Black Moon Sing (The Turquoise Path Book 1) (5 page)

Finally, she turned back to Hosteen with a ragged sigh. “I’d hoped if he really
was
killed that it might prove to be a Typical who’d done it. Imagine wishing for such a thing. But before I saw his hogan again, it seemed more likely that a Typ would do this than another Para.”

“But you do think it was a Paranormal,” Hosteen said. It wasn’t a question.

“You think so, too.”

He glanced up at the smoke-hole again. “That’s too small an opening for any natural cougar to get through.”

Miserable, Ellery nodded. “I just can’t… I can’t fathom a Changer doing something like this!” She pounded her palm with her fist, but it only made her feel small and all the more helpless. “We always stick together. We look out for each other. We don’t kill each other, unless it’s in self-defense. The world is already too dangerous for us without turning on one another.”

“It is a small world you live in,” Hosteen said, “you Paras. I was hoping you might have some idea of who committed the crime. Which skinwalk—” he corrected himself with a shake of his head. “Which
Changer
might have hated Mr. Roanhorse enough to attack him so violently?”

“No one. I don’t know a single Changer who’s capable of this sort of evil.”

She gazed down at the stain again, visualizing Roanhorse lying there in his own blood. She shuddered at the image.

Then, with a slow chill of disbelief, she thought of one potential motive for such a killing. And one particular way Roanhorse might have died.

“William Roanhorse was a trader, just like me,” she mumbled.

“Pardon?”

Urgently, Ellery stepped closer to Hosteen. “He was a trader. Do you know what that means?”

Hosteen lifted his hands in a gesture of vague confusion. “Traders are… a subset of Changers, right?”

“Right. How much do you know about the way we Paras order our society?”

“Nothing at all, I guess,” Hosteen admitted. “After all, I thought you were a skinwalker, but you insist—”

Impatiently, Ellery cut him off. “You’ve heard about the Three Cs, haven’t you?” Most Typicals had

“Of course. Changers, Casters, and Chanters.”

“That’s right. There are three distinctly different types of magic: shape-shifting, which is what all the Changers do; spell-casting, which is what witches and warlocks do, and enchantment, which is what vampires and fae can do. But there are different ways to do each kind of magic. Weres can only change into one sort of animal, for example. But we traders—what we do is special. We partner up with individual animals—those who have already died and passed into the spirit world.”

“So you always change into the same animals—not just the same species, but the same unique individuals?”

“Yes, exactly. But we can’t access their spirits—we can’t use our magic—unless we have a piece of that animal’s original, mortal body with us. A token; a physical thing that still retains the memory of the animal who once lived.”

Hosteen’s eyes lowered to Ellery’s chest, and for a moment, absurdly, her face heated. But she realized at once that he wasn’t ogling her—he’d be an idiot to waste time checking out a girl during an investigation, anyway. He was looking at her coyote-tooth necklace.

She lifted it from where it lay against her skin and held it out toward him, as if to punctuate her point.

“I’m not sure where this is leading,” Hosteen said.

“What was found on Roanhorse’s body?”

Hosteen shrugged. “Nothing. His clothing, of course, though it was shredded in the attack. And the usual jewelry a traditionalist like Mr. Roanhorse would wear. Silver, turquoise…”

“But no amulets made from animal parts? Nothing made of teeth or claws or fur?”

“None whatsoever.”

Ellery hurried to the bed and pulled back the woven blankets, but she quickly exposed the bare mattress. “This isn’t right,” she said as she returned to the cupboards to rummage through them again. “Something is missing. Something very important.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“Roanhorse’s main spirit-partner was a cougar. A mountain lion. But I can’t find anything here made from a cougar’s body.”

“Maybe he didn’t keep his… ah… his
implements
here.”

“Are you kidding?” Ellery laughed bitterly. “He never would have been without his tokens. But they’re all gone—the cougar tokens, and all the others he had, too. Whoever killed my friend took his tokens, Hosteen. They stole his animal spirits. And I have the feeling they…” The thought was so horrible that Ellery could hardly get the words out. “They used William’s own cougar spirit against him. To kill him.”

She groaned and buried her face in her hands, allowing the tears to flow where Hosteen couldn’t see.

It was a worse fate, a worse violation, than anything Ellery could imagine.

And the lure of the northeast still hung all about her, pulling at her spirit, at the animals she carried within her. That summoning force didn’t want Ellery, she realized with a chill. It wanted Dusty and Ghost Owl. It wanted her magic.

Whatever was calling to her—
whoever
—it was almost certainly the same entity who had killed her old friend.

CHAPTER FIVE

E
llery and Hosteen stumbled outside the hogan together, blinking in the bright mid-day light and breathing deeply to clear their heads.

Hosteen tentatively patted Ellery’s shoulder. It was obvious that he was aware she was badly shaken, but he seemed unsure of the best way to comfort and encourage her. Ellery didn’t know whether anything could have comforted her in that moment.

