“Okay… well, I guess that’s why you live here. You can do your job and you don’t need to pay for a hotel. That’s great for you.”
Corvin got back to the boat before Damon. He had a few bags and handed them down to Reg, who put them into the hold.
“Did you bring a sleeping bag?” she asked him.
Corvin raised his brows. “Of course.”
“Damon didn’t tell me to. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m going to sleep.”
Corvin’s mouth curved into a smile. “Why, of course I’d be happy to share my sleeping bag with you, Reg.”
“I’m not sharing a sleeping bag with anyone.”
“I do have a… deluxe size. I like to have freedom of movement. And, of course, the opportunity to rescue a lady in distress.”
Reg remembered how she had told him that she wasn’t a damsel in distress. And already, before they had even started the tour, she had run into problems and she was asking him for help.
Well, she hadn’t exactly asked him for help. Just explained her dilemma and asked whether he had a sleeping bag.
“I don’t need your sleeping bag. Maybe you and Damon could sleep together and I could borrow his.”
“That’s not nearly as attractive an idea.”
Damon struggled up to the boat, unbalanced under his load, and was going to drop it all if he weren’t careful. Reg tried to take things from him one at a time, but that didn’t work and he just dumped everything on the edge of the dock and down onto the boat. Reg picked up what had fallen onto the boat and put it into the hold.
“We’ve decided that you and Corvin are going to share a sleeping bag,” she told Damon. “Since you forgot to tell me to bring one. And I can use yours.” She looked over at Corvin. “Corvin’s is deluxe size and he said he won’t have any problem fitting both of you.”
Damon looked at Corvin. Corvin rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know I said no such thing.”
Damon gave a gasp of shock. “You lied to me, Reg?”
Reg grabbed a few more items from him and put them into the hold. “How much of this stuff do you need? You must have packed half your house!”
“I like to be comfortable when I camp.”
“Then you should camp in a hotel. No wet ground or snakes.”
Chapter Eight
They were finally on their way.
No one had killed anyone yet. Though Reg had certainly wondered at times whether they were going to be able to avoid bloodshed. How Corvin had managed to convince Damon to allow him to come on the trip, Reg didn’t know. There was no love lost between the two of them. Reg suspected that Corvin had been one of the bullies in school and, while Damon was not a small man, he might still have been bullied as a boy, or had seen other people bullied by Corvin. That would explain a lot.
Except that they were not, as far as Erin could tell, the same age. That sort of threw a wrench into that theory.
Maybe Damon just recognized a type. Corvin wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet.
Their guide took them out into the water and immediately started a practiced patter about the Everglades as he first circled the inlet and then pulled out into the river. He gave some basic tips on boat safety—mostly logical stuff like not trying to rock the boat, not all rushing to one side at the same time, and not drinking alcohol to excess. They were all given life jackets, but when Tybalt said how shallow most of the Everglades River was, Reg and the others put them aside. What was the point in wearing a life jacket when you could touch the bottom?
Except maybe to shove in the mouth of any alligator that tried to eat them.
Reg scanned the water ahead for alligators. Why did she have to go somewhere there were alligators and crocodiles? Why couldn’t the wizard have gotten lost in Disney World? Lots of people went to Disney World.
She was sure that each fallen or floating log was the elongated body of one of the predators. She didn’t hear much about what Tybalt had to say about the plants they were passing by and the animals that they might see.
“The Florida panther is nearly extinct,” he told them. “You aren’t going to see one of those. They’re too shy of people.”
“I would be too if someone was killing off my species,” Reg muttered.
She saw Corvin look at her. He raised one brow. She thought about her own statement, wondering why he cared what she said. Then she remembered several different times when Corvin or one of the other people who knew about him had told her that his kind was dying out. She was glad of it. She didn’t think there was a place in their society, even in magical society, for a predator like he was, always on the prowl to steal powers from people like Reg. It was good that they were a dying breed.
But Corvin probably didn’t think so.
Reg looked back in the direction the boat was traveling, trying to listen to Tybalt’s patter and take in everything he had to say. Like Corvin had said, she needed to know about the Everglades and have a guide who knew what he was talking about if they were to find Wilson as quickly as possible.
She moved from her seat to one that was closer to Tybalt. He looked at her, waiting for an explanation as to what she wanted.
“Have you ever heard of anyone getting lost in the park?” she asked.
The guide laughed.
Reg didn’t see what was so funny about her question. She stared at him, trying to silence him with her icy gaze. “Well?”
“Anyone getting lost in the park?” he repeated. “Yes, of course. People get lost here all the time.”
“I don’t mean just for a few hours, or a day, or whatever. I mean… for days…”
“The park swallows people whole,” Tybalt said. “There are people missing here all the time. And the swamp doesn’t give up its secrets. Once you are lost in the Everglades, you stay lost.”
“Lots of people get lost here?”
He nodded. “Probably more than we’ll ever know about. There is a ghost village where Seminole once lived, but then they all disappeared. There have been many men, women, and children lost. There have been planes that have crashed here, and all of their passengers have been lost. The swamp swallows them all up.”
