Kristoff’s eyes twinkled as the devil came out in his grin. “I can fix both your problems.”
“I can’t drink from you now.” Her breath caught in her throat, voice sounding unusually husky. She tried to cover for herself, explaining primly, “That would keep me awake. Like an espresso.”
“I know you like to do things the hard way, but I can make this easy.” Kristoff smirked, standing to reach over the bar for an empty, squat blue jar. Wide-mouthed, it looked like it belonged to an antique cosmetic set. He bit his wrist and let the blood drain into the jar, then handed it to her. “That’s a gift, not a favor.”
Fingers brushing his, Red took the gift, but ran from the temptation.
Chapter Eighteen
The next day, hair still magically dyed black, Red nestled on the Winnebago’s sofa as the vehicle rolled on an unpaved dirt road, finishing a movie on Ezra’s tablet. She’d found it on the table with a note from him. In a totally sweet and unexpected move, he had downloaded Point Break for her and said she could return the device when she came back. Keanu Reeves in a surfer heist movie was her definition of brain candy. It had livened up the ride from Reno.
Spacious enough for a smaller camper, the loft bed over the driver’s seat made space for a tiny galley kitchen on one wall and a booth table detached from the sofa. Daggers clanged together in a box on the table. They’d loaded the booth seats with supplies. The ingredients for each sneaky snare had been separated by spell in different containers ready to be deployed. Tucked into a nest of blankets, the earthen jar with the portal water was in the cramped bathroom. She had smuggled something else on their journey too.
When she had transferred the blue jar from an insulated lunch bag into the mini fridge, Vic gave her a dark knowing look as he settled into the driver’s seat.
Red lifted her chin in a silent challenge. He had trained her to do what it took on a job- use everything she had, because the bad guys wouldn’t hold back.
Brow furrowing, he barked out a gruff warning. “I know what that is, and I don’t want to know how you got it.”
It was the last Kristoff’s blood was mentioned.
Conversation turning to the job, Vic drove the motorhome through an academy portal to a barn outside Reno. The vehicle ate up the highway as Red did last-minute cramming on the ritual to awaken the seedling. Finally, the rocking motion of the sofa lulled her into pulling out the tablet. It had been a sweet gesture from Ezra, but it couldn’t fully distract her from the face-off ahead.
Now the movie was over, and the real show had begun.
Vic relentlessly fiddled with the static on the radio. His left knee jangled, and his hand fluttered to tap on the steering wheel. He tipped his hat up to squint at the sunny horizon. “Did you get anything from Lucas?”
Red stretched out her legs on the sofa before joining him. Sitting in the front passenger seat, she unplugged her charging phone. “The last status update said he was still hiding underneath a weighted blanket while Lashawn listened to a podcast. Still at least five hours out.”
“Any attacks?” Vic’s hands tightened on the wheel. “I still don’t know if I did right by coming with you instead of Lucas. Lashawn is tough for a guy in a sweater vest, but if they attack early… He’s under an illusion to look like me.”
“They haven’t seen the werewolves. Besides, the pack won’t attack on the highway. Gloria was spooked by the attention when her dad killed Diego. The Gendarme used their influence to triple the speed traps. They’ll see a lurking state trooper every time their trigger fingers get itchy.” Red repeated the facts like a calming meditation. She didn’t mention the uncertainty of the lonely road to the ghost town through the natural preserve. By the time the Falcon got there, it would be after sunset, and Lucas could throw down with the wolves if it came to it.
She kept her tone neutral when she said the next part. “Kristoff texted me that at least one vassal outside Death Valley took the reward money for news of the werewolves.”
“They’re on the trail.” Vic nodded and gunned the engine, pushing the motorhome forward through the umber gravel.
Red sent word back that they had arrived. Flicking to the email from Perenelle with instructions for the rituals and the intel on Battle Forge itself, she zoomed in on the map to its isolated location in an antelope refuge.
