Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (5 page)

If we hadn't been standing
in a
blown-out house with a possible dead body and bad magical vibes, his
description would have made me laugh. “That sounds like witch
training all right. I thought she didn’t want big brother’s
help in finding her life’s direction?”

“She doesn’t, and she’s
fighting me every step of the way. Her talent is nothing like mine.
She spells things partway, and my techniques don't necessarily work
for her. She ends up screaming and crying like an idiot.”

“Hmm. You aren’t still
trying to pick her dates for her too, are you?”

His response was a growl in
the back of
his throat.

“I’m telling you, she’ll
stop dating shifters when you quit trying to stop her.”

His hand tightened on mine
in an echo
of the growl. He obviously had no sense of humor on the subject.

There was no winning that
particular
argument so I moved past it. “The offer is still open if you
want me to take a shot at training her. My magic might be closer to
her talent.”

His shoulders were tense
enough to have
been carved from granite. “The point I was trying to make was
that even a spell gone wrong doesn’t feel as contaminated as
that wind. It was unfocused and...hungry. I swear I smelled blood as
if a beast had just gutted a kill.” He leaned forward to look
down into the fireplace, but the ashes near his foot shifted. We
both retreated, fast.

The scorpion that emerged
was easily as
ugly as the first one. It scuttled toward the hole and dove over the
side before either of us had a chance to react.

“Mayan curses! Did she keep
those
things as pets or what?” I tugged on his arm until we were
outside the perimeter of the house.

“The place was crumbling.
It was
probably full of them and now they’ve been misplaced.”

“Shouldn't they have died
in the
fire?”

“The mountain nights are
cold.
Maybe they were attracted by the burning embers and new crawl space.”
He kicked a black line of what I had assumed was ashes. It
shattered.

“Melted sand,” he said.
“This fire was hot.”

My silver was still quiet,
but that
wasn't as reassuring as usual. “Let's go. I don't like this
place.”

He brooded a few seconds
longer before
finally stepping away.

I really hoped he didn’t
return
here and explore on his own. The strange wind obviously had him
worried, and I didn't blame him. Unfocused magic didn’t usually
smell like fresh blood. It wasn’t usually hungry either.

White Feather dropped me
off and,
completely preoccupied, immediately headed home. That left me with
plenty of opportunity to work on a new spell that had at least some
potential to help.

I had wanted to duplicate
White
Feather's ability to gather information from his surroundings ever
since I'd seen him use wind to do it. Of course, such a spell had to
be adapted to earth in order to work for me. Given what I'd just
witnessed, using earth elements might also be a sneaky way to
discover what was riding
in
the
wind that was bothering White Feather.

Two birds with one spell,
and I loved
working on such challenges. Mixing potions was one of the joys of my
job. No, not because of the power, but because of the sheer
creativity. Herbs were basically pre-packaged, ready-to-use spell
ingredients. Mother Earth did all the magic. All I had to do was
collect and concoct the right combinations, or in this case, tap into
the information she stored.

Silver was the first
element for the
spell because it was my strongest connection to Mother Earth. Next, I
pulped cholla and pear cactus and pureed everything with several
drops of essential oils from mesquite, creosote, and juniper. The
idea was to have enough plant oils to link across just about any
desert distance.

As soon as the spell was
assembled, I
headed out to Tent Rock. It was rumored to have once held a large
pool of earth magic used by a long-ago disbanded witch council. The
council had probably never met there, and if there had been a magical
pool, it was unlikely to have been sucked back into Mother Earth when
the ancestral witches disbanded.

Rumors aside, Tent Rock was
a
beautiful, secluded area, and it was obvious the desert magic ran
strong through the canyons and mystical tent formations.

With the sun drifting low
in the
mid-afternoon sky, the wind-scrubbed formations rippled with pinks,
browns, desert yellows and whites. After hiking a mile or so, the
canyon walls closed in.

I crouched to make it under
a fallen
rock that rested across the tops of two larger boulders. This was the
perfect area to set the spell, but to test its potency, I required a
target.

