“I’m sure she’s okay,” Sam said. “When we find her, she’ll probably laugh at us for being so concerned.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Jazz said, clearly unconvinced. “But it’s a big forest, and I don’t even know where to start looking for her. All I know is that she’d been searching for her friends in the east. There’s a lot of area east of here.”
Sam perked up a bit. Finally, something he could do to help. “Actually, I think I can narrow it down quite a bit from that,” he said. “When she came to the fire tower the other night during the storm, she wanted to know exactly where it started. I was able to point her toward a notch between two hills to the east where I saw the first clouds and lightning strikes begin. Maybe that’s where she went.”
But then his excitement drained away in the face of the realistic limitations they were facing. “Of course, I don’t know how much ground we can cover with just me, a teenage runaway, and an oversized cat. We’re going to have to try and get some other folks to help search, but right now most of the local volunteers are fighting the fire. It’s going to take some time to find people who are available to search for a missing person, especially since we don’t have any evidence that she’s really missing, other than our gut feelings.”
“Not to worry; I’ve called in reinforcements,” said a gravelly bass voice. “And who are you calling oversized? I’ll have you know, I’m a perfectly normal size for a dragon disguised as a cat. You should see Barbara’s Chudo-Yudo. He’s masquerading as a gigantic white pit bull, and I swear, I’ve met trucks that are smaller.”
Sam could feel his jaw drop open, but it took him a moment to gather himself together enough to shut it. He blinked at Jazz. “Did that cat just talk, or am I losing my mind?”
Koshka laughed, a bizarre sound coming from something with whiskers and ear tufts. “So you believe in witches but not in talking cats? You have a very limited worldview, Human. You might want to work on that.”
Jazz just shrugged. “I know, it’s a little weird, but you get used to it.”
Somehow Sam couldn’t imagine getting used to any of it, but before he had a chance to say so, there was a thumping noise from the back of the caravan and a cupboard swung open to reveal what looked like a swirling void filled with fireflies. A scent like a summer breeze and lavender and something sweet like honey or mead filled the space, and then two women walked out of nowhere, bent over slightly to fit through the confines of the cupboard door.
Once inside, they straightened up and faced toward Sam and the others; two stunningly beautiful women, both wearing swords and determined expressions, but otherwise completely unalike. The one on the left was tall and imposing, with a cloud of black hair, head-to-toe black leather, and a scowl that didn’t bode well for anyone who got in her way. The one on the right was a tanned, willowy blonde in a patchwork skirt and tank top, whose smile for Sam and Jazz didn’t distract his attention from the fact that in addition to her silver sword she seemed to be carrying at least three knives, one of which she tucked into her long braid as soon as she determined that neither of them was an immediate threat.
“Hello, Koshka,” the brunette said. “Chudo-Yudo sends his regards. Want to introduce us to your friends and tell us what the hell is going on?”
“Baba Yaga,” the cat said, making a kind of bow in her direction. “This is the girl Jazz, whom Bella has taken under her protection. Jazz, these are two of Bella’s sister Baba Yagas. Barbara is the dark, crabby one, and the pretty, yellow-haired one is Beka, who is in charge of the western third of the country.”
“Nice,” Barbara muttered. “Dark, crabby one indeed.” But she did make an attempt at a smile. “And who is your other friend, pray tell?”
Sam stood up. “My name is Sam Corbett. I work in the fire tower near here.”
Koshka head-butted him in the back of his knee, almost knocking him over. Sam was pretty sure it was an affectionate gesture, but it was hard to tell for sure.
“Sam is a Human Bella has become involved with,” the cat said bluntly. “They’re in love, and he knows who and what she is, so you can speak freely in front of him. She has been training the girl, so the same applies to her.”
“Wait, what?” Sam said, taken aback. “Bella and I aren’t in love. We hardly know each other.”
Barbara, the darker one, let out a tiny chuckle. “In my experience, that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.” Beka nodded, eyes twinkling, as if they were sharing some joke he didn’t know the punch line to.