“We’re coming up to the ghost town.” Vic pointed, a child’s enthusiasm on his face. “This is real wild west shit here. Cowboys and miners and ladies of ill repute.”
“The main exports were silver and local artisans wove—" Red recited from her phone before looking up at Vic’s blown raspberry. “Not every noteworthy bit of trivia about a place is about their sex workers.”
He chortled. “Most of the time it is.”
The ghost town jutted up from the desert floor like a gravestone. Low single-story shells of former saloons and shops wore high false fronts like masks. Tumbleweeds grew in the spaces between the ruined buildings. Back in its boom days, it had once been big enough to rival Tombstone, Arizona and Bodie, California. Only nine ruins and a far-off graveyard on a hill survived. Their plan had the werewolves pinned in the butcher shop, the only other building with four intact walls and floor other than the bordello. Weathered wooden remnants leaned over the dirt main street as if still hungover from the silver rush. The desert winds whistled through the gaps in the gray wood.
It was heaven for a former sniper like Frank. She smiled. They wanted him feeling nice and cozy as he stumbled into their traps.
“Enough banter,” Red said. “We need to set up.”
Vic parked the motorhome by a broken steeple in front of a crumbled church. Someone had spray painted an anarchy symbol next to the caved-in window. A dumped jumble of old cans and a rusty toilet rested amid the dry scrub brush. “This is charming.”
“I should buy a second home here,” Red quipped absently, scanning the distance for the tell-tale dust of a tail.
“I was thinking film a music—" Standing, Vic jerked back. “What the…?” He rubbed his brow as he reached up and tugged. He grunted as something heavy fell into his arms.
Hannah appeared in a blink, her eyes sleepy and darting. She blushed, looking up at Vic and clutching his shoulders.
Rolling his eyes, he set her down. “Stowing away again.”
“You were under a cloaking spell this whole time?” Red asked, slamming her hand against the front seat.
“It was a potion,” Hannah said, backing away. “It was supposed to work until someone touched me.”
“Trudy is probably out of her mind with worry right now,” Red said, checking her phone. She didn’t have anything except the texts from Lucas and Kristoff.
Vic flopped down on the camper sofa. “Fan-freaking-tastic. Now, we have to worry about that harpy.”
“She doesn’t know. She told me to study and left to help with Basil or something. Don’t tell her before you hear me out.” Hannah lifted her hands. “I’m younger than you all, yes. I’m unexperienced, yes.”
“I’m convinced,” Red said through clenched teeth, standing. “Let’s water this portal seedling and push her through first.”
Hannah stood her ground by the small table, posture straightening. Her expression remained calm even as her words came out fervent. “I’m both those things, but I can help. I need to help. These wolves murdered my father. I could have run out of the casino after them, but I’ve been trying to prove that I’m not a kid. I won’t be a burden. I can help set up. I’ll disappear when the fighting starts. Whatever. I just can’t stay home. Let me do my duty.”
Red and Vic looked at each other. Her head knew that this was going to turn out to be a pain in the ass. Her heart was with the teen anyway.
“The portal seedling takes a while to bloom anyway,” Hannah added, smiling.
Vic gestured to Hannah. “I told you she was persuasive!”
Red shook her head. She put her hands on her hips. “Come on, then. You want to help? Help us
unload the van.”
“I accidentally brought someone else with us.” Hannah’s shoulder rose to her ears, her face screwed up in a sheepish wince. She reached up to the loft bed above the front seats. A sleeping Ezra materialized at the tap of her hand. “He found me when he was leaving something in the motorhome. I panicked and used all the sleeping powder that I brought on him.”
“Did ya kill him?” Vic poked the other man’s shoe.
“No.” Hannah pulled a balloon made from a cured animal bladder out of her backpack. “I’ll make him huff this.”
“Well, get him up so we can put him to work too. I don’t have time to explain this to you separately.”
Red added, “He’d better be okay!”
