The Spirit Seducer (The Echo Series Book 1)

A
god undone by prophecy
. A warrior strong as the earth. And the woman who will decide their fate…

T
he dream comes every night
: A warrior clad in leather and wielding a spear, fighting off demons with the heads of jackrabbits and pumas. Defending her.

Echo Ruiz knows it’s ridiculous. There’s no one in Santa Fe less likely to need defending. Thanks to the migraines, she’s confined to her mother’s house. Her Native American Studies classes are online, and she hasn’t made a new friend in a decade.

Until her twenty-first birthday party, when trickster Coyote himself shows up. An hour later, Echo is on the run from the power-hungry god. Her headaches are gone. Her mother is a hostage, and she’s been thrust into a mirror-world of deadly loveliness to fight or die.

Her dream warrior? He’s as real as the sweat on her skin. His name is Zeke, and he remembers a lot more about Echo than she does about him. So does her best friend, Layla, who has secrets Echo’s never guessed.

But if Echo wants to defeat Coyote—if she wants to survive—she’ll have to discover the way herself. Because that’s one ending the legends have never told…

T
o hear about new books
, sign up for my newsletter at
here
.

C
opyright © 2016
Alexa Padgett

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-945090-00-4

T
his is a work of fiction
. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the material in this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews.

E
dited
by Nancy Cassidy and Nicole Pomeroy

Cover design: Clarissa Yeo

F
or Chris
. Because you gave me the opportunity to dream big.

“
Y
ou don’t look happy
,” Layla said from my bedroom’s doorway. My best friend since we were ten, Layla was my opposite. She was tall, thin, and blonde. Poised, perfect. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

The morning started poorly. I wanted to move out and get away from my mom’s overprotectiveness and countless rules. I’d finally told Mom my plan.

The resulting scene was epic-level Ruiz. From bustlines to breakups, the ladies of
familia
Ruiz kicked some serious
culo
. All of them except me.

“Hey.” I smiled, cheered by Layla’s presence. “Thanks. Mom and I got into it earlier. I hate upsetting her.”

Layla’s return smile didn’t reach her eyes, which were darker and more serious than usual.

“Your mom’s looking out for you, Echo.” She fiddled with the hem of her cute tunic dress.

“Seriously?” Tension crawled up my spine, settling into my shoulders. “It’s not natural to be homeschooled like I was. You know that. I know that, and I was the one homeschooled.”

Layla’s thin brows pulled low before she shifted her gaze over my shoulder. “At least you got to miss out on all those awkward high school experiences. Believe me, E, there were many days I would’ve traded places with you.”

I rubbed my temple. “Only because you didn’t live it. I never even set foot on a college campus, thanks to the impersonal joy of Internet classrooms.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Besides the fact I was compelled to study Native American culture, even though I’ve never met any Native Americans?”

“You know them,” Layla said, waving her hand with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “And you have two degrees. Before the age of twenty-one. That’s impressive.”

“The only reason I was able to work so quickly through my bachelor’s and master’s programs was because there’s nothing else to do when you’re pretty much housebound.”

“You’re the one who chooses to stay here. It’s not like you can’t leave.”

I snorted. “Sure. It’s that simple.”

“I didn’t say it was easy. There are good reasons for you to still be at home.”

As my aunt Lupita liked to say, I lived
la vida jodida
—or, to clarify with a little less bad language, I was the ugly duckling who hadn’t fledged into anything that remotely resembled a swan.

The doorbell rang, cutting Layla off. I gave her the bright smile I usually saved for my family. It was more fake than the maple syrup my aunt Juana brought over for our French toast brunches.

“That’ll be the aunties. It’s going to have to be later, ’kay?”

“No, it really
can’t
wait,” Layla said. I ignored her and rushed out of my room.

Opening the door, I was immediately surrounded by a flock of clucking females. They piled into the tiny entryway, talking in a loud mix of Spanish and English, making my head pound, just like always.

“Are you sure you’re twenty-one?” Carolina asked. “I swear, Echo, you don’t age at all. I’d kill for your skin.”

“So I’m told.” I shrugged. “You look pretty good yourself,
Tía
.”

Carolina fidgeted, glancing away. I was used to her reaction. Most people struggled to look me in the eye. I shared the color with my mother—a shiny, new-penny copper tone. Our eyes were too bright, too unusual not to elicit a strong reaction.

Unnatural, I’d heard people whisper more than once. I preferred to consider us one of a kind. Out of deference to my auntie’s discomfort, I dropped my gaze to my feet, pretending to have an interest in my hot-pink nail polish.

