Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5) (21 page)

“We can ask him,” I said. “We’ll find Emmett’s office and drag him out of it. Get Drake, Colby, and Coyote to help. Bring Cassandra down here too. Plus my grandmother—Emmett’s gone one-on-one with her before and didn’t like it.”

“Calm down.” Mick didn’t move his hand, and it grew heavier through my thin hospital gown. “I did check out his office building. He hasn’t been there for weeks.”

“So we’ll stake it out. I want to confront him. Teach him not to mess with us.”

“We will.” Mick’s rumble was soothing. “But not yet. I need you at full strength if we’re going after him.”

“Mmm.” I relaxed down into the bed and put my hand over his. “How about a little dose of dragon healing?”

The glint in Mick’s eye returned. Knowing him, he’d likely been feeding me healing magic all the while I was unconscious, but he understood what I meant.

He pulled the loose gown to bare my shoulders and began to kiss my neck, my throat, and down between my breasts.

***

I agreed to stay and recover but only if my family went home. The next person I asked to see after Mick was my dad.

Pete sat down in the chair Mick had vacated and glanced at the machinery around me. He didn’t clasp my hand, but he didn’t need to. My dad and I had a connection even when we didn’t touch.

“Mick takes care of you well,” he said. He looked tired, with lines around his eyes.

“Yeah, he does.” I smiled weakly. “Better than I deserve.”

Dad gave me a wise look, obviously disagreeing. “You deserve all happiness, my daughter.”

My heart squeezed in a way that hurt. “Thanks for coming down. I know you hate hospitals even more than I do.” I paused. “I heard your flute. It was beautiful—it pulled me awake. Thank you.”

My father’s dark eyes softened but his cheeks burned a little red, my dad always embarrassed when someone praised his playing. “We’d not leave you alone,” he said. “Your grandmother led the way. You should have seen her running for the truck, shouting for us all to come, and to hurry. She loves you very much, Janet.”

When I’d been a child, I’d been convinced Grandmother had hated me. Now I knew her anger at me had been born of fear. She’d been terrified my mother would rise up in me and not only hurt my dad but take me—the real Janet—away from them. Grandmother’s harsh lessons had taught me to be strong, to fight even myself.

“I love her too.” My smile deepened. “I’d like to see her face when you tell her that.”

We shared an amused look, my dad and me. We knew exactly how Grandmother reacted when she feared being sentimental.

“Go home,” I said to him. “You should be concentrating on your wedding, not your messed-up daughter.”

By my dad’s expression he didn’t agree, but he nodded. “Your grandmother wants it to be a grand ceremony. All the old ways with everyone in the family attending.”

Everyone in the family meant a mob scene. I think my dad’s ancestors attempted to populate the entire planet with Begays. I needed a chart to keep my many cousins straight.

“She’s excited,” I told him. “You’re marrying a normal woman from a normal family.”

“Gina has shamanism in her family. And talent.” My dad sounded proud. Gina did make lovely jewelry, sometimes with turquoise and other semiprecious stones, sometimes with a simple mix of gold and silver.

“She’s wonderful,” I said. “I’m just as excited for you as Grandmother is.”

My dad gave me one of his rare smiles. “Gina reminds me of you.”
 

Without explaining what he meant, my father rose, touched my forehead with steady fingers, and left me.

***

I stayed in the hospital two more days. I finally persuaded my dad to go back to Many Farms, though my grandmother told me pointedly that she’d have him and Gina drop her off at my hotel. They left, and I felt better. I didn’t want them anywhere near a place where Emmett had a base.

With Mick’s healing magic and my returning strength, I recovered quickly, to the surprise of the doctors. When I felt well enough and the hospital discharged me, I asked Mick to book a hotel room in the heart of downtown.

From there, we went in search of Emmett Smith.

Chapter Twenty

From my hospital room, I’d been able to look down on a freeway through the city and the sea of humanity hemming us in. It made me crazy.

True, I could lift my gaze and focus on the low mountains that snaked through town, rising free of buildings like islands of calm. The city had agreed long ago to keep the inner mountains as a preserve, places of serenity for its inhabitants to enjoy.

