“In the time you’ve spent telling me why you can’t say what we’re doing here, you could’ve told me what we’re doing here.”
“When did I get to be ‘we’? This has got to be some kind of weird dream.”
“Hmmm. Well, in my experience, when a person goes to great lengths to evade answering a direct question, it means the person is either up to something they’re ashamed of or else they don’t have a good answer.”
“I’m not interested in your thoughts on the matter, warlock. Nor do I think you have any experience that’s relevant to what I’m doing here.” Her eyes flashed.
“No. You’re interested in freezing your heart-shaped butt off in the Arctic Circle.”
She gaped. “You do not have permission to observe or comment on the shape of my butt.”
He laughed. “Too late.”
“Why did you go to Wimberley? You know how it works and you knew you weren’t the ‘winner’.” She punctuated the word ‘winner’ with air quotes and rolled her eyes.
“I decided that, if a winner who wasn’t me had been chosen, the choosers’ needed to recalibrate their equipment. ‘Cause I’m the one.”
“The one?” With a little puff of exasperated breath, she said, “As they say in Wimberley, for cripes’ sake.”
“You might as well stop pretending you’re not into me because I know you are.”
“Just out of curiosity, going with the outlandish and completely fantastical hypothesis that I’m ‘into you’, what makes you think that?”
“You couldn’t keep your eyes off me in Aspen.”
Wednesday ran through a range of comebacks, but knew that any argument would sound like a lie. Because saying that would be a lie.
“Thinking somebody is attractive is not the same thing as wanting to pledge undying love.”
“This is different from hookup interest and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Rally! I’ve got stuff to do here.”
“What? Just tell me and I’ll help you so we can get back to civilization, meaning heat and steamed milk.”
She cocked her head. “You want to help.”
“Sure,” he answered, looking devastatingly sincere.
She hesitated for a minute. “I know you’re going to laugh, but I’m here to save the world.” Rally didn’t laugh. He waited for her to say more. “Look around. All this ugly gray stuff used to be beautiful light blue ice that reflected the sun’s rays back into space and kept our planet from burning up. And it’s not just our world that has to be saved. There are other realities existing side by side with ours. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. If we mess this up for our dimension, everyone and everything everywhere goes extinct.”
Rally was just about to ask what she planned to do, when they heard the rumble. It wasn’t huge or earth shattering. It was a large chunk of ice breaking nearby. It barely caused movement, but the movement it did cause was just enough to make Wednesday scramble for footing. In doing so, one foot slipped on the ice and, within the space of a blink, she had plummeted into the churning crevice below where the force of water would keep her under.
Naturally, Rally’s first reaction was panic. He started to jump in after her without thinking through the best course of action.
What was the best course of action? But he remembered the exercises. The seemingly endless exercises. His father would set up intense situations designed to cause fear, and force Rally to still his mind and slow his heart rate before deciding how best to proceed.
Rally had asked why. “My friends don’t have to do this stupid stuff. Why do I? Why do you push me so hard?”
“Because,” his father had said, “someday your capacity to act wisely in the presence of pronounced fear may be the difference between life or death. Yours or someone else’s.”
Rally reached out with his senses and found Wednesday’s location by locking on her spiking emotions. He teleported to where she was struggling underwater. He knew, judging by the energy he’d used to reach her, that he didn’t have enough juice to teleport both of them back up to the ice sheet surface.
Just as he was contemplating that the two of them might die together without so much as a single kiss, he saw a clear ice sheet in the calmer water underneath the roar above. He remembered having read about bubbles in the ice, some the size of closets, some with vast spaces. He took a chance and teleported both of them to the other side of the ice sheet into a cave-like space about fifteen feet in width and depth.
The top, or ceiling, was too low for Rally to stand up straight, but that was the least of his worries. He’d read that the bubbles contain small amounts of oxygen, but he had no way of knowing how long it would last. Wednesday dragged in big breaths until her lungs began to relax.
She was soaking wet and freezing, literally, her clothes were hardening on her body. Rally’s choices were limited. If he used his ability to regulate temperature, he might keep Wednesday alive only to melt the bubble and land them both back in the frigid depths from which they’d just escaped.
He calculated that they had one chance. He’d use part of what energy was left to send a psychic S.O.S. to the coven while using the rest to keep them alive. So many things could go wrong. Even if he didn’t melt the bubble, he might not be able to send a loud psychic signal since he was already working with partial power.
Wednesday looked at him with fear in her beautiful eyes.
“Shhh,” he said. “No worries. I have a plan. Stay quiet for a minute while I try to call my friends.”
She blinked and parted her lips, but she thought better of arguing with a warlock who may have sacrificed himself for her sake.
Aodh was mid-thrust and about to come hard for the seventh time when he suddenly disengaged, darting up and away from the bed and the delightful tangle of creamy skinned limbs that had kept him enthralled through the night and into the morning.
“What’s wrong!?” Bell sounded even more alarmed when she got a good look at his face.
“Gotta go, sweet cheeks. Somebody needs me.”
She sucked in a breath. “Somebody named Rally?”
