Shadow of Time (a YA Paranormal Romance novel)

Chapter 10

Hannah sucked in a mock scandalized breath. "You truly are the worst BFF ever! You don't share things with me anymore, not even going on a private date with my neighbor girl."

Emily cleared her throat and shook her head. "Let's skip that for now, okay?" she deflected. "First, I want to know about the strange things you just mentioned."

Talk about changing the subject. Now she had to fess up to being stark-raving mad – there was no way around it. Hannah looked around furtively, letting out a sigh when the door swung open and Nick stepped into the café. "Let's wait till we're all properly sitting down," she stalled.

"My dissertation is well under way," Nick beamed, sitting down at their table. "It should be, too. I'm off on that trek through the rez with Ben and Josh. We'll take three days, they said. And how are you doing? Seriously, you look like a car hit you." He shot Hannah a questioning look.

She shrugged, staring at the palms of her hands as if the answer was written there. "I'm just so tired. I didn't sleep well. Yesterday, at Rainbow Bridge, I heard this coyote howl in the distance. Josh heard it too, and he looked at me in this – this anxious way, as if he was in a panic and wanted to protect me. But he didn't. He stayed away from me. Yazzie thought he was acting weird, too. After that incident, Josh kept his distance all afternoon."

"Coyotes?" Nick's eyebrows furrowed. "Didn't we see coyotes at your cabin too, before we went to the rodeo? Or were they just dogs?"

Hannah breathed in and out, trying to suppress her feelings of terror. In her mind, she relived the moment the shadow from her vision turned into a coyote. "I don't know," she blew out defeatedly. "I just don't know. Do you guys think I'm getting some kind of supernatural warning?"

Emily arched an eyebrow. "Why supernatural?"

"Well, I sort of zoned out at Rainbow Bridge. There's no other way to describe it. One moment I was relaxing in the sun, and the next I had a vision of a wintry landscape and three creepy, shadowy figures watching me. One of them shapeshifted. He morphed into a coyote."

"You were in a trance?" Nick asked in surprise.

"Something like that, yeah."

"It happens during vision quests as well," he said, leafing through his notebook. "Images of the past are experienced as if they're happening in the present," he read out loud from his notes.

Hannah swallowed. Slowly, it began to dawn on her. The dreams and the terrible vision seemed to come from the same time period – from the past. Josh had looked the same, as if he was about thirty years old. Could she actually be seeing things that had happened in the past?

"But – what have I ever done to see those images? I keep dreaming about things I've never seen before, but they seem so real, so I don't think my mind is fabricating them. What should I..."

Her words locked in her throat when the waitress put the quiche they'd ordered on the table. Great. She sounded like the village idiot, babbling about supernatural warnings and apparitions in the middle of a café.

Emily put a reassuring hand on Hannah's arm. "You know what? I need to be in Naabi'aani today and tomorrow morning, but I can come straight to your place tomorrow afternoon. I'll stay with you for a few nights when Ben is away. And we'll figure this out. We can make a list of everything you've seen and experienced and try to make sense of it. Don't think you're losing it – spirituality is a constant in our culture, so at least you blend right in with us Native Americans."

Nick put his arm around her shoulders. "And I'll try to sound Josh out about what happened at Rainbow Bridge during our hiking trip. Maybe he's overly sensitive to spiritual things, being a medicine man and all. I can tell you one thing, though – he likes you. I don't need crystal ball-gazing or Tarot to tell you that."