Who except another trader would have any use for tokens? And who except another trader would be able to shift into Roanhorse’s cougar, and then turn the creature on its long-time partner?

Ellery gazed back through the open door, into the hogan one last time. Then she bit her lip hard as a sudden realization struck her. There was something else missing from Roanhorse’s home—something that had been there ever since Ellery could recall. Why hadn’t she noticed on her first look around the place?

“Did any of the officers take anything from this house?” she asked.

“Nothing except Mr. Roanhorse’s body.”

“His turquoise is gone. He always kept strands of turquoise beads up on the wall, hanging near the ceiling and covered by a cloth. But there’s nothing there now. Just empty pegs.”

“He was wearing a string of turquoise beads,” Hosteen said.

“Just one?”

“Yes; I read over the detailed report again this morning before I picked you up. I’m certain it was just one.”

“He had many more than just one strand of beads. He had dozens.”

Ellery and Hosteen shared a look of dark significance.

“Strange,” Hosteen said. “Of course turquoise is used often in ceremonies, but what value does it have beyond the spiritual?”

“It’s just not worth stealing,” Ellery agreed. “But then, neither are a trader’s tokens, unless you know what to do with them. Do you have any suspects at all? Any idea who might have done this?”

“None,” Hosteen said. “There was virtually no evidence of human involvement, and we can’t exactly go out and arrest all the cougars on the reservation.”

“There must be more evidence somewhere. I’m not a police officer, but I’ve watched enough crime dramas to know that no criminal ever gets away without leaving
some
trace.”

Hosteen smiled wanly. “You’re right about that, but sometimes we aren’t as good at finding those traces as the actors are on TV.”

“That’s because you’re only using human senses.”

Ellery stepped back and looked around for a moment, gazing down the long dirt road to be sure no one was approaching. She eyed the sage lands around the hogan to be certain no one but Hosteen would see her transition. Then she reached through the bracelet with its glass-encased filaments of owl feather.

Ghost Owl, I need you
.
It’s time
.

The barn owl’s spirit resisted, as it often did. Ghost Owl preferred to shift on his own terms, and he seldom agreed with Ellery about convenient times for shifting, or about the necessity of a trade. He was every bit as belligerent after death as he had been in life, and besides, last night’s failure to shift had him just as on-edge as Ellery still was. She had no idea whether the shift would work now, or whether she would encounter the same terrifying blocks she’d felt last night.

But once Ghost Owl stopped his indignant screeching and flapping, Ellery felt the cool rush of pressure cascade over her body and saw the brilliant blue light flare around her. It blotted out her human vision; relief surged through her. The trade was working. In another heartbeat she was in the air, light as a dandelion seed on the wind, flapping the strong, silent, pale-feathered wings of her owl’s body.

Hosteen’s mouth fell open in shock; he staggered back a few steps, and Ellery clicked her beak in amusement. She circled the cop once, tilting and gliding, then climbed the air currents until the hogan and Hosteen’s truck were as small as toys below her.

She could feel Hosteen gazing after her as she gained altitude. The desert below melded into one great patchwork of red earth and pale, dry-green sagebrush. The hogan’s roof was a smooth circle far below, its smoke hole staring up at Ellery like an unblinking eye. With her owl’s eyes, she searched the ground around the house for any faint traces of evidence.

Most people assumed all owls were strictly nocturnal, but barn owls like Ghost Owl hunted just as easily by day as they did by night. His eyes were far keener than any human’s, and it only took Ellery two laps around the hogan before she spotted tracks in the sandy red soil. The large paw prints had almost been blown away by desert winds, but enough of their traces still remained—especially between clumps of sage, where they were sheltered from the elements—that she was confident they were the tracks of a mountain lion.

She swooped low, crossing the line of tracks that led from the northern edge of the hogan, then arcing back to cross the tracks again. Each time she passed overhead, Ellery grew more convinced she was correct.

With a tilt of her wings and a few energetic beats, she cruised along the path of the cougar’s tracks. The creature had run north for a while, climbing up the slope of the foothills toward the summit of Black Mesa. But as it had neared the top of the mesa, the beast had veered suddenly in a different direction.

Northeast.

Ellery’s owl form chirped in surprise. Then she examined the tracks more closely as she followed them northeast, counting wing-beats between each paw print. The cougar had taken gigantic strides, running faster than any earthly mountain lion could have done. Definitely the work of a trader; their unique magic granted them unnatural speed.

As the tracks gained the crest of the mesa, sunlight glinted off something bright and smooth embedded in one of the massive paw prints. Ellery’s flying speed carried her beyond the small but mysterious object; she flexed her broad tail, fanning its feathers, and beat against the wind currents with her silent wings to slow her progress. Then she circled back to search for the shiny object again.

There
. She noted the sun’s flash once more, and swooped down for a closer look. Her talons hit the earth, kicking up puffs of red dust as she hopped to a stand-still. She tilted her head, staring at the paw print first with one sharp, black eye, then the other.