Aodh paused with one leg halfway into his jeans. He finished pulling the pants leg on with a newly formed frown. “Yeah. Rally. How would you know that, Bell?”
“It’s a long story?”
“Make it super short.”
“He went after my best friend. She’s in Greenland. Or she was. Kangerlussuaq.”
Without shirt or shoes Aodh began making phone calls. As it turned out, every single one was still in Wimberley, shacked up with witches whose turns for mating had not yet come. Aodh told them to meet at the gate to the colony.
When the other five had been told where to meet, Aodh turned to Bell and ran his eyes over the lightly freckled peaches and cream skin covering delectable curves before settling on her clear green eyes. With an irresistibly sexy smile, he said, “Don’t make the bed. I’ll be back.”
She parted her lips to say, “Okay,” but he’d already disappeared, leaving her to think, Huh. I didn’t know they could do that.
Each of the warlocks could have teleported to Greenland from anywhere, but Fate was on their side in that they were together. As a group they could teleport with a fraction of the energy it would have taken to go solo. That was both the beauty and the terror of the newly formed warlock coven. Together they held fearsome power and could probably move a mountain range if their talents were combined and focused on a singular resolve.
Within fifteen minutes six warlocks were standing in Rally’s hotel room where he’d left the tablet open to the map tracking Bell. Fortunately for all, Bell had left her phone in the tent.
With some of their juice trained on staying warm in barely-there clothes, they resumed travel to the camp site.
Wolfram turned to Aodh. “You got a line to him?” He was asking if Aodh still had an ‘awareness’ of Rally either by feeling or outright telepathy.
Aod
h nodded. “He and the witch are both alive, but he’s getting weak. If I lose the connection, we’ll never find them, which means we’ve got to get them now!”
“Where?” Wolfram barked at Mallach, knowing Mallach would be best at tracking.
Mallach looked around before pointing at a spot. “There.”
“Lead the way,” said Wolfram.
In ether form, they followed Mallach’s vapor trail that would be invisible to anyone who was not a warlock and materialized next to him on the ice sheet right above where Rally and Wednesday were trapped below.
“How can they be trapped in there?” Turf said.
“He said it’s like a bubble in the ice, but he’s melting it trying to keep them from freezing,” Aodh said.
“So how’re we gonna do this?” Turf said.
“Ideas?” Wolfram suggested.
“Do it quick,” Aodh admonished.
“Mallach,” Wolfram said, “can you get inside this…?”
“Bubble,” Aodh supplied.
“Bubble,” Wolfram repeated.
“I think so,” Mallach said.
“Better be sure. We’re not losing two of us,” Wolfram said.
Mallach smirked and disappeared. In less than a minute he was back. “They’re directly below us. You’re gonna need to watch your heads because you can’t stand up all the way. Rally’s pretty much out of juice. He can’t move.”
“Okay,” Wolfram said. “If Rally’s gone into stasis, he’ll be heavy as dead weight. Let’s get him first.”
Aodh shook his head. “He’ll kill us if we do that. Get her first.”
Wolfram motioned to Mallach, all six became a trail of ether that sped down through the ice to the dubious shelter where Rally and Wednesday awaited rescue. The six converted Wednesday’s body composition to pure energy so that they could teleport her, locked on, and flew to the surface.
She was immediately left on the ice sheet, alone, while they returned for Rally, whose eyes were glazed over. He wasn’t completely unconscious, but he was paralyzed, having used the last of his reserves in the hope that his friends would get to them in time.
Wolfram was right. A warlock with no energy was heavy as fuck.
Once they got him to the surface, Wolfram said, “Jean Mar, help Harm get that witch to the vehicle. Harm, will you drive her back to the hotel?” Harm nodded. “We need to get him there fast.”
That was enough said.
Rally looked and felt like a stone slab when they laid him down on top of his hotel room bed.
“Is he gonna be okay?” Aodh asked Jean Mar, who was the most qualified to judge.
“Of course,” Jean Mar tossed off. “He just needs to be quiet and still while he regenerates life force.” Jean Mar looked toward where Rally was stretched out like a corpse. “Merde. He almost sparked out trying to save that witch.”
“You do know why we were in Wimberley, don’t you?” Aodh asked the group in general.
They looked blank.
“Because you said, ‘Come on, let’s go crash a witches’ party?’” Turf asked.
Aodh smiled. “Guess I didn’t explain.”
“Explain what?” Wolfram said.
“That wasn’t just a party.” Aodh proceeded to educate them about the spring rites and, more importantly, why Rally was there.
“Mes Dieux.” Jean Mar took his finger away from checking the pulse in Rally’s neck.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Mallach asked.
“Yep,” Turf said. “He’s been snagged.” Turf looked at Rally. “And you owe us for nearly freezing our peckers off. Don’t bother playing dead. I know you can hear me.”
“But…” Mallach looked dumbfounded and sounded a little horrified. “He’s only like, what? Five hundred years old?”
“Fate works in mysterious ways.” Aodh took a chair. “There’s no point in everybody hovering like ladies in waiting. It’s not like he’s going anywhere. The main thing is somebody has to keep watch to make sure the maids don’t walk in and freak.”
