Strange night, hell. I've been figuring she was just pushing buttons, and here she is talking about and using Medicine like it was part of her. Maybe it is. . . .
'Yeah.' That was all she said, but it sounded, if not conciliatory, at least a little less hostile.
Apologize, Spotted Horse. Get it over with.
He gritted his teeth, then unclenched his jaw, and calmed himself enough that the words wouldn't sound forced or false. 'Jennie, I'm sorry. I've said a lot of stuff that was out of line. I think maybe we are on the same side. Maybe we ought to start at least talking a little more.'
She made a little skeptical sound, but she didn't tell him to go jump a cactus. Finally, as they reached a looming shape that turned out to be her little Brat, she answered.
'Put that stuff on the floorboards and follow me home,' she said, sounding more tired than brusque. 'We need to talk.'
_CHAPTER ELEVEN
jennifer finally sent David back to his motel at about three in the morning, after she realized she had begun to repeat herself. Her eyes felt swollen, and they had begun to burn with fatigue-although Grandfather was still wide awake and perfectly prepared to sit in on the discussion if it carried on till dawn.
At least they were friends again-or as much friends as she, wary and watching, would permit. Grandfather had helped with that.
So had the fact that David had apologized.
David hinted he wouldn't mind staying; she ignored the hints. He gave her a mournful look as she opened the door for him-in the normal fashion this time. She blithely waved good-bye and shut the door as soon as he was on the sidewalk.
She rested her back against the door for a moment, then locked it, and walked back through the house to her bedroom, turning off lights as she went. Grandfather was already in his room; as she passed his door, light shone from the crack underneath it. Just as well; she wasn't up to any more deep discussions at the moment.
At least she and David had achieved a truce, if not precisely a reconciliation. And at this point, she wasn't certain she wanted a reconciliation, with all the emotional baggage that came with one. She wasn't even certain she wanted a relationship that didn't involve a reconciliation! It wasn't as if she didn't have her hands full.
Full in more ways than one. She still had the mundane investigation for the insurance company, a couple loose ends to wrap up for other clients, and her own private investigation of Calligan and the looting of the burial ground to deal with. The last thing she needed at the moment was David Spotted Horse on her doorstep.
Or in my bed.
Even if he had completely changed his ways, there were still certain demands to be met when one had a lover. . . .
She closed her bedroom door, and shook her head. 'No,' she said aloud. 'I don't think so.'
Not with what Grandfather had taken to his room to complicate an already complicated situation. David had turned the trap, bait and all, over to her with only minimal argument. The medicine-pouch was Osage, was from one of the plundered cairns, and there was no way to tell how it had gotten there, or even how long it had been there.
She had turned it over to Grandfather after determining where it had come from. Handling it was not her concern at the moment. There was another car in the back drive-it was Mooncrow's and he was a perfectly good driver. He could very easily take the pouch back and reinter it, if that was what was needed.
She shook her head, and went straight to bed, wondering if she would ever learn anything more than that.
Unfortunately, the bomb wasn't likely to tell her much of anything. The trigger had been a simple one, a trip wire. The explosives could be found at any construction site where blasting might be needed, including any of Calligan's. In the morning she would dust the bomb for prints, but even if she found them, unless the owner of said fingerprints had a criminal record, it wasn't likely she'd find a match. Her request for a match check would go into a long queue of other similar requests from private agents-which had a lower priority than the requests from law- enforcement agencies. So even if she found prints and the bombmaker did have a criminal record, she might never get an ID until I after the case was solved or something forced her off of it.
Mooncrow couldn't make anything more of the pouch than she could, except to assure her that although Watches-Over-The-Land had made it, it had not belonged to him. In a way that was both reassuring and disappointing. It would i have been good to recover at least one of her ancestor's looted possessions, but she wasn't certain she had whatever it took to handle something once belonging to a shaman as [ powerful as her forefather had been.
In the end, when she looked at the clock in her headboard and saw the time, she realized that all she was going to do now was think in circles. Almost four in the morning, and she knew very well she was completely exhausted. She stripped and climbed into bed; but once she turned off the lights, she stared up at the ceiling, unable to go to sleep.
Well, I can force myself, she thought. I can make myself relax if I want to. But do I want to? Obviously there's still something bothering my subconscious. I suppose if I don't deal with it, it 'II be showing up in my dreams. I sure as hell don't need that.
It wasn't hard to figure out what that something was. David Spotted Horse, that's-what. He'd come back like the proverbial tomcat.
Though tonight he'd probably lost one of his nine lives from fright alone. He'd had a good scare thrown into him by the Little People. . . .
But now that she thought about it, she wasn't entirely certain that he had been in real danger after she knocked him on his ass. A scare might have been all they intended after that moment. They were so unpredictable; they were perfectly capable of changing their minds within a few seconds.
They 're almost as contrary as Mooncrow. Hard to tell what they intend from one moment to the next. Certainly the leader had been willing to listen to her, and although he had given in, it had been without much of a protest, much less a fight. Was that due to the effectiveness of her protections, to her own ability, or to the fact that they had decided not to bother with David, anymore and accept that she was protecting him? There was no way to tell besides asking them, and no guarantee that they'd tell the truth if she did.
Oh, if David had managed to get himself killed, they'd have taken him, all right. He fit right into the category of 'those condemned to roam the earth, out of the sight of Wah-K'on-Tah' There wouldn't have been enough left of him to paint if the bomb had gone off in his face; he'd have been lawful prey. Messing with stolen Osage relics, dying without paint, being buried without paint-she had the feeling they'd have had him even if he'd been white.
Granted, he was a Cherokee, and normally Osage of her forefather's time hadn't much use for the Thing-On- Its-Head People, but these were mi-ah-luschka, and they were a law unto themselves. It didn't take much to wind up swelling their ranks, if they decided to take you.
But after she had saved him from blowing himself to bloody bits, and had confronted them, they had truly seemed less angry than resigned. There hadn't even been any serious argument when she claimed David was already under her protection and implied that he was acting on her behalf.
They did make certain he saw every single one of them, though, and they took a great deal of glee in his obvious fear. It was probably the first time he had Seen something not of the physical world, but of the Medicine world, at least as an adult. It had obviously come as quite a shock. And she had to admit, she had taken just as much enjoyment in his fear as the Little People had.
Maybe they knew that; maybe that was why they hadn't given her much of a fight.
So now he was a believer-in the Little People, at least. And she thought he might have seen her two spirit- echoes as well, her Medicine Woman-self and her Kestrel-self. The way he kept giving her strange looks when he thought she wasn't watching was proof enough that he had seen something odd about her.
Grandfather had hinted obliquely at something of the kind, and David had gotten a queasy look. David hadn't wanted to believe. He was one of those for whom the old legends were wonderful, but hardly applicable to modern times.
Odd. She should have been the one with that attitude. She was the one living in the Heavy Eyebrows' world,
