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Impatience was something new to Jamison. He’d been raised to be calm and accepting, not acting until nature or the gods showed him the right path. Since his first Change, he’d been more volatile, less willing to wait for someone else to tell him what to do.
Had he ever been patient? he wondered. Or just stubborn? Had he only wanted to show off to others that he could sit in meditation longer than they could? To show that he didn’t need to rush around looking for happiness? That he could sit like a lump and wait for grass to grow on him better than anyone else? Idiot.
Naomi had never waited for life to show her what to do. She faced her problems full-on and did what she had to do. She’d left her husband in Phoenix when he
made it clear he blamed Naomi for Julie’s deafness. She’d returned to her people, took over her parents’ business when they retired, and made something of her life. When Jamison had disappeared, she hadn’t folded up and stopped. She’d gotten mad and kept on living.
Naomi embraced life, the good and bad of it. She was an Unbeliever, yet she indulged her neighbors’ obsession with the Ghost Train and took in Jamison’s Changer ability with good grace.
Jamison put his hand on hers. He liked the feel of her skin, always warm, on his. She laced her fingers through his and gave him a little smile, which made his blood sing.
Jamison had been raised not to interrupt his elders, but he sensed that this man could go on rocking and mouthing nonsense for days if he wasn’t stopped.
“Sir,” he said in a low voice. “Mr. Clay.”
Alex Clay didn’t look up or stop chanting. But after another minute or two, he wound down to silence. He rose, took a bundle of herbs from a basket in the corner, and tossed it into his wood-burning stove. A sweet but acrid smell permeated the room.
“I think that’s a controlled substance,” Naomi hissed. Jamison gave her the barest nod.
The old man sat in front of them again. He took Jamison’s hand in his then Naomi’s. He closed his eyes and began chanting in a low drone as the room filled with heady smoke.
Alex put their hands together and started piling the stones on top of them. The turquoise and onyx felt warm, the white stones strangely cool. Naomi’s eyelids drooped from the smoke, and Jamison wished the man would open a window or something.
Alex suddenly opened his eyes. They were wide and black, full of more intelligence than his rambling muttering had led Jamison to believe. He put his hand on their joined hands and squeezed. Naomi winced, and Jamison felt the pain of stones pressing into his skin.
Just as suddenly the old man let go and raked the stones back to the blanket.
“One hundred dollars,” he said clearly. “Cash.”
Naomi raised her brows. Jamison bit the inside of his mouth, pulled out his wallet, and counted five twenties into the man’s outstretched hand.
Jamison helped Naomi to her feet while Alex recounted the money and stuffed it inside the pouch with the stones.
As they made to leave, Jamison turned back.
“I don’t mean to question you,” he said. “But you are a Changer, aren’t you?”
The old man chuckled. He didn’t move, but suddenly his body shrank and his clothes collapsed inward. Naomi gasped.
An elderly hawk emerged from the clothes, shaking its feathers. It glared at them with yellow eyes, put one wing over its head, and went to sleep.
o that’s it?” Naomi asked as she started the truck. “Now “we’re bonded?”
“No.” Jamison sighed, frustration and disappointment warring within him. “I think that was the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever gone through. He’s not a real shaman.”
“But you gave him a hundred dollars.”
“He needs food and fuel for the winter. I bet he shafts a lot of people, and they go along with it because they feel sorry for him.”
“He really is a Changer, though. He didn’t fake that.”
Jamison shook his head, glum. “But there was no bonding. You’re still vulnerable.”
“Then so are you.”
Jamison tried to contain the anger boiling through him. “Let’s get back to Magellan. The weather’s changing.”
Naomi peered at the sky, which had moved from blue to gray while they’d been inside, clouds lowering. Storms could gather fast in the mountains. Jamison remembered a summer day he’d been hiking on Humphreys Peak, one of the sacred mountains of the Navajo near Flagstaff. One small cloud had been hovering over the summit when he started, but within an hour, he was dodging lightning strikes and a deluge of hail.
