Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(27)

Now he waited quietly while I approached. He wore his hair in its usual long braid, a denim button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. The only time Dad dressed up was for powwows when he’d wear his velvet shirt and silver rings and turquoise belt buckle. In the winter he wore heavier flannel shirts and coats, but the rest of the year it was denim on top and bottom.

Gina Tsotsie was a large woman, elegant in a blouse and skirt, turquoise on her fingers and in her ears. Her family were jewelry artisans that sold through museum stores and high-end shops in Santa Fe.

Gabrielle blocked my view of them as she wrapped me in her strong arms and lifted me from my feet in an enthusiastic hug. She swung me around, much as Colby had, her smile wide, before she thumped me down again.

“You’re okay!” she yelled though she stood a foot away from me. “I made Mick tell me what really happened to you. He finally confessed this afternoon—now that you’re awake and all right. Your dad wanted to come see you.”

“This trip was Dad’s idea?” I asked in amazement. I had assumed it my grandmother’s.

“He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Gina stood with him. Your grandmother said no way unless she came with him, and they weren’t about to leave me behind on my own.”

No, Grandmother would not have left Gabrielle to wreak havoc on the innocent inhabitants of Many Farms. I stood her aside and continued on my way to where my father, Gina, and my grandmother had stopped in a clump a little way from the truck. They’d not approach the door, front or back, until I invited them.

I couldn’t deny, through my surprise, how impossibly happy I was to see my dad. I moved faster and faster until I reached him and folded my arms around him.

My dad was the least demonstrative man I knew, but I saw relief in his eyes that I was upright and alive. His slim but strong body swayed under my enthusiastic embrace, then his arms came around me and squeezed me in a brief hug.

“Daughter,” he said softly.

I thought he’d say more, and when he didn’t, I pulled away and studied him. His dark eyes were moist, the love in them plain. He flushed when he realized I’d caught him in an emotional moment.

“I’m all right,” I said, my hands on his shoulders. “Mick took care of me.”

Grandmother, who’d come up beside Dad, looked at me sharply and said, “Hmph.”

Gabrielle popped up behind me. “Let’s go in. I’m starving. I hope Elena made enough dinner.”

I couldn’t resist hugging my father again. When I’d been blissfully riding with Mick across the country after we’d first met, the one thing that had finally drawn me back to Many Farms and home was him. Dad had been the one person in all the world who loved me unconditionally.

I was nervous though, as I led my family in through the hotel’s front door. Grandmother had been here, but I had to wonder what Dad and Gina would think of my new home.

Dad didn’t like entering through the front, and he didn’t like going first. He told me his habit of not announcing himself came from his long line of warrior ancestors making sure they weren’t seen by their enemy until the very last minute. When I’d been old enough to point out that the ancestors in our family had been farmers, he’d only chuckled.

Grandmother saved Pete’s embarrassment by marching in ahead of us all, her walking stick thumping. She sniffed the air as soon as she made it over the threshold. “Everything seems fine here. No demons. Not now, anyway.”

Gina followed, looking around in slow inspection. She took in the walls painted in warm reds and yellows, the tiled staircase with a wooden bannister, my framed artwork of places around the southwest, and turned her dark eyes on me. “Well done, Janet.”

Her praised warmed me. Gina wasn’t talkative, not like Grandmother. Gina and my father could sit for hours, not saying a word, but being perfectly content in silence together. Gina only spoke when she had something important to say.

The kitchen door banged open. Elena, her bright flowered top and black pants covered by a long apron, emerged, glaring at my family.

“You had no need to come down here, old woman,” she said to my grandmother. “I have everything under control.”

“Do you think so?” Grandmother retorted, stumping forward. “My granddaughter was in a coma, put there by demons. Under control, you say? Pah!”

“She fought the demons in Flat Mesa,” Elena countered. “Without bothering to tell me she was going there first. I kept her safe when the Firewalker brought her home. She is still alive, isn’t she?”

“You should have called me!”