Even so, the aura of so many living on top of each other made my skin itch. The only time I’d ever stayed in such a place was Flagstaff when I’d attended NAU. Then, at least, I was comforted by the San Francisco peaks raising their snowy heads above the town, and the fact that a fifteen-minute drive through traffic would take me to open country. Here, a person could drive for hours and still be surrounded by city. It made me claustrophobic.

Mick took it in stride as usual. He booked us into a swanky high-rise hotel only a block or two from Emmett’s building. The morning after my release from the hospital, we breakfasted in a busy restaurant that served tasty food, and walked from the shadows of its doorway into the sunshine.

It was a Tuesday. Anyone I’d met from Phoenix talked a lot about what they did on weekends—camping, boating on one of the many lakes, hiking, swimming, golfing, heading for the Grand Canyon or Mexico, or up to the White Mountains or Flag to ski. To hear them you’d think Phoenix was all about being outdoorsy and sporty. But that was on the weekend. During the week, downtown Phoenix was all about work.

I’d been to Manhattan, where I’d found something entertaining around every corner. In Phoenix, there’s another office around every corner. Restaurants, sure, but only to feed people in the offices. After five, many of the restaurants close, and most people go home to the suburbs, unless there was an event downtown, like a baseball or basketball game. I’d watched the mad crush on the freeway from my hospital room, everyone scrambling to get back to the far-flung reaches of the metropolis, leaving the center of town mostly deserted.

At ten this morning it was fairly quiet on the streets, as everyone had gone inside the air conditioned buildings.
Fairly
quiet—if we’d seen this much traffic in Magellan or Flat Mesa we’d wonder what emergency had occurred.

Mick led me at a stroll across Central and into the avenues, seeming to know his way around perfectly. No one gave him much of a second glance—Mick with his crazy black hair in a short ponytail, a silver earring glinting in one lobe, and tatts showing from under his T-shirt sleeves, wasn’t that unusual here. Lots of bikers made this city home, and though people downtown wore suits, the constant heat made dress a little more casual. The guys running around in shirts and ties, pressed slacks, and shiny shoes, though, shot Mick looks of envy.

A glass and steel building rose among many on the corner of Second Avenue and Adams. Mick walked right in, politely holding the door for a couple of women in silk shirts and skirts who gave him interested smiles.

Whatever they did in this building, security was pretty tight. A security guard on one side of a walk-through metal detector handed out baskets for keys and cell phones then gave them to the guard on the other side. Mick relinquished his keys and phone and walked through without a beep. Since I had neither phone nor keys, I showed my open hands and walked in after him.

The metal detector found nothing, and Mick was his usual friendly self as he retrieved his belongings. Mick never saw a need to carry tangible weapons.

The next hurdle was a reception desk near the elevators, behind which sat a pleasant young woman with dark hair and a desert tan flanked by yet another security guard.

The young woman’s smile deepened when Mick approached, and even the security guard gave him a cordial nod.

“Are you back, Mr. Burns?” the woman asked. “I’m afraid Mr. Smith hasn’t returned.”

“Yes, he has,” Mick said. “I saw him.”

Mick hadn’t seen him—I knew that—but I too sensed Emmett here. He’d passed through this lobby recently. The dark gray aura he’d left behind was unmistakable.

The young woman flushed. “All right, you caught me. But he doesn’t want to see anyone. You have to book an appointment a year in advance with his personal assistant to get in with Mr. Smith.”

Mick leaned on the tall counter and looked down at her, his half smile affable. “Call upstairs. Give his assistant my name, and also tell him his friend Janet Begay is here. If he sends us away, then …” Mick lifted himself from the counter and shrugged. “We’ll stop bothering you.”

The young woman flushed again. She so wanted to help Mick, but I saw a touch a fear in her eyes. I didn’t blame her. If I were her, I’d be intimidated by Emmett too.

Mick deepened his smile. He rested his fingers on the counter again, and I saw a spark of magic move from them down to the telephone on the desk. The guard and the receptionist noticed nothing.

Mick gave the woman a nod, said, “All right,” and gestured for me to turn away with him. At that very moment, the receptionist’s phone rang.

“Oh, wait.” She held up one slender finger as she pressed a button on the phone and spoke through her headset. “Yes?” A pause, and then she looked relieved and delighted at the same time. “I will. Thanks.”

