Nightwalker

by Allyson James

  The glass the fireman mentioned had come from the rows of glasses that had hung above the bar, the bottles of wine and liquor that had lined the shelves behind it, and the windows that had imploded.

  The magic mirror hung above the bar in its usual place, and I relaxed a little. It was still intact.

  The frame had warped and half melted away, but the frame wasn’t part of the mirror. The magical part was the glass itself, the silver backing it, and the ton of spells a long-ago mage had poured into it.

  The face of the mirror was black. I couldn’t tell from the doorway whether it was filmed with soot, or whether the darkness was inside the glass itself.

  The fireman was standing right next to me, and so was Emilio, so I couldn’t very well launch into a conversation with the mirror. But I risked one question.

  “Are you all right?”

  Silence. The mirror didn’t respond, not even with a tinkle of broken bits.

  Emilio’s big hand landed on my shoulder. “I know it’s hard, Janet. But it will be all right. Fire chief says the saloon’s structure is still sound, so get on to your insurance company and start clearing things up.”

  Emilio Salas was a cheerful sort, always optimistic, in spite of his job, and in spite of living in the weirdness of Magellan all his life.

  He patted my shoulder again, his work done, and went to the kitchen to see if Elena was good. Emilio was one of the few people Elena liked—maybe because sorrow, sarcasm, and anger bounced off him and didn’t leave a mark. Emilio seemed to absorb negativity like Nash absorbed and annulled spells.

  The fireman told me my guests could come back in, but of course, the saloon was off limits. He’d told me to have someone board up the door right away.

  I went back outside to the clustered guests to find that Cassandra had returned. She’d already handed around coffee and was talking to everyone about their options, whether they stayed here or moved to another hotel.

  With Cassandra was her girlfriend, Pamela, a tall woman with black hair in a tight braid and wolf-gray eyes. Pamela was a Changer who could become a wolf. And like a wolf, she was insanely protective of Cassandra, who was, in Changer terms, her mate.

  I was happy that Cassandra had someone to keep her safe, but Pamela sometimes decided that Cassandra should be kept safe from me. A Changer thinking someone threatened her mate was a dangerous thing.

  “Who did this?” Pamela asked me in a low voice. She had her arms folded and regarded me with coldness.

  “Dragons,” I said.

  Her eyes flickered. “Mick let them?”

  “I wouldn’t say he let them. But don’t worry, they’ll pay.”

  One way or the other. Pamela returned to helping Cassandra calm the guests—though why Pamela thought she could calm anyone, I didn’t know. I went inside and into my office, opened the desk drawer, and took out one of the shards of broken mirror I kept in there.

  When the mirror had been broken, Mick and I had pried pieces out of it out to carry with us or keep stashed around the hotel in case we needed them. Mick and I could communicate through the mirror over long distances much better than we could on cell phones. The mirror never hit a dead zone.

  I took the piece of mirror out of the leather bag in which I kept it, carefully laid it on the desk, and peered down into it.

  Chapter Nine

  Darkness. The mirror had gone black all the way across, as though this piece had burned along with the others.

  The mirror didn’t answer me when I again asked if it was all right. I even apologized to it and told it I’d take the damage out of Drake’s hide.

  Still nothing.

  I stroked the surface of the mirror, but I didn’t even get a shiver of delight or a string of lewd comments.

  I was cold with misgivings as I put the mirror shard away. The thing drove me crazy with its drag-queen drawl, sexual suggestions, insane laughter, and stupid jokes. On the other hand, it had saved my life several times over. Without the mirror, I’d have been very definitely dead a while ago. But not only would losing a magical talisman be bad for me, I’d miss it.

  Magic mirrors could be repaired. The trouble was, any mage strong enough to repair a magic mirror would also be strong enough to kill you for it.

  I had hoped that the mirror would be well enough for me to use it to spy on the dragon compound. Last year, when I’d been taken to the compound, the mirror had told me how to finagle the shard so it could look through all the mirrors in the dragons’ mansion. I’d discovered later that the mirror had maintained the contact so it could look into the dragon compound any time it wanted.

