“A healing shroud.”
His dark eyebrows ticked up. “That’s rare. But good. Yes, if it’s strong—”
“It’s strong.”
“Then it should break the magic that’s holding her. Is it nearby?”
“A few miles.”
His whole face lit up. “Good. Yes, good. The compress will last a few miles for sure.” He shifted his hand with the rock, which was still resting against his chest, pressing it closer over his heart, lending his strength to help Abbi.
“So.” He leaned back against the wall opposite me, his free hand in the fronds of a sword fern, his sneakered feet flat on the floor, knees bent. “You had questions. What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Miss Woodbury,” I said. “Have you met her?”
“Yes.”
“Is she a seer?”
“Yes. As much as.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not everything fits neatly in a box. People, abilities, assumptions. It’s hard to put one name to Miss Woodbury. She sees things. Much of it is accurate. She…influences things. But she doesn’t know everything. Free will always throws a wrench into the cosmic machinery.”
“What does she want with us?”
“I have no idea. She called me, told me to look for Lula and Brogan Gauge, told me where you’d be.”
“So you just drop everything and do what she tells you?” The van hit a hard patch of road and a headache rattled through my skull.
“She’s a friend. She’s done favors for me in the past, so I do favors for her. You’re a very suspicious man for someone who’s just been rescued from a rollover in the middle of a flash flood.”
“All the more reason to be suspicious.” I rubbed at my forehead. Didn’t ease the headache.
“What threw you into the ditch? Bad tires?”
“Avoiding a front-end collision with a car headed straight at us.”
“You must have been off the road for quite a while.”
“You showed up less than five minutes after we were run off the road,” Lu said.
The lines around his mouth dug in as his lips pulled down. “That can’t be right. I didn’t see a car pass me. There aren’t any side roads, houses, or pullouts. If someone had run you off the road, I would have seen them.”
The van hit another bump, and I pressed my hand over my eyes to keep my brains from falling out.
“You missed them,” I said.
“No…” He shifted and tapped my arm.
I dropped my hand and squinted at him. He pressed another soft cloth, this one filled with something that smelled of peppermint and rosemary, against my eyes. The relief was immense. I took over, holding it over my aching head.
“I couldn’t have missed someone on the road,” he said.
“Swell. I saw the car…”
—sandpaper eyes, unhinged laughter delighting in our pain—