She hung up and beamed at Mick. “It seems Mr. Smith
is
expecting you, Mr. Burns. Take the second elevator straight up. It only goes to his floor.”

Mick thanked her as though she’d done him an amazing favor, and he ushered me with his hand on the small of my back to the elevator. I felt the woman watching Mick all the way—he does have a nice back view.

As the nearly silent elevator doors slid closed on us, the chill in my bones returned. I was never meant to be inside a concrete and steel building, sailing upward in a box that confined me like a coffin.

Mick saw me shiver and slid his arm around me. “He can’t do a lot to us in front of other people,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure. “It’s not Emmett that bugs me. It’s this place.” The decor of the lobby, the elevator, even the doors, was cold and industrial—white, black, gray, steel. “It’s like death.”

“True, it’s not inviting,” Mick agreed. “Emmett’s probably going for chill to intimidate his clients.”

“His clients.” I pondered the word. “What does he actually do?”

“On the surface, he runs a private bank. Below the surface, he hires himself out to help others make money, for a hefty percentage. Like what he did with the hotel Cassandra used to work for.”

Cassandra had been the manager of a boutique hotel called the “C” in Los Angeles. Her boss had used Emmett to help fulfill the wealthy clientele’s more bizarre requests.

We couldn’t say more, because the elevator doors opened, spilling us out onto a floor of polished black. Steel gray walls and etched glass surrounded another receptionist’s desk, but she was far less friendly than the young woman below. Her black hair was pulled into a severe bun and her makeup made her face a pale mask with black-lined eyes and scarlet lips. She took in our jeans, dusty shirts, and Mick’s tatts askance, but told us coolly that Mr. Smith expected us.

Her tone implied that we were late, although we’d come straight from the lobby, traveling as quickly as the elevator let us. She pushed a button under her desk, and one of the steel panels on the wall slid open, revealing a short hall that ended in another steel door.

She had no intention of leaving her chair to escort us. The door at the other end of the hall opened, however, and a young man in a gray business suit stepped out to wait for us.

As we entered the hall, the steel door to the reception area glided shut behind us, sealing us in. I seriously didn’t like
that
.

“Mr. Burns? Ms. Begay?” the man asked. “I’m Mr. Smith’s PA. Follow me, please.”

The door behind him led to yet another short hall, one wall of it lined with floor-to-ceiling windows. We were about thirty stories up, and my stomach turned over to see the cars and people moving such a long way below. I’d been to the top of the Empire State Building but hadn’t experienced the vertigo I did now.

The PA touched a button on a remote, opening yet another gray, brushed-steel door. Beyond this, at last, was an office.

The office took up about an acre of space and rose two floors, the walls on three sides nothing but windows. Standing in the middle of it was like being on the edge of a cliff. I had to admit that the view of the mountains to the south, east, and north was spectacular, as was the vast grid of streets laid out in precise right angles spreading out below. In Phoenix, all streets, with very few exceptions, ran north and south or east and west. I’m sure that exactness appealed to Emmett.

Emmett was just rising from a desk across the vast floor, which here was polished white. Though it felt solid enough, the expanse of gleaming white did nothing to help my vertigo. The desk had a glass top on a brushed steel frame, and was empty, except for one slim computer monitor and a small keyboard. No paper, pens, files, or paperclips cluttered Emmett’s desk. I’m sure they didn’t dare.

“Thank you,” Emmett told his PA. “I’ll call if I need you.”

The PA looked doubtful about leaving his boss with two such disreputable-looking characters, but he nodded and withdrew through another seamless door. The nameless PA was human, I knew from his aura, which was clean and without taint of magic. He was simply a man doing the job he’d been hired to do.

Emmett was as scrupulously neat as ever, a new pair of glasses on his nose. Or rather, a different pair—he might have many. These had emeralds on the temples, which went with the subtle shade of his green silk tie.

His aura, unlike the PA’s, roiled dark gray like winter storm clouds. Every magic he’d learned or stolen from other mages whirled within him, making his aura inky, thick, and evil.

“Janet,” he said in a pleasant tone. “I am pleased to see you have recovered without permanent damage. I hear the Hopi County sheriff’s office and jail did not emerged unscathed. They have to level the place and build again. Hard on the taxpayer.”