Ghoul Interrupted (6 page)

“She’s expecting it.”

“I’ll do my best to stand up for her,” Rex added.

Heath met his uncle’s steely eyes and his expression softened. “Thank you, Uncle. She could really use it.”

Rex nodded, then turned away. I bit my tongue and followed Heath back to the other side of the room, where he waved to all his relatives and hugged Ari again. Holding up her keys, he asked, “Can you take me to get my car?”

“Take mine for today,” she said wearily. “You two can bring it back when you get yours out of the garage.”

Heath kissed her on the cheek, then took me by the hand and we left.

When we got outside, Heath walked me right to the passenger door and opened it for me. I got inside, and he leaned in a little. “I’m really sorry my family was so rude,” he said, moving his finger along my brow to sweep a lock of hair out of my eyes. “They’re set in their ways and they don’t like outsiders.”

“I understand,” I told him, hoping he believed me. The truth was that the encounter had thrown me a little. It’d been uncomfortable and stressful, and I just wanted to get out of there.

Heath sighed and kissed me before stepping back to close my door and get in on the driver’s side. We pulled out of the Pueblo and headed off.

As we drove, I waited for Heath to say something, but he didn’t. He just drove silently, and I could feel the waves of grief and anger rolling off him. I knew he had to be at the end of his rope, what with the death of his favorite uncle and an aunt he clearly loved, not to mention the less-than-welcoming feeling his family had given me, and to top it all off, his mother was coming back into town and apparently wasn’t welcome at her own brother’s funeral.

I knew all this, and common sense suggested that I should have left Heath alone. He’d talk to me when he was ready, but maybe I was a little short on my supply of common sense that day. “Wanna talk about it?” I asked, just as Heath pulled over onto the shoulder of the road.

Heath sighed, and then the stiff posture he’d been holding while he drove sort of crumpled, and he rested his forehead on the steering wheel and pounded the top of the dash with his fist.

I waited a beat before reciting one of my favorite quotes. “Family,” I said. “It’s why God gave us friends.”

It took a minute but Heath started to chuckle. He then lifted his head and regarded me. “I’m really, really sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For dragging you into the middle of this nightmare. I should’ve told you to go hang out in L.A. or Boston. Not pulled you into all this crap.”

My brow lifted. “What?” I said with a half smile. “This?
This
is all you Whitefeathers got? Please, sugar. My family makes your family look like the Waltons.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he said, leaning over to rest his head on my shoulder.

I patted his hair. “Don’t sweat it, honey. I can take it.”

He chuckled again. “Oh, I
know
you can take it. I’m just not sure
I
can.”

I kissed the top of his head. “Can I ask you something?”

“How’d I turn out so normal coming from that?”

I laughed. “No. Your grandfather showed up when we were at the house—”

“My grandfather?” he interrupted, sitting up to look at me. “Sam was there?”

I nodded. “You didn’t feel him?”

Heath stared at the gearshift. “No. But that could’ve been because I was too focused on not telling my uncle Vern to shove it.”

I ran my hand through his silky black hair. “I have the distinct feeling that Sam’s very glad you held back.”

Heath grunted. “So what’s your question?”

“Sam showed me this pot.”

“A pot?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to think how to describe it.

“What kind of pot?”

“It was sort of round and it was painted black, but on the side was this white feather. I had the feeling I needed to ask you about it, but not in front of your family.”

Heath blew out a breath. “You aren’t kidding about not mentioning that, Em,” he said. “He was showing you our family’s urn.”

“An urn?”

Heath nodded, but his eyes were far away. “It was in my family for generations,” he explained. “Each time a Whitefeather died and was cremated, a small portion of their ashes went into the urn.”

That surprised me. “Why?”

“Well, it has a lot to do with our belief that we’re looked after by our ancestors. It’s why our lands and our burial grounds are so sacred. Our ancestors, we believe, are very powerful spirits and having their ashes collectively together in one spot allows us to call on them for help in times of trouble.”

