Jaime massaged her eyelids, suddenly tired. She didn’t know what her visitors had truly wanted, or what they’d walked away with... or even what they’d do with whatever they’d learned. But they hadn’t been straight with her, and that was never a good sign. And—
Her head snapped up; she looked into Kesna’s startled watery blue eyes. “If they were in the job room, they were in the stable,” she said. “Everyone knows that palomino was here—and now they know he’s gone.”
And like everyone else in Camolen, they knew Ramble was the only living witness to what had happened.
“They could figure it out,” she whispered. “Where Carey is... why he took the palomino...”
“Does it matter?” Kesna said, easing down into a chair, her gaze locked to Jaime’s with a plea behind it. Please let something be easy. Let it be all right.
“Only,” Jaime said, “if they don’t want anyone else to know what Ramble knows.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Sixteen
Jess crouched along the outside wall of the square brown nature center, not quite willing to sit on the wet ground. The rain had stopped, the songbirds were out in force, and there was just enough sunshine to spark off the wet leaves.
It’d been a long time since she was this miserable.
The park naturalist stood alongside the green Metroparks pickup in the tiny parking area, talking to the ranger behind the wheel; both of them glanced her way with alarming frequency.
She knew they meant to be kind, that they were worried about her—a woeful woman waiting for her friend to show up, every word out of her mouth making her seem odder than the one before.
Surely Dayna would know to come look for her here. Surely the others had made it to the main parking lot safely once she’d distracted the ranger. Surely they’d somehow gotten Ramble under control...
She shivered, trying to remember if she’d felt this sick the first time the world-travel spell had brought her here. Probably she just hadn’t known it—hadn’t known what this human form was supposed to feel like. That it shouldn’t tremble, and that her vision shouldn’t go grey when she stood. That even weak human limbs shouldn’t be rubbery beneath her.
She tugged her sweatshirt sleeve down over her hand and rubbed the back of her covered wrist over her brow, trying to ease the ache there. When she looked up, the naturalist was heading toward her with purpose, the ranger on her heels.
“We’ve been talking,” the woman said; her name tag, now that she’d removed her poncho, was readily visible. Mary Carter. The ranger stood behind her, thumbs hooked into his belt, raking his gaze over the rain-darkened color of her hair, her larger-than-normal irises.
Mary Carter crouched down to Jess’s level. “We’re not really comfortable with the fact that you can’t give us a contact number, and that you don’t look well. We’d like to take you to a hospital.”
Jess shook her head. “This is where my friends know to find me.”
“It would be easier,” the ranger said, “if you could tell us where to find them.”
She could only shake her head again, trying not to let them see her shiver. Not shivers from being damp on this warm, humid spring day, but shivers from a body too harshly wrenched from one state to another. If they thought she was truly sick, they’d never leave her alone. She said, “We are new to this spot.”
They exchanged a glance, and she wondered what she’d said that wasn’t quite right this time—although the way she formed her words alone might inspire those expressions.
“But you said that this Mark fellow lives here,” the ranger said. “Don’t you even have a last name? We’ll look him up in the phone book.”
She shook her head yet again. Caution, this time. If they found his name once, they could find it again. They could find him. They might try to check up on her... they might tell someone else. They—the local peacekeepers and guards—might stumble across Ramble.
They’d take him away. They’d put him in a small, closed-in space with no way to communicate, or to understand what he really needed. She shivered again.
“Jessie,” said Mary Carter, “you aren’t leaving us much of a choice. Your friends will know to check the hospitals when they don’t find you here.”
“No,” Jess said, unable to hide a hint of panic. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, fast and uneven and somehow stealing the breath from her lungs.
The ranger reached down and took her upper arm, not an unkind grip but enough to draw her to her feet. “It’s best this way. Mary and the park volunteers will be here for the rest of the afternoon. If your friends come looking, they’ll learn you’re at Marion General.”
They’d ask her questions she couldn’t answer, they’d find all that was strange about her, they’d take her away—
“No!” she cried, trying to yank herself free, not caring that the people in the parking lot—locking doors, shucking raincoats, loading up with binoculars and water bottles—looked over to stare at her.
The woman said, “Bill, maybe we should let the police handle this—”
True panic blossomed within her even as she struggled to think, knowing if only her heart would stop racing and her legs didn’t feel so weak she wouldn’t be so scared and yet unable to stop herself from pulling against him—just like the horse she was, an astonishing revelation that made her laugh out loud with the absurdity of it—something she shouldn’t have done, she saw that right away. The doubt left Mary Carter’s face, and the ranger’s fingers clamped more firmly on her arm. The laugh turned to a sob.
“Jess!”
A sweeter voice she’d never heard. Deep and easy-going and always sounding like there was a smile behind it. “Mark!”
She found him by following the gazes of the naturalist and ranger. There, striding across the parking lot, more breadth to his shoulders than the last time she’d seen him but still with a carefree quality in his movement even facing two uniformed park officials with a squirming handful of nearly hysterical—
“Jess!” he said again, not so loudly this time, just making the point. He opened his arms slightly and the ranger looked at the naturalist; she gave the slightest of nods and Jess was free, sprinting gracelessly to throw herself at him with such force that he staggered, laughing.
