“Um, I’ve got to get home,” the teen said. “People are going to be, like, looking for me.”
“Uh-huh,” Bella said. “Somehow I doubt that. Either way, I’ve got some questions for you first. And I’m thinking you might have a few questions for me too, about what happened back there in the clearing.”
To her surprise, the girl just laughed, sounding more genuine than she had a minute before. “Why would I have questions? It’s pretty obvious—you’re a witch and you put out the fire by magically calling down rain. And I really appreciate it, but I have to get going now.” She started edging away, only to be brought up short by Bella’s grip on her backpack.
“I don’t think so, niece. You and I are going to have a nice little talk. Besides, I have a cat that thinks you need to eat more. You’ll discover that it isn’t a good idea to argue with him. Or me, for that matter.” She switched her grasp to the girl’s thin arm instead. “I hope you like tuna. We eat a lot of damned tuna.”
* * *
SAM PUT THE two-way down on the table as gently as if it were made out of glass. He felt a bit like that himself. Except that if he had been glass, maybe things would have been a little clearer.
He was relieved to hear that Bella was safe—more than relieved, downright thank-you-God-he-didn’t-believe-in grateful. But there were all sorts of things about the story the crew chief told him that didn’t add up. Where had the niece come from, for instance? First there had been a grandmother who was there and then not there, and now a niece that Bella had never mentioned? Not that he knew her all that well. Or at all, come to think of it.
It was also a hell of a coincidence that Bella had been at the site of two recent fires, both of which had started and been put out under mysterious circumstances. It wasn’t that Sam suspected her of setting fires—at least, he hoped like hell he didn’t suspect her, because he really liked her—but something was off here.
He’d been hoping to avoid seeing her again; keeping his distance was force of habit by now, and a lot more comfortable than the alternative. Especially after that comment she made about true love, not that she could have known how much that would hurt, for someone who’d had true love and lost it. But after today, he didn’t think he could stay away. He was tortured by the idea that she could have burned to death while he sat in the tower doing nothing, but he wasn’t sure if he was planning to check on her or check up on her. Maybe both. She was a confusing kind of woman.
* * *
GREGORI WAS TRYING to meditate. Not easy to do under the best of conditions. In a dank cave after being bled and tortured and starved, nearly impossible. But he knew it was the best way to keep body and spirit intact under these trying circumstances. Besides, he could tell that his unbreakable calm drove the witch crazy, and that was almost as soothing to his soul as the meditation itself.
He had finally reached the point where the smells and noises of his confinement faded away, leaving only the internal spaces of his mind, when he heard a high-pitched shriek followed by cursing in at least three different languages. Now what?
A wooden spoon went hurling through the air and smashed against the cave wall, and Gregori gave up with a sigh and opened his eyes.
“These instructions must be wrong!” Brenna said, clearly talking to herself rather than any of the occupants of the cave. She mostly ignored the Riders unless she wanted them for something. “I don’t understand why the spell isn’t working.”
She rifled through the pages of the huge book she’d been using, muttering darkly. “This was the second time. The second time the energy simply cut off just as it was being channeled in from the forest’s suffering. It doesn’t make sense. I did everything right. Drew the runes and sigils. Set the blood circle. Triggered the magic. Lit the fire.
“But I must be doing something wrong. Impossible. Impossible. The fires should be working. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps it does not make sense because the spell itself is flawed,” Gregori said, speaking as calmly and rationally as he could.
He had tried before to reach through her madness to the woman underneath. After all, they had worked together for many long years, when she was still a Baba Yaga. The Riders had helped her often, saved her skin more than once. Surely there must be some vestige of humanity left in her. Some shredded remains of sanity. If only he could persuade her to give up this unattainable dream of immortality, perhaps she would let them go and he would no longer have to watch his friends suffer.
It was worth the attempt, even if so far each time he had tried she had only become more and more convinced that he knew some secret that he did not.
“Flawed. The spell is not flawed,” Brenna said. A vein throbbed in the center of her forehead like a warning light. “I have followed the directions. I’ve felt it working. Already I am stronger, my magic as powerful as it was when I was drinking the Water of Life and Death. It must be working.”
“It is doing something, Brenna, but that doesn’t mean it does what you think it does,” Gregori said. “And each time, the effects wear off. The costs are too high and it does not last. Surely you must see by now that the potion you seek cannot be created. Not by these means. Not by any means. Immortality cannot be bought with the lives of others. You are either born to it or not.”
Brenna threw another spoon, then a huge chunk of black crystal veined with emeralds, and finally, a small cast-iron cauldron. The last one clanked into the wall next to Gregori’s head, shattering off pieces of rock that flew like shrapnel. One shard sliced open his cheek, and blood dripped wetly down his face.
“Noooo!” Brenna screamed, picking up a double-bladed black athame and waving it through the air. She clumped over to stand in front of Gregori’s cage. “You lie! You and the others, you don’t deserve to live forever. You’ve already had so long, while I grow old without the Water that is due me for my many years of service. I will make it work. You. Will. Help. Me.”
