“What the hell has gotten into you?” she asked groggily. “And also, oof.”
“Did you hear that?” Koshka asked, ignoring her. He didn’t even wait for her to answer, which was good since she hadn’t heard anything because she was asleep, before he bounded off the bed again and over to the front of the caravan.
“Make a door and open it, you stupid hut!” he yelled, and then ran off into the night, leaving Bella sitting there with her mouth open and a cool breeze blowing through the tee shirt she slept in.
She listened intently for a minute, but still didn’t hear anything. Finally she waved her hand to shut the door, pulled the covers back over her head, and said something rude about how the only thing crazier than dragons or cats was a cat who actually was a dragon. “Probably just a really big mouse,” she grumbled and fell back to sleep.
* * *
WHEN KOSHKA RETURNED at last, the sun had been up for a couple of hours, and Bella was sitting on the steps blearily drinking coffee. She put the cup down when he trotted slowly into the clearing, blinking when she took in his unusually bedraggled appearance.
“Good grief,” she said. “You look like you’ve run for miles over rough terrain. Backward. Where the heck did you disappear to?”
The dragon-cat made a sound deep at the back of his throat and gave her a pitiful glance. Bella took the hint and snapped her fingers, producing a bowl of water from inside the caravan.
After he’d gulped down the entire thing, Koshka said, “I did run for miles over rough terrain. Although I’m pretty sure I was going forward most of the time. I spent hours trying to follow the echo of a memory of a sound. I heard it last night, carried on the wind.” He shook his massive head. “I don’t know what the sound was, but I’m telling you, Baba, there is something wrong in this forest.”
“I know,” Bella said, getting up to fetch him more water and an extra-large portion of tuna before sitting back down and picking up her coffee again. This time she held the warm cup more for comfort that anything else, a shiver running down her spine. “It’s as though the trees are whispering unhappy secrets to one another, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. It’s driving me crazy. It’s like I can hear it, but I can’t hear it. So you think the sound that you chased last night had something to do with whatever is going on here?”
“I’m sure the noise I heard was connected to the Riders somehow, but I couldn’t tell you why.” Koshka inhaled the tuna and then licked his chops, looking more like himself. “Just a gut feeling. But as you know, my gut is never wrong.”
“The Riders?” Bella sat up straight, sloshing coffee over her bare foot without even noticing. “Are you sure? Where are they? Did you find them?”
Koshka rolled his eyes. “I would have started with that, if I had. So no, I didn’t find them. But I’m pretty sure I can point you in the right direction; I got quite a bit farther than you did yesterday, I think.”
Bella drooped. For a minute there, she’d thought she was actually going to make progress on at least one of her assignments. If she didn’t have something good to report to the Queen soon, she was going to end up on the short list of “people most likely to be turned into something they weren’t going to enjoy being.” Besides, she really wanted to find the Riders.
“Great,” she said. “But you have to stay here while I’m out trying to follow the trail. How am I supposed to know where you went?”
Koshka licked a paw and rubbed it over one ear. Not that he couldn’t magically clean himself, but he enjoyed playing the role of a cat. He’d told Bella once that he’d spent a very long century disguised as a dog and he was never going to do it again.
“You worry too much,” Koshka said to Bella. “Have a little faith. I marked the trail for you, of course.”
Bella made a face. “Oh great. I’m going to have to sniff all the bushes for dragon-cat pee. I can’t wait.”
Koshka made a face back, wrinkling his wide nose. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even I don’t have that much pee in me. I put a mark on the trees as I went past. You should be able to follow it, at least as far as I got.”
She patted him on the head, then scratched underneath his chin the way he liked until a tiny ribbon of smoke trickled out of his nostrils. “I’ll leave in five minutes. You’re the best dragon-cat ever.”
“Of course I am,” Koshka said. “Was there ever any doubt?”
* * *
SAM PACED BACK and forth in the fire tower, restless and twitchy without knowing why. He didn’t even go into service for another hour, but he couldn’t stop looking out the windows anyway. His morning run, racing the sun as it rose in the sky, should have helped, but if anything, it only made him edgier. It was as if his blood was boiling as it moved through his veins. Something was wrong. He could feel it in his bones.
It probably didn’t help that his dreams had been filled with images of roaring fire and a red-haired woman with even hotter curves and lips. His binoculars swung back in the direction of the clearing where Bella’s caravan sat. Not for the first time that morning. Or even the tenth. She drew him like a lodestone pulled at iron, a natural force that couldn’t be explained.
Sam could see her now, sitting on the steps petting her cat. As he watched, the sun slid through the trees and hit the exact spot where she rested, making her glow like an angel. Too bad he had a feeling she was anything but. In fact, he was certain she was trouble. But even so, trouble had never come in a more beautiful package.
* * *
BELLA PICKED HER way through the woods, following the trail Koshka had left for her. True to his word, he’d put tiny claw marks on the trees he’d passed, spaced just far enough apart that she could always see the next sign as she paused to get her bearings. Unlike those of a normal cat, Koshka’s claw gouges gave off a glow when she looked at them with her magical sight, although no one else would have seen them even if they’d been looking.
