by Nash, Layla
“The very same. Looch is always ready to fight,” the ranger said under his breath. He grunted in pain and rubbed his shoulder after I socked him for talking about my sister like that. “Like all of the Luckett women, I should add.”
I leaned close to the fire and pointed at Mason and Nelson in turn. “You do not want to see me angry. If you so much as look in the direction of my sisters, I will end you. Got it?”
Mason put on an offended look, hand splayed across his chest as he sat back and puffed up. “Moi? Why would you have a problem with me courting your sister?”
I snorted again, trying not to think of what Ma would have to say about such unladylike noises, and shook my head. “Aside from the fact that you say shit like ‘courting’? Because you’re just here for a job, for a little interlude, and then you’ll be gone. That’s it. You’re not here for keeps and we can’t leave, so there’s no use in entertaining anything else.” Which just reminded me of Lincoln, sitting calm and quiet on the other side of the fire, since it applied to him, too.
“With as much paranormal activity as has happened up here, we could make a case for needing a permanent waystation in Rattler’s Run,” Nelson said. He didn’t look particularly rattled by the thought of being stationed near a place where the weather and time didn’t obey natural laws, nor about their short mission turning into a whole career in a little nothing town. “No one at headquarters is aware of the Crossroads and what it might mean for magic in this part of the country. It’s at least deserving of more study. If we were sticking around for a while, would you mind introducing me to your sister?”
“Yes, I would mind. They’re my sisters and they’re... unique. It wouldn’t be good. At all.” I shook my head, and when he started to ask something else, I held up my hand to forestall other questions. “Nope. And don’t you dare accidentally bump into them, because I will find out about that as well.”
Hazel grinned, clearly pleased about something, but she only sat back and watched the shifters grumble and complain about not even being able to take out my sisters. I didn’t know if I was more worried about the lions breaking my sisters’ hearts, or Lucia and Olivia wreaking havoc with the shifters. A lovesick lion would have to be a hell of a thing to see, and I wasn’t sure Rattler’s Run was ready for that sort of thing. Besides, it would make it awkward as hell if I dated Lincoln and my sister broke up with one of his team members. Or vice versa.
When the lions seemed inclined to keep picking at that wound, Hazel waved to get my attention. “Was there something wrong in the cave? Some of the magic felt kind of unbalanced up here.”
I jerked my thumb in Lincoln’s direction. “Your boss touched something he shouldn’t have. Got the spirits all riled up.”
She stared at him, clearly at a loss for words, and Lincoln held his hands up in self-defense. “It was a stalactite. Not magical at all. Just stone or calcium or whatever it is.”
That started an argument between the two of them over whether a normal object in a magical place naturally becomes magical itself, or whether the magic transmutes something or the Bell only knew what else. I stopped understanding them about three sentences in, which was just as well because I near broke my jaw yawning. Chewing through the oatmeal almost finished the job, so I put it aside and dragged my stuff over to where someone had kindly set up my tent. I wanted to look at the book I’d borrowed from the cave, but there was no way I would do it in the open around Lincoln and his team. Not until I knew what it was and had showed my sisters.
And I needed to have a word with them about ogling the shifters, since the moment Olivia knew what they were she would no doubt be all over both of them. And I wouldn’t put it past her to sleep with them both. Possibly at the same time. I shook off the thought, icked out all the way through, and pried my boots off so I could scoot into the tent after thanking Eddie for dinner and saying my good nights to the rest.
Luckily Hazel and Lincoln still argued over magical metaphysics, and Nelson and Mason weighed in occasionally, so they just said good night and went back to arguing and dropping names of Greek philosophers and all kinds of people who sounded like they were from a fairy tale or a movie about hobbits.
I crawled into my sleeping bag with every intention of studying the book by the light of my headlamp, but before I could do more than pull it out of my pack, my head hit the pillow and I passed out.
