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The horse licked Matt’s shirt, leaving a trail of half-eaten electric-orange carrot across the front.
Matt decided to take that as a yes.
CHAPTER 4
Gina sat in the window seat of her room and stared at the place she could see even in the dark as though lit by a neon X.
There was something in that underground cavern. Something that had taken her parents away. Something that had wanted to take her.
In the depths of the night, when the wind cried her name, Gina knew with complete certainty that it still did.
She’d never told anyone what she’d felt down there, what she’d heard ever since. Sure, she’d dropped hints to Jase, felt him out. But if he’d experienced anything out of the ordinary during the hours they were buried, he’d either blocked it from his mind or decided to keep it to himself for the same reasons she had.
She wasn’t keen on the idea of winding up in a mental hospital or at least in therapy. To be quite honest, she couldn’t afford either one.
And that was the best-case scenario. Worst case—Isaac would believe her. He’d bring shamans from the Rez to dance and chant at the edges of the place where the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao slept. He’d have the earth over the cavern sprinkled with salt or lye or chickens’ feet or whatever happened to be the latest and greatest charm guaranteed to thwart evil. Word would get out. The curious would go there.
Then more would die as the legend of the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao promised.
* * *
Even if Matt hadn’t been in the kitchen the day before, he would easily have found it by smell alone the next morning. McCord’s mother knew her way around a stove.
Matt stepped into the room, breathing in the homey scents of bacon, eggs, toast, and best of all—
“Coffee?” Fanny asked without even turning away from the griddle where she flipped pancakes with a quick, practiced flick of her capable wrist.
“Thanks.” Matt crossed to the counter and served himself from the full pot.
Fanny graced him with what appeared to be a genuine smile. As opposed to her son, Fanny seemed to like Matt. “Sleep well, Mr. Teo?”
He’d tried to get her to call him Teo, but since she addressed everyone with the same combination of respect and familiarity he didn’t try too hard.
“Fine,” he said, which was a lie. How was he supposed to sleep with the scent of Gina in his hair? And how had her scent gotten in his hair anyway?
It was all in his
head—so to speak—and he knew it.
But what had really kept him awake was the memory of Gina practically tripping over her own feet as she left both him and his obviously too close for comfort questions behind.
What had she seen? Where had she seen it? How was he going to get her to let him—a supposed phys-ed teacher from Arizona—see it, too?
Fanny cleared her throat as she gave him a quick, suspicious glance. She reminded Matt of his mother.
Oh, not in appearance. Sure, they both had dark hair, but Fanny’s was inky black like her son’s and reached to the base of her spine even when gathered into a clip at her nape, while Nora’s had replicated the shade of fine cherrywood, although most times she’d worn it so short the burgundy highlights had all but disappeared.
But the way they moved, quick and sure—places to go, people to feed, or in Nora’s case to unearth—combined with their sharp eye for detail and a mother’s loving ear for bullshit.
“I … uh…” Matt began, and Fanny waved her spatula in dismissal.
“You don’t have to be polite. It’s always hard to sleep in a strange place. Just because you couldn’t doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the bed, or the room, or…” She let her words trail off, arching a brow in his direction when he remained silent.
“Oh, right!” How he could be so smart at book things and so dense at life things had always been a source of embarrassment to him and amusement to everyone he knew. “Bed was great. Room, too. Nothing wrong. Nope. Uh-uh.”
“Sheesh, Jones.” McCord stepped up to the coffeemaker, his massive shoulders crowding into Matt’s space, making him want to move away, though he refused to. “No need to lick her shoes. She isn’t going to hit you if you didn’t like the bed.”
“Of course not,” Fanny said, then smacked her son in the forehead with the kitchen utensil.
