Nightwalker (14 page)

A second lackey had entered with a silver tray loaded with bits of food, followed by a maid with a bottle of wine and glasses on trays. These two faded away, and the first lackey poured the wine and carried it around to all of us.

I took the offered glass of cool white wine, my gaze still fixed on Gabrielle. She lifted her glass to me in silent toast then drank a good mouthful.

Young’s attention was all for Mick. “You come highly recommended, Mr. Burns,” he said. “Mr. Bancroft has quite the reputation as a collector.”

I jammed my wineglass against my lips to stop my questions. Mick had obviously fed the man some line of bull and dragged Bancroft’s name into it.

I didn’t like white wine, but I dumped a gulp into my mouth. Then I admitted that this wasn’t bad—the expensive stuff, I gathered. But between the shaking auras and Gabrielle’s presence, even the smooth wine couldn’t calm my rebellious stomach.

Young signaled to the lackey. The lackey set down his tray, turned smartly, and exited through a door behind Mr. Young’s desk.

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought in another expert to authenticate the pot.” Young nodded graciously at Gabrielle. “I thought two heads would be better than one.”

Mick had taken in Gabrielle without a change in expression, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d known Gabrielle would be here. Mick was just good at not giving away his emotions.

We sipped wine in silence, while Gabrielle continued to shoot amused looks at me, until the lackey returned with a large, latched box.

Lackey set the box on a table made of wood so old it shone with age. The lackey unlatched the box then stepped back and let Young open its lid.

Inside the box lay a pot. It was a simple vessel with a flat bottom, its sides bulging into a pleasing swell. That swell flowed back in to the pot’s mouth, which was a near-perfect circle about four inches across.

I knew how these pots were made, though I’d never mastered the art myself. Clay was rolled into long snakes that were then coiled around and wrapped one on top of the other, the final shape finished by hand. No potter’s wheel had made this.

The potter had then painted a line of bears and tortoises marching around the outside of the bowl—not realistic animals, but abstract, square-lined ones. Jagged patterns like lightning interspersed between tortoise and bear. For a finishing touch, black waves ran around the lip of the vessel’s mouth, every line perfect. The colors were simple—white, rich brown, black, and red.

Once the pot had been fired, it had taken on a hardness and sheen that was enduring. The colors had faded a bit from time and weather, but they were still beautiful. This bowl, as lovely as it was, would have been used for a practical purpose—to store grain maybe. Useful beauty.

I couldn’t, however, discern from which tribe it had originated. Ansel said he’d found it in Flagstaff, which meant it could have come from any of the tribes in a line from the tiny valleys around the Grand Canyon all the way east through Arizona and southern Utah to the pueblo tribes of New Mexico. There were plenty of ruins in the cliff-sides around Santa Fe.

Young handed white gloves to Mick and Gabrielle and donned a pair himself. Apparently, I was the only one who wouldn’t be allowed to pick up the pot, because a pair wasn’t handed to me. Whatever story Mick had woven didn’t include me playing an expert.

Mick pulled the gloves over his big hands and carefully accepted the pot from Young. They made a strange pair, the slim, medium-height Mr. Young, with his brushed suit and carefully trimmed gray hair, and Mick, tall, massive, with black hair every which way and in his biker clothes.

Mick held the pot as carefully as he would a newborn baby. He turned it around in his hands, examining every line, every minute crack, while I sipped wine and watched.

Mick passed the pot to Gabrielle, who took it just as gently. I expected my zany little sister to do something like smash the pot against the wall and laugh, maybe blow out all the glass in the cases with her magic to prove she could.

But it wouldn’t matter even if she did dash this pot against the nearest wall, because it was a fake.

Gabrielle lifted the pot to her eyes and examined it as Mick had. She was no expert, I was pretty certain. She was only copying what Mick had done, but she did it very well.

“It’s a fake,” she announced.

Young blinked at her. “What are you talking about?”

Mick glanced at me for confirmation, and I gave him the barest nod.

The thing had no aura, or very little anyway. It was beautiful, a work of art, but it was no antique. This pot had been made recently, within the year, at a guess. Age can be faked to the naked eye, but not to the inner eye of someone who can see auras. A broken pot in the case behind Young, the pot’s design barely discernible after all these centuries, carried far more vibrations than this vessel did.

