From Jennifer Ashley, With Love: Three Paranormal Romances from Bestselling Series

by Jennifer Ashley

  When Paige answered the door, I shoved the stuff at her and said, “Nice try. Where’s your pet Nightwalker?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Paige could have wasted time pretending she didn’t know what we were talking about. Instead she hugged the evidence of her crime to her chest and settled for a glare.

  “He’s not here,” she said. “Where’s yours?”

  “Why do you want Ansel dead so much?” I countered.

  “Why do you think? He killed my sister.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “I told you—I left you a voice mail. She was still alive when he lost sight of her.”

  Bear stepped past us and into the house, but Paige’s outrage was all for me. “I heard your message. If your Nightwalker told you that, he’s lying. Laura is dead, and that filthy Nightwalker killed her. He sucked her dry and dumped her body somewhere.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bear wander slowly around the small living room, stopping in front of every table and shelf, looking over the ornaments, photos, and curios—some belonging to the McGuires, some belonging to Paige.

  I didn’t need to concentrate on auras to scent Nightwalker. He’d be in his day sleep now, but he was near, probably in a back bedroom with windows shielded against the sun.

  “Why did you think Ansel killed her in the first place?” I asked. “Did you have evidence, or did someone just tell you that?”

  “If she’s not dead, then where is she?” Paige ignored Bear, facing me as though she considered me the bigger threat. “All I know is that my sister met a Nightwalker for dinner in Gallup. The Nightwalker came back, and Laura didn’t.”

  “That’s all true, but Ansel didn’t kill her,” I said. “He’s been searching for Laura too, trying to help her.”

  “Of course he’d tell you that. Who is gullible enough to believe a Nightwalker?”

  “You are, apparently,” I said. “Why are you letting him stay with you?”

  Paige made a noise of exasperation. “All right, since you know everything. He’s a friend. No, a boyfriend. Before he was turned. He’s the one who told me you had a Nightwalker living in your hotel, and that he’d become friendly with Laura. He told me he found Laura and Ansel in Chaco Canyon. My boyfriend—Bobby—was trying to rescue Laura and bring her back to me, but Ansel was too strong and ran him off. Ansel is much older than Bobby. Apparently they get stronger with age.”

  Rescue Laura, my ass. “You don’t seem very stunned that your old boyfriend is a Nightwalker. You’re amazingly calm, in fact.”

  “He’s been staying with me for a year. Trying to fight the blood frenzy and live normally. Like you claim yours is.”

  Bear turned around. “You’re lying.”

  Paige blinked. “No, I’m not. He really is trying.”

  “I meant about everything,” Bear said. “How about some truth? Or would you like me to tell it for you?”

  Paige studied Bear with new worry. “What are you talking about?”

  Bear waved a large hand at a table of framed photographs. “You care enough about these photos to have brought them with you. Friends, your parents, your boyfriend—before he became Nightwalker, perhaps? None of your sister.”

  “I packed in a hurry. I grabbed what I could.”

  “A person in a hurry would have left all these home,” Bear said. “You came here intending to stay a while, and you brought what you treasured in case you didn’t go back. Why don’t you like your sister?”

  “I like her fine. I mean, she’s dead, isn’t she? I didn’t want her picture—I didn’t want to be reminded.”

  I wasn’t much for keeping photographs myself, but I knew that people found comfort in the photos of loved ones, living or dead, so they could remember them every day. I, for instance, kept a photo of my dad on my desk and a copy in my wallet so I could look upon his face whenever I wanted to.

  “Not getting along with your sister is nothing to be ashamed of,” I said. “I don’t get along with most of my family, except my dad. Not many people have pictures of me among their most treasured things.”

  “All right, so we weren’t best friends,” Paige said in a hard voice. “That doesn’t mean her death doesn’t bother me. And that the Nightwalker shouldn’t die for it.”

  “You faked the séance to convince me she was dead so I’d hand Ansel to you. But Ansel’s a nice guy, and he’s as worried about Laura as you are.” My eyes narrowed. “Or maybe you’re not as worried about her as much as about what she’d found?”