Koshka sighed, and Sam could swear that he saw a trickle of smoke eddy out of the cat’s nostrils. “Fine,” the cat said. “Have it your way. So you don’t think of her all the time, even when you’re trying not to? Couldn’t describe in minute detail not just how she looks but how she smells, what shade of green her eyes are at twilight, how you feel when she smiles at you?”
Sam swallowed hard. He’d been in love once before; he knew all the symptoms. He’d just been so sure it would never happen to him again, certainly not now and not with a woman like Bella.
“Of course I like Bella,” he said hoarsely. “She’s wonderful, but that doesn’t mean—”
The woman named Barbara gazed at him with amber eyes that seemed to see into his soul. “Never mind all that romantic nonsense. Would you tear the forest apart with your bare hands to find her?”
Silently, Sam nodded, swallowing hard.
“Good enough for me,” Barbara said. “Let’s go get our girl.”
“But, wait,” Sam said, not quite believing he was arguing with a cat. And two witches who had somehow walked out of a cupboard.
“What?” Koshka said in the tone of someone who is rapidly running out of patience.
“You said we were in love. But surely Bella isn’t in love with me.” How could she be?
The dragon-cat snorted. “She may not know it yet, but she is. Now, can we go find her so she can tell you so herself?”
TWENTY-SIX
AFTER A BRIEF discussion, it was decided that Sam would lead Barbara and Beka to the part of the forest where he thought Bella might have gone. That settled, he was left with one pouting teen and what he was pretty sure was a pouting cat, although it was hard to tell underneath all the fur.
“I should go too,” Koshka said with a growl. “But I can’t leave the Water of Life and Death unguarded. I am not happy about this.”
Barbara’s dark brows drew together, and she exchanged an indecipherable look with Beka; some kind of Baba Yaga shorthand, Sam concluded, although he had no idea what it meant.
“Maybe you should come along and bring the Water with you,” Barbara suggested. “I have a gut feeling we just might need it.”
Koshka groomed his whiskers with one immense paw. “Is that so? Well, I’m all for anything that allows me to join the search. But you’re going to have to carry the flask. Bella tried to make me wear a harness once. It did not go well.”
Sam could well imagine. “I’ll carry it if you want,” he said.
The women traded another one of those looks, and Beka shook her head. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll just throw it in my bag.” She indicated the patchwork purse she’d been wearing that matched her skirt and looked capacious enough to hold half the contents of the caravan if she deemed it necessary.
“Uh-huh. Don’t trust the human with your magical drink,” Sam said, not at all offended. “I get it.”
“It’s our responsibility,” Barbara explained. “It would be like a cop letting someone else carry his service revolver around. Just not a good idea.” She spoke like someone who had once argued with a cop about that very thing, and Sam remembered that Bella had mentioned that one of her Baba Yaga sisters was married to one.
“What about me?” Jazz asked plaintively. “I want to go look for Bella too.”
Now it was Sam’s turn to communicate silently with th
e others, and he was glad to see that they all agreed, although he knew that Jazz wouldn’t be so pleased.
“You should stay here,” he said. “Just in case Bella does come back, so she’ll know we’re all out searching for her.”
Not surprisingly, Jazz rolled her eyes. “You could leave a note,” she suggested a tad acerbically. “You know, something that says: Worried about you, gone searching in the east. Come find us if you get back.” She tapped her bitten fingers on the arms of the chair.
Beka smiled at her. “Sam’s right, Jazz. Not only is it important to have someone manning the home base, just in case, but we have no idea what we could be walking into out there. Anything strong enough to prevent Bella from returning could turn out to be very dangerous indeed, and she would never forgive us if we let anything happen to you. She has grown very fond of you, you know.”
Sam thought he’d never seen anyone look so stunned in his life.
“She mentioned me to you? Bella did?” Jazz said, eyes wide.
“Of course she did,” Beka said, and Barbara nodded in agreement.
“Oh. That’s . . . Oh.”
“So you’ll stay here?” Sam asked. “Please? Just in case she comes in hurt and needs help?”
