Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,87

don’t like them—annoying things. But they are good at reflecting. This one is reflecting things from your past, specific things. The why of it is up to you.”

The fact that the mirror had instigated the dreaming had floored me. To keep me safe, it had bleated before I’d fallen unconscious. Whenever I had been out, it was true, Mick had been right there by my side. Emmett had come nowhere near me—even Emmett must have known it was futile.

Maya, when she’d been thrust into the dreaming with me—I’d carried a mirror shard at the jail, which must have zapped her too—had been watched over by Nash. Drake, with Gabrielle in the dark near my saloon, protected by Gabrielle.

I remembered that careening myself into Nash in my second dream hadn’t woken me up as I’d thought it would. Probably because I hadn’t been spelled—I’d been sucked into a reality made by the magic mirror. The mirror had been gone in that dream—because it could not be inside itself? Or had it simply reflected the fact that Cassandra had moved it in the waking world?

Why had it thought I’d be safer in my dreams? Safe from Emmett reaching me with his magic? Or safe because I’d learn what he could do and how to fight him?

I had no answers, although I’d take the mirror by its frame when I woke up and shake it until it coughed up everything.

“Thanks,” I told my grandmother. I waved vaguely at the front door. “And thanks for letting Dad keep me. You could have stopped him.”

“I know.” Grandmother looked uncomfortable. “I was afraid to. I was afraid that whatever demon had got its claws into him would destroy him if I sent you away. I didn’t understand what you were or what had happened to him. Easier for me to find out if you stayed where I could keep an eye on you.”

I studied her, then I smiled, my heart lightening. “You did it from kindness, Grandmother. You didn’t want to upset Dad. You love him too much. Admit it.”

Grandmother scowled at me, and I began to laugh. She so hated getting caught being nice.

“There are other things you must see,” she said, a growl in her voice. She heaved herself up and began walking into the desert.

***

I had no idea where we were going, but the scenery changed from desert to mountain within one step and the next. Ponderosa pines soared around us, blotting out the sky. The wind turned even colder, snow drifts piling up under the trees. A ribbon of black road stretched beside us, wet from melted snow and ice. The sign I could read a little way off read Whiteriver, 10 mi.

A car burst toward us, going far too fast for the slim, winding road. The car slid sideways on ice, the driver frantically turning the steering wheel. The vehicle spun until it finally thumped into a snowy bank and stopped.

I hurried forward. I had no idea whether these people could see me, but I felt a burning need to help them.

A man, Native American, got himself out of the driver’s side of the car. He was yelling, but his words were slurred. A woman, also Native American, emerged from the passenger side and hurriedly stumbled toward him through the ice and snow.

The man reached into the backseat of the car and pulled out a bundle much the same as the one my father had held. This one too began to shriek and cry. I halted.

“No!” the woman pleaded. “You can’t!”

The man snarled at her then ran a few steps into the woods, holding the baby between his two hands as though it might explode.

“You can’t do this. She’ll die!” The woman ran after him, sliding on the ice, catching up to his lumbering stride. “Give her to me. I’ll take care of her.”

“You don’t want her. Her mother was a witch. This baby will grow up and kill you.”

I went cold, and not because of the weather. Though the man and woman spoke a language I didn’t know, I somehow understood every word. I knew who they were, and the name of the baby the man was trying to abandon.

He tossed the bundle down under a tree. The child’s wails grew, terror ringing in the still air.

The woman rapidly stooped down and came up with the baby in her arms. She was crying, but she tried to sound comforting as she soothed the child. “Hush now, Gabrielle. He didn’t mean