.

  “I’ve been having trouble with my neck,” she said. “Maybe you could examine it?”

  “I—uh.”

  “Not now,” I blurted.

  Adsila laughed, the sound bubbly and sweet. Why couldn’t she cackle like an old hen? “Of course not. I’ll walk into town sometime this week and stop by your clinic.”

  “That would be fine.”

  Ian flicked a finger toward the sticks now positioned at the four corners of the house, reminding me why we’d come.

  “Do you know what those are for?” I asked.

  “Granny Q. said they were for protection. I’m not sure against what.”

  Ian and I exchanged a glance.

  “Is there something wrong? Something I should be worried about?”

  I hesitated, but Ian gave a slight shake of his head. Telling Quatie’s great-great-granddaughter about a shape-shifting witch would only convince her we were nuts and make her ignore anything else we might say in the future. Quatie had protected the place in the best way she could, the way we would have if she hadn’t done it first. They were safer than anyone in this town at the moment, even us.

  “Could you have Quatie call—” I stopped. No phone. “I don’t suppose you brought a cell phone?”

  “She hates them. I know better.”

  “Do you mind if we wait?”

  “Actually we should get back,” Ian said. “I need to finish translating your great-grandmother’s papers.”

  I really wanted to know whatever Quatie did about the Raven Mocker, but we had sticks to whittle, people to protect.

  “Maybe you could bring her to town?”

  “No car.” Adsila spread her hands. “Sorry.”

  She had said she was going to walk in to see Ian.

  “How’d you get here?” I asked.

  “My father dropped me off. He had to be in Atlanta for a conference. He’ll pick me up on the way back. I figured I could either walk or hitch into Lake Bluff if I needed to.”

  I couldn’t fathom that a young girl would choose to spend any time in the mountains with an old woman and no cell phone, electricity, or Internet connection— although I had. Not that there’d been too many cell phones or Internet connections back then.

  “Could you tell her I’ll visit again late this afternoon? Make sure she doesn’t wander off?”

  “I’ll do my best,” Adsila said.

  Ian and I headed for the car. I reached my side first and glanced over to find Adsila staring at Ian’s backside. She met my eyes, smirked, then shrugged before disappearing into the house.

  Ian opened his door, paused. “What’s the matter?”

  “Besides her hitting on you two seconds after we met, she was ogling your ass just now.”

  He looked at the cabin, then back at me. “I’m a little old for her.”

  “Ten years? That’s nothing.”

  As he leaned on the top of the truck, his biceps flexed against the sleeves of his black T-shirt, and I did a little ogling of my own. He was so damn pretty.

  “I have no interest in anyone but you.”

  I dragged my gaze from his muscles to his face. He was serious.

  “When this is done, if we’re both still standing, we’re going to have a long, long talk about the future,” he said.

  With that he got into the vehicle, and I was left to ponder his words and fight a growing fear. Because he’d said “if” and reminded me that one or both of us could die.

  I wasn’t afraid of dying, even before the wolf that could be my great-grandmother had come trotting through my life, solidifying my belief in the great beyond. But Ian’s words revealed a new wrinkle.

  I was downright terrified that he might.

  Chapter 33

  I kept that fear to myself. Ian couldn’t stop searching for the Raven Mocker any more than I could.

  Driving around the last curve before we reached Lake Bluff, I cast an absent glance toward the trailer park nestled in the shade of a hill. Then I hit the brakes so hard, we skidded on the gravel as I turned into the drive.

  “Grace, what the—?” Ian stopped when he saw what I had.

  A squad car parked next to a dingy, tiny trailer, a crowd gathering. Cal earnestly speaking to several of the people.

  Together we got out of the truck.

  “Who saw her last?” Cal asked as we approached.

  “She went to town to see—” The man, whom I identified as Jarvis Trillion, a regular at both the Watering Hole and my jail after he’d been at the Watering Hole, pointed. “Him. That newfangled, fairy doctor.”

  “Fairy?” Ian sounded both confused and a little pissed.

  “Well, you do wear a feather in your hair,” I said. “In certain circles, like this one, you’re just asking for it.”

  Ian’s hand lifted, brushing the eagle feather, and Jarvis sneered, “What’d you do with Katrine, asswipe?”

  Cal cleared his throat. “No need for that, Jarvis.”

  Jarvis scowled, but he knew better than to screw with Cal. Cal ate guys like him for a midnight snack. Or was that Chuck Norris?

  I motioned for my deputy to join us away from the others. “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You told me to handle things. That you’d be working with Doc.”

