Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,59

that son of a bitch who locked us all in your hotel? Why doesn’t he go away?”

“He didn’t …” The situation when we’d been hexed last winter had been more complicated than that, but I didn’t have time to go into it.

Maya wasn’t listening to me. She’d glanced at Mick in sudden concern. “Mick, you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“He doesn’t know you,” I said quickly. “He’s Mick from my past.”

“There’s still something wrong. Are you sick?” Maya asked him.

“In a manner of speaking,” Mick said.

Maya looked puzzled, but she knew Mick well enough to grasp when he didn’t want to talk about something. She turned her gaze back to me.

“So, I woke up this morning back in my own house,” she said. “Everything normal there, except I’ve been staying at Nash’s. Trying to fix his place up so a human being can live in it. I stepped outside in time to see Nash drive past in a deputy’s car, heading to McGuire’s old house. When I walked down there to see what was going on, Nash comes out with Amy McGuire and starts kissing her. What the hell?” Maya pointed a shaking finger at me. “You tell me how that happened.”

“He’s with Amy?” I asked in alarm.

“I just said that. I thought she was gone forever. You cleared that up. You told me.”

When I’d first moved to Magellan, I’d come to investigate the disappearance of Amy, the chief of police’s daughter. She’d also been Nash’s fiancée.

I frowned as I tried to keep everything straight. Maya and Nash had been an item until Nash had returned from Iraq. Their breakup after that had been volatile, especially when Nash had announced his intention to run for sheriff. He’d then turned, rather suddenly, to Amy.

I’d thought he’d gone to Amy later than this, only a year or so before she disappeared, but then, this was a dream. Timelines often didn’t make sense in the ramblings of the brain.

But if Nash was with Amy, right now …

“We need to get down there,” I said.

“Good.” Maya’s anger turned defiant. “I’m not above fighting for him this time. But I came to find you, and your hotel was all falling down again, and it scared the shit out of me.”

“You and me both.”

Maya’s red pickup stood at the edge of the lot, near Barry’s bar, the driver’s side door still open. Mick caught on to my worry, even if he didn’t understand it, and headed for the truck. Drake, who did understand my concern, herded Maya and me after Mick.

“Why did you put on your work clothes?” I asked Maya curiously as we hurried across the parking lot.

“Everything else in my closet was old,” Maya said. “I couldn’t find any of my new clothes. This is my old truck too, but looking brand new.”

I gave her a helpless look. “Dreams can be crazy.”

The passenger door was unlocked, and Mick held it open while I scrambled in. Mick and Drake, without speaking, climbed over the back of the pickup and settled down into the bed.

“You are going to explain all this to me after we go rescue Nash from that bitch,” Maya told me from the driver’s seat. She put the truck in gear and peeled out of the lot in a cloud of dust.

“Get in line,” I said grimly.

***

As we drove through Magellan in the early morning light, I was struck by how little had changed in the six years between now and when I’d arrive to live here. Of course, my dream might be painting the picture as I remembered it, not its reality, but the town seemed serene and untouched. Maya navigated the curves of the highway past the diner and the New Age store, Paradox; the small churches and the gas station; Hansen’s Garden Center, owned by my friend Jamison’s wife; the police station; and finally to the residential area.

Maya lived on the last street in town before the highway narrowed and moved toward the mountains in the south. Amy McGuire had lived at the end of this cul-de-sac before she’d had unfortunate things happen to her.

Maya didn’t slow, despite the 25-miles-an-hour sign at the entrance to the street. She gunned the truck all the way down the road and slammed on her brakes just as she reached Amy’s yard. There were no sidewalks here, or curbs, and Maya’s momentum carried her straight into the grass in front of Amy’s house.

Nash bolted outside before Maya was out of the truck. He