I sat up, sweaty and cold. Calmed to find myself in my hotel room, I reclined against the pillows and panted until I’d caught my breath. I opened my eyes again expecting nothing but the ceiling fan.

Willa was standing above me, a knife in her hands aimed down at my chest. Not this time, you don’t! she growled, plunging the blade down through my ribs.

I gasped.

It was then that I truly awakened, wet with fear, clutching the blankets around my neck. I hunkered into a crouch, leaning my back against the headboard and rocking myself back and forth like a child.

7
The Right Tree

I

When day broke, when light crawled under the heavy hotel curtains and spilled onto the floor, I was finally able to sleep a few hours more. Otherwise, I spent the night angry and afraid, curled in a rag-doll bundle with the covers up under my ears. Who did these ghosts think they were, harassing me like this?

I got up feeling drained and unhappy, and a shower did little to take the edge off of my misery. By way of distraction, I took the phone book out of the nightstand and looked up the Crescent Moon. The day clerk at the front desk supplied me with fuzzy directions that got me downtown all right, but then lost me. I had to stop at a gas station and get more directions, and thereby learned that the day clerk had been off by miles. Lovely. Once I did get to the correct block, parking was tricky; but the Death Nugget is small and I can parallel park in two flawless moves, so the situation remained manageable despite my grumpy frame of mind.

The Crescent Moon was just as Dave implied—thick with incense smoke and light with imported fabrics. Candles of every color were grouped in clumps according to their scents: musky and exotic, floral, perfumey, and simply decorative. Along the back wall were rows of specialty books on everything from feng shui to natural childbirth. Silver wind chimes tuned to friendly minor keys tinkled when the door fell shut behind me.

“Peace be with you, little sister,” greeted the man behind the counter. He was maybe fifty, with a Walt Whitman beard and a straw hat that had feathers in it. “Can I help you with something?”

A large brown dog ambled slowly out from behind the counter. It stretched with a mighty grunt and came to sniff my legs. “That’s Bo. He’ll just smell you and leave you alone unless you start petting him—and then he’s yours for life. He’s real friendly.”

“He sure is,” I said, scritching the dog’s scruffy head and ears. He thumped his tail against the counter and leaned into my thigh.

“Some folks don’t like dogs, but I don’t understand it.”