  Paige stared at me a moment, her pale eyes round. She looked a bit like Laura, but less tanned, less energetic. Maybe living in the shadow of Laura’s success as an athletic, pretty, and successful businesswoman had embittered her, or maybe it was more complicated than that. Family dynamics always were.

  “Get out of my house,” Paige said.

  It was Chief McGuire’s house, but I didn’t argue. Bear turned and walked out the door without another word. I had to have a parting shot.

  “Your Nightwalker killed one of the slayers. If word gets out about that, Bobby will be on top of the slayers’ to-kill lists. They won’t care that he’s under your protection. Slayers hate Nightwalkers, period. They’re in it for more than just the bounty.”

  Paige matched me stare for stare, my warning not striking fear into her heart. “One of the slayers I hired will get through, and Ansel will die. Even if my sister is still alive, it’s his fault she got messed up in everything she’s messed up with. I’m not calling off the slayers.”

  I gave her a nod. “All right then. I know where you stand. Mind if I just say hello to your Nightwalker while I’m here?”

  I spun away and was down the hall before Paige could stop me, to the door at the end, where the Nightwalker aura was strongest. The door wasn’t locked and gave way faster than I thought it would.

  I half-fell into the room, but it was empty. The window blinds were down but the slats were open, letting in streaks of sunshine that landed across the bed. The sheets were rumpled, a man’s clothes lay on the floor, but nobody, human or Nightwalker, was in the room.

  The Nightwalker’s aura was. He’d been here and, by the number of clothes on the floor, he’d staying here a while. If I hadn’t been avoiding this side of town I might have sensed him, but I hadn’t come down this street in a long time, at least not since Paige had moved in.

  Paige watched me from the doorway, her arms folded, looking a bit smug. I pushed past her. “Tell Bobby to come see me when he shows up again,” I said, and I left the house.

  * * *

  Bear was nowhere in sight by the time I got outside. I looked up and down the street and out into the desert, but I didn’t see her.

  The land was heating up for the day, shimmers of warmth rising from the flat desert east of town. Nowhere did I see the bulk of Bear either striding along or waiting for me. She’d gone again.

  I started my bike. Paige’s Nightwalker had gone to ground somewhere else today, and my chances of finding him weren’t great. Nightwalkers are excellent at hiding themselves during the sun hours. They know they’re the most vulnerable then and trust very few with their secret hideaways.

  I didn’t have time to go running around all over Magellan and beyond hunting another Nightwalker. I had a young woman and an artifact to find, then I had to figure out a way to destroy the pot before Pericles got hold of it.

  On the other hand, I didn’t need to hunt a Nightwalker myself when there were so many others out there eager to do it for me.

  I rode to the diner, took a booth in the back, ordered lunch, and pulled out a now-creased business card. I remembered that my cell phone had been reduced to melted slag, and asked Jolene if I could use the kitchen’s phone. It was cordless, and she brought it to me with my milkshake.

  I dialed the phone number on Rory’s card. He’d told me to text him, but he’d have to put up with hearing a human voice.

  “So the bitch who hired me is harboring a Nightwalker too?�
� Rory asked. “What is wrong with people in your town?”

  I started to explain that she wasn’t from my town, but let it go. “Can you find him?”

  “Find him, stake him, behead him. If you want me to dispose of the remains, it’s an extra fee. What’s the bounty?”

  Probably more than I could afford. “You wouldn’t do this for the satisfaction of ridding the world of another Nightwalker?”

  “Nope. Slaying is dangerous work, and I want to get paid. Then there’s wear and tear on crossbows, clothes to replace the ones I ruin when I make the kill, crossbow bolts, wooden stakes . . . All that plus my risk of the Nightwalker biting, draining, or turning me.”

  “Fair enough. How about five hundred?”

  He snorted. “How about five thousand?”

  I gripped the phone. “I don’t need you to kill him. I need to talk to him first.”

  “Capturing a Nightwalker alive is even harder. That will cost you another grand.”

