Lacey glanced at Ben. The old man stood, feet slightly apart to steady himself, and watched his grandson with intent eyes. Every once in a while he worked his jaws a little, a harmless tic. When he suddenly shifted and stood up straighter, Lacey looked to see Sam padding toward them. His face was solemn, and when his eyes met Ben’s, he nodded almost imperceptivity.
Without a word, Sam turned toward the truck and Lacey and Ben followed. She again scooted to the middle seat, her feet up on the hump of the transmission, Ben close beside her. Sam started the truck and drove carefully back to the hogan.
Lacey was dying to ask questions—What did he feel? What did he know?—but held off. She just sensed it was not the time, not when Sam had just communed with his cousin’s spirit. Neither of the men spoke, and she wouldn’t either. There would be time later.
When they reached the hogan, Sam parked the truck but left it running. “Stay here,” he said. He got out and went around to the passenger side, opening the door for Ben and helping the old man out. Before he closed the door, Ben peeked in at Lacey and smiled, his eyes alight and the nubs of his teeth showing. She waved to him and he waved back.
The two men walked slowly to the hogan door, talking quietly, Sam leaning down close to his grandfather. The old man gestured, moving his arm up and over as if indicating the stars across the sky. Lacey looked up and saw them twinkling, cold and brittle in the clear winter air. When she looked back, Ben was entering the hogan and Sam was striding back to the truck.
Quickly Lacey moved to the side, giving Sam more room behind the wheel. He put the truck into gear and turned it back the way they had come.
If she’d hoped for some explanation, she didn’t get it. Sam drove carefully, his eyes intent on the road, especially when they crawled down into the deeper wash and then climbed out the other side. Finally Lacey could stand the silence no longer.
“Did you pick up on anything?” she asked.
Sam kept his eyes trained on the dirt track. “Yeah. That was no animal attack. He was murdered.”
Lacey sat up as straight as she could in the bouncing truck. “Do you know by whom?”
His mouth twisted in a cynical parody of a smile. “Yeah.” He faced her. “A witch.”
A witch? Lacey thought of knocking her head on the dashboard, see if she could dislodge whatever was screwing up her ears. “Did you say a witch?”
He nodded, his eyes on the road again. “Yeah. A powerful one.”
Lacey gaped like a fish. “But, but… You don’t mean a real one? One that works spells and commands flying monkeys?”
Sam gave one humorless laugh as he pulled the truck up at Gabe’s house. “Not your version of a witch, no,” he said, cutting the engine. “Ours are different. And they’re very dangerous. And very real.” He impaled her with his dark eyes.
Lacey shook her head in confusion. “I am totally lost here,” she said. “Help me out. What do they do? How do you know?”
He shut off the headlights and turned sideways so he faced her directly. “They terrorize people. Their sole intent is to gain power over others, and they do that by intimidation, curses, even poison; they kill people. This is not a Halloween game, Lacey. This is real.”
She was still having trouble with this. The concept was so outlandish. Yet Sam, her intelligent, confident partner, believed it. “You’re serious,” she said finally.
“Deadly,” he said.
She tried another tack. “But what did you get from your cousin? What did he say?”
Sam’s gaze drifted out the windshield to the darkness around them. “It was someone he knew, someone he trusted. It was a total surprise. I got that from him: shock, disbelief, then an electrifying fear. Not just for his life; for his soul.” He looked back at Lacey. “His throat was slit. As he lay dying, bleeding out, the fear was the strongest emotion. Not pain, not sorrow, but fear.” He paused, his eyes unfocusing. “And something else. Something I can’t quite get. Something like… balance.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
A shiver raced up Lacey’s spine and shook her entire body. She wasn’t sure if it was the creeping cold or Sam’s serious tone. She clutched at something she could understand.
“So the animal attack—that came later, after he was dead? Maybe coyotes got to him and… obliterated the evidence of his murder?” Her teeth were starting to chatter. She jammed her hands into her pockets and balled them into fists.
