He looked up at me. “Which part of what you said then didn’t you mean?”
His eyes were so blue, like a deep mountain lake. I wanted to fall into them forever.
I crossed the room and took the pillow from his hands. “If I said I didn’t want to make love to you,” I said, stroking the side of his face, “that, I did not mean.” Then I leaned down and brushed my lips against his.
His hands found my waist as his mouth clung to mine. Then he stood and pulled me into an embrace. I laid my cheek against his chest and listened to his heart beating wildly, in time with mine, before he bent to kiss me again.
Eventually we made it back to my bed. The raw urgency of our first kiss never surfaced that afternoon; no hint of coyote ever showed in his eyes. It was all Joseph, awkward as a teenager and graceful as an owl in flight. It was all honesty. And it was exactly what I needed.
Chapter 12
As much fun as our afternoon had been, we still had a job to do that night. I called the pizza place to order supper, then ran down to the Cube to retrieve his clothes from the day before. “Maybe I’d better start leaving a change of clothes at your house,” he said, sniffing at his shirt.
We got to his place around 9:00 p.m. George was watching TV, beer can in hand; he waved to us as we walked in. He was already dressed for our escapade, looking every inch the urban Indian: cowboy boots, boot-cut jeans, Western shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. His bolo tie featured a huge chunk of turquoise on the clasp. I couldn’t see his belt buckle from where I stood by the door, but I suspected it was graced by a few more such stones. His hair hung in two plaits on either side of his head, each tied with a leather thong. An impressive cowboy hat sat next to him on the sofa.
“Perfect,” Joseph said approvingly. “I’m gonna go throw some stuff in a bag.” He kissed me and headed off toward his bedroom.
“Good job,” George said to me when Joseph had disappeared down the hall.
“What do you mean?”
He indicated a spot at the other end of the sofa, and I sat. “Joseph’s been needing a woman for quite some time now. I guess you’re it.” His attention seemed to be split between the TV show and his comments to me.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you mean, he’s been needing a woman?”
He turned his head toward me and lowered his voice. “You know about the skinwalking.” It was a statement, not a question. I nodded. “He had a pretty rough time of it with the tribe when he first started to change.”
“I know about some of that.”
“Well, it’s made him pretty secretive about it. He’s kind of scared to tell anybody, for fear they’ll shun him like the tribe did.”
I nodded as the pieces fell into place. It made sense; all that “man of mystery” stuff when we first met must have mostly been due to his fear of being found out.
“And then, too,” he said, as if vouchsafing a confidence, “sometimes the change sneaks up on him. Makes it hard to date a lady if you’re worried you’ll turn into a wild animal in a clinch.”
I snorted. “I can see how that would put a crimp on things, yeah.”
“Now you be good to him, you hear?” George said. “He deserves something good in his life, after what he and the old man have been through.”
I smiled. “I’ll do my best, George.”
“See that you do,” he said, and burped.
Joseph came into the room, a backpack looped over one shoulder. He slapped George on the back. “Let’s go, buddy. It’s show time.”
George drove his own pickup truck and went to check in first. We waited until he texted Joseph his room number – “326,” Joseph read aloud. That was the signal that the coast was clear in the lobby. We checked in, keeping our backs carefully turned to the doorway in case Durant wandered by for some reason.
Our room was on the sixth floor and, as luck (or the goddess) would have it, in the same wing as Durant’s room on eight. We were pretty sure he hadn’t changed rooms again, but as soon as we were settled, Joseph the Mouse went to make sure.
In less than fifteen minutes, he was back. “He’s still there,” he confirmed with a grin, “and he’s got the desk shoved up against the door.” He reached for his shorts.
“Why are you getting dressed?” I asked.
“That,” he said as he dropped his shorts and joined me on the bed, “is a very good question.”
The rest of the night went like clockwork. Joseph did his thing and, relaxed as I was, it was no trouble at all for me to go along for the ride.