  Mostly the mirror enjoyed watching the human houseboy, a buff twenty-something called Todd, strip for his showers. But I sometimes used the mirror myself to keep track of what was going on with Bancroft, Drake, and their cronies.

  I’d have to wait for Mick before I could talk to the dragons. He was the only one who could get me in contact with the compound without me being fried. But Mick was taking his time out there while he recovered from the crossbow wound, and I started to worry about him too.

  I called Heather Hansen, listened to five minutes of her distress about the fire—she’d seen something dark in my aura, she swore it, and she was so sorry she’d been distracted by the séance and hadn’t warned me. I let her run down—she did truly feel bad—and then I asked her for Paige’s phone number.

  She gave it to me readily, telling me it was so nice of me to help with Paige’s sister. Heather offered her services as medium to me any time I wanted them, gratis. Perhaps I’d like to speak to my deceased mother, to tell her I was all right?

  I managed to give her a polite answer before I hung up. The last thing I needed was Heather trying to conjure the spirit of my evil-goddess mother. She might show up.

  I called Paige and got her voice mail. I left a message, urging her to call me, telling her I’d had word that her sister might be fine and well. With any luck, Paige would call off her slayers until she found out what I knew, but I didn’t hold my breath. The slayer marks had been cleaned off the doorframes—I hadn’t seen any new ones as I’d run around outside, apart from the ones made by the slayer Nash had arrested. Maybe they’d think Ansel had perished in the fire and give up. Hey, it could happen.

  I helped Cassandra settle the guests who were staying into their rooms again. She offered to spend the rest of the night here, and because we weren’t full—we’d just lost a hiking couple to the motel in Magellan—I put her and Pamela in the usual room they took when they stayed overnight.

  Emilio, who was hanging out in the kitchen talking to Elena and eating the mess of chilaquiles she’d decided to whip up, cheerfully said he’d sent for some of his nephews to come over and board up my doors and windows.

  They arrived soon, along with Maya Medina, who did my electrical work. Maya eyed the damage from the lobby as Salas’s four nephews started hammering.

  Maya had the kind of figure that managed to make even jeans and a simple pullover top look sexy. She had lavish curves and a nicely formed behind, her blue-black hair fell in gorgeous waves down her back, and her eyes were the color of strong coffee.

  Sheriff Jones loved this woman, though he didn’t always like to admit it—he pretended emotion was what happened to other people. Maya loved him back with fierce intensity and didn’t care who knew it.

  I’d inadvertently walked in on Maya and Nash once when they’d been in flagrante, and I’d seen vividly that Nash was both a virile man and an enthusiastic one. I’d also kissed him when I’d been high on storm magic and needed the magic siphoned off. Mick hadn’t been around to help me calm down, and Nash with his magic-sucking ability had been right there. Unfortunately, when I get too storm-crazed, I don’t have a lot of control, and inhibitions are blown away.

  But the seemingly cold Nash made it clear to all that he preferred the volatile Maya. Maya had actually softened him a little and he her, though you’d have to know them very well to be able to tell
.

  “How do you do it, Janet?” Maya asked, hands on hips. “I get this place into better shape than anywhere else in town, and you go and destroy it. Every time.”

  “I’m a victim of circumstance,” I said. “Not my fault.”

  She gave me the skewering look that only Maya could manage. “It never is.”

  “Think you can fix it?”

  “Of course, I can fix it.” She trailed off into mutters. “I’ll never get out of this town, not when I have to repair your hotel all the time.”

  “I thought you were living in Flat Mesa with Nash.”

  “Same difference.”

  She still owned a house in Magellan, though, with a nice garden and painfully neat interior. Nash had lived like a bachelor for a long time, and Maya was disdainful about the state of his house. Something they needed to work out.

  Finally Salas’s nephews finished closing off the saloon. Cassandra and I worked a spell to rid the rest of the hotel of lingering smoke, seal off any bad gasses that might have collected in the saloon, and sweeten the air. To the scent of sage and sandalwood, I went to bed.

