Color Weaver (3 page)

He pulled into the lot, anyway. “Well, I am.”

Just peachy! She had to watch him eat now.

Moments later they walked into Katie Bo’s and sat at the counter. A young waitress took their order and poured them coffee. Summer was glad they weren’t sitting in a booth and she wasn’t forced to face him. But there was no escaping his wide shoulders. He dwarfed the stool and his arm almost touched hers. Tension sizzled in the few inches separating them.

He added four packets of sugar and two creams in his coffee and stirred it. “What do you know about wendigos?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

The question took her by surprise. She lost her composure. For a second, she bit her lip and gripped her coffee cup.

When she could speak, she said, “You and I both know they don’t exist.” She had tried to add a cavalier inflection to her words, but it didn’t sound convincing at all. “What do
you
know about them?” she tossed back at him, trying not to shift under the weight of those dark eyes boring into her face.

His expression closed down and she knew he wouldn’t divulge anything. “I asked the question first.”

She sighed and said, “Let me think. Wendigo. I think it’s a malevolent, cannibalistic, supernatural being. Has great spiritual power among some American Indian tribes. Tends to be on the emaciated side. Sightings are usually in the winter, a time associated with death and starvation. Am I close?”

“Close enough. Would you agree they look like that creature in your drawing?”

No use lying about this one. He’d taken the drawing to the station as evidence. “Yes,” she said.

His brow wrinkled in a frown as he said, “You drew a wendigo holding the pants, standing right outside your studio. Why?”

“I didn’t know what I was drawing. I did it in my sleep.”

“Sleep?” His eyes narrowed with disbelief, his long thick lashes looking like brown lace. Frustration seemed to roll off of him in waves. It came through in his voice as he asked, “You expect me to believe that you got every detail of what happened down to the holding of the pants and you did it in your sleep?”

“Are you telling me you believe in wendigos?” she fired back.

“All I know is a person has disappeared again and you’re the only suspect I have.” Tension moved along his clenched jaw, stiffened his neck and shoulders. His neck veins pulsed and matched the one in his temple. He looked like a man carrying a grudge and a bruised ego, and all his enmity was directed at her. He took her measure over his coffee cup.

She nervously folded one of the empty sugar wrappers into a tiny square and rolled it between her fingers as she said, “It’s horrible, and I hate it, but a wendigo isn’t responsible. They don’t exist, right?”

“Right.” Sarcasm filled the word. “But something unnatural is carrying people off and you seem to be at the center of it. Just like last time.”

She knew he was thinking about the two disappearances twelve years ago, one of them his own father’s. And he held her responsible for them, but no more than herself. She had drawn the wendigo into existence. She wished she could unburden her soul and tell him that. But what could she say, “Oh, by the way, I’m the Color Weaver of my tribe. The white magic that generates my talent also turns whatever I paint into reality.” Yeah, that would go over big.

She appreciated the creative gifts that accompanied being the Color Weaver, but it came at a high price. She had to be extremely careful of her subject matter. She also couldn’t use her powers for her own gain or she would lose them. No mansions, rooms full of money, diamonds
or sports cars. She never wanted any of that, anyway. All she wanted was to paint abstract art, teach art to indigent kids and assist Fala if she ever needed Summer to combat evil. But the white-magic powers bestowed on the women of her tribe always had a catch. No one knew that better than she.

If only she knew why the wendigo had suddenly reappeared. How much did he know about the wendigo? He at least knew it existed. Had he seen it last night? She wrapped her fingers around the hot coffee cup, hoping to dispel the coldness creeping down through her very soul.

“You never let me say it, but I am sorry about your dad.” After his father had disappeared, Reese had ignored her, wouldn’t answer her calls. He abandoned her in high school like all of her other friends, but she had thought he loved her. Obviously, not enough to believe her.

“If you were, you’d tell me the truth now,” he said. “Tell me where to find his remains.”

“There’s nothing to tell other than I painted a picture in my sleep.”

The waitress set a plate of pancakes, eggs and hash browns in front of him, the country breakfast. She had only ordered coffee.

