Apocalypse Happens by Lori Handeland

that.”
    “You’ll have to bespell . . . something.” I traced the collar around my neck. “Or he’ll be—”
    “I know what he’ll be, and I will take every precaution. I prefer my own blood right where it is and not soaking into the ground of the Otherworld.”
    I took a deep breath, glanced at Jimmy, whose face was tense and pale, but I nodded, and Jimmy closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at me anymore.
    “The deal is made,” the Dagda said. “Now it must be sealed.”
    “With blood, I suppose.”
    “A kiss is so much more binding.”
    “You want me to kiss you.”
    He tilted his head. “Is that a problem?”
    “I can just imagine what the ‘favor’s’ gonna be if you’re sealing the deal with a kiss,” Jimmy muttered. “But then that’s right up your alley.”
    He was angry, hurt, betrayed. I couldn’t blame him for lashing out. So why did I?
    “I could use more power.” I lifted one shoulder, then lowered it. “Why not his?”
    Jimmy stared at me as if he’d just realized something and he didn’t much like it. “You’ve changed.”
    I laughed. “You think?”
    “No more talk.” The Dagda reached for me. Jimmy made a move, as if he’d put himself between us, and the fairy god sent him to the ground with one sharp glare from his ice-blue eyes.
    “Stay,” the Dagda murmured, and then he kissed me.
    As kisses went, it wasn’t so bad. A mere brush of his lips, soft and almost sweet—not even a hint of tongue. Unfortunately, at the first touch I saw the truth of what he’d do to Jimmy.
    It was going to hurt.
    I jerked back, my lips forming “no” but my voice too bound by horror to set the word free.
    The Dagda’s intent gaze bored into mine. “Do you choose to spare him even if it means the end of the world?”
    And that “no” I’d been choking on flew free.

CHAPTER 9
    The next instant I was on top of the hill instead of below it. I laid my hand against the cool green grass and murmured, “Sorry.”
    Then I got to my feet and I left Jimmy behind.
    Quinn had disappeared. I assumed he was making like a statue in Megan’s garden again, which was where he should be. I should be—
    Anywhere but here.
    I got in the Navigator and headed for the airport. The only place I could think to go was New Mexico.
    Eight hours later, I stepped off the plane in Albuquerque—flights from Milwaukee to the Southwest were few and far between—then rented a car and drove north.
    Sawyer lived at the very edge of the Navajo reservation near Mount Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains that marked the boundaries of Navajo land, known as the Dinetah, or the Glittering World. In that world, strange things happened. Especially around Sawyer.
    I drove through flat, arid plains that would eventually give way to mountain foothills dotted with towering ponderosa pines. Canyons surrounded by high, spiked, sandy shaded rock shared space with the redmesas immortalized forever in the westerns of John Ford.
    I was still a few miles from Sawyer’s place when a lone black wolf appeared next to my car. Most wolves wouldn’t have been able to keep pace at 60 miles per hour, but this wasn’t most wolves.
    I pulled to the side of the road and stepped out. The beast paused in the mesquite scrub and stared at me, tongue lolling, spooky gray eyes fixed on my face.
    “How did you know I was coming?” I asked.
    He tilted his head, didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Sawyer might be more than a wolf, but he still couldn’t talk.
    “I’ll meet you at the house.”
    I made a move to get back into the car, and he let out a low woof , then pawed at the dirt and shook his whole body as if he’d just climbed out of an icy cold bath.
    “Why don’t you shift back so we can talk?”
    He lifted his upper lip and showed me his teeth.
    “Oookay.” I stared at him for several seconds. “You didn’t get yourself cursed again, did you?”
    Sawyer had been cursed by his mother, the Naye’i, or woman of smoke. For