Chapter 30
I dreamed big dreams, so I knew for sure that something had gone wrong in the Crossroads magic. When the normal restful sleep turned instead to me walking a long path through the desert all on my own, I knew something was trying to tell me something else. At least I’d had enough practice at dream-walking to know what I was getting into, but that didn’t make it a comfortable adventure. Things that went wrong in the dream world ended up going wrong in the real world as well, and I didn’t fancy dying a horrible death in my dreams and leaving behind a mangled corpse in my tent.
It’d scare Eddie half to death himself to find such a thing.
So I took extra care as I navigated the dream, searching and searching for something calling my name, but it felt like I would never find it. Compelled onward by a hook in my belly button, I searched the desert high and low. I’d about given up and figured it was just a nonsense dream when the scenery jolted and changed and then I faced my dead Aunt Bess across a still pool of crystal-clear blue water, bluer than anything I’d seen in real life.
She looked the same but different, taller somehow and not quite so crazy as the last time I’d seen her. She stood on the far side of the pool, her hands folded serenely at her waist, and watched me as I watched her.
I felt like a fool, waiting for her to speak, so I lifted my hand in something like a wave. “Hi, Bess. How are you?”
“I’m dead, Sass. How do you think I am?”
“Still crazier than a shithouse rat, maybe?” She’d never been my favorite aunt, too stern and joyless so she spoiled all the fun we’d had as kids, and all the damage she’d caused while still pretending to be sane just made me like her less than before. I’d had to clean up a hell of a lot of messes because of her.
Bess’s expression soured. “That’s no way to talk to your elders.”
“You might be older than me, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got the right of things. You made a mess in town and at the Crossroads, Bess, and left it for the three of us to clean up.” I folded my arms over my chest, wishing I’d learned enough dream-walking from Ma to just be able to stomp my foot and end the dream entirely. “What is it you want now? Are you plannin’ to haunt me? Because if you are, I’d recommend following Lucia around instead. She’s a lot more interesting.”
“I’m not haunting you, and I didn’t summon you. You summoned me.” Her eyes narrowed and she put her fists on her hips. “So what do you want?”
That took some of the wind out of my sails. I hadn’t expected my pleas to the ancestors in the caves to actually dig up my aunt as the person who could help me. She was the last one I wanted to talk to—I’d have rather taken on some of the trickier ancestors instead. “We’ve had some trouble, after what you did in the cave and the Crossroads. The magic still isn’t right. There have been dire wolves all over the place, hunting in packs since the first of the year and all of it tied back to your little… episode.”
She looked even less pleased. “Find some respect and temper your tone, girl, if you’re expecting me to help you.”
“Since it’s a problem of your making, I’d think you’d want to fix what you broke?” Maybe if I woke up and went back to sleep, I could conjure a different relative. Gran, maybe, or one of the long-ago witches. “And now we’ve got werewolves, a whole pack of them working together. I’ve killed eleven of them, but since we’ve never had them in the Crossroads before, at least that I can remember, I thought it had to have something to do with your incident.”
Bess frowned, looking thoughtful rather than pissed off, which was a new trick of hers. “There’s noth
ing I did that should have disrupted the fabric of the Crossroads enough to summon werewolves. They must have been sent here for some other purpose.”
“These government folks insist that there aren’t many people or witches who could control and direct werewolves like that.” Not that I wanted to call her a fool to her face, but it felt nice and smug to use some of the knowledge Hazel gave me against Bess.
“Government folks? What kind of government folks?”
I jumped just a little as another witch appeared next to Bess, definitely older and gray-haired and wearing old-timey clothes and a bonnet. I swallowed a knot in my throat as Bess looked just as startled as I felt, and slowly I inclined my head in deference to the new ghost. “A druid, a witch, and two lion shifters. They’re a team apparently sent by the federal government to investigate the werewolves. They weren’t aware of the Crossroads or the nature of the Luckett attachment to the land. I escorted them to the Crossroads, and to the cave. The werewolves were living in the cave until we drew them out and killed them.”
