by R. L. King
No answer.
Stone sighed. Any number of things could have happened, only a few of which were anything to worry about. She might have found Jeremy’s trail and followed it, forgetting about the time. She might have reached the campsite and discovered him there, and was having trouble convincing him to return. Even typical boys that age could be stubborn, and ones with special issues like Jeremy’s even more so. Maybe the two of them were already on their way back.
He left the church, levitating to the roof and turning in place up there, scanning the area for signs of light. If she had reached the campsite, she’d probably retrieved a flashlight, or she could be using a light spell. Those should show up even through the trees, where an aura wouldn’t. She’d said the campsite was beyond the other side of town, so he concentrated his attention there.
Nothing.
“Daphne? Jeremy?” He used magic to amplify his voice, booming it out over the area., then stood silently to listen for a faint reply. If she was anywhere near, she’d hear him in the quiet night.
Still nothing.
Where had they gone? Had they run into some kind of trouble? Had something got Jeremy, and then attacked Daphne when she found him?
Stone crouched on the roof, trying to decide what to do next. He couldn’t search this entire area, especially not at night. He wasn’t familiar enough with the place to do it. Even though he couldn’t get lost with his levitation spell, there was still a lot of terrain out here.
He could wait in the church and hope they turned up, but that seemed far too passive. If they were in trouble, he couldn’t just sit here and do nothing.
Then he remembered what they’d discussed: the tracking ritual. He couldn’t do it without a tether object, since any connection he might have once had with Daphne had fully faded long ago along with their ardor, but she’d said their campsite was only half a mile away. If they weren’t there, surely he’d find something he could use as a tether.
He lifted off the church roof, oriented in what he thought was the right direction, and floated along above the tops of the trees. She’d mentioned a camper—surely that would be easier to spot than a couple of auras among the trees’ unrelenting green.
Half an hour later, he was starting to think something was truly wrong. He’d skimmed back and forth numerous times, scanning the ground below until his head began to ache, but hadn’t found any evidence of a campsite, a vehicle, or another road. The levitation spell came easy for him and so did magical sight, but that didn’t mean he could keep both of them going forever. Eventually, he’d have to stop and rest. He decided this might be a good time to return to the church. Perhaps they were there waiting for him, as worried as he was. If so, they could all have a good laugh over it.
But they weren’t at the church, and as far as he could tell, they hadn’t been back since he had. He called for them again, but only half-heartedly now. He was beginning to think they weren’t here at all.
“Well, bugger…” he muttered, examining his options. At this point, he really only had a single viable one: go back down the hill where he’d left the Jeep, return to Highland, and alert the authorities that Daphne and Jeremy were missing. They didn’t have magic, but they knew the area a lot better than he did, and they could put a lot more people on the problem.
He didn’t like it. The thought of leaving Daphne and her son alone up here in the mountains when they might be in trouble made him feel like a coward—like he was deserting them. But one of the things he’d been trying to work on over the last few years, with Jason’s and Verity’s help, was putting aside the idea that he had to deal with every problem on his own. Sometimes, much as he hated to acknowledge it, he wasn’t the best person to handle something.
This was looking like one of those times.
He stood outside the hole in the wall, scanning the area one last time in the hope they might come tramping out of the trees wondering what all the fuss was about. But when they didn’t, he sighed and headed toward the road. Once he reached the Jeep, he could be in Highland in less than half an hour, and the searchers could be back up here soon after.
He didn’t even think about how he was going to explain why Daphne was here at all.
He continued using magical sight to look around as he headed down the road, but he had to do it intermittently. The way was too strewn with rocks, fallen trees, and weeds to allow him to walk without devoting his full attention to his path.
The walk seemed to take forever. He kept expecting to spot the Jeep up ahead, but all he saw were more trees and rocks. Holding a light spell out in front of him, he edged around a thick tree across the road and examined the area ahead of him. It couldn’t be too much farther—
Wait.
Weren’t those the three fallen trees that had convinced him to leave the Jeep here and walk in the first place?
He stopped, raising the light spell for a better view. He was hardly a woodsman, and most trees looked pretty much alike as far as he was concerned. But he was sure that big one had been the main reason he’d decided to continue on foot.
But if that was the tree, then the Jeep should have been parked just beyond it. He’d pulled it off the road and used a disregarding spell to conceal it from anyone who might happen by, even though he doubted anyone would be up here.
It wasn’t there now, though.
He levitated over the trees and headed to the spot where he thought he’d left the Jeep. It looked like the right place, with the fallen trees in front of it and the road behind.
It was only then that he remembered he’d left a magical tracking beacon on the vehicle.
He wasn’t annoyed he’d forgotten that—it wasn’t something he often did, and the situation with Daphne had driven most of the normal thoughts out of his head. But now that he recalled it, he focused on trying to find it. If he was somehow wrong about the spot he’d left the Jeep, the beacon would lead him right to it.
It wasn’t there.
He narrowed his eyes, turning in place again.
The Jeep wasn’t here—and neither was the beacon. He detected no magical traces of it lingering in the air.
