Black Moon Sing (The Turquoise Path Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to put all my trust in a Typical right off the bat. You Typs are dangerous for Paras. I’d be an idiot if I trusted you blindly.”
    “You would,” Hosteen said, smiling with a wry air. “I won’t deny that. I can give you some other information, too—about myself. Consider it a truce flag, an offering of pure honesty so you know where I’m coming from. So you know I’m holding nothing back from you.”
    Ellery raised her eyebrows, waiting.
    “If I don’t solve this murder, I’m going to be taken off my beat and stuck on the gangs unit. Gang crimes are boring and predictable; I want to stick with the interesting stuff. So my motivations to solve this Changer’s murder—my willingness to risk my reputation on the Rez by working with a Changer in order to get it done—aren’t totally selfless.”
    Ellery drained the last of her coffee from her cup. Hosteen was right: against all odds—absurdly, perhaps—his willingness to expose all of his motives, even the most self-centered one, did… humanize him. She still didn’t trust Hosteen farther than she could throw him. But she trusted him just a little bit more than she did any other Diné.
    “Fine,” she said, setting her mug down on the table with a loud clank. “I’ll help you if I can. For Roanhorse’s sake, not for yours. But we’ll have to work quickly. I’ve got a mystery of my own that needs solving. And anyway, I have to be back to work at the coffee shop in three days. Iced pumpkin spice lattes wait for no one.”

CHAPTER FOUR

     
    E llery pressed herself against the passenger-side door of Hosteen Sikaadii’s pickup truck, feeling the engine rumble through her body, rattling all the grief and exhaustion and fear inside her into a soup of nausea that boiled in her gut. The sun was already bright in a sky still paled by morning, and the air coming in through the truck’s vents smelled thick with heat despite the A.C.
    Coffee the night before had been a terrible idea. Ellery hadn’t slept a wink after returning to her apartment on the north end of Flagstaff, but she doubted she would have slept anyway, even if she hadn’t tried to coffee-chug Hosteen under the table. Texts had trickled in from her friends: no one had seen or heard from Vivi. She was still M.I.A., her bizarre string of messages a mystery that remained unsolved.
    Worry had gnawed at Ellery all night long—not only about Vivi, but about this unexpected return to the Navajo Nation. She’d never had any intention of going back to the place that haunted her—the source of so many dark and painful memories. And she sure as hell didn’t know whether she could really trust Hosteen. The further they went into the vast, red expanse of the reservation, blowing through the small towns along the highway and passing distant homes of sheep ranchers that dotted the scrubland, the warier she felt.
    Hosteen didn’t say much as he drove. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all unless Ellery spoke first. She pried at him with a few questions, learning some of the grim details of Roanhorse’s death, but more often than not she kept her silence and peered at him from the corner of her eye, shielded behind her sunglasses.
    He still wore his black hat, of course—Diné men almost always did. But in daylight his features seemed much softer, the look on his face more dogged and determined than stern or unforgiving, as he had seemed in the alley the night before. His eyes were red-rimmed; evidently he had slept very little, too. At least they had that in common, though it was precious little to make Ellery feel comfortable as his companion.
    Hosteen glanced down at the gauges behind the truck’s wheel, then gave a brief grimace. “I need to get gas. I’ll be quick.”
    He pulled off the highway at a truck stop of sorts, one of those middle-of-nowhere joints that nevertheless managed to attract a startling number of loiterers beneath their towering, dust-streaked signs. This one had a huge white