“That could be,” Sam said. “Hey, you’re freezing. Come on, let’s go in. It looks like everyone else has gone to bed, so we need to be quiet.”
Lacey managed to focus on her watch. After 11:30. The family all had to get up early tomorrow for work and school, so she and Sam couldn’t disturb them.
“But we need to talk about this,” she said.
“No, not now. We need to go in and get you warm.” He stopped her unspoken protest with a look. “Tomorrow, Lacey. Let me think about it. Let me see if I can make sense of it.”
She exhaled, her body shivering. “All right. I am cold.”
“Come on.”
They climbed out of the truck and headed for the house. Sam put one hand on Lacey’s back and guided her through the door into the warm living room. The light over the stove was on, just enough illumination to see by.
“You can have the bathroom first,” he said in a low voice. A pillow and two blankets had been left on the couch, and his duffel sat beside it. He began making his bed.
Lacey felt bad that he was relegated to the couch while she had Griff’s room. But now was not the time to talk logistics. She went on to her room and dug out her sweats, then locked herself in the bathroom as quietly as possible. She’d shower in the morning, when it didn’t matter how much noise she made. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and went back to the living room.
Sam was sitting on the couch, pulling a pair of sweat pants from his bag, as well. Lacey crept up and touched his shoulder. He jumped.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “You can have the bathroom now.”
He nodded. “Thanks. See you in the morning.”
“Good night.” She tiptoed to Griff’s room and closed the door quietly.
She stowed her bags to one side of the room so if she had to make a visit to the bathroom, she wouldn’t trip over them. As she pulled down the sheets on the narrow bunk bed, she thought she heard a tapping noise. She stopped, stood, listening. Yes, definitely tapping—on the window. The wind? It had only been slightly breezy before. She walked to the window and drew the drape aside so she could peer out.
Just the other side of the glass, scant inches away, two round, golden eyes stared back at her, wide and unblinking. A hard, hooked beak scrabbled frantically at the glass, hissing a threat.
Lacey screamed. She stumbled backward, a loud whoop forced from her as she tripped over a pile of books and crashed heavily to the floor. She rapped her head on the bed’s wooden footboard, but cared only that the drape had swung back over the windows, hiding her from the beaked demon outside.
The door to her room burst open and Sam charged in, followed by Gabe and Roxanne.
“Lacey?” he called frantically. He flipped on the light and, seeing her on the floor, rushed to her side.
“I’m okay,” she said. She tried to get her feet under her, but the sliding pile of books confounded her. Sam shoved them away and helped her up.
“What happened?” he asked.
She touched her head gingerly. “I heard a tapping at the window. When I looked out, there was something there, a face staring at me. It had a beak and was trying to break through the window.”
She looked up at Sam with anxiety and confusion. She fully expected him to try to talk her out of both. He didn’t, and that was somehow worse.
He put a hand to the drape, lifting it aside fractionally, and peering outside. He just as quickly let it fall back into place, covering the window.
“Come on,” he said quietly. He slipped his arm around her and pulled h
er toward the door. “Let’s go to the dining room where we can talk without waking the boys.”
Just then the other bedroom door opened. “Mom?” a sleepy voice called. Roxanne went to soothe and settle the boys, while Gabe followed Sam and Lacey to the front room. Sam pulled a chair for Lacey and eased her down to it. He sat next to her, his hand on her back, rubbing absently.
Lacey touched the side of her head again. It was tender, but not disturbingly so, and no lump was evident.
“What’d you do?” Gabe asked. “Hit your head?”
She nodded. “On the footboard of the bed.”
“Let me see,” Roxanne said as she joined them. She gingerly examined where Lacey directed her. “Do you feel any dizziness? Any nausea?”
“No.” Lacey shook her head carefully.
“I think it’ll be okay,” Roxanne said. “I don’t think you hit hard enough for a concussion. Let me get you some aspirin, though.”