As soon as I heard Joseph hooting outside, I texted George, who went down to the lobby. He found an unobtrusive spot with a view of the front desk and sat down with a newspaper to wait.
As soon as Joseph got back to our room, he got dressed. I slipped my arm around his waist to steady him; he leaned on me a little; and slowly, we made our way down the stairs. The fire door opened into an alcove off the lobby. By peering around the corner, we had a clear view of the front desk and George’s chair. George tipped his hat to us and went back to his paper.
We didn’t have to wait long. The elevator doors opened just a few minutes later and Leo Durant sailed out in high dudgeon, holding at arm’s length one of the hotel room trash cans. He banged the trash can on the counter and began screaming at the poor desk clerk. “Again! For the third night in a row! My sleep has been interrupted by some practical joker banging on my window! And every night I find this stuff on the floor!”
George was already on the move. “Excuse me, sir, but I couldn’t help overhearing….”
“Half the state couldn’t help overhearing,” Joseph muttered. I poked him in the side.
“Can I see what you’ve got there?” George went on. He made a show of poking around inside the trash can. “Mmmm. Ohhh my. Mister, I don’t know how to break it to you, but you’ve got a real problem on your hands.”
“I know I’ve got a real problem on my hands!” Leo was turning purple. “I am trying to get this idiot to fix it for me!”
“Have you had any run-ins with any Indians lately?” George asked.
Leo stopped in mid-fume, mouth agape.
“Because,” George went on, “what you’ve got here is the makings of a good, solid Indian curse.”
“What?” The color began to drain from Leo’s face.
“Yes sir,” George said, poking through the trash can again, “I’d say you must’ve riled up them old Indian spirits pretty good. You’re marked, Mister. I wouldn’t want to be you right now. Sorry.” George turned back toward his chair.
“Wait!” Leo called, grabbing the back of George’s shirt. His face was bloodless now. “What do I do with this stuff?”
“Shit,” Joseph said softly. Leo had gone off-script.
Thank Somebody that George was up to the challenge. “Well,” he drawled, “I reckon you need to sweep all that stuff up – I wouldn’t leave even a grain of it in the carpet, if I were you – and then I’d get in my car and drive about a hundred miles due north. Then I’d dig me a hole about two-three feet deep and dump all this stuff into it, and spit on it, and say, ‘Evil spirits, leave me alone!’ And then fill in the hole and walk backwards back to your car. But don’t tell nobody what happened.”
“O-okay,” Leo said. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“And don’t worry,” George said, walking Leo to the elevator. “Your secret’s safe with me.” They entered it together. I could hear George soothing him as the doors slid shut.
We were dying with suppressed laughter as we climbed the stairs to George’s room.
“Nice fucking job,” Joseph said, giving George a high five.
“Especially the ‘cure’,” I said, holding my side where it ached from laughing. “Oh my God, I thought I was gonna die.”
“Oh, it weren’t nothing,” George said. Then he winked at me, and dropped the laconic Westerner act. “It was worth it just to see his face when I told him he was cursed. That was priceless.”
Joseph set the alarm on his phone for 10:00 a.m. so we could be up and out before checkout time at noon. But far, far earlier, my phone rang. I fumbled with it, managing to hit the right place on the touchscreen almost by accident. “Hullo?” I mumbled.
“Naomi, it’s Brock.”
“What the hell, Brock? What time is it?” I glanced at the room clock, which said 5:15.
“Sorry, I know it’s early. Listen, Leo just called me.”
I sat up and looked at Joseph, who I suspect had come wide awake as soon as I said Brock’s name. “And I should care because…?”
“He asked me,” he said with exaggerated patience, “to ask you whether you could get Charlie Frank to come to a meeting at our office today.”
“Today?” I squeaked. “That’s insane, Brock. He’s four hours away. And it’s New Year’s Eve.”
“Would you please just call and ask him?” Brock said. “And then get back to me? Leo is very insistent that we have the meeting today. See if you can get your clients to come, too.”