“Yeah, he’s right,” Wolfram said. “Let’s go get rooms and see if they have any poker chips in this town.”
As they filed out, Turf said, “We can go to the bank and get coins.”
“You think they have a bank here?” Mallach joked. “Look out.”
The clerk, another blue-eyed blonde, blushed at the sight of five model-perfect men advancing toward the desk with knowing smiles. Knowing in the sense that they knew before she looked up that she was going to be tongue-tied at the sight of them.
“We need seven rooms,” Wolfram said, placing a black American Express on the counter.
“S-s-seven?”
“That’s right.” He smiled. She thought he had ancient looking eyes in the face of a young man. And the paradox was disconcerting.
Gathering herself, she said, “Of course.”
“Close to Rally Morovian.”
“He’s a guest with us?” she asked. Wolfram nodded. “We have a Ragsnare Morovian.”
The warlocks looked at each other and burst into laughter, while Wolfram said, “Yes. That’s him.”
Behind Wolfram, Turf said, “I can’t wait until Ragsnare is better.” The others sniggered in agreement.
“I can give you rooms on the same floor.”
“Good,” Wolfram said. “Whatever you’ve got.”
“All charged to you?”
“Yes.”
“How long will you be staying?”
Wolfram looked at Jean Mar, who turned to the desk manager and said, “Three days.”
“Alright. I’ll need to see passports,” she said.
“How do you know we’re not Greenlanders?” Mallach teased.
“Well,” she began, “there’s your accent.” Her eyes ran over their shorts and tee shirts. “And your rather impractical clothing.”
Not missing more than half a beat, Turf leaned his elbows on the counter and locked gazes with her. “All true, doll. It’s easy to see we’re not locals. When you looked at our passports you were surprised that we all take great pictures, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I was.” She smiled as she nodded enthusiastically.
He cocked his head. “Okay then. Can we get our room keys?”
“Certainly. My pleasure,” she said, emphasizing the word ‘pleasure’.
“Save two for the last of our party. One for a gentleman named Harm Licht and another for the woman with him.”
“Of course, Mr. Hart.”
“Say, would you know where we could get a set of poker chips?” Turf asked.
The desk clerk looked surprised. “Um. No.”
“What about matches?”
It seemed to please her to be able to answer in the affirmative.
“What about clothes? Jeans? Sweaters? Coats?”
The owner of the tiny store wondered what had happened to cause fortune to send him a wave of young men in summer clothes looking to be outfitted for cold. That was good news. The bad news was their disgusted response when learning that there were no boots to be had was like déjà vu.
“Well,” the store owner said, “the young man who was here this morning solved the problem by buying used.”
“How’s that?” Turf asked.
“He offered five hundred dollars for a pair of size thirteen boots that fit well and were in good condition.” The man chuckled. “There were multiple offers.”
The stock boy and a customer made no attempt to pretend they weren’t listening.
After a slight hesitation, Turf said, “Size thirteen and a half. I don’t have that much cash on me, but if you will buy boots for me for five hundred, I will buy them from you with my credit card for six hundred.”
The store owner thought about that for less than two seconds before nodding agreement and jotting down Turf’s size. As each of the warlocks gave their size, the stock boy and the middle-aged woman who’d been shopping added the information to their own lists.
“Find out what size Harm and Aodh wear,” Wolfram said.
Turf pulled out his phone and dialed Harm. “What size boots do you wear?” Pause. “Okay.” He ended the call without saying why he wanted to know or asking about the witch or the journey. “Twelve,” he announced. He immediately dialed Aodh and announced, “Twelve and a half.”
Armed with notations of six sizes of boots, the stock boy and the customer practically flew out the door then stopped on the wood deck outside to make phone calls.
An hour later four warlocks were sitting at a round table in the hotel’s cafeteria, wearing ill-fitting clothes, good fitting boots, and playing Texas Holdem using matchsticks to represent chits.
Harm and Wednesday approached the front desk.
“Mr. Licht?” the clerk asked.
“Yes.” He was surprised, but shouldn’t have been.
“Here’s your key. And another for the lady.”
He took them gratefully. “Have you seen my friends?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Everyone’s seen your friends.” She said it like she might have said that it’s very unusual to get a herd of zebras in town at that time of year. “Right now they’re playing poker in the cafeteria.”
Harm smiled. “Thank you.”
He started toward the elevator, but Wednesday pulled at his sleeve. “I need to see Rally.”
At least twenty times during the one hour drive to the hotel Wednesday had asked if Rally was going to be okay. Over and over Harm had patiently and faithfully attested that Rally would be good as new, but the witch was still worried. If anything, he was more worried about her. She looked exhausted.
“You sure you don’t want to take a hot bath first? Maybe a nap? Maybe you want a hot chocolate? Something to eat? Or all of those things.”
“All those things. Yes. After I see that Rally is okay.”
When the elevator opened, Harm was looking at Wednesday, trying to decide what to do. “Okay, you sit down here.” He pointed to a bench by the elevator bank and parked her rolling suitcase there. “I’ll find out where he is and be right back.”
The four warlocks playing poker stopped when they saw Harm come in.
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