“You are entirely too certain of your place in this world,” Phia said, annoyance stiffening her posture.
“Maybe,” Jaime said, though it took effort to hide the fear she felt at those words. Fear of being sent back, of never finding closure for Arlen’s death. Never truly convincing herself he was gone, that he wasn’t waiting somewhere for someone to find and help him.
Her.
“Or maybe,” Jaime added, “it operates enough like mine that I know exactly my place in this world.” She gave Phia her most matter-of-fact look. “Doing my damndest to keep the people I care about as safe as they can be.” She hitched her hip up on the edge of the desk. “Let me know,” she said, “if you ever figure out what those spells were all about.”
Phia gave her a tight smile. “Let me know,” she said, “when you decide to tell us what you know.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Eighteen
“Big bootin’ whee,” Suliya said, staring critically at Mark’s computer monitor, her hand on the back of the chair Dayna occupied as she scooted up beside Mark’s own desk chair. “Just the same as the dispatch, really.”
Mark, hereforeto congenial, actually looked hurt. Dayna glanced over her shoulder with the kind of disapproval Suliya had long ago learned to ignore, and said, “Computers do a lot more than give people access to the Internet.”
“From what you’ve said,” Mark told her, apparently willing to pretend Suliya hadn’t snorted at his toy, “it’s a lot like magic. The way a programmer builds a program doesn’t sound all that different from the way a wizard builds a spell.”
“Huh,” Dayna said, looking entirely too thoughtful.
If she started playing with the computer, Suliya was going to get bored fast. “I think I’ll go see how Jess is doing with Ramble.”
In perfect unison, Mark and Dayna said, “No!”
“Poot,” Suliya said, sliding into a sulk.
“Jess is having enough trouble with Ramble,” Mark said, so reasonably. “Not to mention that he keeps taking off his clothes.”
“You can’t keep blankets on some horses,” Suliya told him.
Dayna gave her a calculating look that put Suliya right on edge. “You want something to do? Fine. Let’s see about straightening your hair.”
“What?” Aghast, Suliya clapped her hands to her head. “Not my hair!”
Mark grinned, and Dayna gave her a wicked smile. “You stand out far too much with that mop. Or we could cut it...”
Suliya gave a shriek of dismay, and Mark winced. “Keep it down. I don’t think Carey’s feeling well.”
“Not since we got here,” Dayna said. “The world travel messed him up, and there’s no one here who can help. I sure can’t pull of that kind of advanced healing magic.”
Mark tapped out a few idle keystrokes. “I gave him some ibuprofen.”
Suliya glared at Dayna. “No one said anything about my hair before we left, and no one’s touching it now.”
“We didn’t know we’d be looking at a long stay,” Dayna said.
Mark started the process to shut down the computer. “Dayna’s right. We don’t want you looking memorable right now.”
Suliya gave Dayna a suspicious look. “And just how easy is it to un-spell if you do it?”
“Easy enough,” Dayna said, pushing back her own sandy, boringly straight hair. “Look, I’ll just do a small little section, okay? And I’ll put it back, and you can see for yourself.”
Except Dayna couldn’t.
Her casual concentration turned to quick consternation. “A little spell like this should be a snap—we know the spellstones work!” Dayna said, and tried a quick series of additional spells, none of which had any effect whatsoever. Suliya snuck away to the bathroom to check her hair from all angles, making sure it was just as it had been.
She’d thought this would be an opportunity to prove herself invaluable to Carey... but Carey barely noticed her, and her only contribution these past days—boring, boring, boring—was to take watch outside the Ramble’s stall when Jess needed a nap or a meal.
Patting her hair back into place behind a borrowed headband, she considered that given the expression on Ramble’s face when he looked at her, she might well be better off outside the stall.
For Ramble didn’t like being human. And he certainly understood just who had made him that way.
Suliya peeked back into Mark’s little office, a cramped room in the browns and tans of the straightforward decor. The computer overwhelmed a desk that reminded her of the one in Carey’s job room office, and the desk crowded unadorned bookshelves of some material that looked like wood but wasn’t, chock full of books with the overflow shoved in every which way. The most remarkable object in the room was a strange little frame with five perfect silver balls hanging on clear string.
Which was to say, there was very little to remark upon in the room at all, and to Suliya’s mind—considering she had crossed the barrier to another world—that made the room somewhat of a cheat. The kitchen was fun, and the house boasted any number of small oddities, but she’d seen nothing to—
Well, to take the curl out of her hair.
No one remarked on her reappearance.
“That’s that, then,” Dayna said, in the middle of whatever conversation they’d had while Suliya was gone. “If I can get the right kind of crystal, maybe I can invoke a spellstone, pause it, and suck up power through it to store in a second stone.”
“What’s wrong with using the spellstones you brought?” Suliya said. “There sure are enough of them.”
Dayna raised a censuring eyebrow. “That’s what you get for walking out of the conversation,” she said, but almost immediately relented. “I’m concerned about how the travel went—and now we’ve had trouble with the whiteboard. I’d like to have some extra power to feed into the stones for the way back.”
