Shadow Walker (4 page)

I’d lived in Flagstaff for a couple of years while I worked on my degree in fine art. I warmed to see the familiar tall pines flowing through the city, the mountains soaring behind it, the black volcanic rock everywhere. I also remembered the discomfort I’d had living side by side with so many other people. In all this beauty, why live in a box that shuts it out?

Mick dodged his way through traffic up to the hospital that now housed Nash. The nurses at the front desk said we could go to the floor where Nash was, but not inside his room.

Nash lay in a bed on the other side of glass doors, his skin as pasty white as it had been in the SUV. Tubes snaked into his arms, and machines behind him flashed gently.

Mick kissed my cheek, said he was off to the bathroom, and asked if I wanted any coffee. He was ready to wait it out.

As Mick walked away, I looked back at Nash, a man I struggled to understand. Nash was an Iraq War vet. He’d been inside a building in Baghdad when a bomb went off, and the building had buried him and his men. Nash had been the only one who’d made it out.

That event had scarred him both mentally and physically, though he never spoke about it. He suffered from PTSD, though his method of dealing with that was ignoring it, working out like a maniac, and being as much of a pain in the ass as possible.

“He’ll be all right,” someone said next to me.

I turned to find a middle-aged woman with the same lean sharpness as Nash and the same cool gray eyes. “I keep telling myself that,” she said. “He’s strong, my boy. He’ll pull through.”

“Mrs. Jones?” I’d been surprised to learn that Nash’s parents lived here, so close to Magellan. They never came down to visit him, and Nash never, ever talked about them.

“Ava. Are you a friend?”

“Janet Begay. I was in the accident with him.”

She looked me over, reassessing me. “Thank you for helping him.”

“I didn’t do much. Nothing I could do.”

Ava turned to watch Nash again. “He’ll pull through. We raised him to be strong, to let nothing stop him. He’s weathered worse. He’ll come out of it.”

I knew she said these things to keep her hopes up, but the short phrases explained a lot about Nash. He was strong to the point of insanity—Nash never took a break. This was the first time I’d ever seen him stop and lie down.

I heard footsteps approaching and glanced down the hall. When I looked back, Ava had gone.

The person approaching wasn’t Mick, but Maya Medina. Maya loved Nash desperately, and from the way she scowled at me as she approached, I knew she was trying to figure out how to blame me for the accident.

“I didn’t cause the sinkhole,” I said without greeting her.

“Are you sure about that?” Maya was beautiful, with creamy dark skin, black hair, and thick-lashed brown eyes. Plus she had five inches on me that I envied. She’d resented me when I first came to Magellan, but now she was the closest thing I had to a best girlfriend. “Weird things happen around you, Janet.”

I couldn’t argue. I shared Mick’s suspicion of coincidence, and the fact that the skeletal hands had been at Spider Rock and then again in the sinkhole bothered me a lot.

“I’m glad to see his folks here,” I said, to change the subject. “I was just talking to his mom.”

Thick silence greeted my words. I turned to see Maya staring at me with a peculiar expression.

“What?” I asked.

“Janet, you couldn’t have been talking to his mom. Nash’s parents are both dead. They died ten years ago.”

Four

I dragged Maya down to the cafeteria and told her to explain what the hell she was talking about.

She angrily stirred a latte. “They died in a wreck out in California. Ten years ago—a little longer than that. Nash doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“The doctor in Flat Mesa told me he called them,” I said. Mick slid into the seat next to me and set a cup of black coffee in front of me. Its heady aroma made my mouth water.

“The doctor in Flat Mesa used to live next door to them,” Maya said. “He knows they’re dead.”

“Then who did he call? Why did he tell me he contacted them?”

“Janet.” Mick’s rumbling voice was gentle. “I didn’t hear the doctor say anything about Nash’s parents.”

“You’d gone to check me in when I had that conversation. All right, I admit that I was full of painkillers and not very coherent at the time, but I’m not on painkillers now. I met her. A woman called Ava.”

“That was her name,” Maya said.

“The doctor didn’t mention their names to me, and I’ve never heard anything about them before now. So how would I know that?” Score one for me for not being completely crazy. Maybe.

“It could have been a woman pretending to be his mother,” Mick said. “Knowing that you wouldn’t know who she really was.”

“Why would someone pretend to be Nash’s mother?” Maya asked.

I looked at them both in sudden horror. “Because only relatives are allowed in his room.”

Mick and I were up before I’d finished the sentence. The three of us ran out of the cafeteria, taking the stairs instead of waiting for the slow elevators. We dashed down the eerily deserted hall outside of intensive care to Nash’s room.

Nash slept on behind the window, unchanged, the machines still pulsing their rhythm. The woman I’d met stood over his bed, reaching toward him with a long, thin hand. The machines beeped faster as her fingers neared his chest.

Mick flung open the door. Maya stared at Mick, bewildered, and I realized that she didn’t see the woman in the room. But Mick did. He rushed inside, flames dancing in his hands.