  “Are you kidding me? I don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Tell you what—you let me have your Nightwalker so I can collect the bounty on him from Paige, and I’ll give you a discount.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “Bring me that other Nightwalker, and we can talk.”

  “If I capture him alive, and you don’t pay up, I’ll just let him kill you.”

  Rory hung up.

  I sat staring at the phone until Jolene brought me my burger. “Bad news, Janet?”

  “No.” I sighed and handed her the phone. “Just asshole men.”

  Jolene laughed. “Can’t argue with you there.” She took the phone, her backside swaying in her tight capris as she stopped on the way to refill Salas’s coffee cup.

  I ate the burger, lost in thought, trying to decide my next move. I hadn’t brought the fake pot with me today, but I wanted to ask my friend Jamison Kee about the markings. What Jamison didn’t know about the pueblo peoples who’d filled this area in ages past, not to mention the legends of all the tribes of the Southwest . . . No, there was nothing he didn’t know.

  I finished, paid, and slipped Jolene a tip. I said hello on my way out to Salas as he lifted his chicken sandwich. I liked Emilio—he was one of the few people I knew who wasn’t underhanded or didn’t have his own agenda.

  I left the diner to talk to another man who wasn’t underhanded. Jamison Kee, from Chinle, one of my closest friends, had been the first person outside my immediate family to become aware of my Stormwalker powers. He’d not only acknowledged me as Stormwalker, he’d taken the time and trouble to teach a scared teenaged girl how to handle her powers and not be too afraid of them.

  At the time, he’d been a storyteller with shaman abilities—that was before he’d found out he was a Changer.

  Jamison was also an artist, a sculptor. One day he’d been working on carving a mountain lion out of a hunk of sandstone, when he’d became a mountain lion himself—a real one. Scared the shit out of him.

  Terrified he’d hurt Naomi and her daughter, with whom he’d been living at the time, he’d taken off to Mexico to find a group of Changers he’d heard about. They’d taught him about being a Changer—after torturing him a while, for his own good, they’d said—and he’d finally escaped them and returned home.

  Jamison had an artist’s studio behind the house he shared with Naomi and Julie, Naomi now his wife. Naomi owned and ran the plant nursery that fronted the highway, and their house lay behind that.

  When I pulled into the nursery’s lot, Naomi stood next to a flatbed trailer full of trees in big wooden planters and talked animatedly with one of the guys who worked for her. I waved but didn’t stop, going on through to the private drive, where I parked and went in search of Jamison.

  From the sounds coming from the hogan-like shed behind the house, he was in there sculpting. I debated disturbing him—the creative fire isn’t something that can be turned on and off like a faucet. Jamison’s creative work was worth giving him his solitude.

  Julie came out of the house, a big smile on her face. “Hello, Janet.” Her hands made the sign as she spoke.

  “What’s Jamison working on?” I asked, turning to hang my helmet on my bike. Then I felt stupid. Sometimes I forgot that, in spite of medical technology, Julie couldn’t hear well enough to make out my words, especially at this distance, without reading my lips. I had to be looking at her to talk.

  “He’s working on a piece of basalt,” Julie said before I could repeat the question. “He’s excited about it.”

  Apparently, she had been able to figure out what I was saying. Good. She wouldn’t have to gently remind me this time. “Do you think he’ll mind if I interrupt? It’s kind of important.” I used sign language with the last words, showing her how much I’d learned.

  Julie laughed, her face lighting up. “It’s all right, Janet. You don’t have to sign. I can hear you. Perfectly, in fact.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My mouth dropped open in shock. Julie kept looking at me, her smile telling me she enjoyed seeing me jerked out of my presumptions.

  Then the enormity of her announcement connected in my brain. Julie can hear.

  I ran at her in joy, lifted her off her feet, swung her around, and kissed her cheek as I set her down. I was not usually one for impromptu demonstrations of affection, or even touching anyone without their permission, but this was a special occasion.

  “What happened?” I asked excitedly. “Did you have surgery? Is this a new kind of implant? What?”

