Sorrel:
Are you good?
With the message delivered, I waited a couple of seconds but didn’t get a response. But Rose sometimes turned her phone off when she was with people.
“Hey, we need to get the finding-map online before the fog eats the sun,” Juke said. I stuffed the phone in my pocket, hoping Rose wasn’t angry enough not to help.
Ranth was already in the goat enclosure. I marveled at how effortlessly he got the goat between his legs and milk shot into the bucket. Apparently, the wizard also had mad animal skills. My best nature skills were foraging for wildcrafting. Mushrooms, nettle, and seaweed harvesting was literally part of my blood. Not quite the same track, and probably all meaningless if I was considering what Ranth had said.
I walked into the tent. Juke was testing the lights on the side panels.
“Good to go?” I asked.
She nodded. “The tech is, at least. How it meshes with the magic part is not my specialty. If you connect this with an energy source to transmit data, you should get a result—in theory.” She stuck her hands in her hip huggers. The snakeskin print clung to her svelte frame, and the bottoms ended in rolled pink socks and sneakers. I loved her brand of style; it was so particularly her. Her braids were pinned to the back of her head with an iridescent butterfly.
Ranth came into the tent with the milk.
Inside the chalk circle were a hunk of green stone, a bowl of freshly dried sea salt, a clay brazier and charcoal brick, a length of hemp rope, and the bottle of wine. I grinned. Freddie, as usual, had been his awesome reliable self.
“Needs to be a salt triangle,” Ranth said, shaking his head.
“It’s not a protection line. I drew the circle to give you an idea of range. The signal needs to come from within that boundary, preferably the center of it,” Juke replied, glancing at me for backup.
Ranth nodded thoughtfully.
I picked up the salt. “I’ll set up the triangle. What else can I do to help?”
“We need some fresh water. Spring water if you have it. Should have mentioned that. I have to assemble it myself or it won’t work,” Ranth said, setting down the bucket in the circle.
“We only do spring.” I walked over to Juke’s cooler and handed him one of the flasks from inside.
“I will need you to take the vessels away once I’ve set them up. Except the bucket. But I must cleanse it first, so it can stay with me. The wine needs to be open.”
Juke pulled the cork while I poured the salt in a triangle big enough to sit in comfortably. Ranth lit the charcoal disk, set it in the brazier, and handed me the matches. He picked up a ball of kyphi and sniffed. His nose wrinkled.
“Will it work?” I asked.
“It smells different but good. We’ll see.”
Watching him work was like watching myself… if I were precise and organized.
When the disk turned ashen, he dropped a ball on top. The resin warmed and spread, releasing a white smoke that curled upwards. Ranth dumped fenugreek seeds beside the brazier and handed me the baggie.
“Juke, it’s time to open the roof.” Ranth stood up. He stripped off the jacket and handed it to me while he talked. The T-shirt followed the jacket and then the shoes. He dipped his hands into his waistband.
“Holy Shastas, what are you doing?” I asked.
“It’s a nature spell. You can’t do it with worldly trappings!” He raised a disbelieving eyebrow at me, as if I should know this.
I grew up with people who believed that nature was the first clothing, but I’d lived in San Francisco since I was twelve. I’d gotten used to the clothed human form.
Juke had clicked the roof button, and the panels above us grated open as Ranth dropped his pants. That was about the time Ori and Freddie arrived. I don’t remember the exact time because when Ori yelped, I was scraping my tongue off the asphalt.
Freddie shielded his eyes. “Man, what are you doing! Put your clothes back on.”
I looked away, then looked back. If this was what it took, then fine—eyes front, job first.
Ignoring all our reactions, Ranth leaned over the pile of seeds, his muscles stretching and giving us a model-style view of male anatomy at its finest. Ranth selected three seeds and popped them into his mouth one after the other, then dropped three more onto the brazier. I’d seen him naked before, but things were different now. He was so comfortable in his skin, I couldn’t help the desire rolling off me. So so sexy.