Had someone stolen his vehicle? The magic beacon hadn’t been a tracker, staying with the Jeep to help him locate it if it had been moved. Instead, it would have remained in the area, gradually fading. He hadn’t used a tracker because he hadn’t expected anyone to take the Jeep. Who would have? Joyriding squirrels? The beacon had been to help him find it if he somehow got turned around among all these identical trees.
“Well, bugger,” Stone muttered, smacking his hand into a nearby tree. This made things more difficult. The closest other ley line in the right direction was all the way up near Morgantown. By the time he got hold of another rental vehicle and made it back to Highland, more precious time would have passed—time during which Daphne and Jeremy could be facing more danger.
He paced, stalking around like an angry cat, hoping whatever drunken backwoods rednecks had nicked his car ended up driving it into a lake or something. Not a very charitable thought, but he wasn’t feeling very charitable at present.
His wandering gaze fell on the spot where he was sure he’d left the Jeep. There was a large, jutting rock near the it, and when the light spell’s glow passed over it, he thought he saw a flash of something pink.
He hurried over, sure it had to be nothing, but as he drew closer he saw a folded piece of pink paper on top of the rock, held down with a smaller stone.
He couldn’t be certain it hadn’t been there before—he hadn’t been paying much attention to his surroundings aside from the fallen trees—but he thought he would have noticed it if it had. As soon as he snatched it up and saw what it was, though, his eyes widened.
“Bloody hell…” he murmured.
The paper was his copy of the Jeep’s rental agreement, which he’d stuffed in the glove box as soon as they gave it to him, without looking at it. He still didn’t look at it now, though, because something else immed
iately captured his attention.
Scrawled in a hasty hand across the top in ball-point pen were seven words:
Sorry. I had to. Please don’t follow us.
Below it was one letter: D.
7
Stone stared at the note, thoughts whirling.
Daphne had taken the Jeep?
Why?
It didn’t make sense. How had she even known where it was?
But then he remembered how: he’d told her it was there. He’d mentioned he’d had to leave it at the foot of the road because he couldn’t get it past all the obstacles.
That still didn’t explain why she’d taken off with it, though. Had she found Jeremy and the two of them decided to make a run for it? Why hadn’t they returned to the church and found him first? Had they left their campsite behind? Hell, how had she managed to drive the Jeep at all? He hadn’t left the keys in it. They were in his—
He slipped his hand in his coat pocket where he’d left the keys, and a hard pit formed in his stomach.
They were gone.
He clenched his fist inside his pocket. The keys were gone, and he didn’t think he’d dropped them. He stared at Daphne’s note again: Sorry. I had to. Please don’t follow us.
The hard pit in his stomach grew, as more uncomfortable thoughts surfaced in his mind.
She’d planned this.
She’d been surprised by his sudden appearance in a place she hadn’t expected to see anyone, let alone someone she knew. And apparently he’d spooked her enough to cause her to take off.
He thought back, trying to recall whose idea it had been to split up to look for Jeremy, and remembered it had been his. He’d played unwittingly right into her plan.
And what about Jeremy? Had he been in on the plan too? Stone hated to entertain such unhospitable thoughts about someone he’d once loved, but if Daphne had been planning this all along, perhaps she’d somehow directed the boy to get “lost” so it would make sense for the two of them to separate while trying to find him. That would give Daphne and her son enough time to regroup and head down the road to grab the Jeep. If she’d already stolen the keys without Stone’s knowledge (no easy trick—he had to give her credit for that. Wherever she’d been hiding herself all these years, she hadn’t neglected her magic), it was the only thing that made sense.
“Well…damn,” he muttered. He looked at the note again. Sorry, she’d written. I had to. But why did she have to? He shifted to magical sight and scanned it again, but no traces of magic hovered around it. All he had were the seven words.
Sorry.
Was that a genuine apology? Had she had some compelling reason why she needed to get away from him? Or perhaps to get Jeremy away from him?
None of this made sense.
His annoyance crested when he realized he was stranded up here, eight miles from Highland. That was going to be a long walk if nobody came alone. And with the nearest easily accessible ley line in Morgantown, he’d either have to rent another car and drive up there—which wouldn’t even be possible, since they didn’t have a rental agency—or catch a cab. Damn it, Daphne, if you’d just told me what the problem was, we could have worked something out.
He still planned to report the Jeep missing when he got back to Morgantown. If she was trying to get away from him, she’d had more than an hour’s head start already, and if he had to walk all the way to Highland that would add at least another couple hours. She’d probably ditched it by now and secured other transportation. That was what he would do, and Daphne was every bit as quick-witted as he was.
He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down before setting off down the dark road toward Highland. As he began walking, he thought briefly about why he was here in the first place. He hadn’t found anything about Stefan’s anomaly, which meant one of four things: either it wasn’t there at all and never had been; it had been there when Kolinsky had detected it but had faded; he was looking in the wrong place and it was somewhere else; or…
Or.
