"I can"t find anything wrong with this bike mechanically," Mick said as he put aside his wrench, wiped his hands, and straightened up.
He mounted the bike, which looked small under his big frame, and started it up. It purred like it should. Mick lifted his feet and drove across the parking lot, me watching, waiting for the motorcycle to turn wild and race off with him.
It did nothing so dramatic. Mick circled the big dirt lot I shared with the Crossroads Bar and came back to me. He turned off the engine and remained straddling the bike. "Everything"s fine."
"The magic mirror said it wasn"t a live being that possessed it," I said, and related the brief conversation. I also told him about Heather"s seance.
Mick listened to it all with a serious look on his face, and gave me the hmm again.
"Your conversation is not very helpful this morning," I said, folding my arms.
Mick didn"t rise to my irritation. "I know you don"t want Ansel to have killed her," he said quietly. "I don"t either." He gazed across the lot into the wide desert. A light breeze moved the air, bringing with it the scent of dust and the lingering exhaust from my bike. "But people like us sometimes have to make the decision to do something about the danger, even if we don"t want to. Even if it hurts."
I knew what he was really talking about. "Like you being ordered to kill me if I turn into an insane killing machine?"
"Yes." He returned his gaze to me. "Except I can"t do it anymore. I can"t hurt a hair on your head." Mick reached over and touched said hair. "You"re too much a part of me now." His hand was warm, but I resisted melting into his touch. If I did, I"d drag him off to bed get nothing else done today. "If I turn into an insane killing machine, I give you permission to stop me," I said. "I don"t want to hurt anyone. Least of all you."
"I won"t be able to," Mick said. "Not anymore. You know my true name. That has tangled me up with you more than I can begin to understand. Killing you would probably kill me too." My heart squeezed with worry. "G.o.ds, Mick, don"t say things like that."
"It"s true." His fingers moved to my jaw. "You hold me in thrall. And at the same time, you belong entirely to me."
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wasn"t certain how I felt about being Mick"s possession, and lately he"d become even more protective. I, who"d fought tooth and nail for my independence, had difficulty belonging to anyone. I had to admit, though, that if I had to belong to someone, Mick wasn"t a bad choice.
He caressed my cheek again, then he gave me his usual hot smile. I rose on my tiptoes, bracing myself on his wide shoulders to press a kiss to his warm, strong lips.
The sweet moment was interrupted by a cell phone. His, not mine. Mick set me gently on my feet, answered it, listened, and said, "Sure, she"ll be right there."
"I"ll be right where?" I asked as he hung up. "Who was that?"
"Barry. He wants to talk to you."
Barry owned the Crossroads Bar across the lot. "He called you?" I asked, puzzled. "Why didn"t he call me? He knows my number."
Mick looked at me with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. "Where"s your cell phone, Janet?" My hand went to the holder on my belt to find it empty. I remembered I"d had to use a payphone in Gallup to call Mick earlier, and I had no idea where I"d left the d.a.m.n thing this time. I was hard on cell phones. I either lost them in stupid places, or they got crunched during my adventures. The magic mirror was a more reliable communication device between me and Mick anyway.
"I don"t know," I had to say.
"It"s probably in Ansel"s room," he said. "Or in the refrigerator. Hope it"s not in a potted plant this time."
"That only happened once." I hadn"t retrieved it before the maid had watered the plant . . . a couple of times. "Does Barry want to talk right now?"
"He said as soon as you can. I"ll look for your phone." Mick dismounted the bike, touched my chin, and kissed my lips again. "I just like the look on your face when I tease you about it." I liked the look on his face when he teased me. I returned the kiss with some heat then took myself across the parking lot to the Crossroads Bar.
Barry"s bar had been in business far longer than my hotel, which had stood derelict until I"d had the whim to buy the place and open it. My hotel had a saloon, but that was more for tourists and guests who would be way out of place in Barry"s biker hangout.
The Crossroads was a real bar, dark inside with a long counter, barstools chosen for their function not beauty, pool tables, and tables and chairs that had seen better days. Barry carried every kind of liquor a person could want, but mostly he sold beer. He had no magic, and he wasn"t fond of serving the magical. If I hadn"t ridden up here the first day on a Harley, I doubted he"d have spoken to me at all.
Barry had opened his doors a half hour ago, but he had only two customers-a man from Flat Mesa who came there regularly to hide out from his wife, and a tough-looking youngish guy I"d never seen before.
I slid onto a barstool and watched Barry put away clean beer mugs.
"Guy over there says he wants to talk to you." Barry jerked his chin at the tough-looking man. "Find out what he wants and make him go away. I don"t want any trouble, understand?" I understood. Barry"s bar had gotten busted up in a raid earlier this year, and while Sheriff Jones had done the raiding, it had happened, indirectly, because of me.