I remembered something then. “You said ‘was.’ ”

“Huh?”

“You said this urn ‘was’ in your family. It isn’t with you guys anymore?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Heath said, and I noticed the bitter tone in his voice right away.

“So if I ask you, what’s the answer?”

“Well, that’s the irony. I don’t know. But it’s the one thing my grandfather asked of me on his deathbed. Something I haven’t been able to do for him, which is no wonder that he’s bringing it up to you now.”

“I’m lost,” I said. “Can we start from the beginning again?”

Heath sighed and it sounded like there was a lot of dirty laundry in that sigh. “The urn went missing right around the time my mom left the Pueblo. Vernon’s convinced that my mom took it. Rex too, I think. But Milton, he always suspected it was someone else. Someone outside the family, who might’ve been jealous of us and our success and status within the tribe. He thought the person who took it wanted to deprive us of the benefit of our ancestors.”

I waited a beat before I asked, “But your mom didn’t take the urn, did she?”

Heath looked at me sideways. “No,” he said. “At least, I’m ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent sure she didn’t.”

“Why not a hundred?”

Heath shrugged. “Who else could it have been? It disappeared the exact same weekend she left the Pueblo and she was the last person to see it. Hell, she was even in charge of it.”

I waved at him. “Hi, yeah, I’m lost again.”

“My mom was a master potter,” he said. “That’s what our tribe is known for, actually. We’re famous for our pottery and special kiln techniques. Specifically that black-on-black glaze we give our pottery. Our Pueblo has produced quite a few stars in the Native Indian art world, and my mom was one of them.”

“Really?” I asked. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well, she hasn’t thrown anything new since my stepdad died. She says it makes her too sad. But it put a little extra food on the table for a lot of years, and she was able to save a little for my college fund too.”

“So, she was the last person to see the family urn?” I asked, getting back to the point of the story.

“Yep. She was repairing a crack in the side. According to her, she fixed the crack and left it on a shelf in the tribe’s workshop. That night she left the Pueblo for good. The next morning, the urn was gone.”

I thought about that for a bit. “Then, really, anyone could’ve taken it,” I said.

Heath pulled his hair away from his face, reaching into his pocket for a rubber band to secure it with. “Yeah. But no one’s ponied up to take the blame for, like, twenty-five years, Em. And lots of Whitefeathers have died since then. Their ashes haven’t been able to join their ancestors, which means they’re left to face the spirit world alone.”

My brow furrowed. “But you know that’s not true, right? I mean, Sam’s made it across okay, and he personally told me that he’s met up with your ancestors.”

“Oh, I know that’s how it works,” he assured me. “But try to convince my family of that and they’ll call you a liar right to your face. It’s what they believe, and nothing I say is going to change their minds. Especially since most of them believe it was my mom who took the urn in the first place.”

“But what possible reason could she have for depriving your family of the urn?”

Heath leaned forward and started the car again. “That’s a whole other story,” he told me. “And one I’ll tell you later. Right now, I just want to get back to the hotel and lie down for a while.”

It was then that I remembered the talon marks I’d seen on the side of Beverly’s car. “Heath,” I said, “there’s something you should know about your aunt’s accident.” I then explained to him what I’d seen on the side of her car. “I didn’t mention it when you came out of the station because I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ari, and I don’t know for an actual fact that they’re really demon marks. I mean, in theory I suppose they could’ve been gouges from the tree she hit, but the pattern is way too similar to that demon we encountered in San Francisco. I really think we should check it out.”

Heath’s face was hard like granite, and without a word he put the car into drive and pulled back out onto the road. At first I thought he might be mad at me for telling him, but he reached for my hand again and gave it a gentle squeeze.

We wound our way through a variety of roads until we crept onto one that, I was guessing, didn’t see much traffic. There was nothing as far as the eye could see but scrub and low mountains. We drove for about five minutes when Heath slowed down, and leaned forward, letting go of my hand to focus on the road ahead. “What’cha looking for?” I asked him.

