Hexed

today. Elena Williams was an Apache from Whiteriver, a culinary genius but given to fits of sullenness. Some days she never came to work at all.

“Whether you believe me or not, can you fix the electricity?” I asked Maya.

“In this dress?”

“You can wear something of mine.”

“You’re two sizes smaller than me, and you only have bikerchick clothes.” Her voice went sad. “I was going to meet Nash.”

“Oh.” Maya’s so-called relationship with Nash Jones, the sheriff of Hopi County, was drama with a capital D. I’d seen them a couple of times together lately, eating sedate meals in the local diner, looking like two people afraid to talk to each other.

“Call him,” I said. “Tell him you’re stuck because of me. He’ll believe that.” My run-ins with Sheriff Jones were volatile and memorable. He blamed me for anything weird that went on in his county, and the trouble was, he was usually right.

“I tried.” Maya’s face went even more glum. “My cell phone won’t work.” She fixed me with an accusing stare. “What did you do this time?”

I started rummaging in a drawer. “Why is everyone assuming that I did something?”

“Because you usually do.”

She had a point. I pulled out a screwdriver. “Here.”

Maya sighed, but she yanked the screwdriver out of my hand and headed for the back of the kitchen, where the junction boxes were. I knew that if anyone could bring the lights back, it was Maya. She was the only one currently in the hotel who wasn’t magical, but when it came to electricity, she had talent to burn.

I returned to the lobby to find Cassandra trying to get a signal from her cell phone. I couldn’t get one on mine, either, and my landline was out as well. A good curse would take care of pesky things like phones.

But I had a couple of secret weapons at my disposal. I poked my head into the saloon and looked at one of them. “Mick still on the roof?” I asked the mirror.

“Yes.” It sounded as glum as Maya. “There’s some bad things stirring, sugar.”

“That’s why I want Mick.”

“I mean, really bad, sweetie. I’m having a bet with myself how fast you’ll replace me if I die.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. You’re a magic mirror. You can’t die.”

It sighed. “I can be melted into slag, ground to powder. And then I’d never see your beautiful ass again.”

I ignored it. Besides, even a melted magic mirror could be re-formed with no loss to its power. “Are you still tied in with the mirrors at the compound in Santa Fe?”

“The place with Bancroft and Drake and their hottie houseboy? I might be.”

I had the feeling my mirror had been training his magic eye on the twenty-two-year-old human who did errands for Bancroft, a member of the dragon council. The houseboy’s name was Todd, and his job was to make sure that the needs of the dragons’ guests were met. Each and every need.

“Drake owes me one, he and Bancroft both,” I said. “Stand by to contact them if we need help. If we need it, that is. I don’t want Drake out here giving Mick hell if it’s not necessary.” Drake worked for the dragon council, and he was more arrogant than the three council members put together. But I couldn’t ignore his potential as an ally.

“I’ll stand ready, sweet cakes.” The mirror paused. “Could you show me your beautiful bod, one more time? Just in case . . .”

I made a disgusted noise and left the room. I was surrounded by perverts, but they were powerful perverts, and I couldn’t afford to do without them.

I ascended to the second floor, took the back stairs to the third, and opened the door out onto the roof. Mick was there, gazing out over the desert beyond the Crossroads—what the locals called the T-intersection of two highways. My hotel and the Crossroads Bar sat on desert east of the T, but the Crossroads was also a mystical crossroads, I’d learned, where magic and reality could blur. A railroad had been built here once but had gone bust nearly a century ago, the empty railroad bed and a derelict hotel the only reminders of its aspirations to glory.

I paused on the roof a moment to appreciate the fineness of my boyfriend. Mick’s body was broad, hard, and strong, the muscle shirt and jeans he wore, despite the chill, showing it off in a good way. Wind tugged at his wild black hair, which he usually tamed into a short ponytail. Tonight he’d left it loose, and it was all over the place. I wasn’t sure why Mick had hair at all, or why it was always that length, but he never changed it. I didn’t mind, because his hair was wonderful to run my fingers through.

Mick had been my first lover—my only lover—though we’d spent five years apart before we’d both ended up in Magellan. He was the only being who could tame my Stormwalker magic when it threatened to overwhelm me. Thoughts of how he did it started wicked fantasies bubbling inside me.

The dirt parking lot I shared with the Crossroads Bar was filling with motorcycles as the sun set in splendid glory to the west, silhouetting the distant San Francisco Peaks.

Mick turned as my boot scraped on the roof, but he’d known I was there. Mick always knew where I was.

He gave me the smile that turned my heart inside out. “Hey, baby.”

I silently damned whatever mage had tracked down Cassandra. Stupid curses. Mick and I should be making love up here under the blaring sunset, the red light touching our skin, not discussing malevolent magic.

“Coyote says it’s a hex, not a spell,” I said as I approached him. “All doors and windows are locked downstairs.” I looked around. “So why doesn’t it apply to the roof?”

“Who says it doesn’t?” Mick picked up a pebble and tossed it upward as hard as he could. About fifteen feet above our heads, the pebbled exploded into dust.

“Shit,” I whispered.

“Funny, that’s what I said.” Mick dusted his hand on his pants. “If I change to dragon up here, and my body expands . . . zap.”

Terrific. There went my hope that Mick could spread his dragon wings and fly away, maybe go for help or find whatever mage was chanting the curse and fry him.

“How did this get by you?” I asked. “This is the bestwarded building I’ve ever been in. You must have felt someone trying to cast a spell. How did it get by me?”

“Like Coyote says, it’s a curse, not a spell,” Mick said. “Different thing.”

“Oh, right.” Wiccan magic isn’t really my thing. Mick had taught me to work minor spells such as those for healing or protection, but my true power is more raw and basic. Instinctive. Mick was the one with the encyclopedic knowledge of magics.

“Hexes can fasten themselves like leeches or barnacles to a person or a place and then spread,” Mick explained. “They can be cast on one target, like a building, a car, or even a whole town if the caster is strong enough. An expert witch can slide the curse onto protective wards and use the wards themselves to sink the curse into the building, kind of like an infection.”

Great. A magical bacteria.

I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my jeans. “So how do we get rid of it? Can we infuse the wards with defensive magic, kind of like sending in antibiotics?”

“Possibly. Or we could take down the wards altogether, but that might be exactly what the mage wants. Hexes are tricky. Let me think about it. In the meantime, we need to minimize casualties.”

Minimize casualties. Just what I wanted to hear.

I raised my gaze to the mountains in the west that were quickly fading into the dusk and said a prayer. The gods of my people lived in those mountains, and so did the kachinas, the Hopi spirits who were watching me, not always in a friendly way.

“This was not how I envisioned spending my evening,” I said.

“No?” Mick’s smile heated my blood. “And how did you envision spending it?”

I traced the reddish dust on the rooftop with my boot. “Since I haven’t seen you in a couple of days, how did you think?”