But it was a quick laugh, and he ran a hand across her back and said, “Easy, there, Jess, everything’s fine,” in a way that told her everything was, and that the others were safe. “I’m sorry,” he said to the park officials, both of them coming across the brief strip of grass to join him. “She’s...” and he hesitated, finally adding, “a special child.”
“She seems like more than that,” Mary Carter said. “She seems ill. Not to mention barefoot.”
“Lost the shoes again, ey?” Mark buffed the damp sweatshirt across Jess’s back; she rested the side of her face against his windbreaker and—just like the horse she was—let herself rely upon his strength and confidence.
“She’s just scared,” he told the naturalist. “She gets that way. I got hung up in traffic—I never would have left her alone this long.”
“Mmm,” said Mary Carter, not sounding entirely convinced.
But not arguing. Not talking about taking her to official places where people would ask questions and Jess wouldn’t be able to answer them. Not stopping Mark as he guided her around in a clear intent to leave.
And as she let Mark lead her away, as she trusted in his feet to take them the right direction and his knowledge to reunite her with Carey and Dayna, some small part of her started thinking again.
Thinking about Ramble. That he had no one to trust, and no one to follow. He was here in this strange world at the behest of people he didn’t even know... and he was truly alone.
~~~~~
Carey glanced inside the stall where Ramble slept off the effects of travel and changespell—and a decent dose of Valium.
Unlike Jess, who had a sweetness in repose, Ramble’s strong-boned recalcitrance some
how came through despite his slack-jawed position in the fresh and deeply bedded stall. He lay on his side, twitching occasionally as though his fear and uneasiness had worked its way through the drug.
Thank the Guides Mark had brought the old dental prescription. He very much doubted they’d have gotten Ramble into Mark’s battered vehicle without it, and it had hit Ramble’s stressed system fast and hard.
Now they just needed him to wake up, so they could feel him out under controlled circumstances... so Carey could get a sense of just how long this would take.
Jess was using single words within days, he’d been told, and very simple sentences soon after. But Jess had had the benefit of a human-intensive upbringing... and Carey spoke to his horses more than most.
And Jess was Jess.
He doubted very much this changed palomino had any such advantage. Looking at the long, ragged flaxen and orange-streaked hair of the man inside the stall, looking at his rugged frame and golden skin tones—he had a sudden moment of doubt.
For a moment, he believed Jess had been right from the start.
But it was a short moment, driven by stress and worry. They hadn’t counted on being separated at the park... once they’d intercepted Mark at the winding entrance lane, they hadn’t been able to delay to look for Jess. They’d stuffed Ramble in the car and sped for Jaime’s place, and then Mark had barely waited for them to pull Ramble out before peeling out of the driveway and back to the park to find her.
Dayna came down the barn aisle, looking moderately refreshed but wary. It was a wide, airy aisle, with the indoor ring attached on one end and huge double doors facing the old farmhouse on the other, ten stalls on each side with a tack room and entrance in the middle.
Clean white paint made it bright, and hunter-green trim turned it cheery. The full loft and storage stalls filled the place with the scent of hay, and Mark and his crew of manure movers kept the place fresh.
Carey had once blown out all the windows and panicked the horses into shell shock with a bungled spell... a decision that kept Jaime from ever fully trusting his judgment again.
In retrospect, he couldn’t blame her.
In retrospect, he’d do it again.
And maybe he just had.
They’d put Ramble in the stall across from the storage, right up at the double-doors to the house, and they’d stacked hay bales across the interior aisle to block Ramble’s stall from view. Mark had already pinned a cheery sign on the other side to waylay boarder curiosity: Hay Overshipment! They’d already installed a chain and lock at the sliding double doors.
Dayna ran a hand along the bales and nodded satisfaction, wandering to peer at Ramble through the stall bars. “God, I feel like I’ve run a marathon. Suliya is in the house sleeping it off. I don’t see how Jaime does this so often.”
“I don’t think she does,” Carey said. “That particular spell was only used the one time.” He trailed off, lost in the memories of the wild courier ride, the fall from the dry riverbed trail that had made him trigger the spell in the first place, wounded and already falling from Lady’s saddle.
She rolled her eyes, entirely Dayna-like. “I don’t think it’s changed that much.”
But Carey barely listened to her—focusing instead on the sound of tires crunching gravel. Mark. And—he fervently hoped—Jess.
He headed for the driveway, wincing. Neither Ohio nor the world travel had been kind to his permanently damaged body.
But after a few steps his movement smoothed out. And the important thing—yes, as he came around the corner of the barn to the curving horseshoe driveway, he spotted Mark’s car. He broke into a jog, and when Jess spilled out the door of the passenger side, he was ready to catch her.
“Ramble,” she said, at first making as if to barge past him and then clearly uncertain whether to target the barn or the house. She gave him an anxious look, her hair in her face like a wild child and eyes to match. “Where is he? Did he calm? Did you all make it here all right? Is he well? I want to see him—”
He’d never seen her like this. Never.
