I look at Jared, and then back at Jules. She’s about fifty shades paler than he is, but they both glow with life and youth. I stare at her perfect lips and I’m floored by the rush of feelings I have toward her.
What’s wrong with you, fool? For crying out loud, she’s not even smiling at me. This case is definitely going to be different, probably in all the wrong ways.
Jared lights a joint and takes a long drag from it, holding in the smoke with a puffed up chest. His dark brows lift and his wide mouth curves into a grin around his marijuana cigarette. Jules shakes her head at him with disapproving good humor and then she turns, heading into the trees.
She doesn’t appear to be in any hurry as she brushes aside branches and skirts the underbrush. We emerge on a narrow trail where she turns right, heading north. I keep a moderate distance between us so as not to see her spine stiffen at my presence or hear her tell me to leave again. I can’t leave even if I wanted to. This is my job and I have to stay close now.
When the time comes, it’s my responsibility to help her leave her body behind and give reassurances that what lies ahead is indeed the right direction. People who can’t let go become haunted souls. They get stuck in transition or lose their ability to reason, sometimes both. As unsettling as this feeling is, to be watching and waiting for this vibrant girl to take that turn for the worst, she’s going to need me to stay around.
Chapter Two: Witches
We wander over soft patches of grass growing under widely spaced evergreen trees. Small groups of white-barked aspens wear the bold green leaves of summer. Jules’ steps are near silent as she moves with ease over the forest floor. Her comfort in the outdoors is contagious and I feel myself begin to relax as I watch her. The shadows of sadness have all but left her face and that, too, has a lightening effect on me. My own dredged up and distant memories are successfully hiding again, back where they belong.
Ahead, Jules stops and crouches down next to a shrubby bush. With careful movements she slides the bag off her shoulder and reaches inside. Her hand reappears with a small silver camera. She raises it and I hear the faint whirring of its innards at work. I look to see what has caught her attention. Standing next to two tall trees is an elk. The enormity of the animal is startling. Jules moves a quarter of an inch at a time, looking for the best angles. The button on her camera continues to click. The huge cow takes notice of her but doesn’t shy away. A rustling at its hooves reveals a calf resting in the grass. I am torn between staring at her, or the elk and its calf; both sights are captivating. After a moment she backs up and with even lighter steps continues down the path.
The trail widens the farther we walk and we continually gain altitude. More than once Jules steps off the trail, not to photograph anything, but to inspect the greenery. She bends down next to a tall white flower and examines it. Next, she looks around, stands up and moves to another flower which looks exactly the same to me, but is growing in a group. Selecting a couple of the rigid stems, she snaps them off close to the ground and then moves back to the trail. As she walks, she roots around in her shoulder bag again. She pulls out a white plastic bag, places the flowers inside, and then puts the whole package back in her bag. She appears to watch all of the plants as she walks, her eyes constantly scanning over the ground and only sometimes looking ahead.
Mountain grasses and flowers cover the ground as we walk into an open meadow and leave the trees behind. The intensity of the high altitude sun washes out the colors, casting a golden haze over the meadow. It’s bright, but not so much as to diminish the natural beauty of this place. The entire meadow is dotted with the whites, yellows, blues, and pinks of all the wildflowers. Jules heads toward a small ridge of mountains. Below them are steep hills, and at their base is a large outcrop of boulders. They resemble a pile of gigantic pebbles in the middle of the forest.
Being surrounded by the clear sky, the mountains, and the forest lifts a thousand pounds of weight off my back — no doubt from dealing with my last client. It’s freeing, like letting go of an invisible anchor. Adding to my relief is the undeniable enjoyment of the sight in front of me. Jules’ cute round backside beneath her long shining hair makes my chest swell with contentment and something that almost feels like, what, elation? I’m all at once depressed.
