Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(71)

Gabrielle shot him a smile. “The scales fell from your eyes, did they?”

Drake’s glance at her held embarrassment. “So to speak.”

“Good.” Gabrielle brushed past Drake, letting her shoulder move across his upper arm. Drake flushed a dull red.

“Real funny.” Colby looked back and forth between Drake and Gabrielle, his eyes narrowing. He lost his good humor and began to growl.

My grandmother came hobbling into this interesting situation. “Gabrielle, come with me.”

Gabrielle rolled her eyes. She grabbed my wrist and towed me a few feet from the group as Grandmother and Elena moved briskly toward the railroad bed. “Drake wasn’t meditating that night,” Gabrielle said in a low voice. “He was with me, out near the railroad bed behind the saloon. I guess I was too much for him, because he passed out.”

“Wait.” I pulled her to a halt. “What do you mean with you?”

“What do you think I mean?” Gabrielle’s dark eyes held triumph. “All right, so we didn’t have actual sex. But we made out—a lot. Dragons have a boatload of passion. I can see why you like Mick.”

“You,” I repeated, my mouth stiff. “And Drake?”

“Yes, me and Drake. Why are you so surprised? I like him.”

“I thought you liked Colby.”

“Oh, I do. I like them both. Hot and fiery, or cool and deep—I can’t decide.”

“Gabrielle,” I said. The sharp note in my voice was pure Grandmother. “You can’t play with them. Colby and Drake might be big and dangerous, but they have feelings. Don’t mess with them. They don’t deserve that.”

Gabrielle lost her teasing look. “Did it ever occur to you that I have feelings too? Maybe I keep them both around because I don’t want to be hurt. If one doesn’t want me, the other one might. Not everyone is lucky like you, Janet.”

With that, she jerked away and marched off after Grandmother and Elena.

I returned to the dragons. Colby was glaring at Drake, and Drake looked uncomfortable.

I’d have to keep an eye on things, I realized in exasperation. Dragons took mating very seriously. If Colby and Drake began a rivalry for Gabrielle, one of them could end up dead. I liked Colby, and Drake was beginning to grow on me. Drake had honor and a sense of right and wrong, and he’d proved his worth more than once.

Others who’d come to witness Flora’s attempt to repair the mirror included Jamison Kee. Jamison was Navajo, a Changer, and my oldest friend. He was handsome and strong, a brilliant sculptor, and had been a shaman and a storyteller long before he’d learned he could shape-shift.

His wife, Naomi Hansen, told me she’d fallen in love with Jamison’s voice when he’d come to town to tell stories. I believed her, having heard him myself, his timbre moving from low and velvet soft to growling and earth-vibrating, depending on the story. The night Naomi had met him, he’d asked her about her daughter, Julie, for whom Naomi had related all the tales in sign language.

Not long after that, Jamison had moved in with Naomi in her house behind Hansen’s Garden Center. They’d fallen in love hard and fast, weathered danger and the great change in Jamison’s life, and were still together. They had a strong bond that couldn’t be broken.

Julie, Naomi’s daughter from her first marriage, had total deafness. Nothing had worked to restore Julie’s hearing, except for a spell Jamison had performed this summer, using very dangerous magic. The spell had worked, and Julie had been able to hear perfectly.

But the spell had almost killed Jamison, and me, and brought a crapload of bad people after him. I’d had to take away the source of the spell or these bad people—one of whom was Emmett—would have destroyed him, and likely Julie and Naomi as well.

When I’d gone to visit Jamison and family a few weeks after that, Julie’s hearing had been gone again. The spell had faded, and her deafness had returned. I had hoped that the magic, whose source was a goddess, would prevail, but apparently, once the talisman had disappeared, its effects had worn off.

Julie had said she didn’t mind—she’d rather have Jamison and her mother whole and unhurt. She now had an understanding of what it was like to hear, she said, which she wouldn’t trade for anything. Julie, all of twelve now, was braver than anyone I knew.

I waved to Julie where she stood with Jamison and Naomi, and Julie grinned and waved back.

“Why are all these people here?” I asked Cassandra. “Does Flora need an audience?”

“Not an audience.” Cassandra watched Flora, who was directing Fremont and Don to lay the magic mirror face up on a large wooden table they’d dragged from the storage shed. “She needs earth magics to bolster her own. The dragons, Changers, and shamans will ground her as she works. Most witches learn to tap others for magic—we give it willingly to each other to make a spell work. The magic is stronger that way.”