Chapter Twenty-Three
Darren stood next tothe vehicle and watched the traffic in the distance. Kavon looked calm and collected as he stood next to the closed Chinese grocery, but the bond quivered with something that felt like equal parts fear and anticipation. Darren wished he could look cool under pressure, but that was not one of his super powers.
Les came over and leaned against the SUV near Darren. “So the wasps keep catching sight of a powerful guide. I get the feeling it’s one of the docent, but don’t quote me on that. I haven’t been working with Salma long enough to have this trick down that well.”
“And Salma?” Darren asked.
Les grimaced. “Still stuck in California. Weather report has the storms moving out later today, but the airport is giving commercial aircraft priority for takeoff slots. I’ve never seen Salma so angry.”
“Why do you think I avoided talking to her?”
“Bruh, she would never take her temper out on you. You walk on fucking water with that woman.”
“Exactly,” Darren said. “When she talks to me, she has to edit herself. If she’s talking to you, she gets to say everything she’s actually thinking.”
“Huh.” Les huffed. “You actually have a point.”
“I do, sometimes,” Darren said dryly. He elbowed Les.
Les elbowed him back. “Luckily she did most of her swearing in another language, so my virgin ears weren’t exposed to the horrors of profanity.”
“If it was a foreign language, how did you know she was swearing?” Darren asked.
“Trust me, swearing always sounds like swearing.” Les pointed at a car turning into the empty parking lot. “Look.”
“I see.”
This should be their Native shaman. The SUV door opened and Ahtisham got out, tucking his phone into his pocket as he did so. Coretta and Rita got out of the second SUV. Darren wished he could get a handle on how Kavon was feeling, but he had the bond locked down. Kavon’s normally unflappable emotional state had become a little less stable lately, and part of Darren thought that was good—he was a proponent of expression emotion and Kavon had more than enough reason to be angry. However, he was a little concerned about the timing.
The white car parked under the only tree, a half-dead lopsided thing. Kavon abandoned his post next to the boarded-up windows and started across the lot. He was almost there when the engine turned off and an old woman with deep wrinkles got out of the car. She had a long gray braid, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt for a boy band. She reached back into the car and got a single crutch that had a cuff to hold her forearm. “Kavon Boucher?” she asked.
He held out his hand. “You must be the shaman who has come to help us.”
“Julie,” she introduced herself. She looked toward the rest of them by the SUVs. “Are we all working together?”
“If we find this shaman, we need as much help as possible.”
She walked toward their SUVs, ignoring Kavon’s hand. “If any of you goes throwing my name around as a Native shaman, I will hunt you down and hit you with my cane. How much do all these people know?”
“Everything,” Kavon said, “but we wait until we’re in an SUV to discuss it.”
“Shotgun!” she said. Darren was standing next to the front passenger seat, and she looked at him expectantly. Les snorted.
Since Darren didn’t want to get into a fight with a positively ancient woman, he moved to one side. “I’m taking your seat,” Darren told Les.
“No, you’re not,” Les shot back.
“Enough!” Kavon growled as he passed them on his way to the driver’s side.
“It’s just like old times,” Coretta said as she glared at both of them. “And Rima and I are taking the second row. You can both take third.”
Ahtisham was already getting into the rear seat, and Darren climbed in, resigned to getting stuck in the middle. As soon as everyone was in the SUV, Julie turned to face them in back. “Until twenty-four hours ago, I thought my grandmother’s stories were metaphors for the destructive capacity of unrestrained power. So, can someone explain how these trickster gods managed to find their way back here?”
Kavon focused on the empty parking lot, so Darren answered. “The barrier the docent used to lock the durance out started to fail. It’s old.”
Julie scrunched up her nose. “Docent? Durance?”
“Good guys and bad guys,” Les said.