I’m an idiot. What am I thinking? I know what’s coming and I’m getting sucked in anyway. I have to stop this right now. She’s just a job. It’ll be over soon enough and then I’ll be on to the next one. I tell myself all of this and still I continue to follow, not out of duty, but in an enchanted haze. It’s not just my eyes that can’t look away, but my entire being feels bewitched by her. The draw to know something about this girl is stronger than the gravitational force holding everything on the planet. I’m impacted by every one of my cases, but I’ve never wanted to know one of them personally before… not like this. I have to take care of them. I hang my head in shame at my loss of self-control, even if it is only in my thoughts. What am I supposed to do?
Jules balances like a gymnast on a makeshift bridge of fallen logs as she crosses a stream. The water rolls and gurgles along underneath her and is so clear it’s impossible to tell whether it’s four or forty inches deep. She hops onto the opposite shore with a deft leap and my heart sinks a little more at her perfect example of youth.
The main trail veers to the right through the wild grass but Jules goes left onto a barely visible footpath. She heads upstream. The boulders and the trees butt up against each other leaving no room for walking, but she manages to squeak by. I see glimpses of her between, around, over, and under the tree trunks and the rocks. It brings visions of a sleek fox weaving through the underbrush to my mind again. I lose sight of her completely as the mix of evergreens and shrubs become denser, but I can sense her movements up ahead. When I find her again, she’s in an open patch of ground under the shade of an enormous spruce tree. It’s as serene a place as I could ever imagine. The stream babbles a soothing soundtrack nearby. Thick green cushions of moss cover patches of ground and fallen limbs and standing dead trees grow long beards of pale lichens. It’s unthinkable that something tragic could happen in a place so beautiful, but I continue to observe my new case and the feelings of dread grow deeper roots inside my gut.
Jules examines a spiny broad leafed plant growing at the base of the granite boulders. I watch as she turns a leaf over in her hands and then tears a small piece of it and smells it. She puts it in her mouth, chews, and then spits it out on the spongy ground. Then she looks straight up the rock face. Her eyes hold steady on something and I look to see what has her attention. It’s the same kind of bush except three times larger, and it’s growing from the side of the cliff.
Jules adjusts her bag, securing it to her back like a backpack, and starts scaling the craggy face of the rocks. She finds one handhold after another with ease and in seconds is fifteen feet high. I move to the stream bank so I have a better view and watch as she inches across a rock ledge heading straight to the leafy plant. I try to ignore the jolt of fear I feel from seeing her up so high because there’s nothing I can do for her. If I had a physical body, I’d be sweating with anxiety. Stopping on a wider shelf of stone, Jules is able to turn around within arm’s reach of the bush. She appears to pick and choose through the large leaves and sections of root before placing some of each into her bag.
My eyes leave her for a second as I notice just above her and to her left is a large black crevice where a flat stone leans against one of the enormous boulders. From where I am, it looks like a cave of sorts.
We hear the sound simultaneously.
A low growl emanates from the rocks. Jules shuffles away like a crab running from a hungry gull and in the space of a heartbeat she is already halfway back to the ground. I force myself not to overreact, to watch and be patient. She has a few more feet to go before she’s close enough to the ground to be safe when an eerie hissing sound comes from the cave above.
I prepare myself. Is this it? A cli
mbing accident or an animal attack? For the first time I feel a wide chasm of regret for a client.
Jules’s right foot slips at the sound and she starts to slide. Her hands claw for her life and then they find a root to grab a hold of. It looks too thin, like a measly piece of string, but somehow it holds her. Her toes find a crack to wedge into. Three seconds later and a few more vertical feet down, she is back on solid earth. She runs, and I stay close on her tail.
We emerge into the meadow. She turns to look back. I do as well. Thankfully, no hungry animal is pursuing her. She moves fast, going back the way she had come and she is smiling, breathing hard, and flushed, but smiling. She’s enjoying herself… unbelievable.
She pauses at the creek crossing, adjusting her bag, which by some miracle has made it intact, takes a deep breath, holds her arms out for balance, and then steps onto the makeshift log bridge. I notice her hands are trembling; it must be from the adrenaline. On her last step, she springs forward to the shore, but the log gives way underfoot and rolls to the side.
