Reg unclenched her fists and slowly lowered her arms. The air around her still crackled with electricity.
“Sorry,” Corvin said mildly. “I was just waking you up to let you know that we’re going to pull in here to set up camp tonight.”
Reg looked around. The sun was low and the sky starting to darken. Tybalt was guiding the airboat closer to the shoreline, though Reg wasn’t sure where the river ended and the dry land began. “Dry land” was kind of a misnomer. She didn’t know how far they would have to walk before they reached land that was dry enough to set up a tent. It looked swampy for miles.
“Here? How are we going to camp here?”
“Same as you would camp anywhere else. Damon brought the gear.”
“There really aren’t any hotels around here?” Reg dug her phone out of her pocket to search TripAdvisor. But she had no cell signal. “No bars? How can there be no bars?”
“We’re too far away from civilization.”
“Well… did it occur to anyone that it’s called civilization for a reason? Why do we have to camp?”
Tybalt ran the airboat aground. Sort of. He threw out some kind of anchor to keep the boat still.
“Reg, Corvin, can you start pulling stuff out of the hold?” Damon asked. He stepped out of the boat into the deep mud, positioning himself to take items from Reg and throw them onto the land beyond him.
“How are we supposed to sleep here?” Reg complained again.
Corvin was struggling to get the hold open. Reg reached past him and touched the catch to release the door covering. They pulled out the large bags and equipment. Corvin handed them to Tybalt, who threw them over to Damon, who threw them as far onto the land as he could. Reg kept an eye on everything and wouldn’t let them throw her bag. “I’ll carry that myself.”
Corvin looked down at the duffel. “Is this all you’ve got?”
Reg didn’t bother answering. She wasn’t too happy about it herself.
The spot that Tybalt helped Damon pick out did not improve Reg’s mood. The ground still squished under her feet, the water table just below the surface. Damon gradually got everything set up. Reg didn’t know if they’d even be able to have a fire. But then it was warm. They didn’t need a fire. Reg had just never camped without one before. It seemed like a necessity for a successful camping trip.
They eventually were all sitting in a circle on various stumps or fallen tree trunks or coolers. Reg looked at the others. It would appear that Tybalt was planning to stay with them.
“Do you have a family?” she asked him, wondering whether there were children at home who would be missing their daddy tonight.
Tybalt looked startled at the question. “Me? No, no.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not that type.”
“What type? The type to have children?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Reg shrugged. A bachelor, then. Someone who wasn’t interested in starting a family. Or maybe a divorcee who had resolved never to get into that trap again.
“What about you?” Tybalt returned, his voice rough, loud in the falling darkness.
“Me with kids? No.”
“Are you that type?”
“No. I don’t think I am either,” Reg agreed. “I don’t know if I’ll ever have kids. Seems to me… people need to be more careful of bringing kids into the world. All of this… mess. People shouldn’t have kids if they’re not prepared to be good parents and provide for them right.”
“I think most people would agree with that sentiment,” Corvin said.
“Maybe. But I don’t think most people are willing to follow through. There are plenty of people with kids who really shouldn’t have had them in the first place.”
She knew that Corvin was against bearing any children who might be born with the same “condition” as he bore. He didn’t want to pass on to them the hunger that could only be satisfied by consuming others’ powers. He did not, as far as Reg knew, have any progeny.
Though he had lied to her enough times that she couldn’t be sure that anything he said was the truth. He would say whatever he felt would give him an advantage over her. Sympathy for the man with the chronic condition who wouldn’t bring children into such an awful world… maybe it was just another line intended to lure her in.
Damon didn’t contribute anything on whether he ever planned to have any kids. Maybe he already did. Reg didn’t know much about his history. She’d never asked if he’d ever been married or had any children. Seeing as he was a warlock and was probably older than he looked, maybe she just didn’t want to hear the answer.
“Where do you live?” she asked Tybalt. “Is your home near here? Is it a commute?”
“A commute,” he repeated, and Reg got the feeling that he didn’t know what the word meant.
“I just mean, is it a long drive? Do you drive in? Or take your boat in? I haven’t ever known an airboat driver before. I don’t know how it all works.”
He was silent, looking at her.
Reg started to get a creepy, skin-crawling feeling looking at him. She wished they did have a fire. Could she light a fire in a swamp? Is that what foxfire was? Some kind of magical fire that would work there?
“Not far,” Tybalt said eventually. He looked around them and repeated it. “Not far.”
Reg shivered.
Chapter Thirteen
After a while, Tybalt left them.
He had set up his camp a little distance from theirs. At least, it had seemed like a short distance when they had set it up when it was still light out. After the darkness fell, Reg felt a little disoriented, and she wasn’t sure if he was too close or too far away from them. It wasn’t comfortable having him there.
“You checked his references, right?” she asked Damon.
“Sure. A few people recommended him. Said he really knew his way around the park.”
“Okay. Real references? Because it’s not hard to set up fake ones…”
“How would I know if they were fake?”
“Well, you could call them, of course. You’re the one who is a diviner. You can tell if they’re lying to you.”
