“I think they were fighting. Maybe. A whole troop of them swung through the trees and chased after something. I’m honestly surprised that didn’t wake you up.”
“Me too.” She took a deep breath, then yawned. “What’s everybody else up to?”
“Eating. Packing, I think. I made coffee.”
She rubbed her face. “For everyone.”
“No way. Only you.”
“Oh, my God. I’m so in love with—” She blinked, stared at the comforter in her lap, and looked at him. “The way you make coffee.”
His eyes widened and his brows raised all the way as he chuckled. “Oh, yeah? You fell hard for the way I make coffee, huh?”
She tilted her head back and tried not to look embarrassed. That was a close one. This is not exactly the best scenario to spill all that on him. If I was ever going to say that—cut it out, Lily. “Yep. I’m confessing my love for your coffee.”
“Should I bring you some and leave you two alone?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She snorted. “I don’t take coffee to bed.”
“Oh, good.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m glad there’s still room for me somewhere.” He turned and stepped into the kitchen.
Real smooth, Lily. He has to know that Lily in the morning is the worst version of me, right? She puffed out a sigh, tossed the covers off, and slipped out of the bed in her pajama shorts and tank top.
He waited for her with a hot cup of coffee when she stepped out. “Thank you.” She took the cup from him and headed to the bathroom.
“No problem. I definitely don’t wanna keep you two apart.”
“Ha, ha.”
When she came back out of the bathroom, he was seated at the tiny table with his own cup of coffee. She came to sit with him and slid into the booth far more easily than he ever did with his long legs. They stared at each other and smiled over the rims of their cups as they drank and didn’t say another word. He’s gonna ask me what I almost actually said.
Romeo swallowed and took a breath. “So I have a—” A soft knock came at the Winnie’s side door. He raised an eyebrow at her, then laughed. “I’ll get it.” His knees thumped against the underside of the table as he scooted out of the booth. Lily tried not to laugh as he rolled his eyes and stood to head for the side door. When he opened it, they were both surprised to see Neron standing outside.
“Good morning.”
“Oh. Morning.” Romeo smiled and studied the man’s dark clothes and firmly set jaw.
“I am called Neron.” He nodded. “And I know you are Romeo.”
He smirked. “Well, I guess that’s it for the introductions, then.”
The corners of the visitor’s mouth twitched up a little. “It is still good to make them. I brought you both some food. It was cooked last night but it is also good heated again for breakfast.” He lifted a wooden plate with a stack of the same sugar-encrusted corn cakes from the night before.
“That actually looks excellent. Thanks.” He took the plate and held himself back from eating it all at once when the steam curled up toward his face.
Neron cleared his throat. “I also wonder if both of you have decided what you will do after today. After most of my people leave.” He peered past Romeo into the RV, and Lily stood from the table.
“We talked about it last night,” she said. Romeo turned to glance at her, then nodded. “I think we’ll come with you. At least for part of it.”
“Good.” Neron inclined his head and looked relieved. “I was hoping this would be your answer.”
“We might have to move on ahead of you, though.” He stepped aside and gestured for the man to join them. The man merely raised a hand in polite refusal and shook his head. “We don’t really have two weeks to spare while everyone else walks to Guatemala.”
His gaze cut quickly toward the werewolf again. “Two weeks?” He chuckled, then barked out a laugh. “You think we will take two weeks to go to Ichacál?”
“Maybe more, right? I know it’s a long way to walk.”
Neron laughed again, shook his head, and grinned at the couple as Lily came to stand at the top step inside the door. “We are walking—mostly. But it will only take us a few days. Not weeks.”
Romeo turned back to glance at her. “I feel like I missed the punchline.”
“Yeah, me too.” She smiled at their visitor. “How will you walk four hundred and twenty miles in a few days?”
“Oh, you have not seen this done.” He nodded, and his smile settled into a tiny flicker at the corners of his mouth. “I do not wish to spoil the surprise of it for you. I know you will find it amusing. When we bring the wagons here beside you, it will be time to leave.”
“Um…okay.” She smiled at him. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Of course.” Neron nodded again and turned stiffly away from the door before he strode toward the huts.
“He has a weird sense of humor, doesn’t he?” Romeo watched the man disappear between two wooden buildings before he closed the Winnie’s side door.
She shrugged. “Maybe that’s what happens when you can only use magic through death.”
“That makes sense.” He turned and walked up the steps with the steaming sweet-corn cakes in his hand. “Hungry?”
“We might as well eat now, right?” She laughed and snatched the top cake. “Before we find out whatever kinda super-speed or totally unexpected magic these people use to get to the temple.”
“I guess. I thought the same thing at Carowinds when I was…I dunno. Seven? Eating a whole elephant ear so I wouldn’t have to stop riding rides for lunch was not an excellent idea. As evidenced by me puking the whole thing up anyway after the Tilt-O-Whirl.”
Lily snorted. “Was that your idea or your dad’s?”
He took a cake from the plate before he set it on the counter and shrugged. “I think we came to a mutual understanding. He didn’t like it any better than I did.”