After Ezra had been revived with the vapor, the group trooped out of the van. It took a few minutes for the brain fog to clear, but Ezra kept quiet as they explained the plan. Frustration marred his usual blue skies attitude. He shook his head. “Damn it, Hannah. I talked my mom out of coming. You know she’ll hot wire a portal to get here and chew you out for this.”
“She doesn’t need to know until she needs too,” Hannah said, her pink mouth set it a firm “snitches get stitches” line. “She thinks I’m in the library. I’m going to be on the first portal out of here once we get this all set up. You can march me in.”
Ezra sighed. “Fine. Let’s get this together quickly. What first?”
Vic rubbed his hands. “We’re exploring here. Red and Hannah gotta find that seedling, and we’re finding the best place to blow out the wolves’ tires. Need them on foot if we’re going to pen them in.” He jogged into the nearest sagging ruin, skipping through the empty doorsill. The half-hanging sign advertised a general store.
“Babysit him, please,” Red said to Ezra, smirking at Vic’s exuberance as she put on a backpack with the portal water jug. “He has a map with him. It’s not a big place. We just gotta double check that nothing has changed since the last time the alchemists were here. Hannah and I will put on our witch-goggles and scope out the seedling.”
Dust churning up from their shoes, Hannah and Red searched for the portal seedling down the main street. The map marked a spot beyond the half-standing saloon, not to be confused with the completely tumbled in tavern or boarded-up bordello. For a small town, Battle Forge had a lot of options for a good time. Red would have enjoyed exploring the place without the threat of werewolves over her head.
At least one of them was immune to the fascination of wild west relics. Angst wafted off the eighteen-year-old.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re just some kid,” Red said. “I know you’re meant to be something special.”
“I need to do something for my dad. You’re footloose and destiny free, but you’re still acting more like a champion than I am.” Hannah rubbed her arms, chin tipping down, hiding her eyes.
“I had a head start. You’ll have your chance.” Red frowned, distracted by the sensation of a spirit observer. “Maybe sooner than you want.”
The decayed structures seemed to watch her as they passed the butcher shop before the street gave way to desert. A tingling chill floated on the wind like a shift in the mystical ether. Opposite them, scraps of tarpaper flapped on a long crib house. The email had warned that the bordello had ghostly activity. She wondered if the rest of the places were haunted. That would be something she’d have to remember to warn Lucas. Ghosts and vampires did not mix.
“Do you see it? It’s so pretty!” Hannah pointed to a dry pond and a crumbled wire mess that had once been a coop. A faded sign optimistically advertised duck eggs. A dead tree cast shadows onto a glowing lavender-colored shrub, invisible except to their spirit gaze. Bunched sleeping blooms hung from it.
“We found it.” Red waved over to Vic who was trekking down from the broken porch of the former butcher shop. She set down her backpack and laid out the earthen jug filled with the potion that would ready the portal seedling to open.
A few minutes later, Vic drove up in the motorhome. He called out the window. “The alchemists were wrong. The back of the butcher shop has fallen. Maybe in a storm.”
“Check the other saloon and be careful in there. We’ll investigate the bordello.”
“Keep an eye out. I’m hoping for sexy ghosts.” Vic parked the motorhome, hood pointed at the portal. He dropped a large box from the depths of the vehicle at Hannah’s feet. “Time to hold your own, newbie.”
Red directed the teen to spread salt in a wide circle around the dead tree. She started digging at the base with a shovel. It had to be deep.
Perenelle had explained the rough sketches of the portal creation process this morning before they left. The alchemists had planted standing portals all over the state as their influence had grown. Each one was an achievement to the patience of their kind. This seedling had taken twenty years to sprout roots and had taken over a hundred to grow to the size of a small shrub. No one who had planted it besides Perenelle was still alive.
Red read off the instructions from her phone, grateful she had saved it offline. The data signal crapped out this far out in the boonies. “Take the metal thing and set it with the symbol for Hekate pointing north. Then place the rocks symbolizing the different elements into the hole. They’re labeled with runes.”