“Of course they’re going to lie to me. Everybody lies. Especially job references.”
“Then you don’t know whether he’s really a good guide or not.”
“I saw today. He knew his stuff, didn’t he? I don’t know what you’re worried about.”
“Just having him sleeping over there. I don’t like it. What do you know about him?”
Damon shrugged. “Corvin who recommended him.”
Reg looked at Corvin. “Is he… a practitioner?”
Corvin looked to the side, evasive before even voicing his answer. “He is known in the magical community. He’s good at what he does. No one knows the Everglades better.”
“Why?”
“Why did I recommend him to Damon?”
“Why does he know the Everglades better than anyone else?”
Corvin frowned, puzzled by her question. “I would imagine… because he’s been here so long. Because he lives here himself. He spends all of his time here, exploring and acting as a guide.”
“And you’re not worried about him sleeping over there?”
“Are you upset that he’s not staying in our campsite? Or that he’s sleeping too close?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like him there. Are we safe? Have you set wards against strangers? Outsiders?”
Corvin shook his head. “I can set up a few safeguards. What about you? You have been working on protective spells.”
Most of them against Corvin. But Sarah had also been teaching her about imbuing physical objects with protections. It was a lot harder for Reg. Harrison, Reg’s immortal godfather, had helped her build a protective barrier around herself, but she had to mentally maintain it, something she couldn’t do while asleep or distracted. It was strong enough to keep Corvin back, and he was a powerful warlock, especially since consuming the Witch Doctor’s hoard. B
ut what she could do while awake would not help them while asleep.
“Should we take turns keeping watch?” Reg asked. Tybalt was certainly not the only danger in the park. Corvin kept talking about the other creatures and saying that they needed to be careful. “Sleep in shifts?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Corvin said. “Tybalt is being paid to be our guide. Why would he do anything to harm us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t care that much about the money. He can get money from all kinds of tourists. Maybe he wants something else that we have. We wouldn’t know it until it was too late.”
“Like what?” Damon asked, looking amused.
“I don’t know.” Reg looked at Corvin. “Powers.”
“He’s not like me,” Corvin assured her.
“What is he like? Do you know what his powers are?”
“He’s a good guide. That’s all you need to know.”
Reg was starting to feel a chill. She dug a hoodie from her bag and pulled it on. She noticed a small bundle in her duffel that hadn’t been there before. She poked at it and then pulled it out. From the silky, tightly-packed material and capsule shape, she assumed it was a sleeping bag. She looked at the two warlocks.
“Is this what I think it is? Did one of you get me a sleeping bag?”
They looked at each other; both shook their heads. Reg undid the tie and pulled the sleeping bag out of itself so that it stretched in a crumpled form along the ground. It wouldn’t provide a lot of cushioning from the ground, but it would keep her warm. And Damon had groundsheets and pads that she could use.
“Well, if it wasn’t one of you, then it must have been…” Reg looked in the direction Tybalt had gone to sleep.
Corvin chuckled. “What was it you were saying about not trusting our guide?”
“You think he got it for me?”
“I don’t think it was swamp fairies,” he said dryly.
“He must have done it while we were having lunch,” Damon said. “He had a couple of hours to kill.”
“Well… I guess I do feel bad, then. I never thought he would do something like that. I can pay him back. He never said anything!”
“Think hard before offering to pay him for it,” Corvin warned. “Many races would consider it an insult for you to offer to pay for a gift.”
“Oh. Okay, I wouldn’t have thought of that. I don’t want to insult him.”
Reg sat down on top of her sleeping bag, then wrapped it partially around her. It was very cozy and warm. She was finally able to relax.
Chapter Fourteen
Maybe it was because she’d had a nap in the afternoon. Or maybe because Reg didn’t normally go to sleep until late at night or early in the morning. Either way, her body did not agree with her decision to go to bed after talking with the warlocks, who wanted to get an early start in the morning. She knew that Corvin often stayed up as late as she did—they’d had more than one late-night telephone conversation when one of them wanted someone to talk to. Since it wasn’t safe for Reg to have Corvin in the house, especially at night or when she was tired, phones were the easiest solution.
She had wild and restless dreams for the first hour or two after she finally managed to drop off. Voices spoke to her out of the cool mist that hovered over the swampy ground. They hissed warnings to her. Told her to go back home. Something in the Everglades did not want her there. In her dream, she searched for the boat and tried to wake Corvin and Damon, but they didn’t respond, snoring away obliviously as she shook them and shouted at them that they had to wake up.
It was like one of those dreams where she was looking desperately for a bathroom but couldn’t find one. Or did find one but it was flooded. Or she couldn’t get her pants off because she was wearing layer upon layer.
Her brain knew there was something wrong and was trying to prepare her and wake her up to face it.
Reg finally pushed her way out of the dream. She sat up with a gasp and clutched her sleeping bag to her chest, trying to see through the darkness. There was something out there. Something was creeping around their campsite. She strained her eyes, but the clouds and the mist blocked out any light from the moon and stars. There was no fire. She didn’t have a flashlight or lantern. She hadn’t even brought a mobile charger for her phone because she had not realized that they would be camping out in the middle of nowhere instead of sleeping in a hotel like civilized people. So she was loathe to turn her phone on and use it as a flashlight, wanting to conserve the power for as long as she could.
