If that was his point, it made me uncomfortable. I had no problem with Zar flirting. If he was avoiding conversation with these people because he thought I wouldn’t like it, we needed to talk.
A fox in skin with another fox in fur draped across her shoulders stopped at my nearby tray. She loaded up one strawberry after another on her roasting stick until she had half a dozen. I felt a bit better about Jason.
A willowy young female—coyote, I think—chatting with Andrew about where they managed to spend any time in fur in England, floated past for a handful of marshmallows. He was at her shoulder, grabbing a caramel, and she held the powdery white blobs up to his face.
“With or without graham crackers?”
Andrew stared, the marshmallows just under his nose—intense smell and sight of them close enough that he could have scarcely moved to eat one out of her hand. There was a beat, a break, a ripple of energy from him that I felt as tension through my own back while I watched his face.
Andrew blinked. “I’m not really hungry,” he said and walked away.
The coyote frowned after him, started to follow, then hesitated. She’d clearly felt something wrong as well, yet it wasn’t as if she knew him. She returned to the other fire to talk with Kage and Jason.
I turned in place, watching Andrew vanish beyond the glow of the flames, away from the chatting, eating, shifting crowd, into the night.
I’d taken only a step to follow when Zar gently caught my arm. Was he really going to be that clingy in a crowd? Yet I looked to see his expression was drawn. He also watched after Andrew, not me.
“Let him go,” he whispered. “It’s a…” Zar shook his head. “He had a marshmallow thing with Sarah. She used to make him homemade ones.”
That didn’t seem like a reason not to go after Andrew. On the contrary…
But Isaac also stood in my way, gazing up at me. I met his green eyes for a moment and turned back to the fire. Our hosts were still expecting entertainment from us.
“Honey or butter?” I pointed and Isaac turned his nose to the butter so I fed him a few chunks of toasted and buttered bread while my mind drifted from the conversation.
“Where is it?” Kage was asking off to my right while Zar answered a question about vampires.
“Not too far to run up tonight if you’re in the mood. We can’t go like this. It would take us until morning.” It was one of his admirers, though not like most. This one was male, older than Kage and Jason. Equally beautiful, his features chiseled, his black hair in a ponytail.
“Hey, Jay? Want to run up to the lake?”
Jason had his mouth full of roast shrimp, tails and all, and he shrugged.
I let my peach burn but it was just as delicious. Maybe better.
“Mother watched over you to escape such a place alive,” an old coyote told Zar in answer to the vampiric mansion story.
Zar shifted uncomfortably. “Yes … we were Moon blessed to make it out. Vampires are not the sort of ally we were looking for, but Cassia’s been communicating with one now and it does help to have connections everywhere we can.”
A cluster of coyotes had begun to sing and chant with drums and canine voices all blending together.
I gave Isaac a combo cheese cube and mini sausage and, while he sat licking my fingers, I glanced around to the right again.
Kage, Jason, and their handsome host had vanished.
Jed nudged the idle stick in my hand. I added a couple more sausages and an apple wedge.
Isaac was distracted from licking by others gathering around the big, bearded bear in skin, beginning to explain to a mixed group the fundamentals of wood turning. Isaac soon drifted over to join a growing lathe and general woodworking discussion.
I went on answering questions with Zar as long as I could, pulled in so many directions I could hardly manage it. Zar helped, both to answer and to disengage until, with the platters nearly empty and much more of the crowd dispersed or broken up into conversation or song, some in fur curled up, we found ourselves alone.
“Zar?” I spoke in his ear, watching the fire and a couple of toasting marshmallows. “We can’t leave. Half the pack wandered off and Isaac seems to be enjoying a free lecture, but can we get away for a bit? I need to make notes on things I saw. You should too. But I don’t want to be rude.”
“It’s all right,” he said quietly, leaning his own roasting stick against the tray. “We’ll follow the river up. Moon’s nearly full, breathing life into the forest on a night like this.”
“Let’s go then.” I sandwiched the two marshmallows between graham cracker halves and fed them to Jed.
Like peanut butter, this took some effort on his part. Zar tugged me gently away while Jed was still chewing. I think Zar harbored a fleeting hope that we could lose his brother, or that Jed would take the hint. Jed, however, had no interest in woodworking—and no one flirting with him.
He padded after us while still trying to get marshmallow off his whiskers.
Chapter 38
The lazy river that had been the cause of the footbridge we’d passed over hours previously wound its way up and gradually widened. Here, with the ground again leveled off, across a long stretch of rocky riverbank, Zar led us.
Hand in mine, he guided me toward a fallen log by moonlight. I pulled him instead to sit on the stones at the river’s edge. Fallen logs housed spiders. Rivers generally did not. Had I been warmer, I’d have removed my shoes and socks. I loved rivers. This night, at least, was mercifully mild—no bite in the air.
Zar sat beside me on cool stones, resting the flashlight I gave him to defuse off rocks and bounce back at us rather than aim it at the notebook I flipped open.
I leaned into him while Zar sat in silence, gazing to the silver and black water which chuckled and bubbled past, occasionally turning his nose into my hair, inhaling but saying nothing.