While Roxanne went to the kitchen for water and aspirin, Lacey caught Gabe and Sam trading knowing looks.
“All right, you guys,” she said. “Tell me what that was. Tell me what’s going on.”
Roxanne returned, gave Lacey the water and pills and sat next to Gabe. She hunched forward at the table and looked from her husband to Sam. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked.
Sam nodded. “Yeah, it is.”
“What is it?” Lacey demanded.
Sam squeezed her shoulder. “Take the pills.” He waited while she did so, the familiar stone face refusing to say more until the pills were down. She gulped the water, swallowed, and pushed the glass away. Then she folded her arms in front of her and stared at Sam.
“Grampa was right. It’s a witch,” he said quietly to Gabe and Roxanne. “And now, with this”—he nodded to Lacey—“we know what kind.”
Lacey looked from Sam to Gabe and Roxanne. They all seemed to understand.
“What kind?” she repeated, frustration turning her whisper to a hiss. “What do you mean? What was that thing?” She paused, understanding starting to dawn. “Are you saying that… thing was a witch? That was it?”
Sam didn’t speak, but his eyes told her she was correct.
“No, but how? What…?” She had no way to phrase the questions in her mind.
Sam sighed. “I need you to listen, Lacey. Just listen for a minute. In the Navajo culture, witchcraft is very real and very powerful. There are ways that people can… acquire magical abilities. They can do things that you’d think was impossible, the stuff of fiction.” He paused. “One thing they can do is shapeshift.”
Lacey waited, but Sam seemed intent on giving her time to assimilate. “Shapeshift? Meaning… they can turn into animals?”
“Yes. I think what you saw was probably a great horned owl. That’s a common vehicle for witches. Owls, ravens, coyotes.”
She let that sink in. “How do they acquire these abilities?” Her investigative tendencies kicked in. As crazy as this was, she was determined to understand.
Sam glanced over at Gabe and Roxanne. They all seemed to share a common reluctance.
“They have to kill a blood relative.”
“A blood…” Her mind was churning. “So that means the witch is… someone in your family? One of your family members?”
“Correct.”
“But, that’s terrible!” she said, louder than she intended. She leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “Do you know who it is?”
Sam shook his head. “Couldn’t get that. But that’s what we need to find out.”
“I’ll say.” She was already thinking ahead. “We need to go talk to the police and the Medical Examiner, see what evidence they might have found. Then interview members of your family—”
“Lacey,” Sam said, interrupting the flow.
“What?”
“We have to be very careful. This kind of witch has ways of knowing things, doing things. It already knows we’re looking into it. That’s why it appeared to you. That was a warning, a threat. We have to guard against its magic.”
Lacey shook her head slowly from side to side. “What is this thing? Why have I never heard of this before? If this happens here, if it’s real, why isn’t it in the news? Why don’t we know about this in the outside world?”
“It’s dangerous to talk about it,” Sam said. “What we’re doing right here, right now, is dangerous. We don’t even speak the name of it, because to say it out loud is to invite it in. So there’s very little said about it, especially to outsiders.”
“But, how are we going to find out anything if we can’t talk about it? How are we going to question people? We can’t just let it go.”
“No, we can’t,” Sam agreed. “We just have to proceed very cautiously.” He gave her a meaningful look. “This won’t be like the investigations you’re used to. You’ll have to let me take the lead on this. Can you do that?”
She thought she understood. She was a stranger in a strange land, and if she went off blindly, she could get herself—or Sam—killed. It wasn’t in her nature to take a subservient role, but this time it was necessary. “All right,” she said.
“Good.” Sam exhaled with relief. He took Lacey’s wrist, checked her watch. “It’s too late to do any more tonight. We need to think about this and plan very carefully. Let’s all get as much sleep as we can.”
