Horrified, I did pull the Jeep over. We were on a gravel road and I hadn’t seen another car for a couple of miles.
“It’s faint, Beri, really, really faint,” Blythe rushed to reassure me. “I’m just so sensitive to smells. I’ve had to be my whole life because have you ever noticed how much dried herbs look like each other? Most of the time I have to tell them apart by smell.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m just not a very good witch.”
I gripped the steering wheel so hard it creaked. “So. I smell. Good to know.”
“Not all the time…it’s just a whiff now and again. I think it’s coming from the wounds. Let me see your arm.”
I hesitated, then caved and shrugged out of my jacket. Pushing the loose sleeve of another one of Nikolos’s sweaters up my arm, I waited for the tears, but thankfully they didn’t put in an appearance. After the water fiasco, every thought of him today dragged all that guilt out like an old, dirty blanket that smothered me.
“Oh dear,” she murmured, running her finger along the side of the long scar. “I need a lodestone for this.”
“Like the one that popped in Elsa’s sink?” When Nikolos and I had first fought dweller demons in a hospital in Jacksonville, we’d been hurt so badly Blythe’s expensive healing stone had sort of exploded and embedded itself into the sink in my sister’s kitchen. It was the night I’d gotten the thigh wound—the one that hurt worse than my arm.
She nodded. “I can call the council and have them get another lodestone for me. I’ll have to pay emergency shipping, but they can get us a lightning-struck one like the other.”
“Don’t. It’s not like it’ll be worth the expense. That one couldn’t take the dweller wounds.”
“I don’t know what else we can use. I need my books or if we find Sophie, she could help. She’s so much more talented at healing than I am.”
“Blythe, you’re pretty damned talented normally. We’re going to fix your magic. I wouldn’t trust Sophie to heal me. Hasn’t everything we’ve learned in the last few months told you she’s not on the up and up?”
“You don’t know her. If she suppressed my fire magic, as you say, then she had a reason. She loves me, I promise.”
I sighed, shoved my sleeve back down and rubbed my temples. “When all this is over, I’m crawling into that big bed of Nikolos’s, hopefully with him, and the two of us are going to sleep for a week.”
She giggled. “Yeah,
that’s
what you’ll do in bed for a week.”
I hadn’t told her about what I’d done with Nikolos in that dungeon and I didn’t plan to. That stuff was private and besides, my heart felt shredded over it. I started up the Jeep and drove until I sensed the brush of magic. “I can feel something in the forest already, so the concert will be around here somewhere.”
I saw a group of tents at the end of the road. The cheap, thin, two-man kind that came in small bags and had four metal stakes. Most of them were blue. “It’s winter and those are warm-weather tents. I’ve seen them in the stores—only cost around twenty-five bucks.” Instead of continuing on, I parked and got out.
Blythe came around the Jeep to stand beside me, holding her hand over her eyes, squinting. “I can’t see Sophie staying in a tent. Especially a cheap one. She’s kind of fancy, likes posh hotels, that sort of thing.”
“Let’s go around the trees and get a good look at the situation before we move in.” I stepped into the forest, frowned when Blythe laughed. “What?”
“You usually run right in to something.”
I curled my lip. “I do not. I always scout a situation out ahead of time.”
“Not in my experience.”
“Well, it’s not like we had a lot of time with the Dweller, Blythe.”
“True.” She shivered and pulled her peach-colored coat tighter around herself. She really should have grabbed one of Nikolos’s coats. They had to be warmer than that silly jacket. When she stopped walking, I did too.
“What?” I asked. “Is it that forest issue again?”
“I can’t help it. I don’t like being in here and—” She broke off. “Did you hear that?”
Goose bumps sprang up all over my body. I had. Some sort of low laugh that rumbled like it rode on a breeze. I couldn’t tell if whatever made the sound was close or far away—felt like far—but my crawling skin told me not far enough. We stood silently but it didn’t happen again, so I continued on, hoping the harsh crunch of leaves under our feet wouldn’t mask any closer noises. I’d tried stepping lightly, but it didn’t change the noise level at all. I caught a shimmer in the air ahead of us and peeled the dimensions to see Frida and Phro closer to the people in tents. Frida had his head cocked to the side, his muscular arms crossed and every line in the back of his body was tense.
