“And so you will continue to fight the same fights, refusing to see that sometimes a man must act decisively, even when it goes against his nature.”
“I fought them,” Jack said, nodding behind him without taking his eyes off Megan’s father.
“Aye, but your blows were ineffectual, and instead of solving anything, ye only postponed the inevitable. Did ye not hope to avoid taking action yourself by giving Kenzie a week to deal with the dragon? And so your problems come at you again, and my daughter and her child pay the price of your hesitation.”
Jack dropped his chin to his chest. “There has to be a way I can save her,” he said, more to himself than to Grey.
“There is, Coyote.”
“What is it, then?” Jack asked, looking up, only to find his grand-père standing beside Greylen, the two men appearing to be different sides of the same coin.
“You must embrace your dark side,” his grand-père said. “And acknowledge the shadow your heart creates when you stand in the light. One does not exist without the other, Coyote—which means you cannot exist unless you accept both.”
“If I acknowledge the shadows, will I get Megan and my son back?” he asked, looking up to find himself in his pitch-black bedroom, his sheets soaked with sweat and his heart pounding in dread.
Jack untangled himself from the bedding, showered, dressed, and went to work, his mood from yesterday compounded tenfold by the nightmare he couldn’t seem to shake—which vividly echoed the fact that he hadn’t seen Megan since Matt Gregor had whisked her off to Gù Brath in his plane.
Jack’s day continued its downward spiral when he walked into the police station and found John Bracket in their makeshift holding cell. The man had a cut on his forehead and blood on his shirt, and was hollering at Ethel to get him a lawyer.
And Jack realized he was looking at yet another monster he hadn’t fully dealt with: just like a battered wife, he had hoped this particular problem would solve itself. But here it was, haunting him again.
“Did Mrs. Bracket finally press charges?” Jack asked Ethel.
“No, we did. John Bracket got in an accident on the way home from some bar in Greenville, and sent our sand truck off the road. It plunged into Pine Creek.”
“How’s the driver of the sand truck?”
“He’s at the hospital with Simon. They both needed stitches.”
“Both? What happened to Simon?”
“Bracket split open Simon’s cheekbone when the boy tried to handcuff him to bring him in.”
Jack bit back a curse. “If I’d pressed charges last week when Bracket punched me, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“It would have eventually,” Ethel said. “He’d have gotten out on bail, gotten drunk again, and something just as ugly would have happened.” She shrugged. “It’s always the same vicious cycle.”
“This particular cycle stops today. We’re drawing up a list of charges that will keep him locked up for a couple of years, and pray that’s long enough for him to find some religion.”
“I’ve already done the paperwork, and a sheriff’s deputy is on the way to transport John to the county jail,” Ethel said, just as the phone rang. “I put your messages on your desk,” she finished, picking up the phone.
Jack walked into his office, sat down at his desk, and stared at the opposite wall. It wasn’t just time to think like his ancestors; it was time he had a heart-to-heart talk with them.
Jack’s mood did an immediate one-eighty when he walked into Pine Creek PowerSports that afternoon and found Tom Cleary hunched over the partly dismantled engine of his sled. Tom actually looked like a mechanic: he was wearing clean coveralls, his hair was shorter—though it looked like his mother had cut it—and he had on safety glasses and steel-toed boots.
Paul Dempsey was hovering over the boy as if he expected Tom to pick up a sledgehammer and start thumping away.
“Will it be ready by tomorrow morning?” Jack asked, bending down to peer into the massive mess of metal.
“If I work on it all evening,” Tom said without bothering to look up. He did nod toward Paul. “And if Mr. Dempsey quits telling me what to do next.”
Paul harrumphed and walked to the door leading into his showroom.
Jack gave Tom a pat on the back. “There’s a fifty dollar tip for you if you get it done tonight. I need my sled tomorrow morning for a run up the lake.”
“It’ll be ready for you,” Tom said, just as he pulled a large piece of metal off the top, exposing the guts of the engine. “You just burned up a piston, is all,” Tom said, shining a light down one of the four large holes. “But you didn’t score the cylinder, so it’ll be an easy fix.”
“Thanks, Tom.”
“Mr. Stone? Thank you for…for everything.”
“You want to thank me, give half your paycheck to your mother and encourage your brothers to behave, okay? And call me Jack. You’re a workingman now; you’ve earned the right.”
“I already told Mom she could have most of my paycheck,” Tom said. “And I promise the pranks will stop.”
Jack gave him a nod and walked into the showroom just as Paul was flipping the Open sign in the door to Closed.
“You’re a good man, Dempsey,” Jack told him, climbing on one of the large red ATVs. “And smart, too, for hiring Tom. He’s going to make you lots of money.”
Paul puffed up a bit. “I gotta admit, I was judging the book by the cover. Everyone in town has watched those Cleary boys grow up rough-and-tumble, and I guess we’re all guilty of visiting the sins of their father on them.”
Jack nodded. “Giving him this chance to prove himself…well, you’re a good man.”
Paul’s face reddened, and he fiddled with the price tag on the ATV Jack was sitting on, then suddenly got a sparkle in his eyes. “Say, did you know a lot of the snowmobile trails around here double as ATV trails in the summer? What are you planning to do for fun when the snow melts?”
“I’m planning to buy myself a boat and a large cooler for food and beer, and I’m going to fish this lake dry.”
“Oh, man,” Paul said, rushing over to a rack of brochures, pulling one out, then rushing back. “Have I got the perfect boat for you!”
Chapter Twenty-one
“Y ou know you’re certifiably crazy, don’t you?” Camry said as she drove their “borrowed” trail groomer up the ski lift path of TarStone Mountain in the pitch dark. “Which means I must be crazy, too,” she muttered, giving Megan a sidelong glance before turning left into a narrow cutting in the woods. “I mean, it’s one thing for a panther to actually be a man, or for Robbie’s dead mother to turn into a snowy owl, because that makes convoluted sense for the magic we grew up with. But a dragon, Meg? Hold on!” she yelped when the right track of the snowcat rolled up onto a fallen log.
Megan braced herself so she wouldn’t slide into Camry. “Why not a dragon?” she asked as soon as they leveled out. “If they don’t exist, where did the idea for them come from? Somebody had to have seen something that looked like a giant lizard with wings. Who could make up a creature like that?”
“The same person who made up all the mythological beasts,” Camry countered. “Someone with a really warped imagination. Either that, or they smoked a lot of pot back then.” She looked over at Megan. “Dragons don’t exist, sis. You must have seen something else.”
“Jack saw it, too. And I just know Kenzie is hiding it in one of the caves on Bear Mountain.”
“You figured that out just because Kenzie smells funny?”
“That, and because when I alluded to seeing the creature, he got all guarded and suddenly had to leave.”
“Exactly what are you two doing downstairs in the lab for several hours each day?” Camry asked, bobbing her eyebrows. “And how come you lock the door?”
“We’re…doing a project together.” Megan was reluctant to lie to her sister, but she was even more loath to break her promise to Kenzie. “He’s working on a belated wedding gift for Matt and Winter, and I’m helping him,” she explained, which wasn’t all that far from the truth. “And he wants it to be a surprise.”