That came out of left field. But if he wanted direct, she could be direct. As long as she didn’t look him in the eyes while she was being candid. “I like you. I thought you liked me. Then I got sick and you backed off like I had the plague. Which I did, sorta. I hoped spending the day together might let us see if there’s anything left between us. Falling off a mountain and maybe ending up in a splatter of blood and broken bones seemed the best option at the time.”
Eli laughed again. It was a good laugh. He didn’t do it often. Maybe hanging with the kids had brought out a softer side of him. “You rethinking that strategy now?” he asked.
She pulled off her hat and scratched her sweaty scalp, thinking. She redid her ponytail, this time hanging it out of the small hole in back. “Not really. Angie Baby and EJ called you Captain America. They’re right. And this is fun, in a hot, sweaty, hard-to-breathe, muscle-wrenching, exhausting kind of way.”
There was a lot left unsaid in that exchange, but she’d take what she could get. He grinned at her and something warmed again in her middle, which reminded her. She dug in a pocket and handed him a tiny reddish stone. “I forgot. Raw hematite. It’s spelled to make ticks think you’re made of rock. Next time I’ll see if I can make one to repel snakes, spiders, and these gnats, which my lotion does nothing to combat.” She waved at the gnats again swarming her face.
Eli took the small rough stone and tucked it into the chest pocket of his T-shirt before starting back along the pseudo-trail. They crossed a runnel of water. When her foot landed on the other side, the odd itchy feeling of the blood-curse taint hit her. Hard. She stopped, activated herseeingworking again, and stared around. Eli didn’t look back, but his hand went to his gun at his right thigh. “What?” he asked, sotto voce.
“Not something I can explain. Just this itchy feeling I get whenever something evil is close by or is watching me.”
“Evil.”
“Yeah. I don’tseeanything, but something’s not right.”
“Your dog crystal is glowing.”
Liz looked down at the crystal, and in herseeingworking, it glowed red. In her normal human eyesight it was pale pink.
“Your dog crystal isglowing,” he repeated, pushing her behind a tree, his eyes still searching for mundane threats, “at the same time you get an itchy feeling about evil. I don’t like coincidences. What do you know about the woman who hired you?”
Not much, Liz thought, her mind ranging through possibilities she hadn’t considered before. “She was... She claimed to be Golda Ainsworth Holcomb, from the Ainsworth witch family. They’ve been in this country since the eighteen hundreds, are allied with three covens that I know of, and have a solid rep. She sent an email, referencing my sister who doesn’t remember her, but Moll is well known everywhere, so she might have heard her talking about me and that I supplement my income with the occasional magical investigation.”
Liz looked at the crystal again and saw that the energies were still pointing well over a half mile away. They had been trekking hard, but mostly downhill, not horizontal. “But... I had a vague feeling at the hospital that something wasn’t right. Never could put my finger on it. Let me think.” Liz slid down the tree she was leaning on and closed her eyes, trying to recall every word, every gesture.
“Holy crap,” she whispered. “Golda wasn’t wearing—I can’t saywasn’t. But I don’t remember seeing a hospital bracelet on her wrist. And... she smelled wrong.” She looked up at Eli. “Golda had a head wound, broken bones. And she smelled sweet. Vaguely like jelly.”
Softly, Eli said, “People with wounds don’t smell sweet. Shock and trauma to the body release toxins into the blood, and even after the flesh is stitched back up, they sweat out the stink. It can take days for the smell to go away.”
“She had blood in her hair. It was hours old and it was still reddish, like pinkish red.”
“Shouldn’t have been. Should have been brownish red. Unless the accident tossed jelly into her hair. Maybe she had groceries in the car.”
“Could be. That could also account for the sweet smell.” Liz brightened and stood. “That makes a lot of sense, but I think I’ll call the hospital and ask to be put through to her room.”
“Not likely,” Eli said. “We’ve been out of a service area for an hour.” He pointed down the trail and then up. “Maybe by the time we get to that low peak we’ll have service. Not in this crevice.” He checked his watch and the compass. “We should start climbing soon, and be there in two hours, barring any forced detours.” Without looking back at her he added, “You’re breathing hard.”
“Exertion. My pulmonologist says I healed up great, but that I have to breathe hard all the time to force my lungs to work. I’ve begun to run and walk, but not on inclines like these. The pulmonologist calls it rehab, but he means torture.”
“Rehab sucks.”
“Oh yeah.” She followed him along the trail and toward the peak where they might get cell service. Or not.
Eli
He made the trek up and down the terrain as easy as possible, making sure her hands were in place on the next tree or outcropping, her walking stick was properly positioned, and her feet were secure before he moved on. But he didn’t hover. It wasn’t in his nature to take over other people’s jobs, and the witch had set this up.
At the top of the small hill, he made sure she was okay—as in still breathing and not in clinical distress—and took out his binoculars and compass. He took a fix on the surrounding hills, inspecting what he could see of the folds of the land leading down. There was a signal here and so he took another look at the topo maps on his cell. He couldn’t see it from this vantage, but there was a flat place about halfway down that would make a good campsite. Looked like maybe a water feature.
Looking at the nearby hills again, he spotted a cellular tower or three and took another reading on the compass. He set his kit down andremoved a battery-powered, solar-backup Wi-Fi system. He figured about eight feet up on the tree would work. He handed Lizzie a bottle of water. “When you get your breath back, we have a signal,” he said.
Liz
Liz was fit and in good shape for a woman with leftover lung damage, but at the top of the peak she dropped the backpack, fell flat on the ground, drank another bottle of water, and poured the last drizzles over her face through the netting of her hat. Her chest was heaving, her heart was pounding, she was wet with sweat, and if she didn’t have Toto to find, she might just lie there and die, toes curling up like the Wicked Witch of the East.
Most witches hated it, but early on, before she understood the social impact of the film,The Wizard of Ozhad been one of her favorite childhood movies, especially the flying monkeys. At age four, she’d wanted a flying monkey as a pet so bad she’d cried when her mother brought her a puppy. She pulled off the hot sweaty hat and searched out Eli.
He was staring out over the surrounding area with a pair of good-quality binoculars. A full minute or three later, her breathing finally settled into an even pattern, one without the rasp of extreme exertion, and Liz sat up. Her jacket was full of twigs, seeds, leaves, and forest-floor junk. Her hands were blistered even through the gloves from grabbing tree trunks to ease her way down and pull herself uphill, and her fingernails were grubby from all of the above. Her walking stick was dark from dirt.