She gasped for breath between each of the last words, stabbing him through the bars with every utterance until the knife was more red than black. Only the sound of her potion bubbling over, causing the fire beneath it to hiss and sputter, finally distracted her from her ranting.
Brenna picked up the spoon she’d thrown first, brushing the dirt off on her already stained and malodorous skirt, and returned to her stirring and muttering, Gregori forgotten for now.
“My brother, you have got to stop provoking the witch,” Alexei said in his deep growling whisper. “It never gets you anywhere.”
“Look who is talking,” Gregori said, sinking to the ground and checking his wounds; the fact that Brenna had to reach through the bars had kept the knife from going too deep. This time. “Even with several new holes in my arm and side, I look better than you do.”
The huge man’s hands were still burned and oozing from when he’d thrown himself on the bars of his cage to distract the witch. Still, they each did what they could. What they had to. And they hung on, hoping against hope. Because, really, what other choice was there?
Gregori seated himself gingerly back into lotus position, and went back to meditating. All they could do now was wait, and it was as good a way to spend the time as any other.
* * *
ONCE BELLA MADE it clear that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, the girl came along without much of a fuss. Bella wasn’t sure if it was the prospect of seeing Koshka again, or the mention of a tuna sandwich, but she didn’t care, as long as she didn’t have to argue about it.
Back at the caravan, Bella made lunch while Koshka made what passed for small talk when only one of you spoke Cat.
“Here you go,” she said, putting a plate in front of the girl, along with a glass of iced tea. She did the same for herself and for Koshka, although the dragon-cat got a bowl of milk instead.
“So, do you have a na
me?” Bella asked her guest, watching her plow through two sandwiches in as many minutes. She put one of hers on the girl’s plate without comment.
“You can call me Jazz,” the girl said. “Good sandwich. Thanks. Is that dill?”
“Yes, it is,” Bella said, not interested in being distracted by a discussion of ingredients. “Is Jazz your real name?”
“It is now.”
O-kay. “And would you like to tell me what you’re doing in the woods on your own?” Bella said. “Don’t bother with that innocent look either. I’m not buying it.”
Jazz sighed and put down the last uneaten corner of her third sandwich. “I suppose now you’re going to threaten to call the authorities.”
Koshka made his laughing noise and Bella glared at him.
“I’m not all that big on following the rules,” she said. “But I am concerned that you’re okay. After all, I did just save you from burning to death in a tree. That kind of makes me responsible for you.”
“It so doesn’t,” Jazz said, sputtering with indignation. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. I don’t need you or anyone else to be responsible for me.”
“Uh-huh. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“Try again.”
“Fine. I’m sixteen.” The girl crossed her arms over her narrow chest and glared, as if daring Bella to prove she was lying. Of course, Bella didn’t have to prove anything; she had a secret weapon.
“Mwrow,” Koshka said.
“Sorry, try again. The cat says you’re not sixteen.”
Jazz sighed. “Jeez. I can’t believe you’re taking a cat’s word over mine. Okay—I’m fifteen. But I’ve been living in the woods since early spring and getting along just fine, so you don’t need to worry about me.”
“How about you let me decide that once I have all the facts,” Bella countered. “You can begin with why you’ve been living in the woods—and don’t bother trying to embroider the truth, because Koshka here is better than a lie detector.”
A dramatic teenage sigh gusted in Bella’s direction, but once that was out of the way, Jazz apparently reconciled herself to the inevitable.
“Look, I know that you won’t believe me, but I swear, I’m way better off living on my own than I was in any of the places I’ve spent the last ten years,” Jazz said, looking down and fiddling with a loose thread on her jeans as she talked. “My mom died when I was five, and nobody had any idea who my father was. Just a blank line on my birth certificate, I guess. Anyway, there was no one else to take me in, so I’ve been bouncing around from foster home to foster home ever since.”
Koshka left his spot by Bella’s foot and sat down by Jazz instead, laying his big, blunt head on her knee. She seemed to draw comfort from his warm presence and petted him absently while she went on. Bella made a mental note to give the dragon-cat whatever treats he wanted later.
“Not a good experience?” Bella guessed.
“Pretty sucky, actually,” Jazz said in a grim tone. “The best ones were where the people just took the money from the state and mostly ignored me. The worst ones . . . Well, let’s just say that this last place I got to be a combination of slave labor and punching bag. Not a great combo. When Mike, the husband, started looking at me like he wanted to add something else to that list, I took off. And I’m not going back.”
The girl lifted her head to stare defiantly at Bella, but if she was expecting an argument, she was in for a surprise.
“I don’t blame you,” Bella said as calmly as she could. “The woman who raised me rescued me from a bad foster home too. I was a lot younger than you are, so you’ve probably had to deal with some crap that I missed, but my Baba decided to take me because I was being locked in a closet for weeks at a time when I was four, so I get what you’re talking about.”
“Jeez, that’s messed up,” Jazz said. “For real? You’re not just saying that to get me to trust you?”
“I would never do that, Jazz,” Bella said. “I may not always agree with you, but I promise I will never lie to you.”