“Oh.” Reg turned and looked at Damon. “If that many people disappear here forever, how will we find the wiz—Wilson? I thought…”
“That’s why you’re here,” Damon pointed out. “Everybody else who is searching does not have a psychic with them. If you’re just wandering through the park looking at random places, then of course you aren’t going to be able to find someone. It’s too big to do an effective grid search, and there is too much water for scent dogs to follow anyone for long. But we can overcome all of those obstacles because we have you.”
Reg turned to look forward again. She had sort of forgotten why she was there. She was thinking the guide would take them to the place they were to search, and they would do just what Damon had said—wander around randomly looking for him. But of course, that was never what had been intended.
She closed her eyes to focus, and sent her senses out into the park around her, searching for the wizard. She knew he was there. She had already seen him in one vision. So she recalled that vision. She remembered the cloaked form, the wrinkled face under the hood. She breathed in deeply, letting the feelings grow inside of her, reaching out in all directions with all of her senses.
She could feel something. Like a beacon in the darkness, pulsing on and off, glowing in the darkness and then disappearing. She couldn’t see him clearly this time because she didn’t have her crystal ball and Starlight there to amplify the signal. But she could still sense something.
Reg looked back over her shoulder to Damon, unsure what to do next. “I think… we should go that way.” She pointed.
Damon raised his brows. “We’re going to the location he was last seen.”
“Okay… but what if he isn’t there? How long has it been since he was seen there?”
“Why don’t you think he’s going
to be there? Or at least in the immediate area.”
“I think we should go that way.” She pointed again.
She didn’t want to make a big scene in front of the guide. She didn’t know if he was a practitioner or not, and she didn’t like to talk too much about her powers in front of the non-magical community. Damon had already outed her, talking about her psychic abilities in front of the guide, but Reg didn’t want to emphasize the point. Many people believed in psychic powers in a vague, uncertain way. Few actually thought they could get clear answers to their questions through paranormal powers and fewer still demonstrated their abilities in front of others. Unless they were part of a show.
Talk too much or too confidently about having psychic powers, and a person was asking to get herself thrown in the loony bin for evaluation.
Again.
Reg would prefer to avoid that.
Damon considered. Then he shrugged. He had, after all, brought her for her expertise. He leaned forward and tapped on the guide’s shoulder, raising his voice to be heard clearly.
“We would like to go that way.” He pointed in the direction Reg had indicated.
“There’s nothing over there,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “Just tourist stuff. If this guy has really disappeared into the swamp, you’re not going to turn him up in some gift shop or gator farm.”
“You never know where we might find him,” Damon disagreed. “We don’t know whether something happened to him or whether he took off on his own.”
“You said the guy was lost.”
“Well, we think he is.”
“I’ve seen people looking for lost loved ones. They don’t go to tourist traps to do it. They look where it is wild.”
“We’re going that way,” Damon insisted. “I’m not sure what we’re going to find. Maybe nothing. But we’re paying you to be our guide, so you go where we say.”
Tybalt turned to glare at Damon. He held his gaze on Damon for an uncomfortably long time. Reg held on to the side of the boat, anxious about his not looking where he was going.
“You hired me for my expertise,” he told Damon. “So why aren’t you taking it? If you just wanted someone who would go wherever your whims dictated, there are plenty of youngsters out there who haven’t got a clue what they are doing and will go wherever you say.”
“It’s not one or the other,” Corvin said, leaning forward and inserting himself into the conversation. “We need the combination of your expertise and our knowledge. Regina believes we have a better chance of finding Professor Wilson if we go that way. It doesn’t hurt you to give it a try. I’m sure there are plenty of places to look over there, despite it being a more populated area.”
Tybalt rolled his eyes. He turned the wheel of the boat, and they skimmed over the water in the new direction. Reg tried to stay focused on the pulsing beacon in her consciousness and to keep them pointed toward it.
Chapter Nine
Reg tried to pay attention to the sights as they skimmed their way toward the quarry. There were all kinds of plant and animal life that the guide was chattering about as he drove. He’d clearly been a guide for a long time and was serious about his work. He pointed out birds, clumps of what just looked to Reg like grass, and wove in a little history of the park into his narrative.
But she wasn’t nearly as interested in his patter as she was on homing in on the missing wizard. Maybe she could actually get it done in a day. They could find the wizard, make arrangements to get him back to Black Sands and the Spring Games, and collect their reward money. Not bad for a day’s work. And maybe they could avoid the part about camping.
The scent of the water was alluring. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but as they flew over the water and a fine spray kicked up into her face, Reg grew more aware of it. It smelled more like the ocean than like a river, at least to her. She sniffed, trying to analyze it. It was swampy or marshy, like she had expected it to be. She could smell the rich mud under the river, the green plants growing under the surface and rising out of it. And there were animals.
She couldn’t really smell the animals, but she thought she could. Frogs and fish. Unseen things that were bigger and older and had been in the water for many years.