He shoved the plate back, tossed a twenty on the counter, then said, “Come on, we’re going.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

He glared at her, dark eyes heavy and blazing. “Not anymore.”

Summer thought she had beaten herself up all she could about the disappearance of his father, but she could still feel a knife twisting in her chest. All the buried emotion rose up to choke her. Tears blurred her vision as she followed him to the car.

Thankfully, they said no more until he dropped her at her cottage. It looked completely normal, the sun gleaming off the tin roof, as if the wendigo hadn’t dropped Brad Lacy’s bloody pants at her door last night. The only sign of the tragedy was the crime-scene tape stretched along the fence near her studio door.

When he pulled to a stop, she got out. Before she shut the door, he said, “I know you are involved somehow in these murders and I’ll prove it.” His deep voice held a deceptive calm but it was edged with animosity.

“I thought you of all people would know me and know I’m not capable of something so horrid. But I guess I was wrong. I’m sorry you believe the worst. But do what you need to. We both will.” She slammed the door and hurried to her house

She heard the crunch of gravel as he backed the cruiser down the drive. She was certain Reese would keep his word and connect her to this latest death—there, she’d finally admitted it. She had always hoped it wasn’t death, but she could no longer cling to that hope. The wendigo surely had killed three people, one of them Reese’s father, a man she had come to love as a father. Reese wasn’t the only one who had suffered in all of this.

She just couldn’t tell him the truth about her powers. Even if he believed her story, it would only confirm his suspicions that she had used her powers to control the wendigo. Somehow she had to find out why and how the wendigo had reappeared and destroy it for good this time—that is, before Reese arrested her.

She opened the door, turned around and found Reese glaring at her as if she had just stuck a knife in his chest, then he sped away. Tears blurred her vision as Sampson nuzzled her hand to be petted. His white-and-brown coat melted into muddy tones of tan as she stroked his head and ears and let him kiss the tears off her face.

She looked for the cats to greet her, but only Binky came to say hello.

All of a sudden, her studio blazed with light, brighter than sunlight. Summer jumped and shielded her eyes.

“Do not be afraid, my child.”

Summer recognized Meikoda’s voice. It sounded distant, like coming from a long tunnel. The light weakened and pulsed, and Summer blinked at Meikoda’s image. It hovered three feet off the floor, a ghostly figure surrounded by a blinding yellow-and-white aura.

Meikoda was Summer’s great-aunt and she had recently turned over the reins of Guardian to Fala, her granddaughter. The Guardian of Summer’s tribe was the most powerful shaman on earth and maintained the balance between good and evil. Though she was an ex-Guardian, Meikoda was still a formidable shaman in her own right and feared by many. One of her numerous powers was astral projection, which could be disconcerting if you weren’t expecting it.

“I’m glad to see you,” Summer said, not feeling so alone anymore.

“I sensed the wendigo’s return. I know all that has happened to you.”

Summer wasn’t surprised. Meikoda had an uncanny ability to see things that others could not. She sat down at the drawing table, suddenly aware if she didn’t sit she might fall down. She kept her eyes from Meikoda’s image, for the light was still too intense to look directly at her for more than a second.

“Why is this happening to me again?” Summer asked in desperation.

“I know not. I thought I dispatched this wendigo to middle dimension when it last beset you.” Meikoda’s voice rarely gave anything away, but there was an audible hint of self-recrimination there that was hard to miss.

Middle dimension was Meikoda’s nice term for hell. Summer wished the wendigo back there. “I thought so, too.” She rested her elbows on the table and her chin in the palms of her hands. Her head felt like a boulder on her body and it was getting heavier by the moment. “How did it return?”

“I believe it used the recent
Nonack Ipawaw
to gain entrance to earth.”

The
Nonack Ipawaw
was the Patomani name for a rare lunar eclipse that occurred every eight hundred years. Since the Dawning, the Warrior Bear Maiden, known only to humans as the constellation Ursa Major, had always been the totem of Summer’s people and the gateway to the source of their white magic. When the
Nonack Ipawaw
occurred, the moon’s center aligned with the Maiden Bear’s eye. It opened a magic portal that connected with the moon’s dark side. The rift of powerful energy almost always stirred up malevolent forces. Summer just wished the wendigo hadn’t used the energy to return and plague her.

