Beyond the dragons, Maya Medina’s red truck threw up dirt as it spun to a halt, and Maya leapt out of it. She ran toward us, slipping and stumbling on gravel. Nash met her halfway, and she flung her arms around his neck.
It should have been a beautiful moment. Nash held Maya tight, tight, lifting her from her feet, holding her close. When Maya raised her head to look at him, he cupped one hand around her face and kissed her.
My attention was dragged from them by the sound of wings. Not leather dragon wings, but feathered wings. I expected the crow, but there was too much noise for just one bird.
I couldn’t look around, couldn’t speak. The binding spell certainly wouldn’t allow me to talk. So many mages commanded words of power, could destroy their enemies in two or three syllables. A smart witch would include speech suppression in her binding spell, and Cassandra was so very smart.
When the winged beings surrounded me, I nearly screamed in spite of the spell. I couldn’t, of course, and so the sound plunged back down my gullet and rested like a rock in my stomach.
They were men with masks painted in patterns of red, turquoise, white, black, and yellow. They wore loincloths and soft boots, and their winged bodies were painted as well. These were the kachinas, the real ones, gods not very happy with one small Navajo woman.
They surrounded me, cutting off my vision from my friends, my enemies, and my lover. I couldn’t tell whether the shudder I’d felt in Mick was the magic working or just a residual spark of his own life force.
I’d never know. The kachinas whirled around me until I could see nothing but feathery wings, and then the desert and the night vanished. I found myself in a small, enclosed space, in the dark, and utterly alone.
There’s nothing like being walled in a living tomb to make you appreciate the small things in life.
I sat on cold stone, and cold stone surrounded me. I could stand up and walk a few feet from wall to wall, but sharp pebbles littered the floor, making footing treacherous. After I’d fallen and cut my hands a few times, I decided it was safer to just sit.
I wiped my hands on my shirt and toyed with the pebble I’d picked up. It was light but sharp—lava rock. My tired mind told me that the kachinas dwelled in the San Francisco mountains, which Navajo call the
Diichilí Dzil
and the Hopi call
Navatekiaoui
. The San Francisco Peaks were extinct volcanoes, the cinder cone of Sunset Crater and the lava tubes around it reminders of that fact.
Was I there, under those mountains? Or in another world entirely? Would the kachinas have risked taking me to their spirit world? Or had they simply walled me in here and left me to starve to death?
Strangely, I didn’t panic. The room was dark and cool but not freezing, and I had air. I couldn’t feel any breeze, but the air wasn’t stale and I didn’t struggle to breathe, so I figured oxygen got to me from somewhere.
It was calm here after the crazy fight with Jim, after fighting, terrified, against the stasis spell. In here I was alone, dirty, sore, tired, and trapped—but at least I was safe.
Needless to say, my cell phone didn’t work, not even to tell me the time. I was surprised it had survived intact. I had the habit of being hard on cell phones.
I pulled out the chamois bag I kept the mirror in and pulled out the shard. Even in the absolute darkness, the mirror glinted with a spark of its own.
“So, where am I?” I asked it.
“Haven’t the faintest idea, sugar. It’s dark.”
“Well, thank the gods you were here to tell me that. Your best guess, then? How far am I from Magellan?”
“I don’t know. Distance means nothing to me.”
I refrained from putting the shard under my boot heel and grinding it to powder. “Will you at least give me some light?”
“That I
can
do. Coming right up, sweetie.”
The mirror glowed, the white light stabbing into my dark-accustomed eyes. I snapped my eyelids shut and then opened them a fraction of an inch at a time.
The pale light revealed what I’d guessed—I was in a small, cavelike room with no entrance anywhere to be seen. The floor was littered with black lava rock and glittering Apache tears, which were translucent obsidian stones. I picked up one of the Apache tears, liking how I could hold it to my eye and see the light through it.
“Where is everyone?” I asked the mirror. “What is happening at the hotel?” I avoided the question I most wanted to ask, but the mirror caught on.
“I don’t know whether Micky’s all right, honey. If he were the only mage I answered to, I’d know, because I’d go dark if he were dead. But I answer to you too, so I’m still here, and I can’t tell.”
Pain lanced my heart. “Can you just show me the hotel?” I asked.
The shard of mirror clouded for a few seconds, and when it cleared, I looked through a spiderweb of cracks into the saloon of my hotel. The room was dark, the chairs up on the tables, the place closed.
I was about to tell the mirror not to bother when Cassandra walked in, took down a chair, and sank into it, resting her head in her hands. Cassandra, whose damned binding spell had landed me here.
Another figure followed her: Pamela, tall and strong in jeans and sleeveless shirt. She stood behind Cassandra and put her hands on her shoulders.
“It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart,” Pamela said. “You were trying to help.”
“No, I was trying to stop her from using the magic. I didn’t know they were going to take her. How do I know she’s even alive? My locator spells haven’t worked. They’re being blocked.” She laughed a little. “Gods can do that, you know.”
Pamela softly kneaded Cassandra’s shoulders. “I didn’t realize Janet was that special to you.”
“She gave me a chance without question, never pries about my past. She’s given me what I need, a place to lick my wounds and be alone.”
“Is that what you need? To be alone?”
“I thought so when I first came here.” Cassandra laid her hand over one of Pamela’s. “Not so sure now.”
Pamela leaned down, sliding her arms all the way around Cassandra. “We’ll find her. That was some damn powerful magic you did out there. You’ll work some more.”
Cassandra looked miserable. “I don’t know if I can. I’m so tired.”
I’d never seen Cassandra anything but calm and cool, always knowing exactly what to do. Now she raised a tear-streaked face to Pamela, and Pamela bent and kissed her lips.