“Hey,” he shouted at the woman. “Touch him and die.”

I was pretty sure there were flammable gasses in that room. I was also pretty sure I didn’t want that woman touching Nash, not with that bony hand.

I reached for my Beneath magic and found it ready and waiting. As soon as I had a bright ball of it in my hand, the woman jerked from Nash to fix a furious gaze on me. Her eyes had changed from human light gray to black voids. She opened her mouth in a soundless shriek and lunged at me.

Mick got in her way, hands on fire. He pushed those fiery hands into her chest, and she screamed, a high-pitched sound that threatened to blow out my eardrums. I stepped behind the woman and shot her with the Beneath magic.

That turned out to be a mistake. She sucked up my magic without harm, her eyes glowed a sudden silver, and she swatted Mick across the room. Mick crashed into Nash’s machines and went down with them. Something hissed into the room. Definitely a flammable gas.

On the bed, Nash gasped, and I heard the pounding feet of orderlies and nurses.

Mick untangled himself from the machines, his eyes black with fury. I had the presence of mind to find the valve that shut off the oxygen tank before Mick blasted the woman with flames, but the tanks were still sitting there, waiting to explode.

Mick’s fire surrounded the woman, and she screamed again, just as the orderlies and nurses poured into the room. I could tell that they couldn’t see the woman either—they only saw a big man with fire steaming from his fingers flaming the middle of the room. Two nurses shoved Maya and me out of the way to rescue Nash, and the orderlies went for Mick.

Under Mick’s fire, the woman burned. She screamed as her face peeled back from a bone-white skull, she clawed at it with her skeletal hands, and then she disappeared.

An oxygen tank strapped under the foot of Nash’s bed burst, and the residual fire dove for it, embracing it like a long-lost lover. I wrapped Beneath magic around the tank and tried to smother the explosion.

Incredible pain filled me as my magic struggled with forces of nature. I wrapped that fireball down, squeezing the life out of it, while it tried to burn the life out of me. I existed and I didn’t; I heard a tear and a flutter of wings as a hole ripped in the fabric of reality. Great. I was about to destroy the universe trying to put out a fire.

And then my magic won. A flare of energy yanked at me, and the explosion reversed, then died.

I let out my breath, feeling curiously light. The last thing I remembered was Mick’s worried, midnight eyes as he dove for me, and the floor rushing up to crash into my face.

I woke up on Mick’s lap with his arms around me. I liked it there, a safe and peaceful place. My head rested on his shoulder where I could inhale the good scents of Mick and leather.

When I found the energy to open my eyes, my sense of peace fled. We were in a waiting room at the hospital, surrounded by a ring of security guards and police officers.

“Hey, I
stopped
the explosion,” I croaked.

“You all right, baby?” Mick asked, leaning over me.

“Fine.” I felt like someone had torn out my insides and sewn them back in but, other than that, fine. Physically, I hadn’t been hurt, but magically, it was a different story. “Is Nash all right?”

“He woke up.” Mick smiled with his usual warmth. “He’s pissed off at you.”

“He must be all right then.”

Maya wasn’t there, and I clamped my lips closed over questions about her. If she’d had the sense to disassociate herself from us, good for her. She might be with Nash, holding his hand and refusing to leave his side.

One of the city police officers informed us that he was arresting us for attempted assault, attempted arson, and vandalism. We’d be looking at attempted murder too, he said, if they decided we’d been trying to burn Nash alive in his hospital room.

“Thank you,” a familiar voice cut in. “I’ll take it from here.”

I was startled into standing up, then regretted the swift move and fell dizzily back to Mick’s lap.

A tall, broad-shouldered Native American of indeterminate tribe pushed his way through the ring of security and cops. He was dressed in a black suit with a string tie and cowboy boots, and had his hair in a neat braid. His face was hard and without its usual grin.

“FBI,” he said, flashing an ID that looked authentic. “These two are in my custody.”

The head uniform cop frowned at him. “I didn’t find any outstanding warrants for them.”

“They use aliases,” Coyote said. “The girl sometimes calls herself Lucky Lucy. Works the Indian casinos all over the state and in New Mexico, cons innocent men into giving her their winnings every night. I’ve been after her for a long time.”

Oh, for the gods’ sake. I closed my eyes so no one would see me rolling them. Mick said nothing.

“What about the arson?” one of the nurses said. “They had that room on fire, nearly killed the patient.”

“We’ll add it to the list. But they need to come with me. I have a wagon waiting.”

Mick and I went quietly. The nice FBI agent said that he saw no need for handcuffs, but I had no doubt Coyote that would have pulled them out of thin air if he’d wanted to.

Coyote really did have an SUV waiting, black, with smoked-glass windows and metal grills on the inside. I had to wonder where he’d stolen it from.

Mick and I were ushered into the backseat, and Coyote had the security guards lift Mick’s big Harley into the back. The local police weren’t happy, but I got the feeling they were just as glad to not have to deal with us.