  It was three a.m., and still no Mick. I looked out windows, hoping to see a dragon winging his way home across the desert. Given our history, I went a little crazy when I didn’t know where Mick was. I knew, though, that I couldn’t keep a leash on him. Our relationship would never make it if I tried to do that.

  The hotel was silent now, the guests and Cassandra in bed, the spectators gone. When I’d gone down to the basement to look in on Ansel—who’d been enjoying a viewing of the original Thirty-Nine Steps—I discovered Elena sleeping on a folding cot near his room, like a guard dog. She’d been sound asleep when I passed her, but I had little doubt she’d awaken if another slayer went down there after him.

  I didn’t think I’d sleep again with so many things on my mind, but I was out by the time I pulled up the covers.

  I awoke to a sensation I couldn’t mistake. Mick’s mouth on me between my legs. The wild friction of it brought me to a half-awake state, to a place of joy I never wanted to leave.

  He’d stripped the sheets from my sweating body, and now he lay on the lower half of my bed, my legs over his arms. I made a sound between a gasp and a moan. “Welcome back,” I said.

  Mick smiled up at me, his eyes hot and blue. Not black, not his dragon eyes, which was good for now. Mick the man was enjoying me, and Janet the woman lay back and let him.

  He worked on me, his mouth talented, until my body was rising to his mouth. The coming was good. Black and purple lights danced at the edges of my vision, my body one point of squeezing ecstasy.

  When I collapsed, trying to catch my breath, Mick pulled me up to him, him on his knees on the bed, me with legs locked around him.

  I loved watching Mick have sex with me. He would gaze straight into my eyes, his so blue, his face relaxed, his skin damp.

  He wasn’t a quiet lover though. “Janet, you’re a fire in my heart. It burns me when I’m not with you.”

  My replies weren’t as poetic. We crashed down onto the bed, me on my back, his big body weighting me into the mattress.

  He finished, and everything went still.

  We ended up with me on my side, Mick cradling me back against his chest. I loved moments like this. I thought I could stay forever curled into the curve of him, Mick’s arms around me and protecting me from harm.

  The world didn’t work that way, but for now, I could bask in his warmth and let the world go to hell. And hope it didn’t, not literally.

  “It’s what dragons do,” Mick said quietly, drawing light fingers across my throat.

  “What’s that?” My words were barely coherent.

  “Curl up around each other, male and female, to keep warm after mating. It’s our most vulnerable time.”

  “I can see why. I’m weak as a kitten.”

  He kissed my shoulder. “No, you’re not. You’re strong, my Janet. That’s why you can take me. I saw your strength the night I met you.”

  “After I tried to fry you,” I said. “And then you ate the lightning and laughed. I was pretty sure I was dead.”

  “My way of telling you I liked you. I took you out for Mexican right after, didn’t I?”

  I smiled. “And then seduced me.” I remembered walking into the hotel room in Las Vegas with him, knowing what we’d do there. I’d been both excited and scared to death.

  I’d fallen in love with him that night—as much as I’d pretended I hadn’t—fallen hard.

  Had never really fallen out again.

  “Couldn’t help myself,” Mick said, his voice tickling my ear. “You were the sexiest woman I’d ever met.”

  “Since most of your women were dragons, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  Mick kissed my shoulder again. “I’ve been alive a long time. But the moment I saw you, my whole world changed.”

  He knew how to melt my heart. I rolled over, kissed him, and we made love again, slowly this time, face to face. I loved looking into his so-blue eyes.

  We slept again afterward, and when we woke, the sun was coming up. Mick lay next to me, facedown now, with the covers halfway up his legs. I sighed in relief. I’d woken up too often without him.

  While we lay in the early sunlight, I filled him in on what Ansel had told me while he’d been off healing himself. Mick’s skin was whole and smooth now, only a little scar on his chest to show for it, one too near his heart.