No mistake about it
, she told her owl spirit. A single turquoise bead was pressed down in the middle of one of the cougar’s prints, as if it had been dropped unnoticed and then stepped on as the cougar ran. The bead was smooth from age and plenty of use. Well-worn… old. It may well have belonged to William Roanhorse.

Ellery grabbed the bead with her agile beak, tapping it with the owl’s fleshy tongue. A prickle of familiarity ran through her, causing her feathers to fluff of their own accord. She shook her feathers back into place and hopped across the ground until she had enough momentum to lift off. Then she flew back the way she had come, toward the hogan and Hosteen, who was as tiny as a black ant beside his distant pickup truck.

Ellery fluttered down into the yard outside Roanhorse’s hogan. She sent Ghost Owl on his way with her usual thanks for his cooperation, and Ghost Owl gave his usual disdainful screech in reply.

Cranky old bird. He never changes
.

The rush of blue light enveloped Ellery again; a heartbeat later, she stood before Hosteen in her human form, clutching the turquoise bead in her fist.

Hosteen, Ellery saw, had pressed himself back against the hood of his truck, arms folded across his chest in a defensive posture. He stared at her in silence, but she could read the awe and mistrust plainly enough on his face.

She held out her fist, offering him the bead. But Hosteen didn’t move.

“For crap’s sake,” Ellery snapped. “I’m not going to bite you. Look: I found something. I think it’s important.”

Hosteen hesitated a moment longer, then he took a few dragging steps toward her. “Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s just that I’ve never seen anybody do that before. It’s a little… unsettling.”

“Well, it’s perfectly normal if you’re a Changer. But this is why we keep everything hidden from you Typicals. You never react well to magic when you actually see it being used.”

“Why do you…” Hosteen paused, then gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“Why do you still have your clothes on?”

Ellery blushed. “What, do you think I ought to be naked right now?” The thought made her feel a little hysterical. She fought back the urge to laugh or scream.

“No; it’s just that… you’re so much bigger than that owl was. How do your clothes stay on your human body while you’re
not here
?”

“I’ll explain it all later.”
What little I know about it
. “Right now I think you need to see this.”

Hosteen held out his hand; Ellery dropped the bead into his palm. He held it up between finger and thumb, examining it closely under the shadowed brim of his hat.

“Do you think this could have been one of Mr. Roanhorse’s stolen beads?” he asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Ellery said. “It’s been so long since I saw him last, since I was last in his home. And even then, he kept his turquoise covered. But it does look old, doesn’t it?”

Hosteen nodded. “Old, but not dirty. It hasn’t been lying up there on the mesa for very long.”

“And I found it in the middle of a track—a cougar’s track.”

Hosteen hummed deep in his throat, a thoughtful sound. He handed the bead back to Ellery; she slipped it into her pocket.

“The cougar was running faster than any natural cougar can, I think. I’m not a big-game expert, but my owl knows a thing or two about wildlife, as you’d expect. The distance between tracks was just too great. Only a Changer can run like that.”

Hosteen nodded. “So it was a magic-user after all.”

“I didn’t want to believe it could be true. I didn’t want to think that one Changer could do this to another. And still, something seems…
not right
about this. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something about those cougar tracks, something about this whole situation that doesn’t sit right with me. But I can’t tell what it is.”

“Neither can I—aside from the fact that a man has been brutally murdered. But I’m gratified to know that my instincts were correct: this
was
a magic-based crime. Now we just need to uncover more evidence, if we can. The cougar tracks are something, and I don’t know if the bead will help at all, but—”

Ellery cut him off abruptly. “Hold on. What do you mean,
we
?”

“You’ve been such a great help already, using your…” he gave an awkward shrug, clearly still uncomfortable with the fact of her shifting. “Your
special abilities
to locate the cougar tracks. I know you can be of much greater help going forward.”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I can’t, Hosteen! I loved Roanhorse—I can’t tell you how much it hurts to know that he’s gone, and that he died so horribly. But it’s dangerous for me to be here. Don’t you understand that?”

“I can protect you,” he insisted.

A sudden, unexpected warmth surged in Ellery’s chest. She smothered it ruthlessly. Hosteen may be good-looking, but she knew almost nothing about him. What little she
did
know of him spelled certain danger. As a Typ, and a fellow Diné at that, he would
never
be comfortable with Ellery’s magic. And one man alone could never stand against a whole community convinced that Ellery was evil—a whole community ready to take her life for the crime of being a Changer.

“You can’t protect me,” she shot back. “And anyway, I’ve got a big problem waiting for me back at home. My friend Vivi is missing. She’s a trader, too, and—”

“A trader?” Hosteen straightened, suddenly eager. “Any chance she could have been responsible for—”

“Are you kidding me?” Ellery gave him a withering look of pure disgust. “Vivi did not kill William Roanhorse. Aside from the fact that she’d have zero motivation, she has no ties to the Rez as far as I know, and no reason to be lurking around Black Mesa. Plus, she’s only been missing since last night.” She narrowed her eyes. “But thanks for the creepy suggestion.”