“That would be a first,” the girl muttered. “But okay.”
“So you ran away?”
“Yeah, back in the spring. I got as far as I could before I found this park, and I decided to stay here for a while. It was cold in the beginning, but it seemed like a safe place, before the fires started. After today, I don’t know about that, but I don’t have anyplace else to go, and as far as I’m concerned, even when they’re on fire, the woods are safer than the outside world.”
Since Bella felt more or less the same, she didn’t feel like she had much of a rebuttal for that either.
“Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, do you want to tell me why you find it so easy to believe that I’m some kind of witch who can do magic? After all, that’s not the way most people would react.” Bella didn’t even try to deny the witch part—she was pretty sure that ship had sailed.
Jazz snorted. “I read all the fairy-tale books I could get my hands on when I was growing up—even the grimmest stories were better than real life—and I know magic when I see it. I’m not stupid, and I’ve been looking for it my whole life. I knew it had to be real. I just knew it. So when I saw you call the rain to put out the fire, I figured you must be a witch. You are, aren’t you?”
Bella nodded. “I am. I’m a Baba Yaga, in fact. You might not have read any stories about the Baba Yagas, because they’re from Russia and not all that well-known here in the United States. Plus, of course, they got most of it wrong, because, you know, fairy tales.” She peered at the girl. “Knowing that I’m a witch doesn’t freak you out?”
“Are you serious?” Jazz grinned at her, suddenly looking even younger than fifteen. “I mostly think it is way cool. I mean, if you’re not planning to eat me or anything.”
“Nah,” Bella said. “I just had a big lunch.”
The girl giggled and then pointed at Koshka. “So what’s his story? Is he some kind of enchanted prince or something?”
Koshka sneered at her as only a cat can. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m something much better than that—I’m a dragon in disguise.”
“Wow, that is better,” Jazz said. “And how come I can understand him now when I couldn’t before? It just kind of felt like I almost could, you know what I mean?”
“Koshka can make himself understood by anyone he chooses, or not,” Bella said. “Looks like he chose you.”
“Cool,” the girl breathed, and she leaned over to grab the last of her sandwich.
Bella shook her head. She couldn’t decide if it was good luck or bad luck that she got the one teenager in the world who still believed in magic. Nor did she have any idea what the hell she was supposed to do with her now that she had her.
* * *
AS SOON AS he went out of service, Sam was walking toward the door before he’d even made up his mind to go. He stopped, one foot in and one foot out, and asked himself what the hell he was doing. It wasn’t even dark yet. It wasn’t as though he had to see her face, make sure for himself that she was really okay. He was just going to ask her some pointed questions, that’s all. It could wait for an hour or two.
He told himself that again while he scooped up the box with the owlet in it, figuring it would make a good excuse for a visit. And again as he walked a little too fast down the stairs and then rode the four-wheeler down the path that led to the section of forest where the caravan was parked.
Hopping off the four-wheeler, he walked almost without thinking in the direction of the clearing. Even so, he was a bit startled to find himself there when he stopped at the edge of the trees to catch his breath.
Bella looked up from a small portable barbeque grill, and her smile when she saw him made his heart skip a beat. For a moment, it seemed like the entire clearing glowed with light.
“Sam! This is a surprise,” she said with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm, although he couldn’t imagine why after the way he’d treated her the last couple of times they were together. “You’re just in time for dinner.”
“Dinner?” he repeated, feeling stupid. He hadn’t expected to be invited to dinner and hadn’t brought anything. Except the tiny owl, of course, which was hardly helpful.
“You haven’t eaten yet, have you? It isn’t anything fancy,” Bella said with a laugh. “I’m not much of a cook, to be honest, but I can char meat with the best of them.” She mistook his hesitation for something else and pointed at a bucket of water sitting at the ready next to the grill. “Don’t worry; we’re being careful with the fire.”
She gestured toward a skinny, smallish teenage girl with chopped-off brown hair and a wary expression. “After today, I think we’re both feeling a little paranoid about anything with flames on it.”
“I don’t blame you,” Sam said, walking slowly into the clearing. “Are you both okay?”
“We’re fine. Truly,” Bella said. “So have you? Had dinner?”
“Um, no, actually,” Sam said. “I usually just make a sandwich or something. I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook either.”
“We have tuna,” the girl piped up. “If you’re, like, a vegetarian or something.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. On the one hand, there was a part of him that couldn’t think of anything he’d like better than to stay and eat with Bella. But he didn’t even know if he remembered how to have a normal conversation with regular people anymore; something that wasn’t centered around fighting fires or giving tours of the tower. And his face would probably frighten the girl or make her feel sick.
He took another step forward into the light, figuring he might as well get it over with. “Um, I’m not a vegetarian,” he said, fighting the temptation to pull his cap even farther down over his eyes.
“Great,” Bella said. “Then you’ll join us. Jazz, can you go grab another steak out of the fridge, please? And maybe a beer while you’re at it?” She turned back to Sam. “Would you like a beer? I’ve got Blue Moon, if you like that.”
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