“Hey, Blythe, can you still see Frida?”
She frowned.
“I noticed you don’t talk to him or about him.”
“It’s not like it is with your spirit guides.”
“Guide. My other one took off, remember?”
She stopped walking again and the look of guilt that darkened her features made me stop with her. “I can’t always see him and his name can’t be Frida and I feel so stupid for calling him that all these years, ever since I was a little girl and thought he was a she and an invisible friend. And you said they have to wear whatever we imagine them wearing and…” She closed her eyes. “He’s been in a lot of frilly girl clothes. Even a tutu.” She held her breath then whispered. “Bikinis. Yellow polka-dot bikinis.”
I choked and tried very hard not to laugh. “Oh please. Can you imagine him in one now?”
She slammed her hands over her ears. “No, don’t make me think it. I’m so scared I’ll think stuff like that all the time and then I start thinking that maybe he can read my thoughts. Have you ever done that? Been in a place like the DMV and suddenly worried the person next to you can read your mind and then all you can do is think of horrific things and can’t make your mind stop?”
“Um…not really.” I stepped behind a thick tree and pulled Blythe to stand in front of me. I’d had no idea all this was going on in her head. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy with this sort of thing. He can’t read your thoughts. If Phro could have read mine all these years, she would have taken off. And I think Frida has looked nice lately, even in the fluorescent yellow. Blythe, he obviously cares for you.”
“That’s just his job,” she mumbled, tucking a stray blonde curl behind her ear. “He has no choice. He’s stuck with me and I can’t stop thinking about all the ways I got it wrong. I thought he loved flowers and danced in them because I felt a breeze.”
This one did make me laugh. I put my fist over my mouth and tried to stop, but couldn’t.
Her expression turned fierce. “It’s not funny! I’ve been taking him into flower gardens for years and he’s so allergic it goes into his dimension. Did you see his face after we left the sprite’s warehouse?”
I hadn’t. I’d been too busy worrying about other things.
“It swelled up. How is that fair, huh, Beri? A spirit guide shouldn’t suffer things like allergies.”
This gave me pause. I racked my brain, went back over the years with Fred and Phro. “They don’t. Frida is an unusual spirit guide, I think. Remember how he fought off the dweller demon who tried to get in your body? I don’t know of any guides who can do that. They can gather up enough energy to appear solid for a very brief amount of time or even to throw a sort of punch at something, but even that’s rare. Frida fought and he got hurt.”
“I wish he would just talk.”
This time the laughter that sounded came from a young girl. I leaned around the tree to peek and saw that—thankfully—Frida and Phro were still there, but Phro had turned to glare at me. “Will you hurry up? You have to see this!” she yelled.
“Come on,” I told Blythe. “Let’s get a little closer to the tent people.” We walked, me wincing with each loud, dry leafy step. We stopped close enough to see, but not hear much outside of loud laughter or yelling. I put my palm on a maple tree and nearly snatched it back when I felt a hum of power in the trunk. Instead, I left my hand there. “This forest is healthy and it’s full of magic.” The tingling started to burn so I pulled away. “I don’t think it’s good magic.”
“I could take some herbs back to the sprite, see what he thinks.”
“Good idea.”
Blythe rummaged in her bag and pulled out her bolline. She’d gone with the traditional white-handled one with a crescent-shaped blade but, as usual, hers had intricate carving work—this time with swirled designs in the metal. The little witch had incredible talent when it came to metalwork. She pulled out the ever-present baggies she seemed to keep in huge numbers and cut roots and leaves.
I left her to it and stepped next to Phro. The clearing ahead of us had about twenty or thirty people milling about. The women wore long, flowing skirts and the men cloth pants—all under winter coats. There wasn’t a pair of jeans among them. Looked like a few had been camped here for days, some gathered around a campfire in the center of a group of cheap tents. “These people remind me of Deadheads,” I whispered. “I saw a documentary once on the groups of people who followed the Grateful Dead and they lived in tents, sold tie-dyed shirts and stuff.”