  “I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t call me if another dead body showed up.”

  “Who’s dead?”

  “Katrine?”

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “You’re here.”

  “And that leads you to think she’s dead? Sheesh, Grace, talk about ghoulish. Katrine’s missing. Didn’t show up to open the Watering Hole this morning, and the regulars got antsy. Came to roust her.” He lifted one shoulder, then lowered it. “She h
ad the only set of keys to get in the place. When she wasn’t here, they called me.”

  “You checked her trailer?”

  “No sign of her. Nothing knocked over. No blood. No note. Her suitcase is in the closet, and so are her clothes, but her car’s gone.” His gaze switched to Ian and cooled. “Jarvis said she went to see you.”

  “He was with me. You know that.”

  “I know he was there this morning. I don’t know anything about last night. He could have killed her, dumped the body, then come to you for an alibi.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “You got proof of that?”

  “He had dinner with me and Claire and Mal. You want to, you can call the mayor for verification.”

  “And after dinner?”

  “I checked into Fosters’. Jordan will confirm that, and he’s been with me every minute since.”

  “That just figgers.” Jarvis had crept close enough to hear the end of our conversation. “Two Injuns stickin’ together.” He made an obscene hand gesture by circling his thumb and forefinger, then pushing his other forefinger through the hole several times fast.

  “Is this guy for real?” Ian asked.

  Jarvis had been at the head of Dad’s list of potential cross burners, though Dad had never been able to prove it. My arresting the man for drunk and disorderly five times a month had not endeared me to him, either.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “He’s a real Indian lover.”

  “Bitch.” He spat.

  Ian’s fist caught Jarvis on the jaw. He went down hard. The crowd began to murmur and shift. I recognized quite a few other cross-burning types in the mix. This could get ugly fast.

  “Cal,” I said.

  “Everyone just settle.” Cal rested his hand on his gun and the murmurs faded.

  I could have done the same, but with these guys that would have only made them crazier. They’d barely been able to tolerate an Indian sheriff; now that the Indian was also a woman, I had all I could do to keep them from foaming at the mouth every time they saw me.

  Jarvis shook his head as if he’d been dunked a few times under the water.

  I shot Ian an exasperated look. “That was unnecessary.”

  “No, it was definitely necessary.”

  “I’m gonna sue your ass!” Jarvis yelled. “I’m gonna kick it, too.” He tried to get up but fell on his ass with a thud.

  Ian moved so fast I didn’t have a chance to stop him. Cal tensed, ready to grab him if he needed to. But all Ian did was lean over Jarvis and whisper.

  The other man went pale, staring at Ian, transfixed. Then Jarvis slapped his hands over his face and screamed, “His eyes! His eyes!”

  Ian straightened and strolled back to us so calm, I half-expected him to start whistling.

  “What did you do?” I asked, but I knew, even before he winked.

  The crowd mumbled some more, this time staring at Jarvis as if he were crazy. Cal did, too.

  “You been drinking already, Jarvis? You’d better get on to bed.” Cal motioned to two of Jarvis’s cronies, and they hauled him away.

  “Move along,” Cal told the others. “We’ll handle things.”

  Though they grumbled, the crowd dispersed, some to the trailers parked in a zigzagging row that disappeared into the trees, others to their pickup trucks.

  “You say you were with him every minute. You didn’t sleep all night?” Cal asked.

  “Of course I did. But Jordan was at the desk. I’m sure she would have seen Ian leave.”

  “There’s a back door.”

  Even though Cal was handy in a crisis, right now he was getting on my nerves. “I saw Katrine hanging around outside Ian’s clinic last night. We drove past and straight to the Fosters’. She could have gone anywhere. She’s probably holed up with—” I stopped.

  She could be with anyone, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to say so until we knew what had happened. This could end badly, and I didn’t want to have spoken ill of the dead.

  But I doubted Katrine was a victim of the Raven Mocker. The witch tended to go after people in their own beds, although that didn’t mean it had to. Still, if Katrine were dead by Cherokee witch, this would be the first time we had no body and the first time, as far as we knew, that the Raven Mocker had killed so many times in one night. The violence was escalating.

  “Start searching for her,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  I only hoped she turned up alive.

  * * *

  “I gave Katrine a buzzard feather, too,” Ian said as we drove away.

  “When?”

  “When I gave her the jar of vitamin solution. I’ve been giving a feather to every person who comes into the clinic. Figured it couldn’t hurt.”

  “It didn’t help, either. Where do you think she is?”

  “Like you said, she could be anywhere. But for her to have been a victim of the Raven Mocker breaks the pattern again.”

