Walk like your stalking game,he finally said, trying to offer advice and not just ultimatums. Keep your weight balanced and go gently. You’re still going to sink a little, but it won’t be a lot. You can still move.
“You can do it,” she said in that sweet voice, and he almost changed to tell her that was not helping; it just riled his wolf into proving itself.
Dolce, he said like Nonna used to,Softly.
Finally, the wolf got itself together enough to take the first few tentative steps out onto the snow.
It marveled at the fact that they would not be stuck in a ditch. Its paws sank a little, but with four feet instead of two, it actually worked better than snowshoes for people. The wolf crept forward like it was stalking.
You can just walk now,Mateo corrected, worried it was going to stalk its way to a silver mine.
She started after them, and Mateo immediately wanted to take her on his back, feeling tortured at the amount of effort she had to make to walk. But they would definitely sink if he added another hundred-plus pounds to his back, and besides, of the two of them, she was more likely to do this well.
She rotated around and closed her eyes, and he felt tingling through him. Was that her magic? Could he sense it? Why couldn’t he sense any other witch’s magic?
“The fire has gone out. They’re even colder, but they don’t want to go out to get wood. They don’t know the blizzard’s over. It’s so weird. You said they’re in a silver mine, but it’s like a cave. The walls are all rough.”
He wished he could talk to her. Wolves could talk mind to mind.
It sounded like an old silver mine. No kid could sneak into the new shafts that modern equipment could dig, but these hills were littered with claims by people who blasted into the rock for a couple hundred feet, realized mining wasn’t that easy, and abandoned them. They were often marked with rusted-out tin cans or buckets, which was an archaeologist’s dream and a tetanus nightmare.
He tried to think it really hard to her, like he would to another wolf, but he didn’t hold out hope.
She froze. “Argent picked the site of an old mine. Come on.”
He forced the wolf after her. It was walking more normally as it began to trust the physics of snowshoes. He contemplatedher realization. Had she heard him or just jumped to the same conclusion he had?
They hiked away from the cabin up into the hills. Mateo wished the clouds would dissipate, because this was probably spectacular in the sunshine. Weirdly, he felt nostalgic for a place he’d only spent a couple of days, some of them fighting for his life.
They hiked for over an hour, though the wolf’s conception of time was pretty squishy, and he had no idea how far they were actually traveling. The beast grew confident with its snowshoes, and it showed increasing interest in the world around them, especially because the forest came alive as the rest of the animal kingdom started digging out. Neither he nor the wolf could really fathom this much wildness. It made him ache for his beast, who was not tame but had nevertheless lost whatever wildness it had in the endless grid of the city.
Mateo didn’t know how he was going to get back on a plane at the end of the week and bring his wolf back to that. On the other hand, taking even this long away was absurd, and he could not rip his life apart for a witch.
She walked through the forest like she was born to it, automatically finding the firmest snow as it collected between trees from the direction of the wind, but avoiding the pits on the other side of each tree that sucked in feet. Even though she consulted no GPS or map, she guided them surely with occasional glances at the cloud-filled sky.
They would hear the occasional rev of an engine or the shout of Search and Rescue teams, but every time he flicked an ear toward them, sure someone would come upon them, she would shake her head.
“Over a mile away.” Sound echoed weirdly around them, distorting distances and direction.
It was only when she stopped and his wolf almost ran into her, that he realized his wolf had happily been following her since they left the cabin. It was an alpha wolf; it didn’t follow anyone.
Who was this girl?
“We’re almost there,” she said, and proceeded with more caution as they came upon a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on top.
The wolf almost gave up and let him shift. It did not do fences, especially not ones with barbed wire.
“This is why I hate magic sometimes,” Cat muttered.
He twisted around and cocked an ear at her.
She flinched. “I forgot you can hear everything. I just mean, when I left home intent on shaking some sense into them, the visions left out a blizzard and the need for bolt cutters.”
He shook his head vehemently, noticing the slight fizzle to the air along the wires.
He loped along the fence to look for a fuse box or something like it.
“I suppose we could do your trick with the dangling tree.”