Jazz sighed heavily. “Okay. But you’d better find her and bring her back.”
“Count on it,” Barbara said, a touch grimly, and Sam suddenly felt sorry for anyone who stood in her way.
* * *
ONCE OUTSIDE, THEY ran into an unanticipated problem. Koshka summed it up, gazing at the three Humans and himself and then sniffing Sam’s four-wheeler pointedly.
“There is no way we are all going to fit on that thing,” he said. “Besides, it will be easier for me to follow Bella’s trail from the ground. How do you suggest we handle this?”
Sam was at a loss. Bella had taken her dirt bike when she’d left, so there were no other vehicles. Barbara just shrugged.
“You can lead us on the machine,” she said. “Beka and I can keep up as long as you don’t go too fast. We’re both in good shape, and Baba Yagas have greater endurance than your average Human. When we get closer, we’ll leave the four-wheeler and you can join us on foot.”
“It’s miles,” he said.
Beka grinned at him, looking way too perky to be anyone’s idea of a wicked witch. “I surf for hours almost every day. I’m a lot stronger than I look. And Barbara, well, she’s exactly as strong as she looks. Don’t worry about us; we’ll be fine.”
“But what about Koshka?” Sam asked. “Won’t his paws get sore?”
The cat gave a good imitation of one of Jazz’s eye rolls. “Dragon, dude. I could run all day and all night and into next week if I wanted to. And then make toast.”
Sam figured there was no point in standing around and arguing. Especially with a cat. Dragon. Whatever. They took off down the road with him on the four-wheeler in the lead, the two women jogging behind him (Beka with her skirts hiked up and tucked into her belt), and Koshka running alongside them.
Five or six miles later, they came to a halt when they reached a place where the four-wheeler couldn’t go any farther. Barbara and Beka looked like they’d been out for a leisurely stroll; Sam was impressed despite himself. And if anything, it made him feel a little better about Bella—obviously Baba Yagas were made of pretty tough stuff.
Beka peered dubiously into the overgrown trail Koshka had his broad nose pointed toward. Briars and ferns competed with less picturesque weeds to make a narrow aisle that was more greenery than path. “Are you sure she went this way? I mean, yes, it’s aiming in the direction of the notch Sam told us about, but wouldn’t she have taken a better route?”
“That’s actually about as direct as you can get from here,” Sam explained. “The road through the national forest doesn’t go in that direction. In fact, there isn’t really anything along that route, as far as I know. No houses, no hunting cabins, nothing.”
Barbara and Beka exchanged glances. “Sounds ideal if you’re a deranged former Baba Yaga looking to hide out,” Barbara said.
“Besides, Bella left me signs,” Koshka said, as if that should have been obvious to everyone else. When they all gazed around without seeing whatever he was referring to, he snorted and waved one large paw toward the base of a nearby tree. “She left them at my eye level, not yours.”
Sam still couldn’t see anything, but apparently the two women could, because they nodded happily and started plowing through the underbrush that grew up into what was probably some kind of animal trail. Sam abandoned the four-wheeler and followed along, but his scarred lungs soon began to protest at the speed they set, even when the path grew clearer. He could feel his lungs laboring, and hear the ragged rasp of his breath as he fell farther and farther behind the others. Sweat dripped off his forehead and into his eyes, stinging almost as badly as the briar thorns did.
Finally, he came around a corner to find Barbara and Beka waiting. Beka’s pretty face was creased with concern; Barbara just looked annoyed.
“We have to move faster than this,” she said, arms crossed. “I have a bad feeling we’re running out of time. Can’t you pick up the pace a little?”
Sam struggled to catch his breath, hands propped on his knees as he gasped for air. “Sorry,” he said. “You go on. I’ll catch up when I can.”
Koshka appeared out of the shadows, startling him, although apparently the Baba Yagas were used to it, since they didn’t even twitch. “His lungs are damaged from the same fire that gave him those scars,” he explained to Barbara. “I’m amazed he made it this far.” The cat sounded more admiring than critical.