  He’d noticed that, too. It was so nice to work with someone I didn’t have to explain my every thought to. Cal was so literal sometimes he made me want to bang my head against a wall.

  “Not that the pattern can’t be broken,” Ian continued. “We’ve already seen that. I just wonder why.”

  Considering the first suspect in Katrine’s disappearance had been Ian, I had an idea. If I hadn’t been with him, I’d have wondered if he were responsible. Which might just be what the Raven Mocker was after. Divide and conquer. Get the man who knew the score and was trying to find a way to even it thrown into jail, and leave the woman who didn’t know much alone and floundering.

  However, if the Raven Mocker realized we were on to him-her-it, why hadn’t the creature just ripped our hearts out of our chests? It would be easier.

  My phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID. Claire.

  “Any news?” she asked.

  “You know there was another death?”

  “Yes. Same as the others?”

  “I assume so, though I haven’t heard from Doc yet.”

  She sighed. “Why is it that since you and I took over, weird stuff keeps happening?”

  “Yeah, why is that?”

  “You think that weird stuff happened before, but our dads were better at keeping it quiet?”

  “Doubtful. More likely our dads figured out a logical solution and rationalized away all the scary stuff.”

  “I doubt rationalizing did any good. Someone would have had to kill something.”

  “Maybe last summer wasn’t the first time Edward came to town.”

  “Hadn’t thought of that.” Claire paused. “Listen, can you come over here?”

  “I’m a little busy with a shape-shifting witch and its epidemic of death.”

  “It’ll only take a minute; there are a few things we have to discuss about festival security. Life does go on. We’re going to have hundreds of visitors pouring into Lake Bluff real soon.”

  We had to have this situation cleared up before then. Last year’s Full Moon Festival had brought the town back from the brink of financial ruin. But this year’s could destroy us if tourists began to turn up without their hearts.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “The basement of town hall.”

  “I hate it down there.” The place was downright eerie.

  “Girl.”

  I remembered the times my dad had used the same insult, which really shouldn’t have been an insult.

  “Oh, that always works.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Forget it. I’ll need to bring someone along.” I wasn’t letting Ian out of my sight.

  “You two are attached at the hip, huh?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Good. I like him.” She hung up.

  Claire wasn’t a man hater, but she wasn’t much of a fan, either. She’d had some trouble in the past, and only Malachi had been able to reach through the wall she’d erected between herself and the world. Maybe having a son had helped. It was hard t
o condemn all males when you had such an adorable specimen at hand.

  “I should go to my place and translate the rest of your great-grandmother’s papers,” Ian said. “We need to know everything she did.”

  “I’ll tell Claire I can’t make it.”

  “You don’t have to. You do your thing; I’ll do mine. We’ll meet later.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s daytime.” He put his hand on my thigh. “The Raven Mocker can’t hurt you in the sun.”

  “I wasn’t worried about me.”

  “Me?” He paused as if to think about that. “I’ve never had anyone worry about me before.” His fingers tightened; then he slid them higher, stroking the inside of my leg until I shuddered. “I think I like it.”

  “I don’t.” He removed his hand, but I caught it and brought it back. “That I like. It’s the worrying I don’t.”

  His fingers continued to stroke. I drove down Center Street with his hand between my legs. No one could see, which only made what he was doing all the more exciting.

  “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “As you’ve told me several times, I can take care of myself. Going after evil spirits is my job, and I’m pretty good at it.”

  “I don’t like being separated. Two are stronger than one, remember?”

  “We’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it in. Separating in the daytime makes sense.”

  I parked in front of the clinic. “I know.”

  Ian got out of the truck, then leaned in through the open window. “Come back as soon as you’re done. Maybe I’ll know something by then. We can start pounding sticks into the four corners of houses. Tell people they’re squirrel repellents or something.”

  With a quick grin and then a wave, he disappeared inside. Seconds later he reappeared on the second floor, moving toward his office. My body still hummed from the touch of his. I exited the vehicle. This wouldn’t take long.

  He’d left the front door open, so I locked it behind me, checked the back door and locked it, too, then climbed the stairs. He turned, surprised, when I came in the room, but when he saw my face, he dropped the papers onto the desk and drew the shade over the window.

  I unbuttoned and unzipped my uniform, tossed the bra, lost the gun belt, shoes, underwear, and socks. By the time I was done, so was he. From the appearance of his body, he was as aroused as I was; naked, we met in the center of the room. Our lips crushed together. I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he walked forward until my back met the wall, then drove home.