Free Shadow Bones by Colleen Rhoads Page B

knew,” Jake said, his mouth a grim line.
    â€œWait, where’s the box?” Skye asked. When Jake brought it to her, she opened it and scanned the contents. “His eagle feather is gone!”
    â€œEagle feather?” Jake asked.
    â€œIt was his most prized possession,” her mother said. “He won it in a Grass Dance. I never understood why he didn’t take it with him.”
    â€œIt’s gone now,” Skye said, closing the box. “It has to be Tallulah. She asked to buy it from me several times last year. She told me she wanted the power from it. She probably threw the stones to drive us off so we would leave the box.” She told Mitchell about Tallulah’s behavior since her son’s death.
    â€œLet’s not jump to conclusions,” the sheriff said. “I’ll talk to her.”
    Skye nodded. “Just get my eagle feather back.”

Chapter Six
    S kye found her wariness around Jake lightening up, and the sensation was somewhat akin to being adrift on Superior in her father’s old boat, now lying scuttled in the barn. The holes in her armor were not of her own making, and she managed to summon resentment toward him for that. He was in her thoughts often over the next few days, no matter how she tried to fill her time with making dreamcatchers.
    â€œSkye, I’m running out of some of our herbs,” her mother told her on Wednesday morning.
    â€œI’ll search for more,” Skye said. Maybe a trek in the forest would keep her thoughts from wandering to the way Jake had tried to protect her from the assailant. She’d never had anyone show such sacrifice for her.
    She took her canvas sack and drove out to Windigo forest, a vast tract with native trees that had never seen the lumberjack’s axe. She parked along the side of the road and entered the woods.
    This was her favorite part of her job. Secrets lay in the forest, meadows with herbs and roots that could help her people. The cool rush of shadow and the fecund scent of wildflowers and decaying leaves lifted her spirits.
    She walked along a path her people had used for decades, then plunged through brush along a new trajectory, stopping to check her compass occasionally. By noon her bag was bulging with herbs and roots, and she felt cleansed, reborn by the forest.
    She had turned to head back to the road when she heard the rhythmic chop-chop of an axe. She followed the sound. No one was supposed to chop wood in this forest.
    Pushing past a tangle of forsythia, she stepped into a clearing and found a lean-to. Drying animal skins hung on a rack beside the structure, and a curl of smoke rose from a firepit that held a spit with a rabbit cooking over the low flame.
    She should probably leave. Whoever was living here was doing so illegally and might not take kindly to being discovered. She could tell the park ranger to check it out. The chopping had stopped, and only the drone of insects disturbed the quiet of the deep woods.
    A frisson of panic assailed her for no real reason, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Skye winced as her retreating footsteps crunched dead leaves.
    A form materialized from the shadows in front of her. “I know you,” the man said.
    Skye nearly screamed. She took a step back. “Wilson, you scared me. What are you doing out here?” She felt almost giddy with relief.
    â€œI live here.”
    She hadn’t seen Wilson New Moon in nearly two months, she realized. The forty-year-old mentally challenged man often stopped by her shop to talk about his hobby of balsam airplanes. She sold them in her shop, and he eked out an existence on the income.
    â€œI wondered why you hadn’t been in the shop lately. I have some money for you,” she told him.
    Wilson scratched insect bites that reddened his balding pate, then hitched up his baggy jeans. He looked like he’d lost weight. Skye frowned as her gaze took in his filthy plaid flannel