She’d made her way a couple of miles to the east, well past the tall tree she’d found previously, when she heard a faint cry for help. It was much too high-pitched to be one of the Riders, and she debated for a second, torn between checking it out and staying on task, when she caught a whiff of smoke, which made her break into a run. She burst out into a small, clear space and instantly saw the fire on the far side, burning in the same abnormally circular fashion as the first one she’d seen.
This one was further along, though, and had started to edge beyond its original boundaries, creeping through some underbrush and about six feet up a couple of nearby old-growth trees. Up in one of the trees, a young girl crouched in a notch still out of reach of the flames, but not for long. Bella thought she was probably about fourteen or fifteen, although it was hard to tell.
The girl had short brown hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a knife, ragged jeans, and a backpack slung over her shoulders. She was yelling for help, stopping occasionally to cough from the smoke drifting upward, and there was a hint of panic in her eyes, although Bella could tell she hadn’t completely lost her head.
The girl looked relieved when she saw Bella enter the clearing. “Hey!” she called. “Can you help me? Call the fire department or something? I’m kind of in the shit here!”
“You sure are,” Bella yelled back. “What did you do, start a campfire that got out of hand?” She started wildly running through options in her head, while trying to keep the girl calm.
“Are you serious?” The girl looked indignant as only a teenager can. “I was sleeping up here, and when I woke up, the fire was already burning. I’m not stupid enough to start a fire and then climb up a damned tree to get away from it!”
She held up a hank of rope that she’d obviously used to tie herself to the tree while she was sleeping, although unfortunately Bella could tell it wasn’t nearly long enough to get her to the ground. And it wouldn’t matter if it was, since if she went do
wn the tree, she’d be heading straight into the flames.
The girl coughed again, and a frantic note started to creep back into her voice. “Please go for help. I’m freaking out here.”
Bella was trying not to do the same, but she could already tell that there was no way there would be time to fetch help. By the time she’d returned with anyone, the fire would have overrun the rest of the tree. As it was, smoke was starting to fill the clearing and two neighboring trees were smoldering at their bases.
She only had one choice. Magic. If she used her magic, there would be no hiding it. But if she didn’t, the girl was going to die.
* * *
SAM WAS ALMOST relieved when he spotted the smoke. After feeling so on edge all morning, it was good to have something to blame the anxiety on. He zoomed in on the fire, double-checking against known landmarks so he could give the dispatcher specific details. For a minute, he thought the bright red that caught his eye belonged to a bird, or maybe an isolated flare-up. Then his heart thumped, skipping a beat, as he recognized it as Bella’s hair, distinctive even at that distance, even though he couldn’t make out her features.
At first he thought she was alone, but when he spotted someone up in a tree, his pulse raced even faster. Grabbing up the two-way radio, he called dispatch first and then the county zone warden.
“Bill, we’ve got a smoke in quadrant three. I’ve got at least two civilians in harm’s way; looks like one of them is trapped.” He explained the situation, and the warden swore.
“I’ll call the state helicopter, see if we can get them to fly us in. I don’t know if I’ve got any guys close enough to get there in time, otherwise. Start calling the volunteers, will you? Shit.” He clicked off without any further ado, focused on the job.
Sam made the calls, beside himself with worry. The fire was close enough to the tower for him to see what was happening, but he wasn’t allowed to leave the tower to go to their aid—and even if he could, he wasn’t sure he would have been able to bring himself to get that close to the flames. He watched in anguish as the growing smoke obscured his view, clutching at his radio as if it were a lifeline. Waiting for news. Waiting for someone else to run to the rescue because he couldn’t.
THIRTEEN
BELLA PEERED THROUGH the growing smoke and tried to figure out how the hell she was going to save the girl. She knew she was going to have to use magic and just try to explain it away afterward somehow, but she couldn’t use the spell she’d used the last time. If she pulled all the oxygen out of the air to kill off the fire, it would kill the girl too.
No choice. She was going to have to go for the less subtle and harder to cover up, and make it rain. Her sister Baba, Barbara, was better at that than Bella, but after you’ve spent your entire life accidentally starting fires whenever you lose your temper, you learn all the ways to put them out too.
Bella took a deep breath, choking on the smoke briefly and then pulling herself together. Magic took focus, and it was tough to do when someone was screaming, flames were crackling, and your lungs were starting to feel a little crispy around the edges. Nonetheless, she made herself narrow all her attention to the necessary swirling motions and brief incantation and then nearly cheered as the first fat drops fell out of the sky. A minute later, rain came down in a deluge, drenching her, the girl, and thankfully, the fire. Also about a mile square around the clearing, but oh well. Barbara really was better at this than she was, but at the moment, Bella didn’t much care.
The rain fell for another little while, as the girl sat amazed and relieved up in the tree, waiting for the trunk to cool enough to be safe to climb down. Bella sent a sliver of healing energy up into the teen’s lungs to ease her coughing, and then used some more on herself. They were both too drained to talk, for which Bella was grateful. She was just debating the merits of doing one more tiny bit of magic to make the tree cool off faster (since no matter how tempted she was to disappear, Bella couldn’t, in all good conscience, just take off and leave the girl up there by herself) when a fire crew hauled ass into the clearing.