“So why find me again?”

“That remains to be seen.” Meikoda’s voice held a contemplative ominous note.

Summer shivered and said, “But we destroyed all the drawings I’d made of the wendigo in elementary school.” She remembered that project, a display for folklore month. She’d drawn a poster of a wendigo for her display and written a paper on them. It won a blue ribbon. Little did she know it would destroy her life later.

“We must have missed one.”

“What I’ve never understood is how the sketch of the wendigo I’d drawn in elementary school came to life when I was in high school? Nothing I painted back then turned into reality. You know I didn’t get my powers until my twenty-eighth birthday, like all those in the Guardian’s army. Why did the wendigo plague me when I was seventeen?”

“I believe there was an outside source at the core of that first assault in high school. A demon or warlock must have somehow discovered you were to become the Color Weaver. Perhaps this demon hoped to have you firmly within his domination so he could systematically threaten and terrorize you, then enter your dreams and eventually take over your body and manipulate your spirit, reaching his ultimate goal to control your powers. And it connected the wendigo to you through the sketch you had innocently drawn in elementary school. That way it controlled the wendigo and you.”

“What if it’s back, seeking revenge, and resurrected the wendigo?” Summer heard the fear in her voice and hated it.

“You already possess your powers. The dark ones cannot steal them now. I sense the wendigo is acting alone this time.”

“Oh, my God! How many more deaths will be mine to bear? I wish I’d never touched a pencil to sketch anything. I wish I’d never drawn a wendigo.” Summer heard the agony and regret in her own voice as she rubbed her aching temples. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the image of those red iridescent eyes, but they burned in her memory.

Then her mind shifted and she was back in Jefferson High, hearing all the gossip, whispers of “murderer and witch” behind her back and to her face, people stepping out of her way as if she had the plague. But worst of all was Reese’s rejection, the pain and anguish she had seen in his eyes after his father had disappeared. She was forced to leave and get a GED, then she had attended art school.

This wendigo had destroyed her life once, and now it seemed bent on permanently ending it.

“You had no idea in elementary school that you were going to be the Color Weaver. None of us knew. We knew nothing until you ascended,” Meikoda said. “And you are mindful of what you draw now. The wendigo was responsible for the picture you drew last night. I will make sure Fala destroys that evidence at the police station tonight.”

Meikoda raised a glowing finger and pointed it at Summer. “Your mission, my child, is twofold now. Since you are tied to the wendigo through your magic, only you can wipe it from your life for good. You must find and destroy the sketch that we missed years ago. It is the binding that ties you explicably to the wendigo. Once it is destroyed, the wendigo will have only limited power over you. Also you must figure out what it wants from you. If you face your fear and communicate with it, you may discover why it has returned. I believe there is more involved than just evil intentions.”

“But it has abducted someone.”

“Yes, to get your attention. Discover what the wendigo desires and it will leave you alone. I will try magic to locate the sketch that is still out there and let you know if I have success.”

“Thank you.”

Light radiated through the studio, bounced off the walls and warmed Summer’s skin in blinding heat, then Meikoda’s image dissolved into a spark of light.

So the wendigo wanted something from her. But what? Just the thought of communicating with it sent a shudder through her. But she had to stop the abductions and quickly. And find that missing sketch. She only remembered making one sketch for the folklore display. Just one.

Her eyelids were getting heavy and she felt as if she could hardly keep her eyes open. She dreaded falling asleep. What if the wendigo visited her again?

Get up, go to the kitchen and make coffee
. She was too tired to move from the table. She laid her head down on her forearms. Just a minute of rest is all she needed. Just a minute. She fell asleep in seconds.

Summer woke with a start. The clock on the wall read seven o’clock. Already dark. Her reflection in the studio windows stared back at her. Binky and Jinx, her two female black cats, lounged on the table beside her. Rathbone, the male, was somewhere in the house. He never came into the studio. And Sampson’s great body lay sprawled at her feet. The dog hadn’t left her side since she returned home.