to the Jeep?”
He digs into a pocket of his jeans and withdraws the keys.
Places them in the palm of my hand.
“I’d better get going. We’ve missed trailing him after he dropped off his afternoon group. Let’s hope he heads straight home and doesn’t make a stop anywhere else. I’d hate to think we missed our only opportunity to catch him with those men again.”
Kayani refolds the map. “I’l head for the lodge, just in case. If he’s already left, I’l cal you. It should take him forty minutes or so to get home. I’l retrace his route, then come back here.”
Frey walks with us to the porch steps. “Keep a sharp eye
out, Anna. George can take animal shape. You saw the pelts.
Any of those are formidable opponents.”
His voice is calm, but his eyes telegraph a more urgent message.
Bear. Coyote. Wolf.
I nod my understanding. But I have vampire inside.
There is no more formidable opponent.
IT’S MIDNIGHT AND I AM SO BORED, MY TEETH GRIND
with impatience. George arrived home a little after six. From the time, Kayani confirmed that he wouldn’t have had time to stop anywhere and, backtracking his route just to be sure, came across no one unfamiliar on the way. He returned to join Frey.
The house is quiet, but not dark. Lights shine in the living room and kitchen. Shadowy figures pass in front of drapes pul ed across front windows. Odd since there are no neighbors to see inside.
Final y, the lights are extinguished and I settle back the seat. I expect George and his wife are retiring for the night.
The sound of the front door jerks me back to attention.
George and his wife stand quietly on the porch. They glance around furtively, as if assuring themselves that they are alone.
Then they walk quickly down the steps, sticking to the shadows, and head for the back.
I fol ow. Vampire is in her element at night. I am a shadow among shadows in the light of a crescent moon.
I’m at the back of the shed just as they approach the front.
They are speaking in Navajo. The wife must have said something about thinking she saw the door open this afternoon because George is examining the lock.
He finds nothing because there is nothing to find. His response to her is condescending and sharp in tone.
That changes when they have been inside for only a moment. They had to have noticed the missing charm. Both voices escalate in anger and accusation. Questions are thrown back and forth, reproachful replies flung like stones.
I’d give anything this minute to understand Navajo.
It grows quiet.
George leaves, comes back with a red plastic can. A gas can. The sharp smel of gasoline being splashed on surfaces wrinkles my nose.
He and his wife back out of the shed; he’s stil dribbling gas in his path. Then the scratch of a match, a flare of light, and the shed goes up in a great whoosh and burst that turns night into day.
CHAPTER 43
No
I need to do something — to save something from the shed to prove that George was a skinwalker. If only they would move away, but they stand watching.
I grab my cel phone. Cal Frey. Whisper to send Kayani and the fire department.
Does the Navajo Nation have a fire department?
I guess I’l find out.
I need a distraction. I can pul out some boards in back but I can’t do it quietly.
A siren. Good.
Kayani only five miles away must be screeching toward us.
George and his wife exchange astonished glances. Not hard to read their expressions. How could anyone get here so quickly?
George runs back to the car with the gas can. His wife stares at the shed as if wil ing it to burn faster. I don’t wait any longer. I remember where the blowgun hung from the wal. I find the place, rip out the boards with my hands and fingernails. A section comes away. The blowgun stil hangs from its nail. I snatch it and the bone charms in their pottery jar. The one that held ash has already burst from the heat.
I glance up to find George’s wife staring at me. She raises a hand and waves some kind of feather stick at me, shrieking.
* * *
But vampire has already taken over. To the woman, I become a blur, too fast for her to fol ow, even with her eyes.
Her shriek continues to fol ow me. It hangs in the air until it’s cut off abruptly. I watch from the Jeep. Kayani has arrived at the house. He grabs a garden hose but the hole I tore in the side of the shed has only accelerated the burning. The meager trickle of water from the hose does nothing. Final y, he drops it on the ground and the three stand helplessly as the shed burns to the ground.
Only the eyes of George’s wife are not on the shed. They scan the dark, try to penetrate the shadows. She searches for me.
MY CELL PHONE TRILLS. I SNATCH IT OUT OF MY pocket.
“Gus.” It’s Kayani. “Cancel the fire cal. It was a shed on George Long Whiskers’s property. It’s gone. No need to waste water. Send everyone home.”
He clicks off. I watch as he leads George and his wife into the house. Lights go on, and I take the hint. I start the Jeep and head back to Frey’s.
IT’S TWO HOURS BEFORE KAYANI REJOINS US AT
Frey’s. His first words to me are, “Please tel me you got something out of the shed.”
We’re on the porch. I reach to the floor and pick up the blowgun and pottery jar.
His shoulders drop with relief. He picks up the blowgun gingerly by the end and uses a plastic evidence bag he took from a jacket pocket to handle the jar. “I’l lock these in the car.”
We wait for him to rejoin us. He lifts his nose. “Is that coffee I smel?”
Frey and I both lift mugs. “John-John and I had time on our hands this afternoon,” Frey says, his tone as pointed as a jabbing finger. “We went shopping at the trading post.
There’s a pot on the stove.”
Kayani wastes no time helping himself.
Frey waits for him to lean his butt against the railing and take an appreciative pul before jumping in. “What now?”
I shake my head. “I wish I could say I got away with the blowgun clean, but George’s wife saw me. She shrieked like a banshee and waved some feather thing at me.”
Kayani puts his mug down on the rail. “She did?”
“Does that mean something?”
Excitement lights his eyes. “It means she’s probably a witch, an ’