Mark shook his head. “Sounds damned risky if you ask me. Pausing an invoked spellstone. Sheesh.” But when Dayna turned on him, he held up placating hands. “Yeah, yeah, I’m not the wizard around here. Anyway, I know just the place. Kinda new, stuck off the end of Hocking Street. I’ll take you.”
“Me too,” Suliya said quickly, and when they both looked at her, skeptical in a way her father’s employees never would have dared displayed even when she was a child, she added firmly, “I’m coming.”
Dayna groaned. “I hate the fact that the phrase burnin’ poot comes to mind,” she said, and sighed. “At least braid the hair, will you?”
“We won’t all fit in the truck if she doesn’t,” Mark said, and grinned.
Suliya pretended he was a servant, tilted her chin in the air, and turned on her heel to return to the bathroom and such hair management tools as she’d been allowed to bring. But inside, she didn’t truly mind. Inside, she had a little girl grin.
Time to explore.
~~~~~
Jess leaned her forehead against the bars of Ramble’s stall—his closed, locked stall—and breathed a sigh of relief.
She hadn’t wanted the others here for this.
She hadn’t told them she intended to talk to him today—even though they trusted her. They expected her to let them know when he was ready to discuss the day the Council died.
Never had she deliberately hidden anything from them before. From anyone. She was by nature the most honest of horses, in her evasions and refusals as much as her willingness to try. She knew it had been one of Carey’s favorite things about her as Lady.
But he no longer rode Lady—not for courier jobs, not for pleasure. Not ever. Some hidden piece of him had never accepted the horse part of her, not once he’d taken to the woman.
It was that hidden piece that she no longer trusted. Certainly not to do right by Ramble, a horse already done immeasurable wrong. Carey knew it was wrong, he knew it—and he let it happen because Ramble was a horse. A tool.
So she protected Ramble from him—from them all—and from the intensity of their que
stions. But somehow in the process she felt she’d betrayed her own honest nature. Been forced to it.
She gave her forehead an unthinking scratch against the bars, horse-like even in that, and leaving her bangs in disarray. And finally, she reached for the stall latch. He’d been waiting, interested, at the back of the stall as she’d taught him.
If he ever regained his horse form, he’d have much better manners than he’d started with.
Jess pulled a huge apple from the pocket of Mark’s light jacket, buffed it against her stomach, and took a big bite before offering it to him; he accepted it, took a bite, and—hesitating—offered it back to her.
He’d done the same thing the day before. It had been the moment she’d decided it was time to talk to him.
They ate the apple together, and she used the edge of the jacket sleeve to wipe the glint from his lip and chin. He let her tend him, nudging her only slightly with his shoulder. She’d been the same, once... expecting the humans to handle her. Expecting they had the right, no matter her form.
“Ramble,” she said, sitting cross-legged in the clean shavings of the stall, “I need to ask you some questions.”
Not her own questions, but questions that Carey would have asked. Getting it over with, as right as she could. Because if she didn’t, they would—and she’d do it better, no matter that she’d never believed he could tell them enough to matter.
And then it would be done.
Ramble sat beside her, reaching for the end of her long braid and twisting it between his fingers. The exceptionally mouthy horse had turned into an exceptionally fidgety man—always touching something, feeling the textures... she’d taught him how to tie knots purely for his pleasure in it.
“Ask,” he said agreeably.
“You can ask things, too, if you want,” she said.
He fingered her hair, his mobile face twisting somewhat in conflict. He had the questions, she well knew... he just wasn’t sure how to ask them. As she had, he understood speech much sooner than he was able to comfortably employ it.
“If you want,” she repeated. “You don’t have to.”
He nodded, satisfied with that.
“Not long before we came here, when you were still horse,” she said, watching to see that he understood, “you were out on a ride with Sherra.”
“Sherra,” he said. “Too...” and he made a serious face, a strict face. Trent, Jess was certain, had only laughed at half the things Ramble pulled... had considered it a game.
“Yes, Sherra. She rode you, not far, and tied you while she talked to other people who came without horses. Do you remember?”
“No.” He said it flatly; he didn’t look at her. Lying.
Jess sighed and shifted slightly away from him, pretending to go off in her own thoughts. Pretending he wasn’t there.
“Jess,” he said, and nudged her; she turned a fast and furious look on him and he backed off, dropping her hair to thump against her back. “Jess...”
She didn’t look. After a moment he snorted in pure exasperation, jerking his chin in a motion that would have been a curse of neck-wringing in his horse form.
If he’d said he was frightened, if he’d trembled, if he’d been honest in his reluctance...
But he wasn’t. So she let him work through the dilemma of being ignored until he came around with honesty, as certain as anyone could be that he would... and that in itself spoke more of his recent journey than any of the others would ever understand.
Finally, he said in a low, half-sullen voice, “I don’t want to remember.”
She turned back to him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it is a hard thing. But... it is also an important thing. We need to know so we can try to make that place safe again.”
He frowned; it turned his features harsh. He looked away from her again, then back; it all but broke her heart to see how he struggled.
For her. For her, when she was manipulating him as much as any of them.
