Pete had fallen in love with the goddess and had an affair with her, resulting in me. However, my mother couldn’t exist for long stretches outside of Beneath, and had to abandon the woman whose body she’d inhabited and return to her realm. The human woman, technically my biological mother, had been weakened by the strong magics of the goddess, and she’d died having me, leaving me with my young, bewildered father.
Dad had never seen my goddess mother again. But he’d looked for her. Shortly after my birth, he’d left the reservation for one reason only, to search the stretches near the vortexes for her. Eventually, he’d gone home and given up, resigned to the fact that the goddess was never coming back to him.
About a year and a half ago I’d finally confronted the true manifestation of my mother, when I’d gone to her realm in Beneath. She’d wanted to use me to take her out of there, where she would destroy anything she wanted to—namely the dragons and Coyote, who’d shut her into Beneath in the first place. After that, she’d simply go on a destructive spree.
Our mother-daughter reunion had resulted in pitched battle, and then Mick and I and Nash destroyed the vortex. Nothing was left of that crack in the earth but a caved-in wash, buried under tons of rock and dirt.
That was not to say my mother had been killed. She was immortal, as far as I knew, 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.