“A druid?” The new witch wasn’t pleased. At all. “No good can come of welcoming outsiders into our affairs. There is a reason the Lucketts are tied to this land, and no one else feels the same bond. We have our purpose. You must maintain vigilance, and get rid of these intruders as soon as possible. The druids are a terrible evil and will use this knowledge to further their own ends. We will not stand by while they destroy us again.”
She retreated a step and I lurched forward, almost pitching into the pool in my effort to catch her. “Wait. Help me understand. Who are the druids?”
“Do some reading,” she said, sounding irritated. “Clearly your elders neglected your education.” And she gave Bess a rather dirty look, which made me feel a little better.
“I will, I promise,” I said. “But if you don’t mind—what did you mean about the druids destroying us? Aren’t the druids on our side?”
Her nostrils flared with distaste, and she folded her arms over her chest as she stared me down. “No, they are not on our side. They are on their own side, always. The druids claim to serve the Mother, to serve nature and the balance of light and dark. They search for truth and withhold wisdom—they treasure knowledge above all. They will drag all the information they can out of you, and store it away in their druid’s library, but in the end they will give nothing back. You will be as in the dark as ever, while they will find all of our secrets and use them against us. Beware, daughter Luckett. A druids forced us from the old country when we became more powerful by riding the ley lines and drawing directly from the earth. They could not tolerate a clan of women being the stronger, despite that we were all bandrui to begin with. It is a long and complex history, too long for the telling now. You must read, daughter, in order to know the enemy you face. Have a care you do not give away all of our secrets.”
I opened my mouth to ask more questions, desperate to understand more about the druids and the ley lines and the Lucketts, but her expression darkened as she looked at something behind me. “Now go. Begone. Wake.”
I caught a glimpse of a cinnamon-brown coyote trotting up to my side before the world dissolve and I sucked in a breath and sat up in the half-light of my tent. The sleeping bag tangled around me and nearly strangled me where I slept. I hurt all over, a consequence of that magical battle to save Lincoln from the cave and the tussles with the werewolves, and sleeping on a handful of rocks hadn’t helped much at all.
Lying back down for more dozing didn’t seem possible, not with a slowly-rising sun and the sound of someone rustling around in the camp. I kicked my way out of the sleeping bag and shoved on my boots after checking them for spiders and snakes and other little creatures. I was still rubbing sleep from my eyes when I caught sight of Lincoln standing across the fire from a slight figure with long dark hair and copper skin, unblinking as he watched the federal agent. A rangy tricolor dog, some kind of Australian cattle dog or dingo or something, sat patiently next to a pair of equally scruffy horses and wagged his tail until puffs of dust rose from the grass.
I blew out a breath and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, wishing that I’d sent Olivia on this little trip instead of going myself, and hoped to every god ever imagined that Lincoln at least had the coffee ready.
He didn’t.
The fed looked over at me, carefully neutral about introducing the stranger. “Good morning, Luckett. We have a guest.”
“So I see.” I attempted a smile as I shuffled over to the fire in my unlaced boots and offered a hand to the young man. “Luke, good to see you. What brings you by?”
Luke Mankiller, shaman for the local tribe and grade-A pain in my ass, smiled broadly as he eyed me. He always looked impeccable, did Luke, and perfectly attired for any type of weather. He looked like he’d stepped off the page of some cowboy magazine or the brochure for big city fashion lines that made ranchwear for bankers to sport on the weekend. Luke shook my hand but let me go pretty quickly. “The winds brought word of your troubles, Talks with Fists, and the bison told tales of disturbances in the bones of the earth.”
Lincoln looked more than a little alarmed, but I pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head. “Luke, man, it’s too early for that bullshit. Can you fuck with the new guys after I get some coffee?”
The Native American laughed, shaking his head. “You always ruin my fun, Sass. You got enough coffee for me, too?”
“Yeah, if you stop with that mystical B-grade Western schtick.”
“I make no promises, Talks with Fists.”
“I’ll talk with my fists, all right,” I said under my breath, but good-naturedly, as I limped over to fetch a couple of coffee cups. “No sugar or creamer, my friend, so it’s black for you.”