“I’ll do the best I can, Brock, but I’m not promising anything.”
“Thanks, Naomi.” The phone went dead.
“I bet it just about killed him to thank me,” I snorted to Joseph. “Do you have Charlie’s number?”
Charlie agreed to come. I held my nose and called Brock back, and we set the meeting for 11:00 a.m. “Let’s see,” Joseph said as we got dressed. “If Leo hit the road right after he talked to George, that would have been about four. Give him about an hour and a half to go a hundred miles…say an hour to dig the hole and do all that other crazy stuff George told him to do…another hour and a half back here, shower and shave, breakfast if he can keep it down, and then a forty-five minute drive to your office. Yeah, he’ll be there by eleven. He might even be there early.”
“Stop it,” I said, laughing. “You’re killing me. Call your grandfather.”
He hooked his arms around my waist and found a convenient spot for his hands a little higher up. “Say, why are we getting dressed? We’ve got hours until checkout time.”
“Joseph,” I said sternly. “Call your grandfather.”
“Are you trying to push me?” he asked as he nibbled my ear.
“Not yet,” I said, and then, as one of his hands drifted lower, “oh, fine, have it your way.”
A little while later, I confessed to Joseph that I had felt the tiniest bit badly for Durant. “It sounds like he lost a lot of family in the Indian wars,” I said. “I’m sure that when George told him he was cursed, all that family history came back to him.”
I kind of expected Joseph to say, “Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have messed with us.” That’s certainly what Brock would have said.
But no. Joseph sighed and said, “Yeah. I felt bad about that, too. If I’d known about that when I was setting things up, I might have come up with a different plan. But things were already in motion by the time he said anything. And it was kind of ancient history for him, anyway, right? All that violence was several generations back.”
I knew he was rationalizing, and he knew it, too. “You lost family, too, back then,” I pointed out, running my fingers along his forearm.
He looked into my eyes. “That doesn’t make it right.”
My heart swelled. “Of course not. We didn’t really hurt him, though.”
Joseph sighed. “No. We didn’t. It’s just that sometimes Coyote convinces me to do stupid stuff on impulse. And then we’re both sorry later.” He looked away.
I frowned. Coyote? Maybe he meant the coyote side of his nature. Yeah, that had to be it.
“I just hope White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman knows what She’s doing,” he said.
“So do I,” I said fervently, and kissed him. “So do I.”
Joseph had estimated correctly. Durant was early. He seemed almost eager to see us as we walked through the door of the conference room – Charlie first, then me, then Joseph, then Looks Far. (The old man had taken one look at his grandson and me, grunted, and then hugged us both. It was very sweet.) We took seats on the opposite side of the table from Perry, Brock and Leo.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Leo said, commandeering the meeting from the start. “Our board of directors had an emergency meeting late yesterday about this matter, and I wanted to let you know their decision as soon as possible.”
“On a Sunday? BS,” I wrote on my yellow legal pad and slid it toward Charlie. He read it and nodded slightly. I saw Brock frown as he caught the exchange.
“First, Mr. Frank,” Leo said, “I want to thank you for raising the questions you did at our last meeting. They gave our directors much food for thought.”
“I bet they did,” I wrote. Joseph kicked me under the table.
“Our managers have spent the past few days looking into the answers to those questions,” Leo went on, “and they have discovered what you suggested here in this room last week: that this project is not feasible at this time, and in fact it may never be feasible.”
“That’s good news, Mr. Durant,” Charlie said smoothly. “That’s very good news for my client.”
“And for my client, as well,” I said. “Charlie, do you still have that sales contract?”
“Yes, I do,” he said, sliding it out of his briefcase (where, I would have bet money, it had sat since Friday).
“Mr. Durant, you need to tear up that document,” I pushed. “As a show of good faith.”
Charlie held it out. Leo actually smiled at Charlie as he took it. He held the document at the top between the thumb and index finger of each hand, and made to separate his hands.