Blythe came up to us, carefully wrapping her knife back in its soft cloth. “These people don’t look healthy.”
She was right. I eyed the group around the fire, taking in the gaunt faces and bodies that looked skinny despite the winter coats. One woman stood, wobbled for a couple of seconds before walking slowly to a tent. When she bent to crawl inside, her skirt tightened over her backside and I could see the outline of actual hip bones. “They look like they’re starving,” I said.
A blue pickup pulled in and two wide-shouldered, bald, bulky men in matching tight, blue Staglina shirts got out and began unloading boxes of food. They carried them to the campfire and the people slowly got up to pull out skillets. Within minutes the scent of bacon filled the woods.
My stomach grumbled. “Come on, let’s go back to the Jeep. I don’t see anything that says Sophie or the other witches are even here yet. It looks like a group of overzealous groupies got here early, though I have to wonder why they’re being fed—by bouncers, I think.” I turned and started back.
“Are we driving all the way back to the motel?”
I shook my head. “No, let’s go get some food and warmer coats, then come back.” I stopped, put my hand on another tree and noticed the magic was faint, like we were moving out of whatever made that concert spot special. Low, rumbling and strangely delighted laughter trickled through the other forest sounds again.
Blythe shivered. “I hate that noise.”
“Yeah, me too.” Stopping, I held my breath and tried to hear who or what could be laughing like that, but the silence stretched out. The brush of magic over my skin in the next moment made me shudder. “Let’s walk faster. I’m starving.”
“Me too. I want bacon.”
Chapter Eight
Full dark had settled in by the time we got back to the concert. I parked my Jeep between other cars on the side of the road. If this had been a regular concert, someone would have lit the place up. Instead, we had darkness and a cloud of dirt that showed in the headlights. Street lamps shone up the road and people moved toward them slowly.
“Blythe, do you have some kind of weapon and a place to stash it? I doubt they’ll let you bring the bag into the concert and if they search it, we’ll just go to jail, no questions asked.”
“The band is made up of witches. They’ll understand.”
“But the people running the actual concert won’t. Have you ever been to a concert?”
Just then, something slammed into the side of the Jeep. I jumped out and pulled my knives, but it was only a few excited teenagers banging on cars as they passed them. I leaned down to look in at Blythe. “Let’s go on in. If you have a way to stash a weapon, do it now. But shove the bag under the seat.”
“Like it’ll fit,” she muttered.
I grinned, locked the door and shut it. When Blythe came around, I rolled my eyes and pointed at the baggies sticking out of the pockets of her coat. We’d each picked out a long down coat. Hers was white and mine was black because if I’d tried to wear a white one it would have been black with dirt and muck fast anyway. I’d tried to talk her out of white, especially since she’d stand out at the concert, but she couldn’t resist the “sweet little fur collar”.
Phro pointed out I’d be able to spot her in a crowd easily, so I’d caved. The material was supposed to stop at her knees, but it fell a good foot lower than that, so she waddled a bit when she walked.
The murmur of voices grew louder as we approached the concert arena and just like earlier, magic crept from the ground and the trees around us. It filled my throat, lungs and veins, pulsed inside me with a life that felt outside of my own.
“I can feel the power of this place pulling me.” Blythe patted her sides as if making sure she’d hidden all her baggies. “Can you taste it here?”
Something slithered over my foot and I slowed, watching the snake slide back into the underbrush. The buzz of bees sounded close by, but they stayed back. From the sound of them, there were a lot. “I can’t taste anything but cold air and the dirt coming up off the road. But I feel it. If that dead forest we saw before had magic like this one…I don’t think mere witches could drain it. Even a coven.”
“Depends on the witches.” Blythe laid a hand on my arm and we stopped walking. “Beri, most witches wouldn’t hurt Mother Earth. I told you about that rhyme.”