  “Nothing like that.” Julie’s speech still slurred a little—she’d learned to say the words when she couldn’t hear the click and stop of every consonant. “Jamison did a spell.”

  “Jamison . . .” I stopped in a different kind of shock. “Did a spell . . .”

  My elation blew away on a cold wind, the heat of the summer day gone.

  There was no way that Jamison, as much as I cared for him, could have performed a spell of that magnitude. Changing a person in a profound way—giving the blind sight, the deaf hearing, or making a paralyzed person walk again—was complicated magic that took intense power, experience, and skill. I couldn’t have done it, and neither could Mick. The ununculous, Emmett Smith, might be able to—might—and only if he had help.

  Jamison Kee, artist and storyteller, didn’t possess this kind of power. Jamison’s shaman abilities had been enhanced when the Changer in him had surfaced, but they were still nowhere near enough for a spell of this level.

  Julie nodded happily, oblivious to my growing horror. “He did it the day after the séance. He asked me and Mom not to tell anyone right away, and then to say it had been a medical procedure, but you can know. You’re practically family.”

  Oh gods, Jamison, what have you done?

  I turned away from Julie, who started to look puzzled. “Janet? What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy.”

  I was. Or would have been. As it was, fear overrode any kind of gladness for Julie. I didn’t answer her as I headed at a run for Jamison’s studio.

  * * *

  Jamison Kee, a tall, nicely muscled Diné with a mesmerizing voice, wore only a T-shirt and shorts as he worked with hammer and chisel in the summer heat. The shirt was sweat-soaked and stuck to his finely honed back, and the shorts bared legs of power and light chocolate-colored skin. His long hair hung in a tight braid down his back, and he wore goggles to protect his eyes.

  He tapped the chisel in careful strokes into the black rock on the sculpting stand, not looking up when I ran into the hogan. The sculpture was in early stages, but a feathered wing already emerged from the basalt, and I could tell that it and the rest of the bird would be beautiful.

  “Jamison,” I said.

  The chisel slipped, and Jamison swung around. The goggles hid his eyes, and his face was flushed from the heat.

  The quiet-spoken, good-hearted Jamison I knew growled, “Son of a bitch, Janet. I’m trying to work.”

  “Where is it?” I demanded.<
br />
  “Where is what?”

  I slammed the door behind me. “You know what I’m talking about. There’s no way you are magical enough to do what you did with Julie. Are you crazy? Or just stupid?”

  His mouth firmed, Jamison displeased, not ashamed. “I only did the one spell.”

  “Who was the person who told me that when you deal with forces of magic, the first thing you have to learn is control? Total control.” I was speaking the Diné language, angry. Gods, I sounded like my grandmother. “We have to resist the temptation to play god, and first be reasonable and thoughtful. Who told me that? Oh. I remember now. You!”

  Jamison dropped his tools and ripped the goggles from his face. “I told you. I did the one spell. One. The most important one.”

  “Shit, Jamison. How long have you had the artifact?”

  He didn’t even try to deny it. “A week, I think. Yes, I got it a week ago.”

  “Where did you get it? From Laura DiAngelo? Someone else?”

  “Laura brought it to me. She said she didn’t trust anyone but me.”

  Laura. A week ago. She must have managed to get away across the desert from Chaco Canyon after all, and she’d sought out Jamison. And then went where?

  “How did she even know you?” I broke off. “Oh, wait . . .” Jamison Kee, historian and storyteller, familiar with legends from the Four Corners area and beyond, would be a fantastic resource to an antiquities dealer who needed to know the location and value of a certain historic pot.

  “I told Ansel where it was,” he said, confirming my guess. “Ansel and Laura brought me drawings Richard Young had given her of the pot he was looking for. I told Ansel I’d seen a pot like it in Flagstaff. I swear to you, I had no idea what it was, or how powerful it was, until Laura brought it to me for safekeeping.”

  “No, because if you’d known how dangerous it was, you would have told me or Mick at once, so we could rush up to Flag and destroy it. Right?”

  “What do you mean destroy it?” Jamison’s flush drained away. “You can’t destroy it. It’s our heritage.”