I wrote quick notes of what I’d seen, struggling already to remember, to place things in order.
Part of the magical community.
You already know.
At last, when I could think of no more to add, I flipped a page and handed the book to Zar. He unwrapped his right arm from my shoulders to hold the notebook, writing with his left hand.
I pushed his hair behind his ear and rested my head on his shoulder, taking my turn to watch the river while he wrote.
A shifting sound of river stones made me look to my right. I’d almost forgotten about Jed.
He stood stiffly, five feet from me, staring at us.
I said nothing until Zar was taking long pauses, tapping the edge of the paper with the side of the pen, adding another line, then tapping again, also trying to remember.
Then, in a whisper to Jed, “We need to talk. About what you said last night.”
Zar glanced at me, saw who I was addressing, and said nothing.
Jed didn’t move, only watching. Then he turned his head. For a moment, I wondered if he was going to leave. I knew perfectly well that his avoiding me today was because of what he’d said last night. He wished he hadn’t. Now that he had to face the idea that I was not, in fact, going to pretend I hadn’t heard the confession, it seemed he was considering his options.
“Maybe you could talk to us both?” I offered, voice gentle.
He still watched the river. About to turn away?
Zar added another note, sighed, and rubbed his nose with a knuckle.
“Or maybe you want to keep this between us? We could talk in the morning. We’ll have to move on. I’m not sure if the shamans helped us, but I think so. I’m glad we met them, one way or another. And I’m glad we came. There’s still something else I have to do in this country while we’re here. A few somethings. So we’ll head for Portland in the morning. We’ll need to talk to Gabriel about figuring out our return. But, before any of that, before we’re on the road or leave shaman territory, before another moon, we need to talk. Tonight, if you want to discuss this with Zar. Or in the morning? You and I can go f
or a walk before we leave camp. Which would you prefer?”
Jed stood for a long time with his head sideways to me.
Zar turned a page and sketched on the unruled back of the sheet.
At last, with a twitch of his ear as if he’d just heard the words, Jed turned his tail to us and walked away: back the way we’d come, toward the fire pits and sausages.
His black shape became swallowed in very few strides by the night and Jed vanished.
I shut my eyes, hiding my face against Zar’s shoulder. Zar kissed my hair, still sketching with light, long strokes.
“What am I supposed to do to communicate with him?” I asked the black cotton sleeve of Zar’s shirt. “Everything I say he either doesn’t listen or doesn’t like it.”
“He doesn’t like anything.” Zar shifted the notebook.
“That’s not true.”
“You know what I mean. His ball, himself only when he’s in fur, wilderness, you. It’s a short list.”
I turned my face toward the water again, head still on his shoulder. “What do you like?”
“Being with you.” He kissed my hair.
“How about the long list?”
Zar flipped the page to his notes and tapped the pen again. “I like music, sunrise, moonrise, beaches, strawberry ice cream.” He paused. “I like the way you smell, black and white photography, singing, writing, touching you, the way your voice sounds, making you laugh, a fresh pizza with extra sausage, my family, my pack, the way you take notes and make lists so you can keep us on track, the way you frown when you’re thinking hard, but just a touch, like you don’t know you’re doing it, and … reflections. I like reflections. I love how Moon shares her light with the river by gazing into the river and the river gives back by holding up light to Moon. I love coming to a place of still water on a clear day when the surface is glassy and the reflection is so sharp you could turn the image upside down without being able to tell the difference.”
Notebook and pen in his right hand, right arm against me, Zar turned into me, lifting his left hand to my face.
“I like that you’re on our side,” he whispered, cupping his palm across my jaw. “You didn’t have to be.” He kissed my lips. “I like your hands.”
“My hands?”
“Moon said, ‘Blessed are the paws that carry the wolf through long miles of the hunt. Blessed are the hands that carry the light through long hours of the night.’” He moved his own hand from my face to lift my right and kiss along the knuckles. “Your hands are like reflections: perfect and smooth. So beautiful a wolf has to stop and stare to take them in, or miss half the artistry.”
I slid my fingers into his, feeling calluses from his leatherwork.
He kissed my nails, one at a time.
“Do you want to tell me about your journey experience?” I asked. “It helps to bring it back, sort it out, make it more real and remember if you talk about it.”
He didn’t answer, his lips on my fingers, pausing.
“You don’t have to.” I leaned my nose into his hair as his head remained bowed to our hands. “It’s okay either way, Zar. You can take the notebook page out.”
“It looked like that day in Cornwall.” He spoke softly against my skin. “Or like the beaches I’ve wanted to show you. Birds seemed to be guiding me. All kinds of coastal birds—gulls and terns. There was a she-wolf dancing to the drumbeats, a whole flock of birds, a stretch of emerald fells, and a heap of stones, like an old cairn…”
“And what … was wrong?”
All this time as he’d talked—about his likes, about me, now about his journey—Zar hadn’t sounded like himself. Voice slower than usual, dropped, he sounded sad.