“Gross. To be clear, you mean the funnel-cake thing, right? Not an actual elephant ear?”
“Seriously?”
She grinned. “Hey, with you, that could’ve been an actual possibility.”
“Oh, yeah. There are so many real elephants walking around in Charleston.” He paused and squinted at the ceiling. “That’s one thing I can say with a hundred percent certainty that I’ve never eaten.”
“Yeah, that would be a really weird thing to check off the list.”
“Okay…” Romeo nodded and his expression suggested he wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Lily laughed again. “You know what? Eat your corn cake.”
She took another bite and squealed a protest when he quickly shoved more of it into her mouth.
Half an hour later, the first wagon appeared between the huts, pulled by a man in a bright blue shirt. He grinned at them as they stepped out of the Winnie, dressed and full from breakfast. “So they’re gonna pull all the carts like this?” Romeo muttered but smiled in response as he closed the side door behind him. “On foot over four hundred miles to Guatemala?”
“Well, they are witches.” Lily shrugged. “I’m actually really curious to see exactly how they pull this off.”
“You coulda fooled me, though.” He raised an eyebrow and glanced at the next two carts emerging from the village. “Except for Rosalía, I haven’t seen or smelled a hint of magic since we got here.”
She smirked at him. “You sound disappointed.”
“Not disappointed. Merely a little confused. I don’t know any witches who don’t actively use magic on a regular basis, especially at a party.”
“Romeo, you don’t know very many witches at all.”
“Well, I’ve met any number of them since we left Charleston. And they were all kinds of”—he wiggled his fingers in front of his face—“magic-y.”
“That’s the technical term for it, right?” She bit back a laugh.
“Yeah. I only now made it official.” He grinned at her and took a few steps away from the veh
icle. “Okay. We have two witch-drawn wagons and a—what the hell is that?”
She turned to follow his gaze and her mouth dropped open. “Uh…I’m tempted to say that’s another wagon. But beyond that, I literally have no clue.”
The contraption could easily have been one of the village huts on wheels, although it looked more like two or three wagons cobbled haphazardly together. It was both lopsided and crooked and rumbled slowly over the packed dirt as the only wagon pulled by not one of the oxen but two.
“I can’t imagine anything but magic holding that thing together,” Romeo muttered.
“You’re probably right.”
One more regular-sized wagon joined the procession for a total of four, plus the monstrous, oxen-drawn contrivance. More villagers crowded around them, all of them smiling and embracing those who’d decided to stay behind. The few families among them lucky enough to still have their children had all agreed to make this pilgrimage. Their home—their village—would soon only consist of the younger adults without families and those who were too old to make the trek.
The six children, Rosalía and Filipe among them, darted through the gathering of their people beside the Winnie, laughing and shouting at each other, fueled by the excitement and the trepidation of stepping farther beyond their village and this mountain than Plan de Ayutla.
Aluino and Chalina stepped toward the young couple. The man nodded and thrust his hand toward Romeo for another handshake. His wife embraced Lily quickly and released her. “We begin our journey now,” he said with a wide smile. “We have heard you wish to accompany us.”
“Only for a little while,” she said. “We might move on ahead of you to the temple, but to start, yes. We’ll come with you.”
“You think we will slow you down, don’t you?” Chalina asked.
They glanced at one another and neither of them could come up with anything to say that wouldn’t sound ridiculously or even possibly rude.
“This is fine.” The woman nodded.
Her husband smirked at them. “Perhaps you will change your mind when you see how things are done.”
I doubt it. Lily glanced at the villagers saying their goodbyes and located Neron. The man carried a tall, thick walking stick, the bark whittled away to reveal the hard, glistening wood beneath. A few feathers and stones dangled from brightly colored woven thongs tied to the tip of the staff but beyond this, the death witch carried nothing else with him. He met her gaze with the ghost of a smile and nodded.
“Are we prepared?” another villager shouted. Those leaving the only home they’d ever known raised their fists and voices together in a cheer of readiness. The children still chased each other about. One woman took hold of the oxen harness between the two beasts towing the large, ramshackle wagon and led them forward across the dirt. Four men took up the smaller wagons, holding the harness shafts in each hand like picking up a wheelbarrow before they followed the oxen team.
Aluino watched the procession move off with a proud grin, then turned to the young couple again. “You may follow us in your… This is your home, correct?” He nodded at the Winnie.
They exchanged glances again. “Uh…for now. Yeah.” She nodded.
“The adventuremobile’s growing on us.” Romeo grinned.
“Good. You may follow us in your adventuremobile.” He winked, took his wife’s hand, and followed the wagon procession on foot.
The young witch and her werewolf friend turned to the RV. He shook his head. “I really thought he would’ve picked up on the fact that it’s a nickname.”
“What do you mean?” She opened the side door and climbed the short flight of stairs.
“I mean I didn’t translate adventuremobile.”
She laughed. “Are you gonna tell him that’s not actually what it’s called?”
