Thunder Moon (Nightcreature 8)

“Stolen?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea who?”

“A young Cherokee woman—five-five or -six, a hundred and twenty-five pounds, long black hair, brown eyes. Her name’s Adsila. She’ll be traveling with Ian.”

Cal cursed. “I knew he couldn’t be trusted.”

“She kidnapped him.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Get moving.”

I disconnected, then pocketed Claire’s phone. “I need a car.”

Without a word, she reached into her khaki slacks and handed me her keys. “Who’s Adsila?”

“Quatie’s great-great-granddaughter, or at least that’s what she said. But I think she’s Quatie, grown younger through the supernatural means of the Raven Mocker.”

“And you figured this out how?”

“The woman next to Grandmother in the picture must be Quatie. They were the only full-blood Cherokee women in town then and now. But I met the person in the photo, and her name’s Adsila.” I started for the stairs and Claire followed. “ ‘Adsila’ means ‘blossom’ in Cherokee.”

“Makes sense,” Claire said. “The blossom of youth. The sprout from which the flower grows. Clever.”

“I’ll be sure and tell her so right before I kill her.”

Claire gave me an uneasy glance, but she didn’t argue. “How did she grow younger?”

“The legend of the Raven Mocker says the witch steals the lives of the dying, appearing as a crone from the weight of all the years it’s stolen. But our Raven Mocker began to kill young people, who had a lot of time left.”

“She got younger because she stole more time.”

“That’s my theory.”

I remembered when I’d first met Adsila her body reminded me of Katrine’s, then Katrine turned up missing. I had a bad feeling we were going to find her somewhere minus her cold, cold heart.

“Why did she kidnap Ian?” Claire asked as we exited the clinic and headed at a fast clip toward town hall and her car.

“We must have tipped her off that we were on to her when we went to talk to Quatie about the sticks.”

“You went to talk to Quatie about sticks,” Claire repeated. “What a fascinating life you lead.”

“Crap.” I stopped so fast Claire smacked into me from behind. Several passersby looked at me oddly and skirted around us. “We didn’t suspect Quatie of being the Raven Mocker because she’d placed sharpened sticks at the four corners of her house, which we thought repelled witches. A spell,” I explained at Claire’s frown. “But on the phone just now, Ian said the sticks are meant to repel spirits.”

“What was Quatie trying to keep away?”

“The messenger wolf.” I snapped my fingers. “Which kept trying to tell me she was trouble, and I wasn’t getting it.”

“What’s Quatie going to do with Ian?”

“I think she’s going to kill him.”

* * *

It wasn’t easy getting out of the parking lot without Claire in the passenger seat. The only way to leave her behind was to say, “Oh, Malachi’s here.”