“Tell me,” she said softly. “It will be hard, and then it will be over.”
“Don’t remember,” he said, his chin hard and disapproving, his lower lip tight.
“You do.” She pushed him this time. “You do remember. We always remember.” We, meaning horses. And we, meaning the only two horses ever to discuss their situation in human form.
He still didn’t look at her. He didn’t fidget or reach out. But after a long moment, he said, “The trail ate them... they screamed. It came to eat me. I ran.”
“Attaboy,” she murmured, remembering Trent’s Word. He flushed with pleasure and then put a hand to his face, feeling the warmth.
“Did you see anyone else?” she asked Ramble. “Besides the wizards. Anyone hidden?”
He shook his head; she didn’t believe it.
“No one in the woods? Watching?”
“Magic happened,” he said, a quick burst of matter-of-fact words.
Dayna had said so, too.
“You felt the magic?” When he looked up, his surprise matching hers, she said, “Do you always feel magic when it happens?”
“Always,” he agreed. “Not... you?”
She hitched her shoulder up in a shrug. “Usually. Not everyone does, though.” She eyed him. “Someone made the magic happen. You did see a person in the woods.”
He sighed hugely, letting it vibrate his lips a little. Giving up. “Yes,” he said. “Man. With black mare. Pretty.”
“Good,” she said. He wouldn’t hold back much after that sigh.
Which meant she had it all... and it told them nothing new. A man had been there, bringing that unfocused magic into play... so now they knew it hadn’t been an accident.
But no one had ever truly thought it was.
Jess put her hands over her face, her throat tightening. Ramble’s tentative touch brushed her arm. It made her laugh, but the sound came out more like a sob. “Stupid,” she said. “All for nothing. I told them...”
He made a sharp interrogative noise, as abruptly close to a demand as he’d ever been with her. And for the first time she responded as though he were a friend. She looked at him, at his strong features and bright, beautiful hair, said simply, “They needed to know what you knew. That’s why we’re here.”
He frowned, not understanding, and she shrugged. “Mostly they already knew it.”
“All for nothing!” His face darkened; the words were accusation, and Jess suddenly realized her error.
He was a big man, stronger than she was, stronger than any of them—and just as with a horse, their ability to control him depended upon the illusion that he wasn’t. Angered, endowed with enough intellect and spirit to direct that anger...
Illusion would disappear.
“It’s all right,” she said, although it wasn’t. “You can go back. We can go back.” And they could, now that they knew.
“All for nothing!” He thumped his chest with his open hand. “Not horse!” And he gave a snort of utter disgust that left nothing of his feelings to her imagination. “They did this!”
“Yes,” she said. “Because of how important it is to understand what happened. Because of how dangerous it still is. They—we—needed to know. And now you can go back.”
“Now.”
It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t just repeating her words, but was making a demand.
Now.
“Soon,” she whispered.
This time, Ramble turned his back on her.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Nineteen
Mark drove Dayna and Suliya into Marion, an experience which delighted Suliya and made Dayna feel just plain strange. Looking at the small-town streets with their flat, mid-western flavor, she felt like she’d been gone a lifetime.
And oddly... like she’d never been gone at all.
They drove down Center Street, under a banner advertising the annual popcorn festival—”Popcorn,” Suliya asked. “What’s that?”—and past the imposing stone edifice of the cour
thouse, then city hall and the theater—right through town and almost out the other side, beyond the railroad tracks.
Mark turned the truck down a narrow alley, and just as Dayna gave him a skeptical look, the alley opened into a back parking area.
“Just happened to find this place?” she asked Mark as he took up most of the parking space with the truck.
He shrugged. “I dated a girl who works here.” An instant’s unhappiness crossed his face. “She asked too many questions. I swear, I think she could tell. About Camolen. Just didn’t want to deal with that.”
“But you liked her,” Suliya said, virtually unfiltered as usual, although in this case not without compassion.
Mark made a face. “I did. She never works this early, though, so it’s all good.” He led them between the buildings and to the fancifully lettered entrance sign—in purple and gold with the shop name Starland and a smattering of stars in the background.
“Mark...” Dayna muttered.
He stopped halfway through the door; incense-scented air swirled around them and escaped. “You want spellstones, right? This is your best bet for instant gratification.”
“What is this place?” Suliya said, peering around him. “It looks like stuff for magic shows. Not real magic, but those bootin’ shows where people try to trick you without using it.”
Mark gave her a hard look. “Don’t say that sort of thing in here,” he told her. “You’ll insult everyone inside.”
“Lips stitched,” Suliya said cheerfully. She reached over Dayna’s shoulder to give Mark a little push. “You’ll let the flies in.”
The tiny shop interior echoed the appearance of the sign, with plenty of purple velvet drapings and silken gold cords. Scratched glass display cases held jewelry and stones; a rotating rack offered card-mounted runes. Suliya went straight to the clothes along the back wall, all tie-dye and batik and embroidery. Dayna dodged a small round table with a simple black cloth covering; a neatly stacked deck of tarot cards sat just off-center, wrapped in silk.
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