someone refer to Janet Begay as innocent. Janet, the Stormwalker with the goddess-from-hell mother and magic she was just beginning to understand, was a long way from innocent. Most people called me “troublemaker,” “pain in the ass,” or “oh-my-god-it’s-her-let’s-run.”
Cassandra smiled at me. “Trust me, Janet, after knowing the people I knew, your honesty was refreshing.” Her face fell. “But I’ve put you—and Mick and everyone here—in the worst danger.”
“You think the blood message in the bathroom means Christianson has found you?” I asked.
She nodded. “ And I can’t risk that he won’t kill everyone in this building to get to me. I have to go.”
Cassandra started to rise, but I pulled her back down. “Don’t be stupid. If they’ve found you, the safest place for you is here. We have Mick, and I’ll call Coyote—if I can find him—and we’ll get Pamela up here. There’s some damn strong magic within these walls. We’ll defend you. It’s what friends do.”
Cassandra looked pathetically grateful. Mick and Coyote were the strongest magical beings I knew, but my magic is plenty damn powerful as well. Mine is a mixture of earth magic—Stormwalker power that I inherited from my Navajo grandmother—and the crazy, white-hot goddess magic from Beneath.
Beneath is the shell world below this one, where the evilest of the gods got stuck when Coyote and others sealed the cracks between that world and this one. The vortexes around Magellan held gateways to that world, and one of the evil goddesses stuck down there was my mother. I’d inherited the nasty, unpredictable, insanely powerful Beneath magic from her.
I’d recently learned to twine my Diné-inherited storm magic and my Beneath magic to temper both, but earth magic and Beneath magic mix like oil and water. It’s like having a blender inside you all the time. An angry blender.
Cassandra flinched. “No, I don’t want Pamela here. I don’t want her hurt. If they don’t know about her, they can’t use her to get to me.”
Pamela was a Changer, a shape-shifter who could take the form of a wolf. She and Cassandra shared a small apartment in town, and Cassandra had met her here, in my hotel, the day Pamela had tried to choke the life out of me.
“Pamela will be pissed as hell if you keep her out of it,” I said.
“Yes, but that means she’ll be alive.”
“Good point.” I got up. “But I’m calling Coyote. It never hurts to have a god on your side.”
“I’ll reinforce the wards,” Mick offered. “Janet is right; this is the best place you can stay. Plus I can have a phalanx of dragons here anytime I need them. I don’t care how powerful a mage Christianson sends—he can’t work magic if he’s being fried to a crisp.”
Cassandra got to her feet at the same time we did, the emotion in her eyes touching. “Thank you, Janet. Mick. You are good people. I should have told you right away.”
I shrugged. “We all have our secrets.”
Mick, who had more secrets than most, returned my look blandly and said he’d head to the roof to work the wards.
Cassandra and I returned to the lobby, she to reception and I to my office to hunt down my cell phone. I never could remember to carry the damn thing, so anytime the cell rang, I had to race to find it before it went to voice mail. I’ve never made it yet.
I didn’t make it this time, either. Finally locating the thing stuck in the big potted plant that Juana had obviously watered before our adventure upstairs, I was brushing dirt from it when Coyote himself waltzed through the hotel’s front entrance, followed by Maya Medina, my on-call electrician and pretty much my best friend.
Coyote was a tall, broad-shouldered Native American with a long black braid and intense dark eyes. He didn’t come from any specific tribe that I knew of, because he was Coyote—trickster god, being of raw power, and a royal pain in the ass. He wore his usual jeans and jeans jacket, cowboy boots, a button-down shirt, and a big belt buckle studded with turquoise. Maya, on the other hand, wasn’t in her electrician gear; she was dressed to kill in a tight black dress, red lipstick, and stiletto heels.
Coyote halted in the center of the lobby. He threw his head back to study the gallery that ringed the second story, then he laughed, a big, booming laugh.
“I smell a curse,” he said. “A big,
As soon as the words left his mouth, the front door slammed shut behind him. A hurricane-like blast blew through the lobby, ripping papers into the air, shoving pictures off the walls, and shattering glass. Every open window banged shut.
The wind died abruptly, followed by a heavy clanking as the big lock on the front door fastened itself. Then all the lights went out.
As the four of us stood in twilight gloom, the magic mirror’s voice rolled from the saloon.
“Uh-oh, kids. I think it’s showtime.”
TWO
MAYA RAN TO THE FRONT DOOR, TRIED TO unlock it, failed, and started pounding on the wood. “Hey, let me out of here!”
Cassandra checked the saloon. “Everything’s locked down tight in there.”
Coyote, damn him, kept laughing. He flicked magic at the windows in the front room, his amusement dying when they stayed firmly shut.
“Come on, Janet,” Maya snapped. “Open the door. There’s somewhere I need to be.”
I shrugged, trying to remain calm. “If you can figure out how to get out, you let me know.”
Maya gave me a disgusted look and marched past me and into the kitchen, where we heard her start beating on the back door.
“So, little witch,” Coyote said to Cassandra, his eyes gleaming in a way I didn’t like. “What have you been up to?”
“Leave her alone,” I said. “What exactly did you mean by a curse, Coyote? I thought this was just a warning spell.”
“Nope,” Coyote said, almost joyfully. “A curse, a hex, very bad juju. You can’t smell it? It stinks like shit, all over this hotel. I’d say you’re in for one hell of a night.”
“So break it,” I said.
Coyote grinned. “Wouldn’t it be more fun to see what happens?”
“No,” Cassandra and I said at the same time.
Coyote just chuckled. I was glad he thought this was so damn funny.
He looked Cassandra up and down, and his laughter died. “I don’t see the connection, though. This might be tough.”
“What connection?” I asked.
“The one between Cassandra and the hex. Could be a general hex, on anyone and everyone near her. Or a blanket hex, on the place she happens to be.”
“Whatever it is, just fix it.” I headed for the kitchen. “We need lights.”
Coyote called after me, “The best spells might need a little sex magic. You game?”
I gave him a signal he’d understand and went on into the kitchen.
Maya at least had stopped banging on the back door. She leaned against it to face me, her slender arms folded, her dark eyes full of rage.
“What the hell, Janet? Every time I come near you, I get battered, taken hostage, held at gunpoint, buried in rubble, or all of the above. And I always,
“Would you believe me if I said that this time it’s not my fault?”
“No.” Maya uncrossed her arms, gave the door one final thump, and stalked back into the middle of the big kitchen.
It was eerily quiet in here without the appliances humming. My temperamental cook, Elena, hadn’t shown up
