Mountain Echoes

You can never go home again

Joanne Walker has survived an encounter with the Master at great personal cost, but now her father is missing—stolen from the timeline. She must finally return to North Carolina to find him—and to meet Aidan, the son she left behind long ago.

That would be enough for any shaman to face, but Joanne’s beloved Appalachians are being torn apart by an evil reaching forward from the distant past. Anything that gets in its way becomes tainted—or worse.

And Aidan has gotten in the way.

Only by calling on every aspect of her shamanic powers can Joanne pull the past apart and weave a better future. It will take everything she has—and more.

Unless she can turn back time...

Praise for

and The Walker Papers series

Urban Shaman

“A swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist, magic, danger—Urban Shaman has them in spades.” —Jim Butcher, bestselling author of The Dresden Files series

Thunderbird Falls

“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.” —Library Journal

Coyote Dreams

“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes will captivate new and old readers alike.” —RT Book Reviews

Walking Dead

“Murphy’s fourth Walker Papers offering is another gripping, well-written tale of what must be the world’s most reluctant— and stubborn—shaman.” —RT Book Reviews

Demon Hunts

“Murphy carefully crafts her scenes and I felt every gust of wind through the crispy frosted trees…. I am heartily looking forward to further volumes.” —The Discriminating Fangirl

Spirit Dances

“An original and addictive urban fantasy!” —Romancing the Darkside

Raven Calls

“The twists and turns will have readers shaking their heads while devouring the next page.” —USA TODAY

Mountain Echoes

C.E. Murphy

for my father-in-law, Gary Lee

(why, yes, Joanne’s Gary is named after him, in fact)

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Friday, March 24, 4:15 p.m.

I came home to North Carolina just shy of a decade after promising I’d never go back.

Home was a funny word. I’d lived in Qualla Boundary during high school. That was longer than I’d lived anywhere else up until then, but in the intervening decade I’d lived exclusively in Seattle. But North Carolina still twigged as home, maybe because it was where my father had been born.

It was where he’d gone missing from, too, and that was why I was back.

Driving up from Atlanta was a slow immersion into memories. I had the windows of my rented Impala rolled down, and the rich rotting scent of winter collapsing into spring made a hungry place at the hollow of my throat. Of course, everything made me hungry right now—I hadn’t yet recovered from a week’s worth of exhaustive shape-shifting fueled by my body’s resources instead of food. But that slightly sweet smell of death begetting life had always made me hungry, and I’d forgotten that until now.

The low hills with a haze of new leaves lining the roads; the roads themselves narrowing as I pulled away from interstates; the way strangers stopped along the roadside would nod a greeting as I passed by: those things I remembered more clearly. Then again, I’d spent an awful lot of my formative years in cars, crisscrossing the country with my father. Things I could see from a vehicle were most likely to stay with me, maybe.

Like the sign welcoming the world to the Qualla. It was smaller than I remembered it. I was taller than I’d been fourteen years ago when Dad had driven us past that sign for the first time, but mostly its size was relative to its importance in my life. Back then those carved white words on a brown road sign had been the most important thing in my life. Welcome: Cherokee Indian Reservation. At thirteen, going on fourteen, I’d never belonged anywhere for more than a few months, and that welcome sign was supposed to be the start of a whole new life for me.

It had been, too. Just not the way I’d expected it to be.

I slowed the car as I drove into the town of Cherokee. It was equal parts bigger and better than I remembered it, and exactly the same. The main street was four lanes rolling through town, no sidewalks to mention, just road, then parking spaces, then tourist shops flush up against them. A lot of low brown buildings with statues of headdressed Indian chiefs or protective gleaming black bears in front of them, and—new to me—signs making sure everybody knew which way to drive to the casino. It had opened the year before I left the Qualla, and the bigger-better aspects of Cherokee probably had it to thank. There’d been tourism money half the year before that, and unemployment the other half. That was the Cherokee I remembered, but I was just as glad it had moved on.