A high pitched “Oooh!” rushes from her as her booted foot disappears into the water. She falls, catching herself half on the bank and half on the bridge.
“Thomas Crapper!” she exclaims.
She looks as awkward as a stick bug. Her legs are stretched almost impossibly far apart and her upper body is nearly on the ground. She raises herself up and tugs at her lower limb but nothing happens. She pulls harder, still nothing.
“What in the world?” She stares down into the water.
I notice a stream of red running down her forearm.
Her leg shifts from side to side but does not seem to lift upward at all. She grunts with effort and still her foot stays submerged.
“You have got to be kidding me!” she says.
She glances back again toward the rocks. No doubt reassuring herself that there is no mountain lion to hear her.
Without seeing the source of the bone chilling sound, I’m confident it was a large cat. Jules must have suspected the same thing.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” she whispers.
A wry smile twitches at the corners of my lips. Good to know she has a sense of humor.
I move in close to see exactly what the difficulty is. I’m still invisible, but I no longer care if she can sense me or not. The swirls of mud clear with the current and we can both see the problem. Her foot is lodged in a hole in the bank between two stones. She reaches down; immersing her hands and arms into what must be frigid water, and attempts to push the rocks out of the way. Neither one will budge. She straightens up and then tries again. I can see the muscles of her upper back and shoulders straining with the effort. One of the two rocks moves a centimeter and then hits the log that caused this predicament in the first place. The other stone is embedded in the bank and appears to be massive. It doesn’t budge. She leans over to push the log farther away but it’s wedged in tight on the other end and she’s not quite able to get enough leverage on it to do any good anyway. She frowns and looks around.
With closed eyes, she takes a deep breath, and then says, “Shit.”
She looks at her watch. I look, too. It’s 3:55 p.m.
“Now what?” she says.
She turns her forearm over noticing for the first time the scratches and the thin watery streaks of scarlet running toward her hand. Closing her eyes again, she turns her head away from the injury. I hear the long breaths move in and out of her lungs. After her breather, she re-examines her forearm. One scratch appears to be worse than the others. Her face scrunches up like a child forced to eat liver.
I smile to myself, finding perverse entertainment in her lack of enthusiasm at the blood. It doesn’t look serious, even from my complete ignorance of field care, but I am ninety-nine percent sure she won’t die from a scratch.
Bending down and rinsing her arm in the creek water exposes the cut and her grimace deepens. She reaches for the shore and tears a broad oval leaf from a low growing plant and then rinses it in the water. She puts the leaf in her mouth and chews. It’s beyond me why she needs to eat, but she doesn’t swallow, instead she spits the green pulp into her hand and then smears it over the cut.
The price of my ticket for personal entertainment just doubled but she’s not done.
She pulls the bag off her shoulder and retrieves the plastic bag with the collected greenery and takes out one of the rigid white flowers, plucking some of the fern looking leaves from the stem. She puts the purple bag back together and back over her shoulder, and again rinses the leaves. With delicacy, she lays them over the mash on her arm. She looks at her handiwork with an air of satisfaction and then her frown returns as she wiggles her leg.
With her uninjured arm, she begins to work, scooping away at the mud, sand, and pebbles.
“Grrrrr!” she growls.
I think it is more from frustration than effort. “Take your foot out of your shoe,” I say quietly.
“I already tried,” she complains.
I step back in surprise and stare at her but she isn’t looking at me. Did she hear me or not? She could have been talking to herself. Intrigue reignites the sparkler in my gut but I take another step back instead of forward. There are rules I have to follow, and the first one is: Do not interfere if it will drastically change the course of their life — or death. For me, this rule leaves a lot open to interpretation. I’m interpreting in the present circumstances that I have time to wait and see what will happen. Jules twists and tugs some more and then gives it up, standing lopsided and looking dejected.
“Hello,” she calls.
