Stormwalker by Allyson James Page A

new truck; you won’t have to wait for the insurance. I’ll just get it for you. Want to go looking for one today?”
    “I don’t care about the damn truck.” Fremont growled. “It wasn’t your fault, Janet. A skinwalker did this. That’s what Coyote is saying.”
    Nash’s voice went hard. “Coyote is a crazy man who should watch his mouth.”
    “Skinwalkers are real,” Fremont said. “Janet knows it. Everyone around here knows it. I want to go after the son of a bitch.”
    “Don’t you dare.” I could imagine Fremont stalking through the desert at night armed with a flashlight and pipe wrench. He might have a tiny bit of magical power, but nowhere near anything strong enough to fight a monster who dealt in death.“Anyway, the one that killed Charlie is dead.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Lightning strike. He attacked the jailhouse when I was there. The lightning burned him up.”
    Fremont gave me a skeptical look. “How do you know it was the same one?”
    “I know.”
    “Listen to you.” Maya in her white coveralls had come in while we talked. She set down her toolbox and settled her cap over her dark hair, her brown eyes filled with scorn. I noticed she didn’t look at Nash. “Skinwalkers, my ass. She’s lying to you, Fremont. She hit your truck and flipped it.”
    “Shut up, Medina,” Fremont snapped. “You don’t talk about skinwalkers like they don’t exist. They can hear you. They’ll come for you.”
    Maya shook her head in disgust. “ Dios mío , get me out of this fucking town.”
    “Don’t let the screen door hit you,” Fremont said.
    “Maya.” Nash’s voice was sharp, stentorian. From the look Maya gave him, I had the feeling she had an even bigger problem with respect for him than I did. “I want to talk to you.”
    Maya picked up the toolbox with a jerk. “I’m busy. Appliances should be coming today.”
    Jones’s eyes flashed in fury as Maya stalked off to the kitchen. I could see that he didn’t want to run after her, but he also didn’t want her to get away with blowing him off. Mouth set, he walked to the kitchen, anger in every line of his body.
    More men came to work, and the routine began, my hotel filling with the comforting sounds of construction. The workers talked among themselves, speculating about Sherry Beaumont and her death, but mostly, they just worked. Nash must have finished with Maya, because I saw him move past the lobby windows and drive off in his SUV.
    Nash’s questions about Mick unnerved me. I knew Mick wasn’t human, but plenty of nonhuman creatures inhabited this world incognito. My friend Jamison was a Changer who could turn into a mountain lion, but no one knew that but me, his family, his wife, Naomi, and his young stepdaughter, Julie. Witches are real—maybe not the New Agers who came to Magellan by the busload, but true Wiccans who follow the earth-goddess religion and have more power than people give them credit for. Nightwalkers, bloodsuckers that fiction calls “vampires,” exist as well, indistinguishable from humans though they are thankfully rare. Then there are gods like Coyote who can look like anything they want.
    I didn’t think Mick was a god, he wasn’t a Wiccan witch, and since he went out during the day and didn’t crave blood, that ruled out Nightwalker. His aura was Changer-like, but if he were a Changer, I thought he’d have revealed his animal form to me by now.
    Yes, his dragon tattoos sometimes seemed to move, sometimes to watch me, but dragons didn’t exist—they were legend. The dragons might symbolize the streams of fire that came out of Mick’s hands, or they might mean he belonged to some cult that symbolized their god with a dragon. Not that I’d ever seen Mick worshipping anything.
    What irritated me most of all was that he wouldn’t just tell me. If Mick had nothing to hide, what was the harm?
    The only thing I knew was that Mick, whose last name was not Burns, was very dangerous, more