Instead, she squinted her eyelids as close to shut as she could, trying to sharpen her vision and see something in the darkness. She remembered Ruan marveling that she couldn’t see in the darkness and calling her “blind one.”
Then Davyn reminding her that she could use her fire for light as well as warmth. And fire would help to keep wild animals away. She held her hands close together and conjured fire between them. It didn’t work the first time, but she focused and breathed slowly and felt the fire growing gradually inside her and, eventually, a flicker of flame appeared between her hands. Reg nursed it into a small ball of fire, then held it in front of her and used it to light the area around her. It was a very small fire, so it didn’t light anything more than a couple of feet away very well. She didn’t want to make it any bigger and attract attention. She wasn’t too worried about burning down the forest. Everything was so wet; there was no chance of a wildfire.
There were sounds outside the radius of her fire. She could hear someone or something out there. She slipped out of her cozy new sleeping bag with regret and moved toward Damon’s and Corvin’s sleeping forms. She reached Damon first and shook his arm, telling him in a whisper to wake up. He started to move around restlessly, so she left him and went to Corvin.
“Corvin. There’s something out there. Wake up.”
She touched him, knowing it would cause a jolt of electricity to flow through both of them. Corvin’s body stiffened like a plank, but he didn’t wake up. It was sort of like in a TV medical show where they shocked the dead guy, and his body jumped up into an arc, but it didn’t work. Then they turned up the voltage and tried again and, in most shows, it would eventually work, and he would get up and start talking to them. Maybe it wasn’t realistic, but Reg liked the shows where everything worked out in the end. It made her feel better about her chances that everything would work out in her life.
“Corvin!”
He still didn’t wake up. Reg went back to Damon. If he were awake, he could help get Corvin up too. She grabbed his leg and gave it a shake. “Damon! Come on. You want to get attacked out here in your sleep?”
She shook harder, and he groaned but didn’t wake up. Reg swore under her breath. She looked back and forth between them. Were they both naturally deep sleepers? It seemed unlikely that the two warlocks would both be such deep sleepers that she could not rouse them. Had someone been there? Tainted their food to knock them out? Corvin had brought a bottle of scotch with him, and they had both partaken, but Reg already had a headache and didn’t want to wake up in the morning feeling even worse. Was there something in the drink? Or were they both just intoxicated?
She slowly rose to her feet. Crouching hurt too much to sustain the position for long. She moved farther away from Corvin and Damon, looking for any sign of a monster lurking outside the circle of her fire. Would the wards Corvin had placed keep it at bay? Would Reg’s fire?
She couldn’t see anything, but she could feel a presence close by. It wouldn’t answer any of the questions Reg asked as she probed its mind. Either it was keeping her out, or it didn’t have conscious thoughts. The same way as she couldn’t get clear thoughts from Starlight or other animals. She could sense his mood, understand what he wanted or things he disliked, but he didn’t use words in her head to communicate with her.
Thinking about Starlight seemed to help. She felt her mind expand, and the consciousness of the thing out there respond to her. She pictured St
arlight, saw herself feeding him and picking him up to scratch his ears or give him love. She thought about how he strengthened her psychic connections and had helped her in the past.
The being drew closer to her, despite her fire.
She could see a shape just at the edge of the darkness. Barely a smudge beyond her fire. She had no doubt it could see her with her face lit up. It was long and low to the ground, animal rather than something human-shaped. She didn’t try to use speech to communicate with it, just her mind, emotions, and memories.
Then there was movement from another direction. Behind her and to the right.
They were hunting her in a pack. One out in front of her to draw her out while the rest circled around to trap her.
She turned quickly, the fire flaring in her hands. She was looking down where the creature should be, and instead of the elongated shape she had seen in front of her, saw two legs clothed in pants and boots. A man and his dog?
She didn’t have any time to think about it or to take anything else in.
Chapter Fifteen
Reg was encased in darkness.
Everything around her was black. She wasn’t even sure she had her eyes open. It was black as the inside of a coffin.
At the thought, Reg started to struggle. She was bound hand and foot, but she was not lying in a coffin. She was not being buried alive. Something beneath her was soft and springy, giving way and bouncing as she moved. She stopped and searched the blackness in front of her again for some crack of light or slightly lighter shade of black. Still nothing, just even blackness. She tried to call out, but her mouth must have been gagged, because she couldn’t make a sound. She wanted to call out for help, but she could not. She reached out with her mind, exploring, using all of her psychic senses to build a picture of where she was and what had happened to her.
She didn’t remember anything at first. Just falling asleep in the boat while she was so tired. It took time for her to slowly recall what had happened later. They had stopped for lunch. They had talked. They had traveled down the river for a long time in the boat, headed for the last place the wizard had been seen. And they had gone to bed. That was the last thing she could remember.
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