“Jess,” he said, barely garnering her attention before losing her again, her gaze wild, her hands gripping his arms with increasing urgency. He raised his hands, pushing her hair back and capturing her face in the same gesture—holding her. “Jess.”
She fastened her gaze on him, searching. For what, he didn’t know. Firmly, he said, “Ramble is sleeping. He’s fine. We’re all fine. Suliya is sleeping. Dayna is in the barn watching Ramble. We’re all safe, Jess—including you.”
She whispered, “I thought they were going to take me away.”
He hadn’t known. He hadn’t realized what he would put her through, bringing her back under these conditions.
No. He had.
He just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
He pulled her in close, wrapping his arms around her, rubbing her back. Ninth level fool.
And still he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t do it again. Jaime was right, he thought, to withhold from him that last bit of trust.
“Easy, Jess,” he said, automatically falling back to her words. “Easy, Braveheart. We’ve got you now.”
He wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to comfort.
~~~~~
Dayna waited with impatience on top of impatience, crunching dry toast and peanut butter in Jaime’s kitchen. Ramble slept on, even as Jess yawned herself awake from a short nap and Suliya woke to introduce herself to the wonders of the microwave—and to the wonders of flirting outrageously with Mark.
The moment Suliya retreated to freshen up, Dayna poked him in the arm. Hard. “She’s young enough to be your—”
Mark snorted interruption, unperturbed. “I’m not exactly an old man, Dayna. You haven’t been gone that long.”
“Long enough,” Dayna said. Of course he brought out the worst in her; he always had, even if he’d grown into himself since she’d seen him nearly two years earlier. Sturdier, a little brawnier, holding down his responsibilities here at the Dancing Equine as well as part-timing at the LK hotel where they’d once worked together. “And she’s young. If not in years, in mind.”
“You used to say the same about me,” he told her, as blithely untroubled by her comments as ever.
“Don’t blame me when she thinks you mean it and we have to deal with the mess when it’s time to leave.”
“Naw,” Mark said. “Suliya’s in this for Suliya—she knows exactly what she’s doing. You’re just ticked because I’m not flirting with you.” And then he grinned at her, irrepressibly Mark, until Dayna buried her face in her hands and groaned.
When she looked up, Jess stood in the arched opening between the kitchen and the living room, all in all looking more like the woman she’d grown into and less like Jess fresh from being a horse all her life. Dayna gave her a wan smile, making eyes at Mark—enough of an explanation for Jess.
She switched her attention to Mark and said, “Do you have soda? With bubbles?”
“For you,” he said, “extra bubbles.”
The slightest of wrinkles appeared between her eyes as she looked at him, the vaguely puzzled curiosity of someone not quite awake. Mark explained, “That’s the new, improved, flirtier me.”
“I liked you fine before,” Jess said, but she thought about it, watching Mark grab a glass from an upper cupboard, fill it with ice from the automatic door dispenser, and pop the top on a cold Mountain Dew. “This is nice, too.”
He gave Dayna a triumphant grin, whereupon she threw her hands in the air, just as glad for the interruption when Carey came in from the barn.
“Jess!” he said, stopping an arm’s length away with an odd awkwardness as Jess took her first sip of soda and made a scrunchily pleased face at the carbonation. “Are you feeling better?”
She nodded. “Not like my thoughts are flying apart anymore.”
He gave what Dayna thought was a quiet sigh of relief.
She wasn’t sure; she couldn’t te
ll what was going on in his head anymore. She’d always thought of him as the kind of guy who would do what was necessary, when it was necessary, and not look back. But now it seemed to her that he was already looking back, and they hadn’t even finished going forward yet.
He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, toward the barn. “He’s just starting to move around. I thought you might like to be there when he wakes—what’s that?” His gaze shifted to where Mark emerged from a pantry. The back of the door bore a white board.
Mark didn’t hesitate as he opened the refrigerator and shoved a new six-pack of soda in place. “Jaime’s message board.”
“From Camolen?” Carey asked, moving a step behind Dayna as she headed for the board.
“Yep, that’s the one.” Mark straightened. “I’ve got a few spellstones left if you need to send anything her way.”
“We brought more with us,” Dayna said, giving the poorly cleaned board a critical eye. —ame lo-king for Arle—it said, as if written by a marker going dry.
“Came looking for Arlen?” Carey said from behind her. “When did she send that?”
“What?” Mark joined them, frowning at the board. “Wow, that looks bad. They usually come through a lot clearer than that.”
“It’s new, you mean?” Dayna looked from the board to Mark.
He nodded. “But why would she use up a spellstone to tell us someone came looking for Arlen?”
Jess hiccupped over her carbonation, a desperately muffled sound, and followed it with a very practical, “Because she thought it was important.”
Someone came looking for Arlen. Dayna frowned, caught Carey doing the same. He said, “I think we have to assume that it is important. Some aspect of it. There may be a lot more to the message than we see.”
Quite matter-of-factly, Jess said, “It’s not working right. That’s why the travel was so hard, and my change. The magic’s not well.”
Dayna felt a little frisson of the rightness of it, and gave a sharp shake of her head anyway. “That’s ridiculous.”
The Changespell Saga Page 71