They followed a bend in the river and the breeze that had previously been blowing in her face was now coming from the side. It brought her the scents of Tybalt and Damon. She hadn’t been aware of their unique scents before that. Damon had good hygiene. It wasn’t like he smelled rank. But Reg could detect his musky odor, his salty sweat, and earthy undertones that she couldn’t quite identify. Eau de Damon.
Their guide, on the other hand, did have a much ranker smell. She was surprised she could smell anything of Damon or the water itself with his stench blowing into her. She readjusted her position, pulling back from him slightly and turning her head to the side to try to avoid breathing his scent any more than she had to.
Tybalt smelled like… dead things. It was a smell Reg associated with funerals and cemeteries. A musty odor of mold and decay. She gagged, moving closer to the side of the boat to get away from the smell and be able to throw up over the side if she couldn’t control her reaction.
“Regina?” Corvin’s voice was curious. “Something wrong?”
She tried to school her face to keep from screwing up her expression to give away her disgust.
“Just… a minute. Just give me a minute.”
He watched her. She could feel his eyes focused on her back. She could feel him beginning to press in on her, to try to catch onto her thoughts. She pushed back. He didn’t need to know how much their smells disgusted her.
Corvin’s scent… If the breeze had been coming from the other side, then it would be his scent washing over her, and she knew his scent intimately. The cloying roses that she smelled when he was charming her, his body warming and sending out waves of pheromones and the scents intended to attract her and pull her closer to him. But the wind wasn’t blowing that way. It was blowing Tybalt’s foul stench into her nostrils.
“Do you want a drink?” Corvin offered.
Reg saw the soft-sided cooler filled with water bottles beside his seat. “Yeah. Hand me one of those.”
He pulled one out, cracked the top, and gave it to her. Reg drank a few swallows. It wasn’t ice cold, but it was still cool, the bottle sweating in the muggy heat of the day. Reg tipped her head back and trickled water on her face as well, hoping it would help combat the nausea she was starting to feel at being trapped in the boat with the three men. She wished she hadn’t moved into the seat next to Tybalt and wondered if it would look rude if she vacated the seat for one of the others. Next to Corvin? Next to Damon? She wasn’t sure which would be the better scenario. Maybe she was better off not sitting beside either of the warlocks.
The water over her face seemed only to increase the restlessness she was feeling. She decided that she needed to switch seats, whether it looked rude or not. Tybalt wasn’t anyone she would ever run into again. What did she care what he thought anyway?
She stood up and carefully made her way to the seat by Damon. He smiled.
“You doing okay? You’re not seasick, are you? I didn’t think you could get seasick on an airboat.”
Reg settled into her seat. She took another gulp of water. “No, not seasick, just…” She wasn’t sure how to explain her heightened sense of smell to him. It was just some trick of the Everglades air. Or maybe a side effect of reaching out with her psychic senses. She poured a little water into her cupped palm and rubbed it all over her face.
“Too hot?” Damon suggested. “I thought you were acclimatized to Florida and this wouldn’t be a problem. But you have to be careful of heatstroke. Dehydration.”
Reg lifted her water bottle slightly to show that she was keeping herself hydrated.
“Do you need anything else? You should have a better hat. Something with a wider brim. That red-head complexion…”
Reg touched the ball cap she had grabbed at th
e last moment before leaving the cottage. He was probably right, but the ball cap was keeping her face shaded from the sun. “No, it’s fine.”
He shifted closer to her, sending another wave of scent Reg’s direction. Her breath caught in her throat. He smelled so good she couldn’t help leaning toward him, drinking his smell in like a fine wine. How had she never noticed before how good he smelled?
Damon raised his eyebrows, looking at her uncertainly. Could he read what she was thinking in her face? How weird was it for her to be so entranced by his smell? Corvin, sure, his enticing scent was one of his charms, designed to lure the unsuspecting in. But she had never noticed how great Damon smelled.
“Regina.”
The single word from Corvin was a warning. Reg froze, then looked over at him. What was he doing, interfering with her business? He didn’t have any right to be in her territory. She cut a glare toward him.
“Reg, think,” he said in a quiet tone, hardly audible above the sound of the airboat’s engine. Or maybe it wasn’t audible; maybe it was inside her head. “I think that the… humidity is getting to you.”
She shook her head at him in irritation.
“I don’t think the water on your face is a good idea,” he warned.
“What are you going on about, Corvin?” Damon asked, turning his head to look at the older warlock. “What’s wrong with water on her face? You think it’s going to wash off her sunscreen?”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” Corvin said, giving Reg a significant look. “Try to stay out of the spray. Maybe move back here with me.” He nodded to the empty seat next to him.
He clearly just wanted to get her closer to him. He was always trying to take advantage of the situation at hand and to trick her into allowing him close enough to use his charms to convince her to give up her powers to him. But they both knew that she could turn the tables on him. She could use her powers on him.
Skunk Man Swamp Page 4