“Time,” I say, grimacing. “Not what it’s made out to be.”
“Maybe you need to use it differently,” she replies with that easy sass of hers. Always been this way.
I set the foil-wrapped Wildblood artifact on the counter with a thud, eyes narrowing. “Want to tell me what happened tothis?”
“Where’d you get that?” she asks, straightening.
“Burned out cabin in the winter pasture a week ago. Broken. Useless. And yet the mountains still pulled me to it. Pulled mehere, too.”
She shakes her head, eyes not meeting mine.
“Maybe start with last week’s storm?”
She swallows too loudly.
“Awfully strange one,” I add, tugging at my beard in thought. “Haven’t felt the hum like that in…” I shake my head, mind wandering back. “Not since Clemson still walked this planet.”
“Clemson.”
It comes out like a throb. One of our own. One too many to lose. Though what reason he’d still want to be here escapes me.
“Passed his grave the same day I found this. Funniest thing. The hum of the mountains keeps telling me Ineedit now. Broken or not.”
“Hybrid dampener. Meant to suppress. Always good to have on hand.”
“It doesn’t just suppress. It interferes—with anything tied to resonance,” I say, impatient with her lack of understanding. “Scrambles the signal. Bond, tech… anything that runs through the hum. When it works. But don’t now, and I aim to find out why.”
“You touched it?” she asks, pulling back the metallic fabric carefully.
I nod once.
“What does that mean for the rest of us?” she asks. Younger than me, though ancient in this community, there’s not much Mags doesn’t know. Still, her naivete, whether real or fake, surprises me.
My jaw tenses. “Means men like me shouldn’t ride into towns like this.”
The corners of her mouth soften. “I mean, the mountains. Why are they telling you something new?”
I rub a hand over my face. “Hell if I know. Won’t get caught unprepared, though. I know how that goes.” A cold sweat breaks out on my forehead, memories washing back over me I don’t want.
That’s when I notice it. Something unreadable in Mags’s face that I can’t ignore.
“Whataren’tyou telling me, Mags?”
She squeezes her hands in front of her as if she has a choice. “Discipline, Guthrie. I’ve told you all along. Don’t need a dampener if you cultivate it. And a mind like yours… I can only imagine what you’d be capable of.”
“Don’t lecture me.” I step closer, clearing my throat. “Magdalena Redfern… youwilltell me everything.”
“It’s just,” she stares at her toes, all the vim and vigor gone. “Something I heard earlier today. Already spreading through town like wildfire… that there were some strange happenings at the Wakefield Ranch.”
Wakefield. Haven’t heard that name in decades.
I grunt, face hardening.
“That was a long time ago,” Mags reminds.
But the smell of smoke still burns my nostrils. The pleas for mercy unheeded and unanswered. Wildblood hunters, from a time and a place when survival still mattered.
I shake my head, shoving the past back where it belongs. “What kind of strange happenings?”
