Max suddenly realized she still had her hand resting on his now flesh and blood arm. Self-consciously, she pulled her hand back. "Does that happen to you a lot?" she asked, trying to recover her composure.
"It's improving a little." Gio ran his hand through his wild mane, brushing it out of his face. "I just don't have a lot of control yet." His quick gaze darted around the hut, checking everything as Max had when she woke up. "No sign of anyone yet?"
"No. Do you have any idea when we can expect them?"
"Could be anytime starting today," Gio said. He ran his hand through his hair again, dislodging sand and twigs. "They'll be along in the next few days, if they run true to form."
"Then I guess we'd better get some breakfast in us. I hate fighting a magician on an empty stomach."
She got up and started rummaging through their supplies. Gio yawned and got out of his sleeping bag. She was a little disappointed to see that he had slept in the same dark slacks he had been wearing yesterday; no glimpse of legs. She had to content herself with bare feet and arms.
"Shake your shoes out before you put them on," she said, firing up the Sterno stove for coffee.
Gio froze in the act of putting on his socks. "Why?"
"Snakes, scorpions, bugs. It's just a good habit to get into."
"What a lovely place."
"It really is," Max said, glancing out the window.
If the windows had ever had glass, they had lost it long ago. A sweet-smelling desert wind blew in, along with a certain amount of gritty dust. The view framed by the window looked like a postcard, gold and gray-green with pale blue hills in the distance.
"Want help with breakfast?" Gio very conscientiously knocked each shoe before putting it on. Max doubted there was actually much risk of scorpions—they weren't that common—but it was better safe than sorry.
"Sure. There's a jar of powdered eggs in the top of my pack, and a package of bacon in the cooler that we need to eat soon."
"You travel prepared," Gio said with a smile, digging out the requested items.
"No need to skimp on the supplies, since I have the Jeep. I've done my share of roughing it, hunting and living off the land as a jaguar. These days I prefer an air mattress and a hearty breakfast that I didn't have to hunt myself."
Carrying tin plates loaded with bacon and eggs, and a cup of coffee apiece, they went out into the fresh morning air to eat.
"If your magician is watching us, we should act natural," Max said. "Nothing will tip him off like sitting around and staring at the horizon with binoculars."
"Why in the world would we be here for any other reason?" Gio asked bluntly.
Max shrugged. "Perhaps you're having a nice camping trip with a guide. Maybe you think you'll gain yourself some breathing room if you hide out in the country."
"They can find me anywhere."
"Work with me here, Gio. This is a relaxing, recreational trip to the countryside. Get in character."
Gio set down his plate with the fork neatly laid across it. As before, he had finished his food in record time, and she made a mental note for the future to give him the extra helpings he was evidently too polite to ask for. "What does one do on a relaxing, recreational trip to the countryside?"
"Uh," Max said. There was an answer that came immediately to mind, but it was unprofessional and would probably involve getting sand in uncomfortable places.
However, now that sex had popped into her head, she could think of literally nothing else. She'd had this happen to her in school, when her brain latched on to the wrong answer and refused to let it go and provide the right one. The capital of Spain is not Barcelona, but her mind was perfectly blank of other options. The answer to "how do we spend the next few days" definitely wasnot"have lots of sex," but what else did a person do with their time, ever?
Her jaguar, being no help at all, was wildly on board with this idea. It was normally quiet, snarly, and resistant to anything non-hunting-related, and it hadn't spoken to her properly in years. If their exile had dealt Max a gutting blow, it had taken most of the life out of her jaguar. But her inner animal was all but rolling over and purring now.
"You're not very good at relaxing, are you?" Gio asked when Max continued to not say anything.
"I'm perfectly good at relaxing!" Max retorted.Especially with you on top of me,said her far too active, libido-driven subconscious.
"Did you bring anything to relax with? Games?"
"Somehow it didn't occur to me to chuck a pile of board games into the car on top of the grenades. My bad."