He stopped the car and pointed out the windshield. “Those.”

Heath put the car into park and got out, and I followed suit, joining him at the site of a set of skid marks that began near the yellow dividing line and ended at the trunk of a tree that’d been nearly broken in half.

My breath caught, especially when I remembered poor Beverly’s car. We walked beside the marks, softly and reverently as if following a funeral procession, until we both stood under the boughs of the lone tree.

Heath’s face was pinched and clouded with emotion. I moved closer to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I’m so, so sorry about your aunt and uncle.”

He hugged me and said, “Would you reach out to Aunt Bev and see if she’s here, Em?”

“You think she’s grounded?”

He shrugged. “You know how it is with car accidents. Lots of ’em end up stuck at the scene.”

I stepped back from him and took a deep breath, opening up my senses, looking for her spirit in the ether. I bumped into nothing but the emotion still lingering in the area, and I let myself follow the thread.

I moved back along the skid marks to their point of origin and then even a few steps farther along the road to spread my hands out, literally feeling the air as I went. “What is it?” Heath asked, coming to my side.

“She was really scared,” I said. “Like . . . terrified scared, and the weird thing is that she was terrified some feet before the skid marks start.”

Heath studied me. “What else are you getting?”

My eyes fell on the tree and I lowered my hands to walk back over to it, sensing the waves of terrified energy running like rain down around me as I went, and when I got to the tree, the terror just . . . stopped. “She was killed instantly,” I said, my hand going to my neck. “Her neck snapped.”

Heath was still studying me. “That’s what Pena said.”

I moved around the tree then, because something was still tugging at me. When I got to the back of it, I gasped.

“What is it?”

“Take a look at this,” I said.

Heath hurried to my side of the tree. There, he ran his fingers along three distinctive talon marks carved deep into the wood. “Son of a bitch!” he whispered.

“Son of a bitch” was right.

Heath and I stood there for several minutes just staring at the evidence of a demon on the loose, both of us muted by the sudden gravity of the situation.

“This is bad,” Heath said at last.

“Really bad,” I agreed.

Heath looked at me. “My grandfather told you about this thing, right?”

I started to nod, but my phone rang and I held up a finger to check the display. It was Gilley. I figured I better answer it, but I was annoyed that he’d called right in the middle of a heavy discussion. “Yeah?” I asked.

“Well, good morning to you too,” he said. His voice was thick and froggy and I knew he wasn’t feeling well. Still, what Heath and I were dealing with was much more important. “I’m a little busy, Gil. Can I call you back later?”

“How much later?”

“I don’t know. Half hour, maybe?”

“That’s fine,” he said, coughing into the phone. “Assuming I’m still alive.” And then he muttered something that I could have sworn sounded like “Gilley Gilleshpie.”

“Are you running a fever?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said, coughing again wetly. “I’m delirious, so you might not want to take my word for it.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Gilley could be a handful. “Okay,” I told him. “Heath and I are wrapping up and we’ll be back soon.”

“How soon?”

I sighed heavily and glanced at my watch. “I don’t know. . . . Soon, Gil. I promise.”

Gilley coughed a third time. “Okay, I’ll call the ambulance. Maybe they’ll get here faster.”

With that, he hung up, and I pulled the phone away from my ear to glare at it.

“Gil?” Heath asked.

“Yep.”

“I gather he needs us?”

“He’s sick. Probably the flu.”

Heath put his hands on his hips and eyed the road sullenly. “He was the one who picked that spot next to those sick guys at O’Hare.”

“I know, I know,” I agreed, feeling like I was being torn in two directions. “But when he gets sick, he gets really sick, so maybe we should just go check on him?”

“Yeah, okay,” Heath said. “I have to call my mom anyway.”

“Isn’t she flying here today?” I asked as we walked to the car.

Heath nodded. “She doesn’t leave Phoenix till ten p.m., though. Her flight should be in by midnight.”