He smirked and headed to the driver’s seat. “I know it’s not doing them any favors, but I kinda like the idea of letting the name stick. After all, isn’t every RV an adventuremobile anyway?”
Sliding quickly into the passenger seat, Lily turned toward him and smirked. “Not like ours.”
Twenty
“Okay, I don’t know how much longer I can handle this.” Romeo dropped his head back against the driver seat’s headrest and sighed.
“It’s only been an hour.”
“That’s what I mean. We’ve literally moved at five miles an hour for an hour. Do you think we could maybe hook all those wagons together and tow them? I wouldn’t mind cramming all these people into the Winnie, either, if it means we can move faster.” He jerked on the steering wheel as the vehicle bumped and jarred along the uneven, barely existent dirt path from the village.
“We’ve sat in traffic before.”
“This isn’t traffic, Lil. This is old-school travel from before cars even existed. This is like the Winnie took us back in time to the beginning of America to try crossing the Rocky Mountains with the pioneers.”
She laughed. “That would make a good story, though. Right? Winnebago Time Machine?”
He flashed her a narrow-eyed, sideways glance. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s totally funny.”
“Okay. He snorted. “A little. Maybe I’d enjoy it more if we weren’t a bunch of oversized snails right now.”
“Hey, we said we’d join them for a little while, right? If you really can’t handle it, we’ll simply let them know we have to keep going.”
“I can handle it. I merely don’t want to.” He ran a hand irritably through his curls and shook his head. “And I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to get us back to the highway from here.”
“You mean you don’t have everything mapped out on your GPS again?”
He turned his head slowly to meet her gaze. “I mean there’s literally zero reception or Internet. I could try it with a map. Do you have one of those?”
Lily pressed her lips together and looked out at the large parade of slow-moving villagers in front of them. “Nope.”
Only half an hour later, the wagons came to a full stop. “You gotta be kidding me!” He squeezed the steering wheel, his eyes wide and his jaw clenched in an exaggerated grimace.
She shook her head. “Whatever it is, I’m sure there’s a reason for it.”
“You actually want to keep moving like this?”
“Of course not. But everyone we talked to about heading to Guatemala looked like they were trying really hard not to explode and spill the big secret.”
He grunted. “Yeah. The big secret is that they don’t know how to go anywhere at a decent pace.”
“All right. We can ask why they stopped, and then we’ll—”
Someone knocked briskly on the driver-side window. They both looked out to see Aluino standing there with another wide grin. Romeo rolled the window down. “Is everything okay?”
“Of course.” The man nodded. “We have stopped to perform the first passage. I wanted you to know that you may stay in your adventuremobile”—Lily fought really hard not to laugh—“or you may step outside to join us. As long as you do not break our circle, yes?”
“Oh. Uh…sure.” Romeo glanced at Lily.
“Yeah, I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that,” she said.
“Good.” Aluino’s excitement lit up his entire face and he nodded briskly before he almost literally skipped away to join his people.
The werewolf rolled the window up again and frowned.
“I told you they were planning something besides walking.” She smirked at him.
“What passage?”
“I have no idea. But I’m fairly sure we’re about to find out.”
When they looked out the windshield again, all the villagers began to form a large circle around their traveling group—the Winnie, the five wagons, and the children. Once every space was filled and the circle complete, the adults joined hands and bowed their heads.
“Please don’t start singing,” he muttered.
She snorted, dismissed
the comment, and focused on the witches gathered around them.
The villagers’ lips moved together in a silent chant, which quickly rose into a low hum. In under a minute, the sound of their combined voices—still low and droning in the cadence of practiced incantations—grew so loud, they could hear it inside the vehicle.
“Do you have any idea what they’re saying?” he asked.
“No. It’s kinda weird that—”
The ground trembled beneath them and rocked both the RV and the wagons outside. That’s not an earthquake. Nothing’s moving. She tried to get a better view of what was happening but couldn’t move. Everything around her trembled, oscillating like the first time she’d used an electric toothbrush and held it between her teeth to free both her hands. Her skull vibrated, making it impossible to see anything clearly. At the moment when she wanted to shout for somebody to explain what was going on, the non-earthquake stopped and everything fell still again.
She shook her head and glanced at the villagers she could see through the windshield. All of them still had their eyes closed but a few smiled. When they opened them, they released each other’s hands and most of them broke out into huge, excited grins. Then she realized where they were and her jaw dropped.
The traveling procession had stopped on the top of a slow rise only a few minutes before, most of the light blocked by the thick jungle stretching far overhead. Now, they were somewhere else entirely—an open clearing within the jungle, where the sun beat down on short, green grass beside the rocky bank of a wide river to their right. Everything was damp-looking and dark, covered in moss, and sprouted thick foliage, but this was not the same place as the small hilltop where the village witches had stopped to perform their spell.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “They cast a massive transportation spell. You can see this too, right?” She turned toward Romeo, but he had slumped in the driver’s seat, his arms limp at his sides and his head hanging loosely toward his shoulder. “Crap. Romeo?” She gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Hey, are you okay?”
Any Witch Way (The Witch Next Door Book 3) Page 13