The canyon widened and then
narrowed to
a bare crack before spitting me out at the bottom of a long trail
that angled straight up. The tent domes here had morphed into tall
spirals reaching to the top of the canyon walls.

Air was in short supply as
I climbed
the suddenly steep trail. Around me, tented rock guardians watched.
Bands of color marked my progress; their robes were darker
reddish-browns and then lighter grays, yellows and whites as their
teepee-like bodies thinned to a point. At the apex of one or two, a
single boulder balanced like a giant roving eye. The tents released
whispered messages by skittering pebbles and sand across the sides of
the sandstone.

Ahead of me, on the side of
the trail,
I finally got lucky and spotted a couple resting from the hike. Good. I
wanted to test the spell against something mobile.

I stopped to catch my
breath, making
careful note of the guy’s shaggy brown hair, bright blue
t-shirt and grayish-green backpack. The spell might not convey
anything as specific as colors. I might only get an impression of a
human—or nothing at all.

The guy picked up a rock
close to where
he sat. He brushed his treasure off and showed it to his blonde
girlfriend.

Whatever she said was lost
behind the
sandwich she was eating. Her elfish style haircut was held in place
by a white sweatband across her forehead; very sporty. She stretched
long tanned legs and laughed as he placed the stone in his backpack.
Maybe she was ecstatic because she wasn't the one carrying a backpack
full of rocks.

Not wishing to be seen or
at least not
well-remembered, I turned back down the trail.

The hikers had a bit of a
climb to the
top, and since the only other way off the flat ridge was through a
clearly marked no-trespassing Indian reservation, they would both
likely stay within range of the spell. They would either go up the
remaining distance or hike back down.

Down was a quick jog that
filled my
nose with the smell of chamisa, juniper and baked rock as I squeezed
into the lower canyon and scooted through the vase-like formations.

I hiked off-trail as soon
as a side
canyon wandered off into an open undulation. Sheer rock walls encased
me, and the world was quiet except for shifting sand mixed with wind
whistling its way through the rocks.

The canyon walls protected
my privacy. No one was likely to see me. If they did, I was just
meditating.

I set my supplies on a
boulder next to
a pear cactus proudly bearing bright red fall fruits. Pulp from one
of the fruits made a nice addition to my spell. Once everything was
ready, I painted the essential oil mix under my turquoise bracelet
and on my fingertips.

Maybe this first time I’d
only
feel a tingle from Mother Earth, acknowledging me. If the spell
worked extremely well, maybe there would be some sense of the hikers.

“Okay. Let’s find a
hiker.” Inhaling Mother Earth and connecting to her through my
silver was immediate. The heat through my hiking shoes was as welcome
as the sand beneath me; all Mother Earth.

The smell of essential oils
was really
quite strong. Not only did my wrists tingle, so did my nose and eyes.
I couldn’t tell if the results were from magic or just the
antiseptic properties of the plant oils.

There was no discernible
message from
Mother Earth.

I placed my hands carefully
on two
fruits still attached to the cactus and focused on the trail, on the
juniper essence and the soil that connected it all. “What is in
your world?”

The result was more and
less than I
bargained for. Nausea hit first. There was the feeling of Mother
Earth, only it was through a vast swimming pool, a squishy floating
mess. My senses felt dulled, surreal. I reached harder, diving to the
bottom of the pool where hard packed earth existed.

The unfamiliar morass was
suffocating.
I lost my original grounding. Trying not to panic, I clutched my
silver chain with one hand and linked directly to Mother Earth.

Mistake.

Bam
! The
world exploded.

“Aaaaeee!” I jumped away,
half blinded. Tiny daggers pierced my skin and red fruit oozed across
one hand and arm. The entire front of my shirt dripped pink from
exploded pear fruit. One of the cactus pads had snapped off and
lodged in my arm.

“Moonlight madness!” Had I
fed too much Mother Earth into the plant?

