Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(52)

“I learned a long time ago, sweetheart, that it doesn’t matter what I believe. A thing either exists or it doesn’t, no matter what I think about it.”

I gave him a shaky smile. “I wish I could be so wise.”

“It’s not wisdom. It’s age.” Mick brushed back a strand of my long black hair. “You are so bloody young, Janet.”

His touch was warm and sweet, and I leaned into it. Thoughts kept tapping at my brain, however.

“If you are several hundred years old as a dragon, why does your human body look exactly the same as before Emmett did the spell?”

Mick lowered his hand, giving me a look of regret. “I haven’t the faintest fucking idea,” he said, and led the way out.

***

Mick agreed that going to Magellan by dragon would be much faster than riding the twelve hundred or so miles between here and there on our motorcycles. He insisted we lock the bikes in a storage space in the town—he had the key, so I suspected it was one of his many stashing places.

It took Drake about five hours to go straight south, navigating mountains and deserts, and stopping to rest every couple hours. Not that I minded the time being squashed against Mick.

Mick held me in strong arms, steadying me against Drake’s sudden jerks and dives. He was warm in spite of the cold wind, and he cradled me as gently as ever. Mick had no idea what was going on or what I’d done to him or whether he’d misjudged me, but he was still protecting me.

Finally, Drake he dove out of the sky and landed in the desert beyond the abandoned railroad bed.

The sun was just rising. Light bathed the dry, flat land, so different from the deep green woods and mountains we’d left.

A lump rose in my throat. I loved this place, loved it deeply. The lands around Magellan had been populated by native peoples long, long before the Spanish had reached the area. Anthropologists debated whether those native peoples had been the direct ancestors of modern tribes, but it didn’t matter. I was closer to them than to the Europeans who’d come a thousand years later. This was my place, a part of me, and a part of my blood.

As we crested the railroad bed Drake, in human form now and dressed in clothes Mick had brought with him, looked around nervously. He was well aware of the vortexes in the vast open desert behind us, which was scattered with blocks of sandstone, tinged red from the iron oxide in the earth.

Before us lay my hotel, a box of a ruin. Beyond it, Barry’s bar, unchanged, sat on the other side of the empty dirt parking lot.

I hated to see the hotel derelict, after I’d done so much work making it habitable. But the magic mirror was in there, waiting quietly for us in the third-floor room I’d made into a private office.

“There?” Mick asked me, gazing at the hotel.

“I hope so.”

Mick studied the building a moment longer before he gave me a nod and started down the side of the bed.

I realized that he wasn’t looking around to check out the landscape, which he always did in unfamiliar territory. He knew this place, even though he and I hadn’t been here together until we’d met up again after I’d started renovating. Mick had been here before he’d found me, I was starting to understand. He’d come to check out the vortexes before we’d even met.

The back door of the hotel was padlocked. When I’d come to check out the building the first time, I’d gotten the key from Barry. A guy in Winslow had owned the hotel and land around it, though he’d long since given up any attempt to do anything with it, and he’d asked Barry to keep an eye on the place. Barry wouldn’t be opening his bar for the day yet, and he’d have no idea, at this time, who I was.

Mick solved the problem by picking up a rock and breaking the padlock with one blow.

I made to dart inside, but Mick stopped me with one powerful hand. Giving me an admonishing look, he ducked into the dim interior then signaled me in behind him.

“Stay close to me,” he said. “Drake, you’re rearguard.”

Drake took the position without argument. We emerged from the back hall to the expanse of what would become the lobby. Crumbled brick and plaster lay everywhere, boards were strewn across the floor, and a few beams sagged from the ceiling. The staircase was a set of crumbling cement risers in the corner, which led to a wooden gallery half falling from the second floor. One post held up the balcony precariously from the first floor, but the rest of it sagged.

“Third floor,” I said, pointing. “The door at the end of the gallery opens to stairs that lead to it.”

Mick took in the mess, resigned. Of course it would be on the top floor, reached only via the unstable balcony.