“We didn’t know!” I shout.
Simon takes my hand. “We’re not from around here!”
“No,”the voice says.“Can see that. Can smell that.… You are something different. Not just bloodeaters. Something much more foul…”
I close my eyes and cast into the murk—“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“Mages,”the voice says, scornfully.
And then the darkness swallows me.
35
BAZ
I can’t move.
I try again—I can’t move. My arms are tied.
I can’t sit up. My legs are tied.
My face hurts. I’m lying on a rock.
I can’t move.
I can’t breathe!
No—I can. I can. My mouth is gagged, but I can still breathe.
I can’t move. I can’t see—
I open my eyes.…
I’m lying on my shoulder near a campfire. There’s a woman sitting on the other side. An older woman—or perhaps a younger woman with long white hair. She’s holding her hands out over the fire. There are gold rings on every finger and gold bands around her wrists. She’s watching me.
“Urrrghhff.” Simon is struggling, somewhere close to me—thrashing around by the sound of it. I wish I could tell him to calm down. I grunt, so that he knows I’m here.
He thrashes harder.
“Should send you back to sleep,”the woman says. Her mouth doesn’t move. Her voice is inside my head.“All of you. Don’t need you awake to sort you out.”
She stands and walks over to me. Sheisold, I think, though she moves like a young person. She’s wearing worn jeans and a beaded red shawl that glints in the firelight. Her eyes are pale, that shade of green you only see on cats. She lifts my chin with the tip of her grey cowboy boot.“Heard about you,”she says.“Didn’t think they’d manage it, but here you are. You smell like blood and magic, boy. Both gone rancid.”Her lip curls.“Not. On. My. Mountain.”She kicks me in the stomach.
Fuck.
I try to shout, but choke instead. My chest still burns from the gunshots. I need to eat. I need to drink. I am under every sort of weather.
Simon is tossing around again. The woman turns to look at him.“Fool kitten. Gone and made a dangerous friend. You’ll suffer for it.”
Whatisshe? A fairy? An elf? Does America still have those? Are these the Undying Lands? My mother would know. She could name every sort of magickal being and creature, even the lost and the dead.
The woman lifts her head. She smells something.
I smell it, too—something human. A Normal.
“Shepard!” the woman says out loud. She’s smiling.
“Margaret!” It’s the Normal we left in Denver. I can’t yet see him, but I recognize his voice and his scent. He must have been working with this woman all along.
