De Spina bent down and inspected the mark. He never touched me, although sometimes the intensity in which he stared made it feel as if his fingers were probing my skin, searching for irregularities or remnants of evil within me.
After a minute or so, Professor de Spina stood. “Miss Dane appears to be fine.”
Headmistress Wake nodded. “Thank you, Professor. You may leave.”
De Spina turned and strode down the hallway toward his classroom. When he was out of earshot, the headmistress turned to Phoebe and me and handed us each an envelope.
“These are your mission instructions. A car is waiting out front, and there are credit cards and plenty of cash in the denominations you need to complete your mission.”
Phoebe shot me a wary glance. “We’re not going to warp there?” she asked, disbelief dripping from her tone.
“No, Miss Pudeator. Unless Miss Dane is now capable of warping across state lines to an unseen destination?” She looked at me.
I shook my head, and Headmistress Wake nodded.
“I thought not. Except for the emergency pin I provided, you two are on your own this time around. Every year we will treat you more and more like regular spies of the Paranormal Intelligence Agency. As they have not had a warper on staff for thirty years, regular spies do not get warped from one assignment to the next.”
I stared down at the envelope, a sense of unease washing over me. No wonder these missions took longer. Who knew where in the world we would have to travel before we started our mission?
“If there are no other questions,” the headmistress said, “I will leave you two to it.”
Phoebe and I exchanged glances and shook our heads.
“Best of luck, girls,” Headmistress Wake said and walked away, leaving us to our own devices.
Chapter Fifteen
My lungs strained as we drove deeper into the Colorado Rockies. Phoebe had offered to drive, so I was relegated to the role of navigator for the duration of our journey from Denver to Crescent Springs, the old mining town turned resort mecca.
As far as I could tell, we were due to arrive at our destination at noon, and I couldn’t wait to get there. Hour by hour, the reason they gave Grind-year students four days to complete a single mission became more clear. Without Professor Tittelbaum to warp us wherever we needed to go, missions took way longer.
I might soon warp myself vast distances to sites unseen, but without a vivid photograph as a guide or a prior visit, my confidence wasn’t there yet.
“Are we close?” Phoebe asked.
I leaned over the old-school map the car rental agency had provided. Traveling without cell phones was a pain in the ass, but I’d have to get used to it. Spellcasters confiscated our phones at the beginning of each year. And even if I had a phone, I wasn’t sure it would work this deep in the woods. The map was our only option.
“I think it’s five more miles and to the right.” My finger followed the line representing the desolate mountain road we were driving down.
Crescent Springs was at least an hour off a major highway, with no nearby towns. When we’d asked about it at the car rental agency, only two people had even heard of the place. And their reactions weren’t promising.
Our checkout agent had wrinkled her pert nose and claimed that Crescent Springs used to be a dump where only biker gangs lived. Apparently, about five years ago, some rich family had bought up most of the property in the town and built a spa near the natural hot springs. Nowadays, it was a pricey boutique mountain village where tourists spent beaucoup money to relax in nature.
And that wasn’t all . . .
Another agent overheard our conversation and added that if we planned on hiking, we needed to be careful. Lately, unidentified animals had been attacking visitors in the area. They had killed six people in the last month.
Phoebe and I soaked up all the information, knowing that anything and everything might prove useful in completing our mission. And we needed all the help we could get, because the objective the PIA and Spellcasters had given us was vague at best. We were to find an object, supernatural in nature, and extract it from Crescent Springs for the PIA.
“I feel like I should say something before we really get started on this mission,” Phoebe said, ripping me out of my musings.
I turned from staring out of the window to face her. Her arms were unnaturally stiff as they gripped the wheel. “What’s that?”
“I want to apologize for how I treated you last year.”
I blinked. That was unexpected.
Phoebe darted a glance at me, clearly gauging my reaction. “Obviously, you hold no ill will toward me, and Diana said that you accepted her apology, so I don’t know why it took me so long, but still . . . I wanted to throw it out there.” She inhaled a big breath. “So I’m sorry, Odette. I was a jerk last year. I hope that you can forgive that. It was uncalled for, and I don’t want my past actions to interfere with our ability to carry out this mission. Or any future relationship we might have.”