“She’s right,” Mick said. He reached to take the pot from Gabrielle, who surrendered it willingly. Mick lifted the pot to his nose.

Then
his expression changed. It was just a flash, his eyes going from blue to deep, dragon black. They shifted back again before Young could see, but I’d caught it.

I moved closer to him and looked at the pot in his hands. I saw it then, or rather, smelled it—the faint tinge of Nightwalker. And I knew which Nightwalker.

Young’s expression went from that of a smooth-faced, wealthy man showing off a treasure to a man realizing he’d been conned. And beneath his shock and anger, I saw stark fear.

Fear?

“That can’t be right,” he said. “Check again.”

Mick shrugged and set the pot back into its case. “It’s not more than a few months old at best. If you tell me who sold you this, I’ll do what I can to have them prosecuted, and possibly get your money back.”

Young’s chagrin changed to anger. “No,” he snapped. “You tell me that this pot’s real and sign a paper to prove it.”

Mick looked at him in surprise. “I thought you were willing to let me tell you whether you’d been sold a fake. You have been.”

“You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what I bought. You have to declare that it’s real.”

I could tell Mick was dying to know why. I was too. The only one calm and smiling like a smug cat was Gabrielle.

Mick said, “I wouldn’t maintain much of a reputation if I signed off on a fake.”

Mr. Young’s hand dipped into his suit coat and came out with a small pistol. “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear,” he said.

He pointed the pistol not at Mick, but at me.

I hate guns. They’re unpredictable, deadly, terrifying. Anyone can point one at another person and shoot him or her dead, a life taken in the blink of an eye.

To a Stormwalker or a Beneath magic user, guns just get in the way. They are as liable to blow up in our hands as they are to be of any use as a weapon.

A twenty-two was now aimed directly at my chest. I didn’t raise my hands, as movies teach us to do. I had a glass of wine in one hand, the other folded across my stomach, and I didn’t much feel like moving.

Thunder rumbled outside. Close. The storm was at last rolling down out of the mountains to engulf the town.

Mick’s smile spread across his face. “You might not want to do that,” he said to Young.

“Yep,” Gabrielle said. “Janet can be a real bitch.”

Young’s gaze flicked to me, and he really looked at me for the first time. He took in that I was Indian, a biker chick, and had the remnants of bruises on my face from my fall in Chaco Canyon plus the tussle with my Nightwalker. I saw him note the singed piece of hair I’d had to cut away. He didn’t look impressed.

“I dictated a letter in anticipation of our appointment,” he said to Mick, the pistol not moving. “All you have to do is sign it. I promise not to kill your girlfriend, but I do guarantee that I can put her in the hospital. Your choice. Sign, or watch your lady here rely on a feed tube for a while.”

The gun was cocked, loaded, and I could tell by Mr. Young’s eyes that he’d pull the trigger. And that he knew the difference between shooting to wound and shooting to kill.

“Maybe you should look at the letter, Mick,” I said.

“Maybe I should.” Mick’s voice was rumbling, the dragon edge coming into it. He knew the storm meant that I could take care of myself, but he was dragon, and I was his mate. Every one of his instincts was telling him to flatten Young and put me out of danger.

Young nodded at his lackey, who wasn’t fazed in the slightest that his employer had pulled a gun on one of his guests. Lackey went to the desk and returned with a thick piece of stationary paper containing two typed paragraphs. I saw Mick’s name at the bottom of the page, with a line for his signature.

Mick took it, and I craned to read. The top paragraph was a note from Mr. Young explaining that he’d employed Mick Burns, an expert with a string of qualifications from different museums around the country, to authenticate the pot. I’d love to know whether those qualifications were true. The second paragraph said that Mick stated he’d examined the vessel and found it to be real.

“Who’s the letter for?” I asked.

Young glared at me but spoke to Mick. “Just sign it.”

Lackey moved to Mick’s other side and handed him a pen. Lightning flared outside the high window, closer now. The lights inside dimmed, and a roll of thunder scooped its way through the room, rumbling on and on and on.

Sparks snapped to my fingertips, which I hid by balling my hand into my stomach.

Mick studied the greeting. “Someone called Pericles McKinnon. Interesting name. Never heard of him.” He glanced at me. “Janet?”