Stone let his breath out, not wanting to acknowledge the fourth potential option.
That Daphne’s sudden reappearance after eleven years was somehow related to the phenomenon, and that was why she’d done a runner before he could start asking uncomfortable questions.
She’d said she and Jeremy had only been here today, and he’d believed her. Why wouldn’t he have?
But he wasn’t so sure he did anymore.
In any case, he couldn’t do anything else until he got back to Morgantown. Poking around Decker’s Gap wasn’t doing him any good, and suddenly he didn’t want to be out here any longer than he had to. He summoned a light spell, picked up his pace, and tried not to think too many uncharitable thoughts about Daphne.
For once in his life, he lucked out. He’d only walked two miles before a truck rumbled by, and even more surprisingly, it actually stopped when he flagged it down. Completing the trifecta of good fortune, the driver was headed to Morgantown. He told the man his rental car had broken down and he couldn’t get cell reception out here, and spent the trip listening to the man’s horrible attempts to sing along with the country-music radio station and becoming increasingly annoyed with Daphne for inflicting this whole situation on him.
His luck didn’t hold out enough that the rental agency was still open this late. He gave the old farmer fifty dollars for his trouble and got out, grateful he’d only had to walk two miles instead of eight.
Now, though, he had a decision to make. There was a Hampton Inn across the street from the rental agency, and part of him wanted to check in there, call the agency from the room phone to report the Jeep stolen, and get a good night’s sleep. It had been a long day, he was tired, and it was tempting. He could stop by the place tomorrow morning to handle whatever he couldn’t deal with on the phone.
But he’d only made it a few steps toward the hotel when he realized that was absurd. He was back on a ley line again—he could be home in seconds, where he could sleep in his own, undoubtedly much more comfortable, bed. He could call the agency’s customer-service number from there. There was no reason for him to stay here. If he wanted to come back and investigate further, he could do it just as easily tomorrow.
Decision made, he took one more deep breath, visualized the ley line pathway between here and Encantada, and released the energy.
He suspected something was wrong when he couldn’t feel the ground under his feet.
He knew something was wrong a second later, when he landed with a loud splash in a body of water.
8
The water closed over his head, plunging the world into darkness as cold shock ripped through his body. A loud, urgent rushing sound filled his ears. It took a second for him to realize where he was—generally, if not specifically—and in that second, he’d already sucked in a mouthful of chilly water.
Coughing and spluttering, he bobbed back to the surface. Already, his sodden wool overcoat was trying to pull him back under. He realized if he didn’t get himself together now, he was in very real danger of drowning—or at least of something equally inconvenient. Even though, after the situation with Portas Justitiae, he was reasonably certain death wasn’t on the table anymore, sinking to the bottom of some lake or ocean or whatever wouldn’t be much fun either.
Where the hell was he? This was definitely not Encantada. It was too dark to see much, but he was sure he hadn’t landed in someone’s backyard swimming pool. This body of water was a lot bigger than that—and tasted a lot worse.
Still sputtering, now shivering too, he focused his concentration to form a levitation spell, lifting himself free of the water. Then he spun slowly in place. If somebody was watching right now he’d have some answering to do, but the area seemed deserted. Of course it’s deserted, you prat. Nobody in their right mind would be in the middle of a bloody lake at nine o’clock at night.
It was spring, but that didn’t mean both the water and the air weren’t cold. By the time he floated to the neare
st bank and dropped onto dry ground, he was shivering so hard his teeth were chattering. His coat, which felt at least three times its normal weight from water, didn’t help. He shrugged out of it and threw it down, still shaking.
Magic came to the rescue again, in the form of a warming whirlwind. It took more concentration than usual, but in ten minutes his clothes were dry and all he had to contend with was the chilly bite of the air around him once he allowed the spell to fade. It felt like a warm breeze in comparison. He picked up his sodden coat and took stock.
He still didn’t know where he was, and he had no way to find out. His phone, even if his impromptu soaking hadn’t destroyed it, was a burner and didn’t have GPS or a map app. All he knew for sure was that he was still near a ley line.
But what ley line, if not the one running through Encantada?
How had he ended up here, wherever here was, instead of there?
Had he botched the spell? Lost his concentration and accidentally specified the wrong destination? He hadn’t done that since the early days when he’d been studying the technique with Kolinsky, though, and never while traveling somewhere he was familiar with.
Even so, that had to be it. He’d been too focused on the Daphne situation, and had let his mind wander at the critical point when telling the spell where to send him. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem—he’d just show up at another point along the same ley line—but this time the universe seemed to want to have a bit of fun with him by dropping him in a lake or something.
Thanks, universe. I owe you one.
It would take far too long to dry his coat with the whirlwind spell, so he didn’t wait for that. Instead, he gathered his concentration again, made sure to carefully visualize his destination point, and released the energy once more.
When he opened his eyes, convinced he’d somehow botched the thing again, he let his breath out in relief. He was standing in the middle of his familiar living room. His coat was still dripping on the floor, and Raider watched him in confused fascination from the top of the sofa.
