ial. Don’t disappoint her.” He gave them his pointed-toothed grin. “Me, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
aomi still had misgivings, but the thought of being somewhere bright and cheerful surrounded by friends appealed to her.
“Skinwalkers hate light and fire,” Jamison said on the way over. “And crowds. We’ll be safer there than at home right now.”
Magellan’s railway depot was typical of those built in the Southwest during the great railroad boom of the end of the nineteenth century. Crafted from wood and stucco, the depot was one long, narrow room, with a station office in the back. It had been built in 1890 to service tracks that connected the main line in Winslow to the mountain and mining towns to the south. In the 1930s, the service up to the mountains had been discontinued and the depot closed. Over the years the railroad company had removed the rails and ties from the railroad bed, but the raised bed was still there, empty and unused.
Then an enterprising town planner claimed he’d found a story of a “ghost train,” which rumbled through Magellan each Christmas. He’d started a celebration on Christmas Eve to greet the ghosts as they rode past. The depot was restored, the event planned, word sent out. It worked. The Ghost Train celebration had become a Magellan tradition, and people came from all over the Southwest to see it.
By the time Naomi, Jamison, and Coyote arrived at the depot, it was lit from top to bottom, and a huge Christmas tree glittered in one corner. Candles flickered inside luminarias on the depot porch and the low walls surrounding the platform. The poinsettias Naomi had provided were holding up well, lending brilliant color inside and out.
If skinwalkers didn’t like light and fire, they wouldn’t like this place. Naomi nervously watched the dark desert beyond the depot, but nothing more frightening came out of it than a few rough-looking bikers, riding up to join in the celebration.
Julie, unhurt and unworried, ran inside with Naomi’s friend Nicole and hugged Jamison. Maude McGuire was already there with her husband, Magellan’s chief of police. Maude walked around with a large cookie jar, taking donations for the historical society. She greeted Naomi with a wave and a smile, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her daughter Amy had been missing for a year now, with no word whether she was dead or alive.
“I might know someone who can help them,” Jamison said into Naomi’s ear. She jumped, still nervous.
“Help who? The McGuires?”
“I know a woman, a half-Navajo from Many Farms, who investigates mysterious happenings. If I talk to her, she might be able to look into their daughter’s disappearance. If nothing else has helped, it’s worth a shot.”
“Do you know everyone on the Navajo Nation?” Naomi asked. “In the entire Southwest?”
Jamison allowed a smile to touch his eyes. “Janet Begay went to school with my youngest sister. Janet moved off to Flagstaff, and I haven’t seen her since, but I can track her down. And it’s my mother who knows everyone in the Southwest. She just tells me all the gossip.”
Beside her, Julie squealed. Naomi swung around, heart pounding, but Julie was waving madly to Coyote. He smiled at Julie, a friendly look that softened his face, and he lifted Julie up on his shoulders.
Naomi glanced around the bright depot, which seemed warm and safe. But after the celebration the town would grow dark again, lying vulnerable to attack.
“Julie can’t come home with us tonight,” she said.
“No,” Jamison agreed.
“Will she be safe if she goes back with Nicole?”
“Safer than she will be at home. But I want you to stay in Magellan with me.”
Naomi looked at Julie laughing at Coyote, her hands moving in quick signs. “Because you think the skinwalker will come after me if I’m separated from you?”
“I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe. And if you’re with Julie, he’ll take her too.”
“Damn it.”
“I’m so sorry, Naomi.”
His eyes were dark and grim, and Naomi touched his shoulder. “I’ll help you defeat it. I’m scared as hell, but I’m not letting it hurt my mate.”
Jamison gave her one of his warm, sinful smiles. At the same time someone cried, “The Ghost Train is coming!”
Everyone hurried out onto the platform. Jamison and Naomi followed more slowly, and Coyote came behind them, Julie holding his hand.
The night was clear, the mountain storms having stayed in the mountains. Stars filled the horizon in an opaque sheet of white. It was so beautiful, but Naomi had learned how much evil the empty desert held.
Naomi’s cousin Heather shushed everyone. “Can you feel it?” she said. “The heat of the steam? Can you hear the wheels on the track?”
“Yes,” someone else whispered. “The Ghost Train has returned to Magellan.”
Coyote stared at the empty track bed and then back at Jamison. “They’re crazy,” he murmured. “There’s nothing there.”