The figure took another step forward, now close enough that Martin should have been able to discern facial features, but the headlamp created strange shadows, and the person's head remained slightly bowed.
"Do you know anything about these particular symbols?"Martin asked, pointing toward the alcove he'd discovered."I'm not familiar with this style.They seem different from the main panel—possibly from an earlier period?"
"Éí doodago díí t'óó ahayóí nil bééhózin."The figure held out the bundle of herbs, offering it with an outstretched hand.
Martin hesitated.Was this some kind of local custom he wasn't familiar with?A welcoming gesture?Part of him—the culturally sensitive academic—wanted to accept whatever was being offered, to show respect and openness to Indigenous practices.Another part—the cautious middle-aged man alone in a remote location—felt increasingly uncomfortable.
His pacemaker seemed to flutter in his chest, a sensation his cardiologist had assured him was normal but still felt distressingly alien six months after surgery.
"I appreciate your offer, but I should really be heading back," Martin said, beginning to gather his equipment."It's getting dark, and I've got a bit of a hike to my car."
He turned away briefly to collapse his tripod, and when he looked back, the figure had moved with startling quickness to stand directly before him, close enough that Martin could smell something pungent and earthy from the herb bundle.
"Nidi baa nitsáhákees."The voice had changed—no longer soft but insistent, with an edge that raised the hairs on Martin's arms.
"Please," Martin said, taking a step backward."I need to go now."
His heel caught on a stone, and he stumbled, catching himself against the canyon wall.The rough sandstone scraped his palm, and he felt a moment of irritation at his own clumsiness.When he looked up, the figure was advancing toward him.
"Look, I don't want any trouble," Martin said, losing his composure as alarm took hold of him."I'm just a professor taking photographs for a class.I have permission to be here."
The figure paused.Then, with a movement too fluid to track in the failing light, it lunged forward.
Martin had just enough time to raise his arms in futile protection before something struck his chest with unexpected force.Pain exploded through his ribcage—sharp, shocking, and immediately followed by a spreading warmth that confused him until he looked down and saw the darkness blooming across his shirt.
"Why?"he gasped, his mind unable to process the sudden violence, the incomprehensible shift from academic curiosity to mortal danger.
The figure said nothing, but Martin thought he detected a sorrowful shake of the head as his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the sandy ground.His camera—the ridiculously expensive Nikon—clattered somewhere nearby, and Martin found himself absurdly concerned about potential damage to the lens.
His last coherent thought before darkness claimed him was of Sophia—how she'd been right about the dangers of hiking alone, how she'd never let him hear the end of it.
Boy, is she gonna chew me out when I get back, he thought.
In the deepening twilight, as the canyon walls faded from crimson to black, Martin Reynolds's eyes fixed on the ancient petroglyphs he'd traveled so far to document—figures that now seemed to be moving, dancing in the dying light, welcoming him into their eternal, incomprehensible narrative
CHAPTER ONE
The dead were never truly gone.
Kari Blackhorse knew this truth better than most.She sat on the front porch of the house she now finally thought of as her home, watching the first light of dawn paint the eastern sky in watercolor strokes of amber and rose.Five months ago, this had been her mother's house—a place of memories and grief, of unanswered questions that sometimes whispered to her in the predawn hours when sleep proved elusive.
Now, it was hers.
Steam rose from the mug of cedar tea cradled between her palms, its familiar scent grounding her in the present moment.The medicine pouch her grandmother had given her during the skinwalker case—a medicine pouch that had once belonged to her mother, Anna—hung from a leather cord around her neck, resting against her sternum with a comforting weight.
The turquoise stone she'd added after the events at Sleeping Dog Mine two months ago seemed to warm against her skin, connecting her both to her mother's memory and the healing power that Ruth insisted the stone contained.Kari had come to accept that some things defied rational explanation—a significant evolution for a detective who had once dismissed her grandmother's traditional beliefs.
The distant cry of a red-tailed hawk drew her gaze upward.The bird circled lazily against the brightening sky, riding thermals with an effortless grace Kari envied.Freedom and precision in perfect balance.
Her phone vibrated against the wooden porch beside her.Kari glanced at the screen, her father's name illuminated there like a challenge.James Cooper, retired FBI agent, current anthropology specialist at the Museum of Northern Arizona, and perpetual complication in her life.
"Think you'll be able to make it this weekend?"the text read.
For a moment, Kari drew a blank.Then she remembered: the new Diné material culture exhibit he'd been working on.The one Linda had invited Kari to attend two months ago.
Linda—the thought of that name always made Kari uneasy.Her father's wife of three years.The museum curator fifteen years his junior who had worked alongside him in the final years of his marriage to Kari's mother.The woman Kari had successfully avoided having a real conversation with since returning to Arizona.
What were the chances she could attend the exhibit without getting roped into conversation?Not good.
