Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(22)

“Hey, I’m human,” I reminded him. “Cassandra’s taken, and she’s not interested in guys.”

Mick looked puzzled. “You’re not human. You’re half goddess.”

Half evil goddess. It was nice of him to leave out the “evil” part.

“I was joking,” I said. “I’ve never heard you so impressed. I’m going to get jealous.”

“Why?” He was still perplexed. “Cassandra’s magic is completely different from yours. I meant she was strong for a human.”

I started laughing. “You are such a dragon. You take everything so literally.”

Mick peered at me with that inquisitiveness that could either be funny or terrifying, depending on the circumstance, and kissed the bridge of my nose. “I love you, Janet Begay. Take that literally.”

I didn’t mind at all.

***

I finally wrested myself out of bed and took a shower. When I emerged, damp, hair dripping, it was dark, and the room was empty. My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten in two weeks.

How had Mick kept me alive all that time? He and Cassandra must have used some massively powerful healing magic.

Then again, there hadn’t been anything physically wrong with me, Cassandra had said, apart from the slashes and bruises I’d picked up in the fight. My body had functioned, but my mind had kept me asleep.

As I dressed, I again tried to find the dreams I’d plunged into, to remember them, to figure out what they meant, but met with a great big nothing.

I had a vague recollection of Mick and me riding together as we’d done long ago, but that was it. The details had gone. By the time I headed through the hotel for the kitchen, ravenous, even those remnants of the dreams had vanished.

In the kitchen, Elena had dinner going full throttle. Most of the guest rooms must be full, as Elena was preparing a dozen meals to be carried into the saloon, which served as our dining room. I suspected the hotel was full not only by the number of plates waiting, but also from Elena’s snarls. She’d hired a young man called Don from Whiteriver to be her commis chef, and she sent a steady stream of demands and invective his way. The young Apache man carried out her orders stoically and without fuss.

I didn’t dare ask Elena to throw something together for me, so I slipped into the giant walk-in refrigerator to scrounge for myself.

The refrigerator kept enough food for Elena’s meals and casual meals for the staff. Elena went over the foodstuffs every day, making lists to thrust at me for whatever she needed. She’d been a chef in a New York restaurant before she’d given it up for the simple life, but she still cooked as though I had an unlimited budget for food. Any argument from me that we really didn’t need things like black truffles was met with stony silence.

I usually caved and found what Elena needed. She was one hell of a cook, and I didn’t want to lose her.

I saw movement inside the refrigerator. I tensed, especially when the wave of dark magic came at me, then I relaxed. A tall man in sweats lowered the bottle of blood he was drinking and gave me a relieved look.

“Janet. I’m happy to see you well.”

“I’m happy to be well,” I said. “And starving.” I plucked a tortilla from a shelf, lunch meat from another, wrapped them around each other and shoved them into my mouth.

Ansel watched me a moment, then self-consciously pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed excess blood from his mouth.

Ansel had been turned Nightwalker when he’d been a young soldier from London in World War II. He’d been captured by Nazis and put through bizarre experiments to create Nightwalker soldiers to help their side. Plans backfired when Ansel and the other Nightwalkers turned on their makers, killing them before vanishing. Ansel and some of the others had hidden nearby, sabotaging and destroying what they could of the enemy camps—their contribution to the war effort.

Ansel was soft-spoken, polite, and spent his time collecting stamps and antiques. He now had a girlfriend, an antique collector from Santa Fe. She was human, but she and Ansel spoke a language all their own.

Hard to believe that this affable man, happy I was better, could become an insane, monstrous killer who’d more than once nearly destroyed me, my friends, my hotel … He’d been very apologetic about it later. Of course, almost everyone I’d ever known had at one time tried to kill me, so I couldn’t single out Ansel for my anger.

“Anything happen while I was out of it?” I asked him. “Any crises?”

“None that I heard of,” he answered. “Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion.”

He liked to sound like an old-fashioned Brit to tease me. He was an old-fashioned Brit in truth, a lady-killer from 1941.