From Jennifer Ashley, With Love

  More powerful than the woman gesticulating to her—Heather Hansen, dressed in flowing clothes, multiple pendants, and lots of bangles. Heather owned the local New Age store, which sold incense, jewelry, tarot cards, books, and plenty of souvenirs from Magellan and its vortexes. Our vortexes weren’t as famous as the ones in the red rocks of Sedona, but ours were more deadly. Not many people knew how deadly.

  Heather and Cassandra were arguing, Cassandra in her understated way, Heather with hands on hips and determination in her eyes.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I heard Cassandra say. “You’ll be messing with forces beyond your control.”

  “That’s why I want you there,” Heather said. “You’re a much better witch than I am.” She said this with envy, but it was the truth. “I need your help. Janet, you too.”

  “Help with what?”

  Cassandra gave me a dark look. “Heather wants to have a séance.”

  “Oh?” I asked, understanding her alarm. “Why?”

  What most people think of as séances—mediums, dark rooms, candles, supplicants holding hands around a table—are harmless nonsense. Most are hosted by fake mediums out to impress people.

  Real séances are dangerous. Cassandra wasn’t kidding about forces that could be unleashed by a weak witch—demons, dead witches who should stay dead, and other bad things, always waiting for a gateway to open.

  I doubted Heather could deliberately open a path herself, but she might accidentally. Though she was more the nature-lover variety of witch, Heather did have some magic in her.

  Heather answered me. “I have a client whose sister has been killed, but she has no proof of the culprit. She wants to ask her sister in person what happened.”

  Three guesses as to who the sister was. Heather suddenly had my interest.

  “The dead are notoriously unreliable witnesses,” I said cautiously. “Nine times out of ten, they have no idea what happened to them.”

  “I tried to tell her that,” Cassandra said. “Nine times out of ten, you don’t even get the person you are trying to reach. A demon or someone else waiting to cross over sees the opportunity and rides in on your pathway. Like a hitchhiker. A demonic, slash-your-throat and spit down your neck hitchhiker.”

  Heather waved this away with a soft clinking of bracelets. “I’ve done hundreds of séances, ladies. I’m very good at finding connections for people. This will be simple. Paige will talk with her sister, and we’ll be done.”

  “Paige?” I asked, pretending to be casual.

  “She came here from Santa Fe. Her sister disappeared, but Paige is sure she’s dead.”

  The bite of uneasiness in my stomach turned into a melee, which didn’t sit well with my breakfast burrito. “I’ll come,” I said, ignoring Cassandra’s anger. “Where and when?”

  “Tonight at Paradox,” Heather said. “Eight thirty. I want to make sure it’s fully dark.”

  A person could hold a séance any time of the day or night with the same result, but people are attracted to the dark and spooky. I don’t know why. I like safety, friends around me who can kick some serious ass, and no demons.

  “Good.” Heather beamed. “I wanted to let you know, Cassandra, as we are the only true witches in town.”

  Cassandra gave her a cold stare, but she was businesslike enough to realize she shouldn’t piss off the person who constantly recommended my hotel to her tourist customers. If you want the full Magellan experience, visit the vortexes, shop at Paradox, and stay at the Crossroads Hotel, Heather would tell them.

  “Then I thank you for telling me,” Cassandra said. Fortunately for her, the phone rang, and she said, “Excuse me,” and turned away to answer it.

  As I walked Heather to the front door, she said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, Janet, but leave Mick at home. I don’t want him scaring away my guests.”

  Heather was afraid of Mick. She had no idea that Mick was a dragon—she thought he was a biker, a Hell’s Angel, maybe, and she was more afraid of bikers than she was of dark forces. Not very smart, but understandable. The Crossroads Bar across the parking lot attracted some pretty scary-looking humans.

  I agreed I’d come without Mick, and Heather left, mollified.

  I needed to question Ansel again, but there was nothing I could do about that until he woke up, so I went to question another being I needed to interrogate.

  At least all seemed to be in order in my hotel this morning, thank the gods. Elena was chopping vegetables with vigor in the kitchen, the two new maids were busy cleaning upstairs, the brochure rack was full, and the plants were watered. The saloon was well stocked to open this afternoon, complete with cracked magic mirror hanging over the bar.

  The mirror had come with the hotel. I’d found it upstairs in the dusty attic soon after I’d moved in, after Mick and I had awakened it with a burst of Tantric magic. The crack in it had come later, after one of the harrowing adventures that made me question my wisdom in opening a hotel.

  Because Mick and I had woken it, the mirror was now bound to obey both of us unquestioningly. The fact that the mirror had been able to disobey me on the road made me more than uneasy.

  The mirror appeared to be asleep. I shook its frame, the glass tinkling, and was rewarded with a sleepy, “What?”

  “What happened out there?” I demanded. “I told you to contact Mick, and you said you couldn’t. What did you mean, you couldn’t?”

  “I mean I couldn’t, honey,” it said, the mirror coming more awake. “Something was keeping my mouth shut. Oh, girlfriend, it was terrible.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that—something or someone that could make my magic mirror immune to my commands had to be deadly powerful. Magic mirrors were highly magical talismans, and as annoying as this one could be, it had proved its worth more than once, saving my life and Mick’s several times over.

  “Janet,” the mirror said. “Take me with you to the séance. Please?”

  “No,” I said immediately. I could see the trouble that would bring.

  “I can make spooky noises,” it said. “You know, lend atmosphere.”

  “The people such a thing might impress wouldn’t hear you anyway.” Those without magical ability can’t hear the magic mirror at all. I envied them. “And I thought you were asleep during that conversation.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “Forget it. You’re not going.”

  “Fine,” the mirror said grumpily. “Séances are crap anyway. It wasn’t a person,” it finished.

  “Sorry?” I blinked at the non sequitur.

  “On the bike, sweetie. I didn’t sense the presence of another mage. Not a person.”

  “A spell then?” I asked.

  “But someone has to cast the spell, don’t they?”

  Someone did. I left the magic mirror, disquieted.

  I went in search of Mick, who was tinkering with my bike near its shed behind the hotel. His only greeting was a quick look at me before returning his gaze to his socket wrench, but Mick could smolder me to ash with just a glance.

  He had very blue eyes, the color of which had caught me when I’d looked up into them the night he’d taken my virginity. That had been after I’d tried to kill him with my storm magic, which he’d let crawl all over his body before he’d dispersed it and laughed at me.

  “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 co
nversation. I also told him about Heather’s séance.

  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. “Gods, 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 amusement. “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 damn 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 pussies. 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.”

&
nbsp; 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 snatched 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 goddess, one of the oldest, almost as old as Coyote, though I wasn’t certain. She, like Coyote, was a shifter god, 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.