“Turn it off,” I told the mirror. “Leave them alone.”
“No way, sugar pie. Those two ladies are
hot
.”
I put my hand over the glass. “What is it with your obsession with sex?”
“I’m a mirror. I can only be a voyeur, so I have to go for it.”
“Will you get their attention? When they’re ready; don’t rush.”
“Hang on, they’re coming up for air.”
When Cassandra’s face filled the broken mirror, I let go of my anger at her. Her eyes were red and anxious, her usually sleek hair in tangles, her makeup smeared by tears.
“Janet? Where are you?” She peered into the mirror, but I could tell she saw only her own reflection, not me.
She was magical enough to hear me, though. “I was hoping you could tell me,” I said.
“My locator spells won’t work. They fizzle out. Sheriff Jones tried to activate the GPS on your phone, but that didn’t work either.”
“I’m somewhere underground. Probably too deep for satellites or phone signals. It’s lava, though. An old volcano. That should narrow it down to a few hundred places in the world.”
“Keep the mirror going,” Cassandra suggested. “Maybe my spells will work through that.”
“Worth a try.” My matter-of-fact, brave tone faltered. “Mick?”
The lines on Cassandra’s face deepened. “I don’t know. The dragons took him away. Janet, I’m sorry. I think he’s gone.”
I thought he was too. I remembered the film over his eyes, the last breath he drew when he smiled at me and said,
Sorry, baby.
I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a sob.
“Janet?” Cassandra kept trying to find me in the mirror. “You all right?”
I wiped my eyes. “I’ll keep the mirror out, and you keep trying those spells.”
“I will.” She turned away and started talking rapidly to Pamela as the two of them moved out of sight.
I drew my feet up and hugged my knees. I couldn’t concentrate anymore on trying to figure out where I was; I didn’t try to wake up my magic that seemed to have gone dormant; I stopped worrying about how I was going to get out.
I could only think about Mick.
Memories are most vivid when there is nothing else to interfere with them. Perhaps that’s why the very old remember their younger years so well while forgetting the monotonous drone of their current, day-to-day existence.
I remembered the first night I’d made love with Mick, how he’d surprised me with his gentleness. He’d been patient with an inexperienced young woman, never hurrying me, never laughing at me. He’d introduced me to the astonishing pleasure that could be found in bed, and I’d fallen hard and fast in love with him.
I thought of his smile, the one that said he was a wicked man who wanted to do naughty things with me. I thought of his blue eyes that could turn black when he was angry or aroused, his crazy hair that would never stay put. Any suggestion he cut his shoulder-length hair so he wouldn’t have to bother with it was met with an amazed stare. Maybe when he switched from dragon, that’s just the way his hair went. I’d noted that the other dragons—Colby, Bancroft, Drake—wore their hair long too.
My mind dredged up the halcyon days after we’d first met, when Mick and I traveled up and down the country. They’d been the happiest of my life. I remembered standing on a rocky promontory overlooking the northern Pacific, wind buffeting my body while Mick stood rock-solid behind me. He’d held on to me, and I’d basked in his warmth while we watched the beauty of the cold sea. We’d gone from there up and down the country, gradually making our way across. We rode for miles during the day, stayed in motels at night. We laughed, talked, fought, made up, and made love.
I remembered my astonishment when I found out Mick was a dragon. I’d been blind to it before that, because I hadn’t known that dragons existed at all. Skinwalkers, Nightwalkers, magic mirrors, yes. Dragons, no.
My world had changed that night, and it had changed again tonight. I’d walked away from Mick a little over five years ago because I’d been young and afraid, but somehow I’d never thought of him as completely out of my life. And he hadn’t been; I just hadn’t been able to see him.
The memories flew at me faster and faster, until my emotions were all twisted around, and I couldn’t stop crying. Who gave a damn about the magic inside me, when Mick was dead because of it?
I heard a tiny noise, the barest click of rock on rock. I opened my eyes, and through my tears saw the Koshare sitting on a boulder opposite me, the light of the magic mirror between us.
Twenty-five
“Haven’t you tortured me enough?” My voice came out a harsh croak. “I thought clowns were supposed to make people laugh.”
He sat still, his god power filling the room with crackling intensity. I might get a shock just touching the air. The Koshare’s dark eyes fixed on me, but his red mouth was closed, without smiles.
“Do you speak English?” I asked. “I only know a few words in Hopi, and all of them are dirty.”
I speak all languages. Including that of the Diné.
The kachinas were benevolent gods, coming to the Hopi people to help them find the bounty of the land. As a kid, I’d loved watching the stately kachina dances, and the clowns and their antics. So why was I so afraid of them now?
Then it struck me: because, in this story, they were the good guys, and I was the evil being. My mother had bestowed upon me her powers, her ruthlessness, and her evil. I could pretend all I wanted to that my storm power mitigated the effects of the Beneath magic, that I could handle both. But as I looked into the Koshare’s eyes, I knew it for the lie it was.
“So now what?” I asked. “Are you going to leave me here? Or kill me? I suppose it doesn’t make much difference, but killing me outright will be quicker than leaving me here to starve.”
Is that what you want? Death?
“No, but it’s what you’re going to give me.”
It is your choice, Stormwalker. You choose the path.
“Now, see, this is what I don’t like about gods. I ask a straight question, and you give me some cryptic answer.”
You can die. Or we can take the magic from you.
I stared, shocked. “You can take away the magic?”
We can. Your Stormwalker magic is natural, inherited from your Diné ancestors. It is a part of your world. The other magic is not. We can take it from you, return it to the world to which it belongs.