  Mick’s eyes flicked to black then back to blue as I went through the story. “I think we need to have a talk with Richard Young from Santa Fe.”

  “And the dragons,” I said with vigor. “I want a word with Drake. By the way, I’ve never had a chance to hear what you found out from them. You know, before Drake decided to set fire to the hotel. Please tell me it was nothing you said.”

  “I never saw Drake. I spoke directly to Bancroft. He doesn’t know where Laura is, or what she was doing at Chaco Canyon, and I believe him. He seemed surprised I thought he’d know.”

  “Drake’s playing a game by himself, maybe?”

  “Maybe.” Mick’s frown deepened. “Mmm.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head, lifted my hand on which I wore the silver and turquoise ring he’d given me, and touched his lips to the ring. “We’re going to have to work to figure this out, which means less time I can spend in bed with you.”

  My body warmed. “Then I say let’s find Laura as fast as we can, punch Drake in the nose, clear Ansel, and go back to bed.”

  Mick shook his head in mock anger. “I’m sacrificing way too much for them.”

  “I agree.”

  We both rolled out of bed, me stretching, Mick standing naked in the sunlight and watching me stretch.

  “Seriously,” I said. “You need to kick Drake’s ass for burning down my saloon.”

  “He’ll pay for the damages, believe me.” Mick reached for the jeans he’d left on the floor. I loved watching him bend over for his clothes.

  “Mick,” I said as he slid on the pants and began zipping and buckling. “What else did you do at the dragon compound? Something to do with why you’ve been going out there so often lately?”

  He didn’t look at me, which was a bad sign. Pretending to have trouble with his belt buckle, Mick said, “Dragon business. I’ll tell you in time.”

  Dragons lived so long that in time might mean five years from now. “I’m not trying to be nosy. You know why I worry.”

  “I know. You have good reason.” He finally looked up at me, his expression unreadable. “But I will tell you, when I’m ready. On this—you’re going to have to trust me. It’s complicated.”

  Everything about my relationship with Mick was complicated. Worth it, but complicated.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked, watching me for my answer.

  “Oh, I trust you. I don’t trust the rest of the dragons or anyone else magical out there who wants to kill you or enslave you.”


  “You hold my true name, Janet. As long as you do, no one else can touch me.” He brushed one finger across my cheek. “The only one who can destroy me now is you.”

  I looked at him in sudden terror. “Oh, great.”

  His eyes warmed with his grin, and he kissed my parted lips. “I’m not worried.”

  Good for him. “You said last night that there were dragonslayers as well as Nightwalker slayers.”

  “That’s true. But dragonslayers are few and far between. Most humans aren’t stupid enough to go up against a dragon. Those who are . . .” He made a movement like he was scattering dust. “Aren’t any more.”

  “Natural selection at work?”

  Mick laughed. He kissed me again, picked up his shirt and went out, no doubt to find a giant breakfast. Sex always made him ravenously hungry.

  I showered, noting that Mick had worked healing spells on me while we’d enjoyed ourselves. My cuts and bruises had faded to mere shadows.

  I dressed and went outside my back door to perform my morning ritual of scattering corn to the rising sun. A few local rabbits watched me, waiting to dive in and grab the morsels, as did a crow perched high in the juniper.

  I waved at the crow. Might be Grandmother, manifesting to watch me, or just a crow. Either way, didn’t hurt to be friendly.

  I caught sight of movement on the railroad bed. Just a flash, but it was a coyote’s tail, the coyote dashing down out of sight into a wash.

  Then I heard a roar.

  Dust rose into the air from the top of the railroad bed, kicked up under the feet of a giant grizzly. The bear was far larger than a normal bear, its fur rippling brown and golden as it ran with startling grace across the railroad bed and down into the desert beyond. Dust hung in the air in its wake. It roared again, and the howl of a coyote answered it.

  I hurried to the railroad bed and scrambled up it, half curious, half worried. I didn’t often get to see Bear in her grizzly form, and I wanted to watch Coyote try to evade her. He wouldn’t be able to, I knew it in my bones.