“Wait a second. So your talent is giving yourself an extra five minutes whenever you need it?”
“Basically, yes.”
“Interesting. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”
Neither had Danica, but she didn’t think that was anything to be proud of. She’d always wished she had a more well-known — and useful — magical talent. “Anyway, I was thinking about how you broke the curse, how you sort of had to expand your own gift to do it, and I was wondering if maybe I could do something similar. You know, figure out a way to work with my talent so I can go back a lot farther than just five minutes.”
“That’s….” From the befuddled expression on Angela’s face, Danica guessed that the prima wasn’t quite sure how to react to that proposal. “I don’t know. Maybe there could be some way.” She fell silent, clearly pondering the problem. Her mouth twisted, and she remarked, “I never thought I’d say this, but I almost wish your cousin Damon was still alive. He knew better how to manipulate our witch powers and spells than anyone I’ve ever heard of. He probably would have some insight on all this. As it is….” Her shoulders lifted. “But maybe you should talk to Lawrence, my father’s great-uncle. He’s the one who helped teach me how to do the spirit walk, to go outside the bounds of my body so I could talk to Nizhoni.”
Although she knew it was far too early for any kind of real hope, Danica felt a surge of excitement nevertheless. “Do you think he can help me?”
“I don’t know for sure. I mean, it was one thing for me to go into the spirit world. I still stayed here — my body, anyway. But you’re talking about moving yourself back in time, interacting with people who were alive back then. That’s something entirely different.”
Yes, it was. And when Angela stated the matter so baldly, Danica realized how crazy the entire proposition sounded. However, the prima hadn’t said no. “Can you talk to Lawrence?”
“Not really. That is, he doesn’t have a phone, and cell reception is for crap out on the reservation. My father keeps trying to give him a satellite phone, but Lawrence says he’s survived ninety-five years without one and doesn’t see any reason to start now.”
Ninety-five. That seemed immeasurably ancient to Danica, whose grandparents were only in their late sixties. “Are you sure he’d be up for something like this? I don’t want to bother him — ”
“Are you kidding? He’d love a chance to try to solve this puzzle. And I’d love to see him help you, but I don’t think I can manage to disappear for a whole day. I could get one of the cousins to babysit, but then I’d have to explain why.”
“It’s fine,” Danica said quickly. “All I’d need is directions.”
At once Angela shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t send you out there — for the first time, at least — without someone guiding you in. His house can be a little tricky to find. Would you mind going with my father? He drives out there about once a week anyway to check on things. I know he’d be happy to take you.”
For a second or two, Danica hesitated. She didn’t know Andre Begonie all that well, and it did feel sort of awkward to be driving off with him into Navajo country. But then, if this insane plan of hers actually worked, she’d be going a lot farther — metaphorically speaking, anyway — than the reservation. This was no time to be timid.
“Sure,” she replied, making sure she sounded firm and upbeat, and not worried at all. “If you really think he won’t mind.”
“I know he won’t. Let me go give him a quick call and see when he might be available.”
“Thanks.”
Angela got up from the couch and went into the kitchen, presumably in search of her cell phone. As she waited, Danica glanced around the room. It really was very tidy, with no sign that a couple of almost-three-year-olds lived here. Pictures of the children were scattered around — on the hearth, on a side table, on top of the low bookshelves under the picture window. They really were adorable, with their big green eyes and dark hair. One of the pictures was clearly a professional shot of the entire family, taken in the yard, it looked like, since Danica recognized the outlines of the house behind them. Everyone was smiling. Connor had his arm looped around Angela’s waist and was leaning in toward her. The adoring light in his eyes made it obvious that he was just crazy about her, and Danica felt a little pang as she looked at the portrait. Would she ever find someone who looked at her the same way?
She quickly glanced away from the picture as Angela reentered the living room, phone held to her ear.
“Just a sec,” she was saying. She paused and glanced over at Danica. “Is tomorrow okay?”
That sounded awfully soon, but, on the other hand, what the heck else did she have to fill her days? She might as well go and talk to this Lawrence person, and find out sooner rather than later whether her plan had any hope of succeeding. “Tomorrow’s great.”
Angela returned her attention to the phone. “That works. At ten?” Her gaze flicked to Danica, who nodded. “Okay, she’ll meet you at your place at ten. Thanks, Andre.” She ended the call and stuck the phone in her jeans pocket. “You’re all set.”
It seemed strange to Danica that Angela would call her father by his first name, but then, the prima hadn’t met him until she was an adult. He certainly hadn’t been around when she was a child, so maybe it felt more natural for her to call him by his given name rather than attempt to make up for lost time by saying “Dad” or whatever.
“Thanks so much,” Danica said. “I really hope I’m not imposing or anything.”
“You’re not. As I said, Lawrence eats this stuff up. If he can’t help you, I don’t think anyone can.”
That remark didn’t exactly sound encouraging, but Angela was probably right. The Wilcoxes had some talented witches and warlocks among them, but Danica didn’t know of anyone with the talent to bend time and space. And she doubted the McAllisters had anyone like that, either.
