Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) - Allyson James Page 0,88

it. It’s all right.”

“Anna,” the man said. “Put her down, or I’ll kill you.”

The woman, Anna Massey, looked up at her husband with the same determination in her eyes my father had held in his. “Leave her alone. I will take care of her.”

“She’s another woman’s child,” her husband snapped. “Do you understand that? A witch seduced me, an evil woman—she made me screw her. Again and again, until she got pregnant.”

“That’s not the baby’s fault,” Anna said stubbornly, holding the child close. “We’ve tried for so long …” She trailed off, tears in her voice. “A demon didn’t leave this child. God did.”

Massey stood looking at her, his hands on his hips. He was afraid, drunk, and angry at himself and at my goddess mother for luring him from his wife. I felt pity for him, but only so much—Gabrielle’s father had been an alcoholic and also a rather stupid man, petty and cruel out of ignorance.

Finally, Massey heaved a sigh. “Get back in the car, Anna. I wasn’t really going to leave her.”

Yes, he had been. I knew this, and I saw that his wife knew it too. Anna clutched the child defensively, but obeyed, climbed back to the car, and got inside.

If Anna Massey had possessed the personality of my grandmother, she’d have demanded the keys from her husband and not let him drive in his state of inebriation.

But I also knew that they didn’t die on this day of drunken driving. That would come later, after Gabrielle had suffered years of abuse from this man, and he’d tried to flee her and her monstrous power.

Massey started the car, slowly righted it, and drove away toward Whiteriver at a more sedate pace.

I let out my breath. “All right, why am I seeing this?”

I was speaking to empty air. My grandmother was gone, and I was alone under the snowy trees.

My breath fogged. “Can I at least be someplace warm?” I asked the landscape around me. “How about my hotel with a roaring fire, hot coffee, and Mick to curl up around?”

Nothing. I remained on the road in Mick’s long T-shirt, in the middle of the White Mountains with no transportation. I wasn’t as cold as I should have been, because my physical body was back in my hotel, on the bathroom floor.

Heaving a sigh, I began to walk, heading in the opposite direction from Whiteriver. I would reach another mountain town soon where maybe I’d be able to hitch a ride, if anyone could see me, or would pick up a woman wearing only a long T-shirt. Did I really want a ride with those who would?

Eventually I’d come out of the mountains and find the turnoff to Magellan. But it would be a long walk, and my bare feet were already sore.

Before I’d gone a mile, however, a pickup came up behind me and slowed to keep pace. The driver in a cowboy hat leaned forward and stared at me out the window. “Hey,” he called. “Want a ride, sweetheart?”

I looked up, a biting retort on my lips, then I saw who the driver was. I grabbed for the door, flung it open, and hauled myself into the pickup’s cab.

“Yes,” I said emphatically, slamming the door. I reached for the temperature controls on the dashboard. “And turn up the heat in this thing.”

Coyote, clad in a denim jacket, jeans, and black hat, grinned at me. He batted my fingers away, cranked the heater to high, then stomped on the gas and let the truck leap forward on the icy road.

***

Coyote drove me to Magellan, but he took a roundabout route, going all the way to Holbrook and the 40 before turning west and heading for Winslow and the turnoff to Magellan there. He could have saved an hour and a half cutting across country, but for some reason, he refused.

“I’m savoring the time,” he said when I pointed this out. “It’s not often I get to go on a road trip with Janet Begay.”

“Why are you on a road trip with me? This is my dream.”

“So you keep saying.” Coyote shrugged. “Dreams are byways through the mind. They teach us things about ourselves that we need to know. Show us our own fears, hopes, dreams, needs. Though sometimes, it’s just the brain blowing off steam. Synapses firing.”

“I don’t have time to ride down memory lane,” I retorted. “Emmett did something to Gabrielle, and now Emmett is inside my magic mirror. I don’t trust him not to