Hannah laid down a copper disc etched with small round grooves. She dropped a different color crystal in each one.
“And I’m supposed to bury it.” Red reread the directions. Perenelle wrote the email with little anecdotes (The first portable portal was invented by a Genovese Alchemist who used it to escape the vampire Alaric.) and trivia (In most alchemical texts, the final portion of a ritual would be labeled the phoenix stage.) that were interesting but distracting. It was like trying to read a recipe, but the food blogger wouldn’t just get to the ingredients already.
They buried the disc and poured the potion over the ground.
Reading off the screen, Hannah and Red finished setting up the precisely measured crystal grid. Finally, the last ingredient (a lumpy bone powder) was laid down. Red took the other witch’s hand and started chanting. Teasing out a thread of her magic, she tossed it to the seedling. She made sure to regulate her energy and just send enough to ignite the spark within it. “Careful, Hannah, we don’t need to send too much into it.”
“It will grow faster.” Hannah pushed more of her energy into their connection to pass into the seedling. It was like she turned on a fire engine hose.
The drooping blooms opened, and the trunk of the spectral bush shuddered.
Sweating, Hannah panted, leaning forward as she put her hands on her hips. “Okay. One witchy bit down.”
“More to go. Pace yourself. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way.” Red repacked her bag. Tossing it over her shoulder to walk across the dirt street, she reread the part in Perenelle’s email about the bordello on her phone. She bumped into Hannah.
Stopped, Hannah stared down the main street, wetting her lips. Her brown eyes grew hooded as she squinted for a better look. “He has some guns under all that flannel.”
Shirtless in tight wranglers and a backwards hat, Vic labored in front of the general store. He planted nail-studded boards on the one road leading into town, hoisting the beams around easily. After kicking sand over them, he leaned over to pick up another board from the pile to disguise another row.
Red wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, I hear you going through puberty from here.”
“Perfectly legal here.”
“Channel your weird hormones into witchcraft, please,” Red said, nudging the drooling Hannah. They walked to the bordello where the miners were tapped for their silver as soon as they had brought it back from the hills.
“I know he is like your brother, but damn.” Hannah bit her knuckle. “Even with the mullet.”
Red mock-gagged, putting her phone away in a zipped pocket. “I’m ignoring this.”
“What I’m saying is I want bang your Bard.” Hannah cracked up at Red�
��s horrified face.
“Stop or I will toss you into that portal now, and I don’t care where it might take you.” Red walked through the empty threshold of the brothel. The spooky sight sobered her amused disgust.
The front room was empty except for a dusty piano, missing its keys. Tilted on broken floorboards, a quirk of gravity kept the piano from slipping into a hole in the floorboards. Dumped scrap car parts, rusted barbed wire, and old tin cans peeked up from the cellar. A sun beam shined on the empty doorsill to the other rooms.
“I don’t like how many exits this crib house has,” Hannah said.
“I don’t like the tetanus potential,” Red said. She wouldn’t call the place were-proof. A long building, it was segmented into three parts, each with its own entrance. At least the others still had intact doors. “Let’s see the other rooms.”
Red tapped her foot in front of her and inched around the hole. She walked into the middle section of the crib house. It was bigger than the front room. Old scuff marks lined the center of the intact floor. It would have fit a few tables of miners and their rented women. The trash dumpers had abandoned an old fridge, blocking an outside door. Passing by, she marked it off as an exit that didn’t need guarding.
“This one seems a little better.” Hannah rapped on the warped planks boarding up the window of the third room. “This is solid too.”
“Until a wolf tries to barrel through them.”
Red followed the old spur tracks and stepped over the broken remnants of what had once been an inner dividing wall, long ago fallen to a pile of planks. Mattress rotted away, a rail bedframe rested in the corner of the back section. Dusty freckles of paint hung valiantly to the wall above it. Whatever she had felt watching her from outside, she felt it more keenly by the bed.
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