Coyote swung through town at top speed and shot onto the freeway heading east. He swerved around a couple of eighteen-wheelers in as much of a hurry to leave Flag as he was, his speedometer climbing.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded as soon as I found words.

Coyote grinned at me through the grill separating backseat from front. “Me saving your asses. Neat trick, huh?”

“You couldn’t have magicked us out or made everyone forget we existed?”

“Way more fun this way. I always wanted to pretend to be an FBI agent.”

Mick put his arms around me. “Thank you,” he said.

“Not a problem.” Coyote gunned the engine and swung around more trucks. We hit ninety and kept accelerating.

“Who was that woman?” I asked, to take my mind off the vehicles flashing by much too swiftly.

“Don’t know,” Coyote said. “But she sure wanted Nash. She was full of magic, though, so why would she risk Nash sucking it all out of her?”

I wondered the same thing. The freeway dropped down out of the mountains, and Coyote drove faster. The SUV reached one hundred as we whipped around an RV and nearly rear-ended a flatbed.

“Pull over!” I screamed.

“What for?”

“Just do it.”

Coyote shrugged, swung across both lanes of speeding traffic, and roared the SUV down an off-ramp. He overshot the road at the bottom and rolled straight into the desert, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust.

“Out,” I said. I kicked the back door open and hopped down, my legs like rubber, and wrenched open the driver’s side.

Coyote chuckled as he scooted over and let me scramble into the driver’s seat. But he was a god—if he wrecked the SUV, he’d survive. Mick could turn into a dragon and heal himself. Me, I’d end up in the hospital again, if I made it. I’d survived one accident this week—I didn’t want to go through another.

Once we were on the freeway again, me driving at a careful pace, we continued to speculate on the woman but drew no conclusions.

“I saw you in the wall,” I said, hands firmly on the wheel. Clouds were building up over the San Francisco peaks behind us, and I felt the icy tingle of an approaching snowstorm. “I thought I saw a glyph of you, anyway. Did you see the hands? Did you have anything to do with them?”

“Nope. I saw you all banged up, and I contacted Mick through your mirror. I didn’t see anything else, babe. My eyes were only for you.”

“Figures,” I muttered.

The snowstorm hung back in the higher elevations, so the late afternoon was still sunny in Magellan by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the Crossroads Hotel. Coyote and Mick off-loaded his bike, and Coyote drove off in a burst of gravel, hopefully to return the SUV from wherever he’d acquired it.

Instead of coming inside with me, Mick said he wanted to go back to the sinkhole and continue investigating. I wasn’t easy about him being out there, but those hand things had feared his fire magic, and he’d probably be safer from them than I’d been.

Mick kissed me and held me hard, told me to keep resting, and said that he’d continue the healing process with me when he returned. I knew what he meant by that, and I warmed with anticipation.

Cassandra was still looking over Ted’s list when I went in, her optimism that we could defeat the inspection beginning to fade. The sun was already sinking, but I wanted to solve one problem before I shut down for the night. I called Assistant Chief Salas of the Magellan police and asked him if he would drive me to Whiteriver.

Most people in Magellan liked Emilio Salas, and so did I. He was good at his job but not arrogant about it, and he knew everyone in town, being related to half of it. He was hung up on Maya, but by now even he knew that a relationship with her wasn’t likely. Maya loved Nash, and that was that.

Salas drove me up in his squad car. The sun disappeared behind us as we drove south and east, the twilight clear and cold, stars pricking out in abundance.

Whiteriver lay in the heart of Apache country, the town south of the Mogollon Rim, following the contours of the White River. Salas drove me to my cook’s daughter’s house, where Elena lived whenever she didn’t spend the night in Magellan. Elena herself answered the door.

Elena Williams, even if she was temperamental—and yes, sometimes dangerous—cooked the best food I’d ever tasted. She’d worked in top restaurants in Manhattan and Los Angeles and could have gotten a job anywhere she wanted, but she’d come to my hotel because it was an hour’s drive from her daughter and grandchildren. Elena wasn’t the most reliable of employees, some days choosing not to show up at all, but she mostly put up with the weirdness that went on in my hotel and cooked like a dream. I would beg to keep her.

Salas flashed Elena his most charming white-toothed smile. “Hey,
chica
,” he said. “Janet scared the bad man away. Come back down and make me some of those frijoles and squash. Please? They taste like heaven.”

Usually, Elena softened under Salas’s winning smile, but tonight, she ignored him and pointed a stiff finger at me.

“You, Stormwalker, bring evil,” she said, her voice tight with anger. “A Shadow Walker seeks you. I see the shadows, fluttering in the night.” She stepped back. “I stay here, so they don’t get me too.”

Before I could draw breath to ask Elena what she was talking about, she slammed the door in our bewildered faces.

Salas could do nothing but drive me over the mountains and back to Magellan again, cook-less.