Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) by Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James

just sealed in. I hadn’t heard a peep from her, however, since that night.  
    But Grandmother had a point. The goddess had liked my father, had responded to him, and she might again.
    I growled under my breath. “Yes, all right. I’ll go.”
    “Take Mick with you,” Grandmother advised.
    “He’s not here,” I said. “I’ll run out and make sure it’s quiet.”
    I snatched a mushroom from the board and headed out the back door, chewing it. I don’t like the texture of mushrooms, but I put up with it for their dark, smoky taste.
    The night was quiet, peaceful, a half moon rising to flood the land with light. The back of the hotel faced the old railroad bed, a straight ribbon that stretched from north of Flat Mesa south into Magellan and beyond. Long ago, it had been a railway line to connect Flagstaff to the mining towns in the mountains, abandoned when mines closed.
    The rails and ties had been stripped away to be used elsewhere and the empty railroad bed left intact. It rose high here, built up to keep trains out of the flat plain that could flood when washes overflowed. Hikers, joggers, and mountain bikers now used the bed as a convenient way to go cross-country anywhere between Magellan and Flat Mesa.
    It was also the demarcation line dividing the towns from the vortexes. I climbed up the side of the bed and down the other, the moon throwing white light over the grasses and juniper on the other side. I wasn’t foolish enough to simply rely on moonlight and starlight to guide me, however—I’d grabbed a big flashlight from a shelf on my way out the door.
    A rush of air touched my side, then a low-pitched English voice said, “You shouldn’t walk around on your own, Janet.”
    My feet landed back on the ground, and I shoved my hand to my chest, my heart pounding against my ribcage. “Shit, Ansel.”
    “Apologies.” Ansel gave me a contrite look in the flashlight’s glow. “I did not mean to startle you. But that does not make me wrong.”
    “I know.” I dragged in breaths to take my heart back to normal beating. “I’m heading to check out the vortex. I haven’t been able to in a while, being in a coma and all.”
    “One of us has been keeping an eye on it,” Ansel said, sounding a bit hurt I’d think otherwise. “If not me, then Cassandra or Sheriff Jones.”
    “Nash came out here?” I asked in surprise.
    “Often. He was worried about you, and also about what might happen while you were incapacitated.”
    “Aw, how sweet.”
    Ansel flashed me an understanding look. “He is gruff, but a protector. Don’t be too hard on him.”
    “ Me be hard on him ?”  
    Nash and I had an understanding rather like Grandmother and Elena did. We could work together as long as we each respected the other’s territory—my territory was the hotel; Nash’s, the rest of Hopi County.
    Ansel gave a light laugh. “He can be pesky.”
    “That’s an understatement.”
    I did feel better with Ansel with me. He’d fed, his blood need sated, so I didn’t worry he’d turn on me … much. Nightwalkers are fast and deadly strong, and also highly unpredictable. Anything could set off the monster inside him. It was also true that anything out here in the dark would think twice about going for either of us.
    We walked in companionable silence across the land, the stars spreading in a twinkling blanket overhead. “Nightwalkers should be astronomers,” I remarked. “You’re up all night anyway.”
    “An intriguing idea,” Ansel said in his mild voice. “Had I any interest in astronomy, I might consider it.”
    I gave him an appreciative laugh. Ansel spent the nights he wasn’t visiting his girlfriend watching classic movies or scouring the Internet for his next big antique find.
    We reached the top of a rise and hiked down the other side. While this land could look fairly flat from the window of my comfortable hotel, walking it involved some climbing in treacherous footing. Washes could open abruptly at our