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Spanish, fajada means banded , and the eroded columns of stone that made up the face of the butte resembled a tall band or a girdle. A sloped skirt of dirt and rock circled its base. A lop-sided dome with a flat-topped crown topped the summit.
    “How tall do you think?”
    Jolie raised her sunglasses and squinted. “At least three hundred feet.”
    Coyote read his watch and ran faster. Jolie and I sped behind him.
    We reached the bottom of the rocky slope and veered to the right around the southern side of the butte. Coyote picked up the pace. Normally his attention drifted like a leaf in the breeze, and it disturbed me to see him so focused. We were obviously on a schedule, but for what?
    “Hey Coyote,” Jolie blurted, “what exactly is the hur—”
    I elbowed her and shook my head. Don’t bother.
    Coyote bounded over the rough ground and talus with the agility of his namesake. He paused at the bottom of the butte only long enough to again read his watch, then turned his ball cap around and shimmied up a crack between the hundred-foot-tall sandstone columns like a caffeinated lizard.
    After the long hike I was ready for a break, but I wasn’t going to let a wizened five-hundred-year-old vampire put me to shame.
    Something smacked my head. It was Jolie using me for a springboard to leap high into the gap between another set of columns.
    “C’mon, Felix. You’re moving like an old man.”
    For humans, a free climb between the eroded sandstone columns would’ve been very dangerous but thanks to vampire levitation, we easily skittered upward.
    Once above the columns, we scrambled up the rocky, rounded slope to a tall step of sandstone, climbed that and arrived at the base of the butte’s crown. We were treated to a spectacular high-rise view of the basin—a sprawling blanket of beiges with stripes of olive and viridian—with Chaco Wash unwinding to the northwest and south, and the mesas to the east and north marbled in reds and grays. At the southern end of the wash where it curved around a mesa, the ancient Chaco Ruins looked like tiny, broken rectangles made of dirt.
    Coyote didn’t slow for sightseeing. He scampered toward the crown to approach three sandstone slabs set parallel and edgewise against the broad face of the rock wall. He cut another nervous glance to his Rolex.
    He ducked into a shaded gap between the slabs and the wall, pointed to me, and beckoned with a quick pump of his arm.
    I crouched beside him, Jolie looking over my shoulder.
    Two spiral petroglyphs had been carved into the rock wall at waist level. The small one on the left was maybe four or five inches in diameter. The other was larger, at least a foot wide. Both carvings were well eroded and projected a prehistoric eeriness. A vertical blade of sunlight shining between the slabs sliced across the right side of the larger spiral.
    Coyote pressed his hand against the center of the larger petroglyph and skipped his fingertips across the spiral grooves as if counting. He spread his hand and held it under the sliver of light, his palm flat against the rock. He looked at his watch and ordered, “Quickly, vato . Put your left hand on mine.”
    Confused by what he was doing, I hesitated. “What?”
    He slapped his hand against the petroglyph. The light crept across the knuckle of his index finger. “Do it now!”
    Extending my arm, I leaned over him and placed my hand over his.
    He looked at Jolie. “We’ll be right back.”
    Back from where?
    The sliver of light draped across the back of my hand and warmed my skin. The light grew brighter, brighter still, and I blinked.
    Coyote pushed up from under me. Cars honked all around us.
    We were at the corner of a busy street and an interstate on-ramp.
    ***

Chapter Nine

    I stood straight, paralyzed in disbelief. One second I was in New Mexico, on top of Fajada Butte. And the next …
    I took in the landmarks. An auto body shop straight ahead. A plain, rather ratty, two-story apartment building