“Holy crap,” one of the guys said when he saw Bella. “We thought we’d lost you. Thank God that rain showed up out of nowhere. We didn’t even have anything predicted for today. You must be the luckiest woman on the planet.” He started directing his men to check for hot spots, using a strange tool that had an ax on one side and a hoe-like thing on the other.
Bella pointed up into the tree. “I think she’s the lucky one. I could have made it out, but there was no way she was going to. The fire must have been started by a lightning bolt from the same freak storm that caused the rain. Just one of those crazy things.” It was a feeble story and at least a partial lie, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.
A couple of the other firefighters climbed part of the way up and helped the teen down from her perch. She seemed astonishingly composed despite her ordeal, and ran over to Bella and gave her a big hug.
“Thanks!” the girl whispered, before turning back to face the chief. “That was the scariest thing that ever happened to me,” she said, eyes open wide. “Gosh.”
Gosh? Bella didn’t know what the hell was going on, but she was pretty sure that she was going to need to borrow one of the firefighters’ shovels to dig through whatever bullshit this girl was about to lay down.
“Can you tell me anything about how the fire started, young lady?” the chief asked. “Did you see lightning?”
“Gee, no, I’m sorry,” the girl said, brushing a hank of hair out of her face with a smudged hand. “My aunt and I were hiking through the woods and we got separated. I climbed a tree to see if I could spot her.” She favored him with a cheery grin. “I’m really good at climbing trees. Better than any of the boys I know. I’m not afraid of heights at all. Anyway, I guess I fell asleep up there, what with the early start and how comfortable the notch was and everything, and when I woke up, the fire was already burning and I was, like, trapped. I screamed, and then my aunt came, and then it rained and put out the fire. And then you came.” She beamed at him as if he and his crew were superheroes, radiating innocence from every grimy pore.
Aunt? Bella tried not to choke, and the crew chief looked dubious—rightfully so. But he clearly couldn’t come up with any explanation that fit better.
“Are you the woman from the caravan?” the chief asked Bella. She nodded.
“Sam in the fire tower mentioned you, although he didn’t say anything about a niece. He’s going to be real relieved to hear that you’re safe. He spotted you from the tower; I think he’s been going half out of his mind with worry, knowing you were down here in the midst of this. I’m going to give him a call on the radio, let him know you’re both okay.”
He moved off for a moment, radio crackling. Bella had just opened her mouth to say something to the girl when he came back.
“I think you took about five years off that man’s life, ma’am,” he said a touch grimly. “And he didn’t have any to spare, by my way of thinking. Not after what he went through.”
“Does this have anything to do with his scars?” Bella asked. “I kind of wondered what happened, but I didn’t want to ask.”
“You don’t know?” The chief’s bushy eyebrows rose in disbelief.
“I’m not from around here,” Bella explained.
“Well, sure, but the story was in all the papers. For a while there, Sam Corbett’s name was almost as well-known as Mick Jagger’s.”
“Who?” Bella told herself, not for the first time, that maybe she should spend more time out in the world.
The chief shook his head. “That’s okay. I don’t like rock music either. More of a country and western fan myself. Anyway, Sam was one of the members of a Hotshots team that got caught behind the lines when a huge forest fire doubled back on their position. They deployed their shelters just like we’re trained to, but the fire was too hot.
They all died. Everyone but Sam. That’s where he got the burns.”
“Man that sucks,” the teenager said from Bella’s side. Bella had almost forgotten about the girl, listening to the chief tell his story.
“It does,” Bella said, suddenly glad she hadn’t asked Sam about it. It didn’t sound like the kind of thing that someone would want to talk about. “I’m glad he’s okay.”
“Oh, I’d say he’s far from okay, ma’am,” the fire chief said, his lips twisted. “He lost his fiancée, his best friend, and the rest of his team in that fire. And I suspect a lot more than that, although not the kind of things you could list on a piece of paper. I’m not sure how he keeps going, to tell the truth.” He caught himself and scowled, probably feeling like he’d said too much to a stranger.
“Look,” he said in a more distant tone, his attention already turning back to his men as they worked. “This has been a real bad year so far for these kinds of sudden flare-ups. You take my advice, you’ll move on and camp somewhere else.”
Bella couldn’t tell if he was just being nice or if he thought that they’d somehow had something to do with the fire, but she wasn’t going to stay here and argue with him.
“Thank you for your help,” she said. “You and your men provide an amazing service to the rest of us. We really appreciate it.” She put one arm around the girl and steered her out of the clearing and back in the direction of the caravan.
But as soon as they were out of sight of the others, the teen said, “Thanks again for saving me from the fire. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” and started to walk away into the woods.
“Not so fast, missy,” Bella said, grabbing one strap of the girl’s backpack. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The girl tried out the wide-eyed look on her, although Bella was a lot less impressed than the crew chief had been. She didn’t think innocence and this child had had much to do with each other in quite some time.
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