“Headache?” Aunt Flor asked, pulling me away from her youngest sister. “Carolina, you know perfume makes it worse. Go stand over there.” Flor waved toward the far side of the living room. “Did the pain improve with the new medication?”

I shrugged. “The pain is better, I guess.”

Flor was a doctor, and, as my mom’s oldest sister, she made fairly consistent house calls to ensure my migraines didn’t escalate. I wasn’t sure what that could mean since I spent so much of my time secluded and ill. I mean, how much worse could it get? But I was thankful for her interest and support.

My migraines were a big part of the reason for my seclusion. My mom said public schools would make the pain worse because the institution was nothing more than glorified day care—the place you sent naughty children who didn’t care about learning. They just made spitballs and bullied smaller, smarter kids.

As my aunties chattered away around me, my stomach churned. Crap. These symptoms weren’t going to bode well for me for the remainder of the day.

My aunt Lupita narrowed her eyes as she grabbed my chin. “You look kind of achy. See around her eyes, Flor?” She glanced briefly at my aunt before darting her focus back to me. “Do the aches ever go away completely?” Her questioning gaze made me even more uncomfortable.

The pressure in my head never did go away entirely, not that I planned to tell anyone that. My
tías
were just as protective as my mom, and if they learned about the constancy of my problem, they’d confine me to my bed. At least now I had the run of the house.

All twelve-hundred-and-sixty-eight square feet of it.

“We should cut off the hair. I keep telling you, it’s unnatural. The weight has to contribute to the pain. It’s a strain for her little neck,” my aunt Juana chimed in. I stepped away from her, hands instinctively moving to the back of my head. When she was babysitting me years ago, she’d cut off my hair and made herself a wig. Now that the hairpiece had fallen apart, she was once again lobbying hard for shearing my head.

Juana sighed and turned away. I tried hard not to stare at the small pink patch of scalp visible just behind her left ear.

“You need another scan?” Aunt Flor asked. “Any new symptoms?”

I shook my head, wincing as tension crept up my neck to form a pounding hammer in the back of my skull.

My mom’s hand cupped the base of my neck, rubbing with soft, deft strokes exactly where I needed. I sighed, closing my eyes and trying to tune out my aunties’ voices.

“I know you would’ve preferred a large party filled with lots of young people,
mi’jita
. But I’m glad I overrode your wish to invite your classmates. This is already too much for you.”

I smiled. Probably a pitiful one. Part of me was thankful for my mom’s protectiveness—and her magical fingers now easing the worst of the pain. But another growing part of me wanted the freedoms afforded to most people my age.

Not least of which was the ability to leave my house and enjoy the company of a—gasp!—man.

In my pique, I chose to ignore the fact the only person I knew who was my age was already here. That’s why I’d wanted to invite her to my seminar class—so I wouldn’t feel like such a loser.

Layla and I headed to my tiny, dusty backyard. The winds had died down for the day, and the weather was balmy. Perfect party weather.

I couldn’t have been less excited.

“Maybe we can go out later to celebrate,” she said, her voice uncertain. “To get a better idea of how you deal with crowds. And lights.”

“You mean to a bar?”

She was pointing out all the reasons I’d fail at being independent, so I didn’t want Layla to know just how disinterested I was at the idea of barhopping and getting drunk.

I frowned. Did I not like the idea of drinking because I didn’t believe in flooding my system with alcohol, or because my mother’s lectures had stuck?

I’d been smothered by my mom’s indomitable will over the years. Sure, I knew she wanted to keep me from further harm. I was very aware I was lucky to have her in my life.

But she was as impossible to rebel against as she was to ignore. On the few occasions I left the house with my mother, her beauty immediately drew men’s attention. She ignored them with a painful precision, while I wished even one of them would turn their gaze to me.

But, as in most parts of my life, I was invisible. Insignificant. That’s why moving out was so important. I needed to establish my own identity.

“Maybe. They still do live music at the bars?” I liked music; it tended to ease the pounding in my skull. More, I loved to dance. Not that anyone saw me—I waited until my mom went to work and then I’d draw the blinds, turn up the music, and let my body take over.

I’d developed quite a taste for female hip-hop artists. I liked their raunchy, feminist lyrics.

“Some do,” Layla said. “Want to try one of those?”

I glanced up at Layla to try and gauge her interest in my band idea, but got caught up in her aura, an annoying ability I’d developed over the last few months. I couldn’t see everyone’s, but my mom’s and Layla’s were really bright. I’d figured out how to ignore their luminescence for the most part, not wanting to share this newest weirdness and give them more reasons to worry about me.