“I don’t know.” He raised his face and I kept leaning in so our foreheads and noses rested together. “That was the thing. Only a mess of images and sounds. I’m not sure what all it was. But it was mostly a feeling. There at the end … it was all a feeling. It was grief. As bad as Gabe going away. As bad as when they killed Dad. As bad as anything I’ve known … the friends I’ve lost, the pack in danger… I don’t know why. It was just this feeling with the drumbeats and the birds, after the images started to fade. Cass, if something happened to you—”
“Did you feel like it was about me?”
“I don’t know what it was. I just… That feeling…”
“Shamanic journeys are not premonitions. They’re not even scrying, which is a window into another place in this world. They’re a meditation. A place in which insightful images might find us and messages might be given to us through spiritual and energetic places that we don’t normally visit. If you felt an overwhelming grief while on a journey, honestly … I’m not surprised.”
Zar sat back to look into my eyes in the deflected flashlight glow.
“You’ve been through a lot in the past years,” I continued. “Not just Gabriel leaving and your father’s death, but the shadows around those things, all you had to live through with him home and drinking. Losing Gabriel, finding him again. For nearly a year now, members of your family have been being murdered. If those things don’t cause grief there’s something wrong with you.
“Besides all that, remember what Daniel said about not touching each other? Journeying together in a shamanic circle is a powerful thing. You had me on one side, no stranger to grief, and Kage on the other, who just lost his sister. Then Isaac was right by your head, Jed next to me. You might have picked up from others as well.
“Sometimes journeys are like that, a lot of feelings, mixed images. For many people it’s not just one flowing stream of activity like watching a movie. They’re different. As different as the people who are on the journey.”
He stroked my face, leaning his head back to mine. “I didn’t learn anything. I’m sorry. I thought I might … see something…”
“No, it’s okay. I’m proud of you all for even trying a journey. It’s an awfully magic thing for a wolf to do. What you saw having anything to do with our investigation or not is neither here nor there. We’re working on it.”
“Cass?” He kissed my lips and remained a long time, as if by accident. A quick peck becoming seconds, a lingering hold, a greater tilt to his head. His mouth tasted of salt and pork fat, while my last bite had been my burnt peach. I wished I had another. But not as much as I wanted to be kissing him.
At last he went on. “You know them.”
“Yes,” I said. “But there’s nothing we can do about that now either. Do you realize how big that still is? I don’t think this means I’ve personally shaken hands with whoever is killing shifters. It’s like Kage said—I, or we, know of them. That could still be any pack or member of the magical community I’m aware of in Britain. The fact that I ‘already know’ still leaves us with a world of problems and possibilities. If the message was even true—if I interpreted it correctly.”
“Why are you doubting yourself?” He sounded worried, genuinely concerned by the idea.
“This is fringe magic, Zar. It’s not a signed document. It’s an idea. A possibility that maybe I know of who this is. Maybe not. Even if it’s true, there are so many people we’ve been in contact with or discussed or considered—”
“No, Cass, there’s not. You are a scry, a witch. You aren’t a mundane dawdling through a meditation for the first time. You’re the mistress of your own dreams and guide of your own sight. I don’t know what the birds meant in my journey, or why the wind felt so strong and real. But I know as sure as I see moonlight and feel your touch that what you experienced in a journey can stand up as a signed document.”
Notebook in his lap, he shifted so he could take my face in both hands, looking fiercely into my eyes in the gloom, our noses still almost touching.
“And you knowing of the killers—magical community killers. That’s not ‘everyone.’ Cass, that’s tiny. That’s going home and putting everything together from what the coyotes said and your scries and notes and tracking back. That’s answers. Without fingerpr
ints, without scent trails, maybe without even more magic, we’re going to figure this out.”
He kissed me. I held on, fingers into his hair up the back of his neck, pulling him in for pressure that was just painful, both of us holding on tight.
In a minute, he sat back, slightly breathless, smiling for the first time since he’d woken from the journey.
“You know, though…” he said, opening his eyes to meet mine. “It might be a lot easier if you would sort out this scrying block and go ahead and use more magic.”
I laughed a little and quickly rubbed out tears. “I’m going to do that too. I’m getting my old school books and notes. I knew they’d be good for something one day.” I almost laughed at that also. The truth was, I’d had every intention of throwing them out. I’d only kept them this long as a memento of my mother and grandmother: a box of memories. Not a box of magical reference.
“What about Dieter?” Zar asked.
“Uh…?”
“Nothing came of him, but he knew something. And he’s someone you know. It gets you thinking, doesn’t it? Who do we already know? What have we overlooked?”
“Gavin said we were mental for trying to get anything out of an ancient one.”
“Dieter is only one example. Maybe we need to talk to the packs again, the druids again, and…”
“And Broomantle,” I said softly. “The casters. That organization reaches so far … that’s what I mean about the scale still being off, still being huge.”
He wrapped his arms around me, drawing me into an unexpected embrace. “I love you, Cass.”
I almost laughed again, only because he startled me. “I love you too. Are you okay? It’s hard when you get confusing messages and an emotional dump like that. Especially those sorts of feelings.”
“I’m fine now. Better than fine with you.” Again, he shifted so he could kiss me. “I’ve missed you.”
Hadn’t Isaac said the same thing? No more or less true.
Moonlight Journey: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 6) Page 25