“Nope. I wonder why Mr. Young is so afraid of him.”

Young’s lips tightened. “Sign the damned letter or your girlfriend bleeds.”

“Who is he?” I asked Young. “Why is it so important he thinks the pot is real?”

Gabrielle broke in. “Because Mr. McKinnon probably paid Mr. Young a gob of money for it already, and he might get testy if he thinks Mr. Young is trying to hand him a fake.”

“Then Mr. Young should have had it tested before he bought it,” I said.

“I
did
,” Young said. “That DiAngelo bitch and her boyfriend had it authenticated, and so did the museum in Flag. It was real then. I swear it. But McKinnon told me I’d better be absolutely sure. When you called wanting to have a look at the pot, I decided to ensure that it would be deemed real, no matter what. So sign this and make him happy, all right?”

“If you’ve been duped, why should McKinnon be pissed off at you?” I asked. “Give him his money back, and Mick will make sure you get yours returned. What’s the deal?”

Gabrielle laughed, a sunny sound in the gloom. “I bet McKinnon wants the real one for more than its value, or the fact that it’s pretty.”

Gabrielle, my crazy little sister, could be astute. Or else she knew more about this pot than she was letting on.

“Your entire collection is pretty illegal,” I said to Young. “I can’t believe you’re rubbing it in the faces of two Indian women, all the while trying to woo us with good wine. The feds can put you in prison for pot hunting, and all this—” I waved my hand at the glass cases “—is pretty much evidence.”

Young’s face went chartreuse, and he shoved the pistol at me. “Shut
up
. You’ve just made sure you’re dead.”

Lightning cracked outside, and all the electricity went off. Gray light from the high windows glinted on the glass cases, and the next lighting strike glared against them all.

Perfect.

Young pulled the trigger. At the same time, I grabbed the lightning and all its reflections around the room and directed it at the pistol.

“Down!” Mick roared.

Gabrielle dropped flat, and Mick followed her to the ground. Even the lackey hit the floor with the swiftness of a man used to dodging gunfights.

The pistol exploded. Young screamed as he dropped it, or tried to. Lightning crawled up his body and wrapped him in a blanket of white arcs.

Arcs that I controlled. The lightning didn’t touch his body—it flowed around him, its deadly charge kept from contacting his skin by me and my whims.

The thunder kept rumbling, strike after strike of lightning landing outside. Mountain storms could be hell on earth.

“Who is Pericles McKinnon?” I asked him.

Young continued to scream. The lackey on the ground leapt to his feet as several more equally well-dressed lackeys burst through the door. All were armed.

“Oh, now,” Gabrielle said. She flicked her fingers, and every single one of Young’s bodyguards cum servants hurtled toward the ceiling. They fired wildly at us, but their bullets stuck in midair as though they’d hit a wall of gelatin.

“Gabrielle,” Mick admonished her.

“What? You want bullets ripping through you?” Gabrielle’s eyes widened. “I promise I won’t kill them. Much.”

I made no such promise. I was angry, both at Young for assuming he could manipulate Mick, and at a certain Nightwalker skulking in the basement of my hotel. The slayers might find only a pile of sinew and dust when they finally caught up to him.

“Who is McKinnon?” I directed my question upward to Lackey Number One, the one who’d let us in. His body was pressed against the ceiling, his face white in the gloom.

“Not sure,” Lackey said in a choked voice. “Some badass Mr. Young agreed to get the pot for. Don’t know why he’s so scared of him. He’s a little dude.”

“Unless he’s some kind of powerful magic being.” I looked at Young. “What is he? Nightwalker? Shaman?” I didn’t say
dragon
, because dragons were happy if not too many people knew they existed—as dragons, that is. If McKinnon was Drake under an assumed name, I’d smack him.

“I don’t know,” Young managed to say. “But he does some powerful shit. More powerful than what you’re doing.”

That hurt my feelings. Right now, I was pretty hot stuff. The entire force of the storm filled me and made me stronger than anyone in this room. A ball of Beneath magic waited deep in my core, there if I needed it. I could hold onto the earth magic of the storm and roast the entire place with the ball of Beneath magic. Nothing could stop me, not even Mick, and Mick knew it.