“As black as your soul, white woman.” Luke grinned more, his teeth perfectly white and straight like he belonged on a billboard for an orthodontist.
I shook my head and debated throwing the coffee right in his face. “I hate you so much sometimes.”
Lincoln looked between us, more than a little incredulous. “Wait a second. This is the guy who won’t let you on the tribe’s lands, even if you’re in trouble? I thought you guys hated each other.”
“Nah,” Luke said. He winked at me over the coffee cup. “Sass and I go way back. She used to hex me on the playground until I told my grandfather and he had a talk with her gran. We both ended up in trouble, mucking stalls for a month in the dead of winter.”
“It was all his fault,” I said. “You did bad medicine and the teacher caught you, and you blamed me for being a witch.”
The native man shook his head, dark eyes looking to Lincoln for sympathy or understanding. “Women.”
The fed just looked perplexed.
“We can’t help who we are,” I said, trying to explain as best I could for the outsider. “Who we’re born to. Luke and I are stuck carrying out the agreements made by our ancestors. We might be friends or enemies or Luke might spend the rest of his life following me around like a puppy because of his unrequited love for me, but that doesn’t matter—Lucketts aren’t allowed on tribal land. I have to adhere to that, and Luke has to enforce that. It’s just how it is.”
“I call bullshit on the unrequited love. I asked you out and you said no. And anyway, we tried to renegotiate two generations ago,” Luke said, wrapping his hands around the coffee cup and making a face after he took a sip. “But the Luckett women are notoriously... difficult to get along with. So it went nowhere. They are happy enough being martyred to their history.” He shrugged, for all the world a long-suffering diplomat.
“Like I said, I really hate you sometimes.” I crouched to the fire, resisting the idea of making oatmeal for another meal. “I’d offer you breakfast as well, Luke, even if your ugly ass doesn’t deserve it, but we’ve got only a bit left and not much to share.”
“I figured,” he said, then whistled for his pony and the sullen packhorse he’d brought with him. Both had full packs. “Your si
ster called and said you’d be running low on supplies, and she thought I’d be nearer where you camped than she could get.”
Damn. I looked at Luke as I tried to find a way to continue to hate him despite the fact that he pulled a chocolate bar from the packs and waved it in my face. Instead, I sighed. “I hate you so much.”
“Does this help?” He pulled a bulky package wrapped in white butcher paper from the other pack and tossed it to me, and it didn’t take more than a few folds of the paper before I realized what it was: bacon. Thick, center-cut slabs of bacon, smoked so they would keep and just waiting to crisp up in a pan and melt in my mouth.
Damn and double damn. I nearly groaned at the thought of eating crispy, delicious bacon after so many mornings of oatmeal and granola and jerky. I grudgingly nodded at the fire. “Fine. You can stay. Just don’t make yourself a nuisance.”
“I like my eggs scrambled,” he said, then ducked as I threw a rock in his direction. “And you’re welcome for saving your ass again, Luckett.”
The man was infuriating. And a good man as well, which made it even more difficult to stay mad at him.
Lincoln still remained nearby, watching Luke with a bit of suspicion as I started building up the fire and setting up the grill and everything else we would need for an actual breakfast. Luke stood at ease, hands shoved in his pockets, and watched. He had a curious self-possession that made him seem completely relaxed no matter the circumstances or situation. I’d puzzled over it for years, whether he was just a hell of an actor or what, but it turned out he just didn’t give a shit what other people thought. He was so completely comfortable with who he was and how his own skin fit that he couldn’t care less what anyone else wanted to imagine about him. And he just made me more self-conscious because of it, it seemed like.
But with the way Lincoln was eyeing him, I knew the fed was trying to sort out the same thing. As the rest of the team stirred at the scent of fresh coffee and dragged themselves out of their tents, they very quickly came awake when they noticed Luke’s presence. The shaman just smiled at them wordlessly, unconcerned, and I finally sat back on my heels as I cracked eggs into a bowl and stirred them with some of the shelf-stable milk he’d brought.