“Oh,” Barbara said. “Well that won’t do, will it?” She held out one hand to Beka without taking her attention off Sam, and the blonde dug into her bag until she found a silver flask embossed with a large, ornate letter B.
“Here,” Barbara said, giving him the flask with only a momentary flash of hesitation. “It’s an emergency. The Queen will just have to understand.”
Sam straightened up, still wheezing. He stared at the container but didn’t reach for it. “Is that the Water of Life and Death you’ve all been talking about? Bella told me it was only for Baba Yagas. Is it safe?”
“Safe for you to drink or for me to give to you without permission?” Barbara muttered.
Beka grimaced in sympathy, but said to Sam, “I promise, it is safe. In small amounts, anyway. I gave some to Marcus, my husband, when he was badly injured in a fight. And he married me anyway.” She grinned at him. “Just be careful to only swallow a mouthful. It’s potent stuff.”
“Do you want to find Bella or not?” Barbara demanded.
He definitely did. If that meant drinking some magical potion, well, he’d take his chances.
He tried to take a deep breath, but ended up with a coughing spasm instead, one that seemed to go on and on, ripping and tearing at his lungs until Barbara finally thrust the flask into his hands and helped him to hold it to his lips.
Liquid sunshine ran down his throat, burning and soothing at the same time. His mouth was filled with an explosion of flavors he didn’t even have a name for; sweet as honey, dark as chocolate, potent enough to make his head spin. Underneath the swirling, heady lusciousness of it, he caught a hint of something bitter and musty—death in the midst of life, just as its name suggested.
For a moment, Sam was so overwhelmed by the taste and aroma and sensation of the Water, he almost forgot to breathe. But when he finally remembered to, he was shocked to discover that he could take a full breath for the first time since that fateful day. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so full of vitality and energy, as if his entire body was functioning at its full capacity.
Barbara gave him a look that seemed to indicate she knew exactly what effect the Water of Life and Death had had on him, but then replaced it with her usual scowl
and said, “Do you think maybe we could get back to looking for my lost sister now?” Sam was beginning to suspect that at least half of her attitude was a deliberate put-on. Of course, that still left the other half, so he just nodded and started to run.
* * *
THE END OF the trail spilled them out at the base of a large hill covered with straggly bushes and spindly trees. As soon as they’d taken a few steps into the open, Koshka let out a strange low, deep noise, part hiss and part growl. Something about the sound made the hair stand up on the back of Sam’s neck, and he suddenly believed that the dragon story might just be true. A family of flickers flying overhead quickly changed direction, obviously deciding they had someplace else to be. Sam didn’t blame them.
“Koshka?” Beka said. “What is it?” A large knife had somehow appeared in her left hand, and her right hovered over her sword.
“I smell magic,” the dragon-cat said. “Nasty, unpleasant magic.” He swung his massive head around, sniffing the air. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
It was a mark of how agitated he sounded that even Barbara did as he said. The three of them hung back in the trees while they waited for the cat to return. Sam tried to reconcile the normality of the deep green forest surrounding him with the fact that he was standing in it with two witches out of Russian fairy tales, waiting for an enchanted dragon disguised as a cat to come back and tell him if they’d found a third witch. In the end, he just gave up.
Koshka reappeared a few minutes later, looking disgusted as only a cat can. He sat down in front of the others, rubbing one paw over his dark pink nose. “Pah,” he said. “You should be grateful you stayed here. It’s disgusting down there.”
“Yes, but did you find Bella?” Barbara demanded.
The dragon-cat shook his head. “No, but I found where she was until recently. There is a cave down below; its entrance is almost completely hidden by an old rockfall, but once you know it’s there, it isn’t hard to spot. I checked it out, and it is empty now, but it reeks of magic—magic and blood and pain. Bella’s dirt bike is there, and her scent is still fresh, so she can’t have been gone long. I can smell the Riders too, and it looks like there were some kind of cages and a setup for doing magical work. The place stinks of Brenna. God, I hate the smell of patchouli.” He rubbed his nose again, sneezing.
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