Danica got up from the couch, since she figured she’d taken up enough of the prima’s time already. “Thanks,” she told the other woman, even though she’d said practically the same thing already.
“It’s fine. Let me know how it goes. I’m really interested.”
Most likely, nothing would happen at all, but Danica told herself to be positive. Lawrence had certainly helped Angela when she — and the whole clan — needed it most. After all, up here in the high country, lightning did sometimes strike the same place twice.
* * *
As much as Danica had enjoyed not having her parents hovering over every little thing she did, she knew she should call her mother while she was in town where she actually could get some cell reception. Luckily, though, Danica got the voicemail at the house, which meant she was able to leave a message saying that she was fine, and the cabin was fine, but something had gone funky with the land line. Not to worry, though, because she had a satellite phone, so she could still call out if necessary.
Danica didn’t bother to explain where she’d gotten the satphone, and she didn’t leave the number. Well, that was mainly because she didn’t know it. She’d left the phone back at the cabin, since she hadn’t thought she’d need it in town, where she could use her cell phone. She could always call again with the number…or not. The important thing was that she could make calls. That didn’t mean she wanted to get pestered by people calling her, especially overly anxious parents.
The sun had begun to dip behind the trees to the west of the property by the time she got back to the cabin. She still had an hour or so until sundown, which was good, because she’d decided she wanted to go back into the woods. After more than a hundred years, there probably wasn’t any trace of where the stranger’s body had been buried, but Danica thought she should at least try to find his resting place, uneasy as it was. Maybe if she did that, he would understand that she was attempting to help him.
Dry grass crackled under her feet as she headed toward the clearing. Once there, she looked around, inspecting the ground and the trees wi
th narrowed eyes, hoping she would see something out of the ordinary. But everything looked just as it should — a few fallen branches littering the ground, pinecones scattered here and there, mullein plants driving up yellow-tipped spikes.
There, though, on the other side of the clearing. Danica’s eyes narrowed as she realized that another path wound away through the woods. It could go nowhere, but she had her compass with her. And she had some time before the sun really began to set.
This other path — if you could even call it that, overgrown as it was — snaked away to the north and west, moving over ground that gradually rose and became rockier. Danica had to slow her pace but kept on doggedly, although she knew there was a very good chance the trail would only lead her to another dead end.
She came to a small clearing, barely more than a wide space in the path. To her left, boulders protruded from the hillside, a few pine trees clinging tenaciously to the spaces between the rocks. On the other side, sycamores fought for space with the ponderosa pines. The trees’ leaves hadn’t begun to turn yet, but Danica thought she saw a patch of foliage high up on one that was just starting to turn gold.
As her gaze traveled back down from the treetops, she thought she saw an odd, pale scar on the lower trunk of the middle sycamore. She approached, thinking it must be a scratch left by a wild animal. Didn’t bears sharpen their claws on tree trunks or something?
Her hiking boot hit a rock, and she glanced down. There wasn’t just one rock, but a whole pile of them. And they didn’t look like the reddish sandstone of the boulders above her, but instead were smooth and pale, clearly tumbled in a creek or riverbed. What the heck?
She looked back up at the tree. The scar she had noticed was only a few feet off the ground and consisted of two simple lines.
A cross.
Ice seemed to travel down her spine, and she stepped back quickly. Those rocks covering the ground…the cross on the tree….
It seemed she might have found the stranger’s resting place after all.
Some might have thought the use of the cross odd, but, unlike the McAllister clan, who practiced their own form of Wicca, the Wilcoxes had always been nominally Christian, or at least paid lip service to Christian traditions so they wouldn’t attract any unwanted attention. As to why her ancestors had gone to the trouble of burying the stranger, and then putting a cross above his unmarked grave out here in the woods, she couldn’t begin to guess. Delayed-reaction guilt?
A shadow moved behind her, and she turned slowly, hoping it was a deer and knowing it probably wasn’t.
He stood there, in silence as always. The sorrow in those piercing blue eyes made her want to go to him and put her arms around him. But, considering the way he tended to evaporate into nothing, she realized embracing him would probably be like trying to hug mist.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
His gaze flickered to the meager little pile of stones, and his shoulders lifted. He tilted his head at her as if to say, It’s not your fault.
No, it wasn’t. But it could have been the fault of her great-great-etc.-grandfather, or great-great-uncle. In fact, she very much feared that was exactly the case.
Anyway, this one-sided conversation seemed to answer one of Angela’s questions. Clearly, the ghost was interacting with Danica in some fashion, even if he couldn’t seem to talk.
“I want to help you,” she continued. “I don’t know if I can. But I’m going to try. That is…if you want me to.”
Then she waited, breath held, as the stranger regarded her with those sad blue eyes of his. For the longest moment, he didn’t do anything, but only stood where he was. Maybe he couldn’t really hear her. Was there some sort of disconnect between the land of the living and of the dead, so he could see her but not communicate in any meaningful way?