Now she’s thinking. The trails around here look well used. There has to be a good chance of some other hikers coming this way. I decide to interfere, but not directly with her. If anyone is near, then I can subtly guide them this direction. Then “I” will not be changing the course of her life.
It takes me not even a minute because a group of people are already heading her way. Relief washes over me as if I’m the one being rescued. I go straight back to Jules.
“Someone is coming,” I tell her, and then tell myself, a little encouragement never hurt anyone.
This time she has no reaction to me whatsoever.
Distant chatter alerts her to the presence of the oncoming group.
“Hey! Over here!” she yells.
A deep, “Yo!” answers back.
Jules waves an arm and they see her. “Oh no,” she mutters.
Not the response I thought she would have.
A bubbly blonde wearing extremely short shorts comes forward in front of two others. She blinks heavily mascaraed eyelashes at Jules. “What are you doing?”
They know each other. The blonde reminds me of a snappy Chihuahua with large breasts. This may not be the rescue I was imagining.
“Hey, Ashley, Carrie, guy. I wanted to go swimming. What does it look like?” She shrugs her shoulders at them and pulls at her un-budging leg, demonstrating her problem.
“You’re such a freak, you know that?” Ashley, the bouncy blonde, says. Her shiny white and pink tennis shoes take a few steps back.
“Whatever. How about a little help?” Jules is looking at the beefy guy with the two girls.
With his thick neck and muscled forearms, a football players build, he looks as if he can move the rock holding Jules’s foot without difficulty.
He takes his cue and comes forward, eyes searching the water.
“Eric, wait,” the blonde commands.
He does, and then he looks back at Ashley. There is a mark of undeniable confusion in his brown eyes.
“Why would I ever want to help you?” she says to Jules.
“Maybe, because I’m stuck in this freezing cold creek, Ashley.”
“No, I don’t associate with witches and neither do my friends. Good luck, Juliana. We have to go. Bye-bye.”
“Oh, you horrible…” Jules doesn’t complete her insult. Her hands are clenched into fists at her sides and she has somehow turned from wh
itish blue to magenta in a heartbeat.
With admirable control in her voice Jules says to Eric, who is standing expressionless, “Please, if you could just lift this rock, then I can pull my foot free. You’re obviously really strong; it will take like two seconds.”
He starts to do it.
“Eric,” Ashley’s whiny voice stops him. “If you touch her, you can forget about tonight and any other night with me, ever again!”
“Come on, it’s just one silly rock. Please, my foot is numb,” Jules pleads to Eric.
He looks back and forth between the two and then turns to follow his girlfriend. Gutless, whipped, pea brain. Be a man and help Jules out!
“You guys are going to just leave me out here. Wow, thanks a lot. Good to know I can count on the kindness of others.” She shakes her head at them in disbelief and then turns her attention to the girl with the brown pony tail. “Carrie, come on, please?”
Carrie has been standing in the background, shuffling her sandaled feet in the dirt and keeping silent, but she answers in a shy voice. “If you can’t move it, how am I going to?”
Ashley turns and adds one last punch. “You should’ve thought about the consequences of making your brother break up with me.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Jules says.
“You could have talked to him when I asked you to.”
“I stay out of my brother’s relationships. I told you from the beginning.”
“That stupid herb you gave made me look like I had some disease. That’s why Jared broke up with me. I was hideous! It’s all your fault! Just admit you did it on purpose and we might help you.”
It was red face to red face now.
“All right,” Jules says.
My intrigue grows as I watch the transformation on Jules’s face. If I were Ashley I would be looking for someplace to hide.
“I am so sorry you don’t know how to read. No, let me correct that. I’m sure you can read. I’m sorry you’re too stupid to follow simple directions. Oh, and I’m sorry your liver is so toxic, probably because you drink too much, that it caused your stuck up face to break out. By the way, that doesn’t make me a witch!”
Death Lies Between Us (An Angel Falls Book 1) Page 2