"Got it," I said.
Barry gave me a dark look but let me go. I walked to the tough-looking guy"s table and sat down. He was drinking beer from a bottle, holding the bottle with battle-scarred hands.
"I"m Janet," I said.
He looked me up and down, his eyes pale blue against tanned skin. He"d buzzed his blond hair so short it was only a golden sheen on his head.
"You"re guarding the Nightwalker," he said.
Oh, perfect. I hadn"t met a slayer in years, but today I got to chat with two of them.
"My Nightwalker is harmless," I said. "He drinks cow blood from a jug."
"That"s not what I hear. And there"s no such thing as a harmless Nightwalker. They"re vermin, and vermin need to be exterminated."
"Well, this one"s off limits. He"s under my protection."
The look the slayer skimmed over me told me he wasn"t impressed. "What are you?
Witch?"
"Stormwalker. Not the same thing." I could have boasted that my boyfriend was a dragon, but dragons weren"t too keen on people knowing they existed. I hadn"t forgotten Mick"s mention of dragonslayers, which I had not liked.
"Whatever you are, this is a courtesy visit," the slayer said. "There"s a bounty on the Nightwalker, and I intend to collect it. So take some advice, sweetheart. Clear out of my way, and you and your boyfriend might just stay alive."
If he expected me to cower in terror, he didn"t know anything about Stormwalkers. I rested my elbows on the table and regarded him calmly. "Who set the bounty?" His disgusted look told me he"d expected better of me. "Like I said, this is a courtesy visit.
I"m the best slayer in the country, and I"ll go right through you to get to the Nightwalker if I have to." He leaned toward me around his beer. "Be a shame to see someone as hot as you be sliced down the middle."
His aura showed me no magic in him whatsoever-he was as mundane as Barry. But I didn"t need to read his aura to know that he was a hard man, an experienced fighter, and had killed in the past-Nightwalker, human-he didn"t much care about the difference.
"Yeah, that would be a shame," I said. "You might want to know that someone else tried to collect the bounty this morning. Man with two crossbows. He came up against me, and he ran away."
What might have been a smile creased the man"s mouth. "I know the slayer you"re talking about. He"s good at running away. Me, not so much." He pulled a card from a pocket in his vest and slid it across the table to me. "If you want to negotiate, you text me." I left the card where it was. "How many other slayers have come to town looking for the bounty? Am I going to have a Slayer Fest on my hands?"
The hint of smile again. "A couple others, but they"re p.u.s.s.ies. I"m the one you have to worry about. You"re a sweet little thing, and I thought I"d spare your boyfriend some grief. If you and he get out of the way and let me through, no one will get hurt."
"Except my Nightwalker."
He shrugged. "That"s the whole point."
I looked at the name on the card. "All right . . . Rory. Thanks for the warning. I"ll keep it in mind."
"You need to take this seriously, honey-"
Rory"s words cut off with a startled noise as he looked at something behind me. I turned to see what had made him choke.
A large woman had moved quietly to our table. I hadn"t seen her come in, which was odd, because she was definitely noticeable. She wore traditional Navajo garb-a long dark skirt and velvet shirt, squash blossom turquoise necklace, and turquoise and silver rings and bracelets.
She was tall and wide, but the word fat never occurred to me when I looked at her. Bear was big and formidable, but she held a timeless beauty in her unlined face and fall of thick, jet-black hair.
"This man smells of death," she said in her low, rich voice.
Chapter Five.
"He"s a slayer," I said to Bear. "Occupational hazard."
"You should come away from him."
"I agree." I rose and s.n.a.t.c.hed up Rory"s card, not because I"d be texting him, but because it contained his full name, and I planned to find out everything I could about him.
I put my fists on the table. "Let me explain something, Rory. My Nightwalker"s off limits.
Spread the word. And get out of the bar. Barry doesn"t like you." The slayer wasn"t looking at me. He had his full attention on Bear, trying to figure out what she was and whether he should be afraid of her. His eyes told him harmless woman, but I knew his gut was screaming at him in primal terror.
I could have told Rory he had plenty of reason to fear her. Bear was a G.o.ddess, one of the oldest, almost as old as Coyote, though I wasn"t certain. She, like Coyote, was a shifter G.o.d, and what she shifted into was a giant grizzly bear. Rory was feeling the basic instinct to flee from danger, like all little animals did from giant predators.
Bear only looked at him. Rory took a quick drink from his beer bottle, wiped his mouth, threw down a tip as he got up, and quickly walked away from the table and out. Bright sunlight flashed through the dark bar as he opened the door and then vanished. Barry gave me a nod of thanks then went back to wiping beer mugs, his worry over.