Stumbling about like a
one-eyed witch
who had fallen into her own caldron, I managed to locate a stick to
pry the cactus pad out of my arm. The pain was screech-worthy, but it
came out a moan that would have done Sarah the ghost proud.

Once the pad wasn’t hanging
from
my arm, the pain subsided enough for me to stop whimpering, but the
bottle of essential oils had erupted along with the cactus. My eyes
watered from the stench. I wiped at my forehead, dislodging another
chunk of pink fruit from my hair. Great. If anyone discovered me now,
they'd run screaming to report the beginning of the zombie
apocalypse.

I pulled my water bottle
from my
backpack and hosed myself down, sitting on the boulder to keep from
falling. Dizziness rocked my world. The sand gibbered at me, a
million voices without distinct words.

“Hell...hello?”

The voices murmured,
scouring the sides
of the hollowed canyon walls; hitting, bouncing, echoing. The second
time around, or maybe it was already the third, the rocks rumbled
underneath me. A vibration that might have been hiker's footsteps
echoed through the canyon. There was a faint sound of a throaty laugh
from far away.

Mother Earth had a voice,
and I was
accustomed to listening to her, but this was a new experience.

When the sand at my feet
shifted, the
silver on my wrists tingled in response. The shape that formed in the
sand was almost a perfect square, but the last side didn’t
complete. It remained an open box. The ripples of sand reminded me of
the lines around Sarah’s house, and the faint outline of a
scorpion in the center of the open rectangle convinced me of the
warning--if only I knew what it meant.

As quickly as the design
was there,
Mother Earth let go, and the sand shifted as though the picture had
never been there.

The air stilled as though
taking in a
breath.

I didn’t wait for it to
exhale.

Further intimate
discussions with
Mother Earth did not appeal to me at the moment. I grabbed my
backpack and scurried out the lower exit as fast as my wobbling legs
could manage.

Lynx could have easily
hidden in the
shadows of the desert instead of waiting for me on the porch. If the
kid knew anything, he knew stealth. His shifted form was that of a
feral bobcat, even though he had chosen the larger cat as a name for
himself.

Lynx still did many an odd
job for me,
but he wasn’t on my monthly payroll anymore, not since we had a
bit of a misunderstanding. Independence fit him and made our
relationship easier, although I couldn't quite erase the younger,
half-starved waif I had first hired in a dark alley a few years ago.

Like the often insolent
teenager he
was, Lynx lounged sideways across the metal chair on my porch, the
one not
lined with silver.
It
was unlined
specifically for him, and in case I ended up with any clients who
happened to be shape-shifters.

I parked the car and
trudged up the
steps. Every pore in my body hurt.

“Man, what happened to
you?”
He blinked rapidly as he assessed my ruined appearance. His eyes then
darted around the yard even though it was quite obvious nothing had
followed me up my dirt lane driveway.

“Do you have some sort of
sixth
sense to stop by when I’ve been in an accident?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Nah. You look
like
you bin wrestling with some big bad dude a lot of the time. The guy
that got you today musta been a real bad ass.”

Resenting the comment was
pointless
because it was too accurate. My hiking pants had started out
khaki-colored. They were now spotted with pink and smears of greenish
black oil. My arm was in worse shape. Dried blood decorated the red
patches where cactus needles were still lodged.

I unlocked the front door
and limped
inside. “I don’t have any food.”

He snorted. “You gonna put
on
weight if you eat your whole plate every time White Feather takes you
out.”

“Yeah, so?” I wasn’t
about to tell the kid that the reason the restaurant leftovers in the
fridge had petered out was because White Feather hadn’t been
inviting me out lately. “Witching is hard work. I need the
extra calories.”

“You better change those
calories
to something that will grow skin back.” He eyed the fridge
longingly, despite my assurance that there were no leftovers.

“Have a soda.”

It was only recently that
he bothered
to wait for an invitation. He only did so now because he finally had
his own apartment for the first time in his life. It made him realize
that the threshold of a house was meant to establish a line of
personal belongings instead of another lock to be picked.