Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1)(8)

I pull into Tse Bonito as the rising sun hits full-force above the cliffs, bathing the desert town in dry heat. Tse Bonito has a way of heating up especially hot. Maybe because it’s centered around a T-shaped stretch of asphalt where the two main highways of Dinétah met. Maybe because it’s surrounded by white mesa cliffs that funnel the heat right down into the Tse Bonito canyon. Or maybe because it’s mostly made of tin-roofed shacks and old metal-sided trailers that soak up the hot like it’s their only purpose. Maybe all three. Whatever the reason, the shanty town of trailers, shacks, and the occasional hogan stretches for two square miles under the unforgiving desert sky. A booming metropolis by Dinétah standards.

It’s also not the safest place to live. Sort of lawless, except for the occasional intervention by the Citizens’ Watch and Guard. They police the streets, but a lot of good that does. Tse Bonito is still more Wild West frontier town than anything else. Bunch of cowboys and Indians, although everyone’s pretty much Diné. Last time I came through here looking for a Bad Man, I ended up in a shootout that felt more like the OK Corral than a monster hunt. Can’t say I’m happy to be back, even if it is to call on Grandpa Tah.

Tah lives in the thick of town. His house is one of the half a dozen hogans that are scattered through the busy marketplace and I know that if I don’t catch him early, he’ll be out puttering around, visiting his neighbors or checking out the goods at the moccasin lady’s store a few doors down, doing his daily shopping or just being a busybody. Oblivious to the occasional gun battle and more worried about the daily gossip than staying safe. Not that anyone would want to hurt him. He’s pretty much a saint around here. Well known and well liked, which makes me wonder what he’s doing spending time with someone of my questionable reputation at all. I figure I’m a bit of a charity case to him, especially this last year. And normally something like that might make me stay away, pride and all. But Tah’s good people, and I try to do right by him when I can. Plus, he’s the foremost monster expert in these parts, and I need his help.

I pull my truck in next to the hogan’s only door, careful to stay well out of the dirt road that would be full of people and dust in another hour. Anything that looks like it’s worth stealing comes inside with me. I grab the sticky bag holding the monster’s head in one hand and my shotgun in the other, and walk over.

The door itself is the kind of traditional door you might find on a hogan somewhere out of town, not in a busy public place like this. No locks, no bolts, not even anything that looks like a tripwire or an alarm. Just a dusty black-and-gray blanket, the kind you used to get cheap from the government trading post, covering the only entrance. But I know looks are deceiving and I keep my distance as I shout across the threshold.

“Tah!” I shift my grip on the bag and sling the gun over my shoulder.

I’m about to shout again when a gnarled brown hand appears and pulls back the blanket. The thick fabric stirs up the parched earth and sends the red dust dancing in little pools. “Come in, Maggie,” comes a voice as gnarled and old as the hand that goes with it. “Come in, shí daughter.”

“Ahéheé, Grandpa. Thank you.”

Grandpa Tah looks the same as always. Spotless jeans that are a bright unwashed blue and a few sizes too big for his bony frame. Same goes for his sneakers, which, despite being about twenty years out of style even before the Big Water, look fresh out of the box. A black-and-red checkered cowboy shirt covers his narrow shoulders, white shell buttons gleaming in the light. He’s sporting a close-cropped cap of silver hair and laugh lines on his worn face. But it’s his eyes I like best. Lively and full of mischief, like he’s in on something way more fun than anything you know about.

I like Tah, I really do, and he’s the closest thing I have to a living relative. We aren’t related, aren’t even the same clan, but he calls me daughter. That means something.

I duck under the blanket and break into a grin. I can’t help it. My trailer is shelter. It serves its purpose as far as a house goes, but Tah’s hogan feels like a home, the kind of home they talk about in bedtime stories. It’s a traditional hogan—one big room in an eight-sided building, walls made of long single-cut logs, tightly roped together and sealed with concrete. There’s a cooking fire already burning in the woodstove in the middle of the room, and the scent of pi?on is so pleasantly sharp I can taste it on the tip of my tongue. Warm woven rugs in reds and oranges and browns hang from the walls in between aging picture frames filled with worn photos of smiling family members that I don’t know but I envy. A cheap couch rules the south end of the hogan, and a makeshift kitchen with a sink, a few overhead cabinets, and an old peeling Formica table dominate the west, directly across from the east-facing front door. The floor is hard-packed dirt and covered with a smattering of what looks like unmatched carpet samples in a hodgepodge of rainbow colors. Obvious picks from someone’s castoffs, but every one swept spotless. Tah’s bed is along the southern wall, freshly made. Everything like it always is when I come around, except for a pile of blankets folded neatly on the edge of his old couch.

“You got someone staying with you?” I ask, eyes on the blankets, a memory of my own time crashing on Tah’s couch in my head.

“Hmm?” He follows my gaze. “Aoo’.” Yes.

I wait, but he doesn’t offer me anything else. “And . . . ?”