Layla’s beauty wasn’t only in her shimmery blond hair, but in her large, luminous gray eyes and symmetrical features, much like her father’s, but more feminine. The small grouping of freckles on her nose had looked adorable with her high school cheerleader uniform. She’d turned that in at high school graduation for an artist’s smock, which also looked adorable with freckles.

I’d tried to hate Layla off and on during my awkward tween years, because she was so pretty and confident and nice. And she got to go to school.

Now, I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

I smiled. Layla was integral to my full moving-out-and-acting-grown-up plan. We would rent a little apartment together. She had one more year of coursework to complete for her degree. Maybe I could apply to grad school and work on another master’s. This time, I’d commute to Albuquerque or Taos.

I’d always wanted to sit in a classroom, listen to a lecture and the subsequent discussion. Be a normal student.

My education was skewed, thanks to my mom’s interests. I knew way too much about Native American studies and anthropology and very little about science, medicine, and engineering. The few times Flor tried to teach me chemistry, or even how to cook, my mom came out yelling.

Loud voices set off my headaches faster than a wildfire in the tinderbox we called the Santa Fe Forest. I’d never made it through one of those lessons.

But they’d intrigued me. Especially chemistry. I’d never told my mom, but I was fascinated by the properties of water—I loved looking at it, dipping my feet in, working to create new and more powerful substances with it. I wanted a chance to explore that interest.

But, irony of ironies, I was terrified of the idea of being submersed in water. My showers were quick and utilitarian. I refused to take a bath. My mom said I’d had a bad experience when I was quite young. I couldn’t remember the event, but she was very serious about keeping me from any major body of water. I’d never even seen a lake, let alone an ocean.

While I’d been drifting deeper into my thoughts, Layla had walked away from me. She now stood at the fence, worry pulling down her pale eyebrows. I followed her gaze, expecting to see something way more fascinating than the group of clouds drifting over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was a big, roiling mass like so many others that built over the rugged terrain.

“Pretty,” I said.

Layla glanced over at me.

“The flecks in the clouds.” I waved my hand. “They sparkle.”

She turned back to the clouds. “You see that, too?” Her frown returned, and she bit on her thumbnail, her gaze darting from the clouds to my back door.

“They’re just clouds, Layla.” I looked around the yard. “Have you seen my mom?”

“She was in the kitchen a few minutes ago. Why?”

“I should apologize for antagonizing her this morning. She’s gone out of her way to make this day special, and I want to thank her for that.”

“Not sure it’ll help,” Layla said. “She’s stressed, and it’d probably be better if you both took time to cool off.”

I flipped my long, dark hair over my shoulder. “I’m not picking fights. I just want friends my age. Besides you. Not that you aren’t awesome. You are. It’s just . . . there has to be more to my life than this tiny house.”

Layla’s eyes were dark gray and serious. “You want a relationship—a romantic one.”

My hands fisted, but I managed to keep my face relaxed. This was the problem with having a lifelong friend. Layla knew me too well. I did want a relationship.

I wanted my dream guy. As in the guy I literally dreamed about almost every night.

I snagged a cup of iced tea from the table. I wanted adventure. I wanted to be more than the hermit girl with incapacitating migraines. I wanted to go out and dance and be rowdy and kiss a guy and . . .

“You’ll offer some guy way more than he deserves,” Layla said, her voice firm. “Way more than you know you have to offer. Just wait a few more days before you do anything stupid—that you’ll regret forever. You know that doesn’t work. Remember the tai chi classes.”

“Please. That was a joint bad decision. You have no grace. I just couldn’t deal with the other students.”

“You threw up all over the kid.”

I scowled. “She was mean.”

Mom walked out onto the small brick patio. Her eyes darted toward me, as they always did. I tamped down the spurt of irritation at her overprotectiveness.

I waved and she smiled. I blew her a kiss and she rolled her eyes, chuckled. We had our issues, but my mom was pretty awesome. Most of the time.

Setting down the glorious triple-layer cake, she rested her hand on one of the three large pine
vigas
that held up our airy porch. We’d chosen them together last year; the big pine trunks had replaced the rotting cedar ones that had been there since the house was built a couple hundred years ago. One of the earliest lessons I’d been taught was you didn’t let houses in the heart of Santa Fe leave the family. In fact, many of the people in the neighborhood seemed to love these houses more than the people they shared them with.

Mom glanced at the sky, eyes skimming the boiling clouds I’d watched with Layla. Her fingers wrapped around her necklace as her eyes widened.

“Echo, Layla. Get inside. Now.”