Sleep, Lacey thought with a snort. How could she sleep with witches outside her window? One of the most telling, the most convincing aspects to all this had been Gabe’s and Roxanne’s silent agreement. They knew about this. They understood.
After quiet assurances and soft good nights, the couple went back to their bedroom. Lacey eyed the dark hallway and wondered how safe she’d be in the small bedroom. She couldn’t deny she had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies.
“Why don’t you sleep here?” Sam said. “Take the couch. I’ll sleep in a chair.”
She was grateful for the offer even as she rejected it. “You can’t get good sleep like that.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “Come on.” He took her hand and pulled her into the living room, then gently pushed her down on the couch. “I’ll go get another blanket,” he said quietly.
Lacey curled up on the couch and laid her head on the pillow. She heard the creak of a door, small rustling sounds as Sam pulled bedding from a linen closet. He padded back in and tossed a blanket onto the chair opposite the couch, then went back to the kitchen. She heard him paw quietly through a drawer, the small sound of things rattling as he searched for something. When he came back, he had a slip of paper, a pencil, matches and an ashtray.
He wrote a single word on the paper, then passed it to Lacey. “Don’t read it out loud. Just read it to yourself and give it back to me.”
She took the paper and pulled it close. In the dim light she read.
Skinwalker.
She raised her eyes to Sam. He took the paper back and lit it with the match. They both watched it burn to ashes in the ashtray.
~~~
FIVE
She dreamed of huge shadows soaring slowly overhead, large enough to block out the sun, like starcruisers in the movies. She awoke with a start, her eyes darting about for recognition, for orientation, and then she saw Sam asleep in the chair. She burrowed deep into her pillow and went back to sleep.
“Lacey? Lacey, come on. Get up. Sam? Get up. Come on.”
Roxanne’s soft voice, her gentle but insistent touch.
“Come on, you two. We’re moving you into Griff’s room so you can sleep late. Let’s go.”
Lacey might have protested but she didn’t have the strength. She felt like a zombie as Roxanne guided her down the hall and into the bottom bunk. She was marginally aware of Sam climbing into the top bunk, of Roxanne closing the door with a soft click, then fell blissfully back to sleep.
When she awoke again, the room was light. Even with the drapes still closed tightly over the window, the soft light of morning stole in from the edges. She checked
her watch: 9:20. She hadn’t slept that late in ages.
She sat up and set her feet on the floor. Combing her dark red hair off her face with the fingers of both hands, she let out a soft groan. Her body ached all over. Probably from the bouncing truck ride and then that stupid fall to the floor.
Something moved above her. She startled at the sudden appearance of Sam’s head popping out from the upper bunk, his loose hair hanging down on either side of his face.
“You awake?” he asked, smiling.
“I am now,” she said.
“Sorry. I’ve been awake for a little bit. Didn’t want to disturb you.” He climbed down the ladder from the top bunk, still in sweat pants. “Sleep okay?”
“Yes, actually I did,” she said, surprised it was true. “Except now I feel like shit.”
“Oh?” His questioning tone and sudden intent interest seemed excessive. She eyed him warily.
“I think it’s from the truck ride last night,” she said, “or the tumble here.”
“Oh.” That seemed to placate him. “Just, if you feel anything… different, let me know, okay?”
“Different?” she queried.
“Yeah. Just not feeling well, sick or anything. You’ll tell me, right?”
“Because it might be…?”
“You know.” His reluctance to put a name to his concern sealed it.
“Yeah. I know. Okay, I’ll keep that in mind. You want the bathroom first?”
He smiled crookedly. “Yeah. I’ll be quick.”
By the time Lacey had showered, washed her hair and put on fresh clothes, she felt infinitely better. The hot water had eased some of her sore muscles, and with that improvement, she was sure that was all it was. No witchcraft there.
When she joined Sam in the kitchen, he had a pot of coffee brewed and had set out English muffins, bagels, butter, honey and jam. She was patently surprised.
Skin Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 2) Page 4
