Free Stormwalker by Allyson James Page B

got out of the car. I led them through the lobby, past my curious workers, who showed no sign of leaving, and to the basement door. I clattered down after Salas. Nash was still standing near the wall, his body rigid, his gaze fixed on the corpse.
    “Jones,” Salas said, approaching him. “You okay, man?”
    Nash jerked, glared at Salas, and then strode across the floor, boots clicking in the sudden silence, past me up the stairs, and out.

    By the time I got back outside, Maya was gone, and Nash was in his SUV, pulling out of the parking lot, a cloud of dust in his wake. Once on the highway he turned on his red and blue lights and headed north toward Flat Mesa. I wondered if Nash had talked to Maya, but I noticed that Maya’s truck had gone as well.
    The crow I’d seen earlier sailed to the tree at the north-east corner of the lot and perched there. The coyote came out from behind the hotel about the same time. He stopped in the shade of the tree and sat down, tongue lolling.
    “Better watch it, smart ass,” I said to him. “The sheriff is trigger happy. Next time he might not stop at scaring you away.”
    The coyote’s yellow eyes held scorn. I was pretty sure that even were Nash a dead shot, the bullet would do nothing to this one.
    “The question is, who sent you?” If it was my mother, then the coyote and the crow were my enemies. If Mick, my friends, or at least, they’d be told to help me. If my grandmother, it was an open field. I never knew with my grandmother.
    Neither answered. Very helpful. The could be just animals, but I doubted it. Wild animals tended to avoid people, wise creatures.
    My speculations were cut short by the arrival of the medical examiner’s van. Two men went inside with a stretcher. People from town started showing up to ask what was going on. Fremont appeared from the hotel and decided to be spokesman, telling the tale over and over. Instead of this irritating me, I was grateful to him for drawing attention from me.
    Not long later, Salas came out of the hotel and walked to me. Salas seemed like a competent guy, a calmer version of Jones. “I don’t think it’s Amy,” he said to me. “This woman was older, the ME says, maybe in her forties or early fifties. I’ll call the chief, let him know.”
    I nodded. “Sheriff Jones didn’t think it was her either.”
    Salas gave me a look, but he turned away to make his call without commenting.
    The stretcher came up out of the basement at that point, and I watched in silence as the body was loaded into the medical examiner’s van. The medics climbed into the front, and the coyote and I watched the van drive away toward Flat Mesa.
    Another woman, another disappearance. And my mother hovering out there by the vortexes, waiting to possess people so she could move about in this world and interact with others, just as she had the day I’d met her in Holbrook. I remembered how she’d told me that the “shell” she inhabited was weak, just like my biological mother’s had been. The woman who’d borne me had died. I didn’t think this woman’s death was a coincidence, and I swore I’d stop my mother before she could cause any more damage.
    Good.
    I swung around at the voice, but I saw no one except the coyote. When I caught his eyes, he looked innocent and determinedly scratched at a flea.

Seven
    The Crossroads Bar had opened before Salas finished inside. My workers had already been told to go, and they’d packed up trucks and vans and driven away. Salas came up from the basement at about five o’clock, followed by the uniform. I’d retreated inside as the day grew hot. The hotel had been built long before air-conditioning had been invented, but the walls were thick enough to keep out the heat of the day.
    “You have somewhere to stay?” Salas asked me when he emerged.
    “Yes. Here.”
    “It’s a crime scene.”
    “The basement is. My bedroom isn’t.”
    “I’m sorry, Janet. We need to go over the entire place, try to