At last he took a step toward her, followed by another. The silence of his movements unnerved her; she should have been able to hear the crunch of dry grass under his high boots, the crackle of a twig as his heel descended on it. But she heard none of those things, only the heightened pounding of her heart.
He stopped at last, so close that she could have reached out and touched his face…if she’d dared. Everything about him seemed so solid, and yet…his chest didn’t rise and fall, and she knew if she’d laid a hand where his heart was supposed to be, she would have felt nothing.
Since she didn’t know what else to do, she stood there, holding herself as still as she could. She didn’t want to frighten him away.
A hand reached up, as if to touch her hair. She fancied she could feel something, the tiniest brush of fingers against the loose strands, but that must have been the wind.
And then the echo of one word in her mind, nothing more than a whisper before he was gone again, fading away like mist in sunlight.
Yes.
5
Danica was glad of Andre Begonie’s relaxed, easygoing manner, because after that encounter with her ghost the afternoon before, she still felt a little rattled.
Her ghost. Of course he really wasn’t hers, but she couldn’t help thinking of him that way. Of everyone who’d visited the cabin, she was the only one he’d reached out to, made contact with. That had to mean something.
They rattled along in Andre’s ancient Jeep, all the windows rolled down. Danica wondered why on earth he hadn’t bought a new car. Now that he was back amongst the Wilcoxes and not in hiding on the reservation, he certainly had the funds to do so. Maybe he simply didn’t care about that sort of thing.
She would have liked to say she didn’t care, either, but as they made their way out of Flagstaff and down into the desert lands where the Navajo tribal territory began, she found herself missing her Land Rover and its awesome air conditioning in a major way. Rolling down the windows only helped so much.
One good thing about that, though — the noise from the wind blasting through the Jeep kept conversation to a minimum, which worked just fine for Danica. She really wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Not that Andre Begonie seemed like the chatty type. He guided them down the highway, gaze fixed on the road ahead of them, and didn’t seem inclined to say much. Not in a taciturn or grumpy sort of way, but more like he was fine with being quiet if that was what you wanted. And right then Danica wanted it very much.
She was still trying to figure out how much she should say to this Lawrence person when she saw him. It was one thing to say you were being altruistic about wanting to go back in time and right an ancient wrong. Now, though, after the way the stranger — the spirit — had approached her, had reached out to touch her, she knew deep down that her feelings weren’t terribly altruistic at all.
She wanted to save him because…she was pretty sure she wanted him.
Oh, God, that sounded terrible once she’d admitted her need to herself, especially in reference to a man who’d been dead for more than a hundred years before she was even born. Why did he have to be so damn handsome?
It was more than his looks, though. There was something…a pull…that Danica had never experienced with anyone else.
She wouldn’t count what she’d felt with Matías, because that had all been a lie, an attraction based solely on the unholy magical power of coercion he possessed. He’d made her think that she wanted him, maybe was even in love with him, but it had nothing to do with what she actually wanted and everything to do with Matías’ own sick desires.
But this man, whose name she didn’t even know…she thought she wanted him. Which, again, was crazy.
Of course you couldn’t be practical like your sister and fall for a nice McAllister boy, she thought wearily as she watched the dusty landscape flash by. No, you had to find yourself attracted to a ghost.
She must have made some sort of sound, possibly let out a sigh, because Andre looked over at her then.
“Sorry about all the wind,” he said. “The A/C worked once upon a time, but I’ve just never gotten around to fixing it.”
“It’s okay,” Danica rep
lied automatically, even though she knew she was going to be a complete windblown mess by the time they got to Lawrence’s house. “I don’t mind it.”
He seemed content with her answer, and returned his attention to the road. At least it looked as if they were getting close to their destination; he slowed down for some road construction, and then turned left a little bit before the trading post, which seemed to be where a lot of the other cars were heading.
No trading post for the two of them, however. Andre turned off onto a dirt road and seemed to be headed up toward a canyon. Danica could just make out some sort of compound through the swirling dust — a couple of one-story houses and a few outbuildings she didn’t immediately recognize. A white pickup truck even more ancient than the Jeep they were riding in was parked under a huge old oak tree.
Andre pulled up next to the pickup and put the Jeep in park. “Well, here we are.”
Danica nodded, then reached up to smooth her wind-tangled hair as best she could. Good thing she couldn’t really see what she looked like. But then, she kind of doubted this Lawrence person would care one way or another if she looked like a walking disaster area.
She followed Andre to one of the two houses on the property. They looked nearly identical, and she wondered if he’d lived in one of them while he was out here in hiding, waiting for Angela to grow up so she could break the curse.
Although they’d left a mild day behind them in Flagstaff, the heat here was blistering enough for July. Andre knocked once on the door, said, “Lawrence, we’re here,” and then opened it to let them in.
Cool, somewhat damp air, obviously from a swamp cooler, swirled out around Danica. She stepped into it, glad of the relief from the merciless dry heat outside, then blinked as her eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness. The room was shabbily furnished, with a cracked leather couch, a battered coffee table…and a leather chair in one corner. In that chair sat an ancient-looking Navajo man, his bone-white hair pulled back into a ponytail.
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