I left for the sunshine outside with Bear. The day"s temperature had climbed to over a hundred, and my skin p.r.i.c.kled with the heat.
"You gave the slayer something to think about," I said. We watched Rory mount a motorcycle and head out down the highway toward Winslow. He never looked back.
"Thanks."
"He"s not wrong about Nightwalkers, my friend," Bear said. "And Ansel might have killed this woman."
That Bear knew all the details didn"t surprise me. If she hadn"t figured them out by herself, she would have gotten the story out of Mick.
"I want to hear Ansel"s side before I hand him over to a slayer," I said.
"I too have come to like this creature who calls himself Ansel. I will not let a human slayer come near him."
No, she"d let me finish him off if need be. If Ansel had to be slain, best leave it to a friend, right?
I blew out my breath. "Why did you come to the bar? Were you looking for me?" Bear gave me a slow nod. "Ca.s.sandra told me you were going to a seance tonight. I would like to attend with you."
I shot her a grin. "You won"t find Coyote that way, you know." She didn"t smile in return. "This has nothing to do with my game with Coyote. And I have found him, several times. No, I want to know about this woman who is missing, and the sister who thinks her dead."
I wondered at her interest, but I didn"t deny I"d feel better at a seance with a powerful G.o.ddess by my side. If Heather did manage to let anything through the ether, or worse, out of one of the vortexes, I had no doubt that Bear could handle it.
"I don"t see why not," I said. "Heather likes a show, so the more the merrier." We reached the hotel"s front door. I stopped, looking it over in surprise, then I warmed with anger.
I"d replaced the door, made by an artisan in Santa Fe, not long ago. His first door had been destroyed in one of my many adventures. The second one he"d finished was as nice-the wood was old and well-polished with age, the aura of it deep and resonating with contentment.
White chalk marks now snaked all the way up one side of the door and halfway across the top of the frame, signs I didn"t recognize. They weren"t Wiccan symbols, nor were they glyphs.
They also weren"t magic. Mick and I warded this hotel with invisible sigils, and these markings hadn"t touched those, nor did the chalk vibrate with any kind of spell. Also, they hadn"t been here when I"d opened for the morning.
"What the h.e.l.l?"
I looked at Bear, but she was eyeing them with the same puzzlement.
Mick opened the door, as though he"d seen us coming. He"d donned chaps and motorcycle boots, ready to ride off again east to talk to dragons.
"Slayers" marks," he said. He frowned as he ran blunt fingers over the symbols. "It"s how they communicate with each other. Marks the abode of a Nightwalker and tells whether they"ve been successful in the kill. In this case, no."
"They"re using my hotel doorway as a bulletin board?"
"It"s both a brag sheet and for safety. They sign in before they go on the kill, in case they need someone to pull their b.a.l.l.s out of the fire. It"s like signing in with park rangers before you hike a long trail."
I clenched my hands, my anger tasting sour. "You know a lot about slayers. Dealt with them before, have you?"
Mick looked away. "Let"s just say we"ve tangled."
"You tangle with a lot of things."
"I"ve been around a long time. The way to deal with slayers" marks is soap and water. I"ll have Julia or Olivia wash them off." He named my two maids, cousins of Maya Medina, my electrician. They were young and working their way through college, and had agreed to work for me despite all the stories about the weird s.h.i.t that happened in Janet"s hotel. They were local and therefore inured to weird s.h.i.t by this time.
"I bet that rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the bar did these before he gave me his friendly warning." I hadn"t paid any attention to the front door on my way to the bar, having walked around from the back.
Bear skimmed her hand above the marks, sunlight catching on the silver of her many rings.
"Mmm. Not a nice message."
"You can read that?" I asked.
She nodded without conceit. "The translation is simple." Her fingers floated above the marks as she read. There is a Nightwalker in this house. I claim him. The kill extends to those protecting him."
My anger boiled to compete with the afternoon heat. "He has b.a.l.l.s." Bear gave me a grave look. "Do not dismiss the threat because he is only human and has no magic. Humans have killed most of the magical things in this world. Look around you." She had a point. So many vastly powerful beings tried to best me and Mick that I sometimes forgot to take the smaller threats seriously. But if I hadn"t been awakened by the wind chimes last night, Ansel might have been a smear on my back porch this morning.
I went inside, calling to Olivia to please go soap off the doorframe. She looked irritated and said a few choice words in Spanish to whoever had made extra work for her. She was related to Maya all right.
Bear had vanished by the time I came back out, but I was no longer shocked at the way she came and went without warning. She had much in common with Coyote, who"d she claimed, to my vast surprise, was her husband.