Then Brock said, “Hold it.”
I blinked rapidly. There was a weird distortion in the air around Brock that hadn’t been there before. It was as if someone much taller and burlier overlaid him, occupying the same space in his chair.
“Leo,” Brock continued, and his voice sounded deeper too, “put the document down.” I felt force behind his command, but it was qualitatively different from mine. His felt far older, and as if it came from a different wellspring of power than mine did. I also had the sense of long acquaintance – as if Whoever Brock was channeling had held sway over Leo for quite some time.
Joseph must have felt it, too, or at least he must have seen the same distortion I did. He nearly yanked the tablet out of my hand to scrawl one word: “Loki.”
We exchanged “oh, shit” looks. The playing field had just become a lot more complicated. I began to wonder whether we had been wrong. Maybe Odin wasn’t the Norse god opposing White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman. Maybe it was Loki. Or maybe Loki simply saw an opportunity to cause trouble in the upcoming battle and was egging Odin on.
Suddenly I recalled my vision of Brock’s past, and the grinning wolf that had loped down the trail after him. Loki, too, was a shapeshifter. And he was certainly capable of causing a hell of a lot of trouble.
It was obvious that Charlie wasn’t sensitive to whatever Joseph and I were seeing. Mildly, he said, “What’s the problem, Brock? I’m sure Leo has an electronic copy. If he ever wants to renew his offer, he can simply print it again.”
“That’s not the point,” Brock said.
“And the point would be?” I asked, leaning forward, my arms on the table. Make no mistake – I was gibbering inside. What I really wanted to do was crawl to the door and make a break for it. But then I thought, if I’m going to have to mediate among the gods at some point, I might as well start practicing now. Come on, Lady, I thought, or maybe prayed. I could use a little help here.
I fancied I felt ghostly hands grip my shoulders, easing my fear and steadying my resolve. Then Joseph – and his otherworldly friend – laid a hand on my forearm.
I met Brock’s gaze steadily, thinking, Whoever you are, you’re outnumbered, bud.
Then the conference room went gray around me. The discussion became a murmur, like the soughing of a constant wind through a stand of pines, and the people faded to shado
ws.
That is, some of them did.
In Brock’s place was a very large, very blond Viking with a horribly scarred face and murder in his eyes. “Who are you?” he demanded, looking straight at Joseph.
Joseph had not totally transformed – I could still see him in the tall, lean, lithe creature who stood next to me. But his nose and mouth had morphed into a long snout, his ears had lengthened until they seemed to sit atop his head, and his eyes glowed like amber beacons. “Coyote,” I breathed in confusion and fear.
Coyote/Joseph grinned at me, tongue lolling, and bowed to Loki with a flourish.
I looked around wildly, and noticed that Looks Far was here as well. But he wore nothing but buckskin breeches, heavily fringed, and a buffalo robe that encircled his shoulders. His bare chest was that of a man in his prime, and his skin and hair were the deep mahogany of clotted blood. I suppressed a hysterical giggle. Blood Clot Boy. Oh, why the hell not?
And I realized a fifth being was with us in this strange place. White Buffalo Calf Pipe Woman stood behind me and to my right. The bright aura of her raiment lit the scene.
“Why are you troubling these humans?” She demanded. “Their business is none of your concern. Begone.” She made a shooing motion toward Loki.
Loki was not amenable to shooing. “Your pet humans,” he sneered, “are interfering in my business.”
“You have no business in this land,” She returned. “Your land is across the sea, far from here. Who untied you from your rock? Who slew the serpent that drips acid upon your traitorous face?”
“Ragnarok is coming,” Loki intoned, ignoring Her questions. “I prepare for the final battle. Your pets are in my way.”
Ragnarok, I thought with growing terror. The final cataclysmic battle between the Norse gods and the Giants. It was their faith’s interpretation of the End of Days. Loki was supposed to lead the Giants to slay the gods…and humankind, as well.
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