Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2) (20 page)

I wished I hadn’t.

I ran for the vending machines about twenty feet away
and managed to dive behind them just as I heard the door open. After a few
seconds, the clicking of her heels echoed as she slowly walked closer and
closer. There was no point in trying to hold my breath since the soft hum of
the vending machine disguised it.

She stopped right in front of the machine. If she
leaned over or even took a step forward, she would have seen me. I knew if she
caught me that she wouldn’t be any good to us in finding the amulet. She took a
step…

“Excuse me. Can you tell me where the closest mall
is?” Remy asked, her accent thicker than normal.

“Sorry, but I don’t live around here,” the woman
said. Her voice was deep with suspicion and irritation.

“Okay, thank you anyway.”

I sensed Remy walk away and, after a few minutes, the
woman walked away as well. I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I heard the
door snap shut. After checking that the coast was clear, I hightailed it back
to the SUV, where I found Remy and Hunt waiting.

“Why didn’t you distract the manager?” I asked Remy
as I got in the driver’s seat and started the engine.

“Yeah, had a bit of a problem with that. Besides,
it’s a good thing it didn’t work, or I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”

“You’re right. What kind of problem?” I pulled the
truck into the side parking lot of the diner across the road from the motel and
parked in a spot behind a small tree. We could see the door of the room but we
couldn’t be seen back.

“Well, I can tell you he would have preferred if you
distracted him.”

“Oh.”

We entered the diner and asked for a seat next to the
window. We were the only customers aside from a couple of bikers, so it wasn’t
a problem. Remy sat by the window in the dark red booth, Hunt sat beside her,
and I sat across from them. None of us said anything until the waitress
returned with our coffees and left to put in our burger orders.

“What’s the plan?” Remy asked, watching the room
through the window. At least motel rooms didn’t have backdoors.

“I don’t think she’s the one with the amulet. We need
to capture her, get her back to the castle, and question her.”

“If she is not the one with the amulet, we need to
know who she is working for,” Hunt argued. “We should follow her back to the
amulet.”

“We have no idea what we might be walking into. She
could be bait for…” I trailed off, distracted by the man across the street. He
wasn’t looking around; he had a destination and a determination about him. By
his shirt, I could tell that he was the manager.

He stopped in front of the woman’s door and knocked.
Almost immediately, it opened to reveal one of the red-headed twins from my
vision. It was too far to see her face, but he took a step forward…

“Here you are!” the waitress said brightly as she
arrived with our burgers. I helped move the napkins and silverware out of the
way for her to set the plates down. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

“We’re good, thanks,” I said, looking back out the
window. The manager was returning to his office. “We’ll do this your way, but
I’m against it.”

*          *          *

We stayed at the diner for two hours before it
started getting suspicious. We went back out to the car and sat there, watching
for another hour.

“Oh, my god,” Remy moaned. “How long before the winch
moves?”

“She’s probably asleep. Let’s take shifts in sleeping
or none of us are going to be any good tomorrow. Remy, you should start.”

“Why?”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” I barked. She huffed and
leaned against the window to sleep. “You can sleep, too, if you want,” I told
the headmaster.

“I am fine. Rosin is asleep and I try to make sure we
are never asleep at the same time.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s going on
between you and him?”

“That is between us.”

“Did you save his life or something?”

“Something to that effect. Go to sleep. I will keep
watch.”

I ignored him and leaned back, watching the door as
if the woman was going to get up in the middle of the night and leave her room.

*          *          *

“I don’t want to go to the movies!” I yelled.

I thought I understood why my mother’s expression was
shocked. As far as she knew, I hadn’t left the house after night for over a
year. I had even overheard my parents discussing me when they thought I was
asleep. Dad had suggested I was afraid of the dark and that he needed to beat
it out of me. He told her to lock me outside at night.

Had she done as he said, I wouldn’t have minded.
Astrid was there for me every night, and I wasn’t going to let them take me
from her. Not even for a movie night. It was only years later that I realized
she was shocked because I yelled at her. She shouldn’t have been; her husband
yelled at her all the time.

My mother was like a sponge; she took it until she
couldn’t take any more and then she just bled tears of self-hate. I lost count
of the times I found her in the bathroom crying because she didn’t do something
right and my father was going to get angry again.

Astrid would never cry. She would never let anyone
yell at her.

At least, that’s what I thought when I was a little
kid. My mother told me many times that it was her fault, so I pitied her for
making mistakes. Because Astrid never cried, I thought that meant she never
made mistakes.

“I guess if you don’t want to go, we don’t have to,”
she said, sadly. I looked out the kitchen window and saw that it was nearly
sunset.

“We can go this weekend,” I said, trying to cheer her
up. “I didn’t know you wanted to see that movie so much. I just don’t want to
go out at night.”

“Don’t tell your father.”

I started to walk out when I saw her blue flowered
suitcase under the table. “Are you going somewhere, Mom?”

“No.”

I couldn’t bring my feet to move. Something told me I
needed to go with my mother. Her expression was so sad. She always said my
smile made her happy. I opened my mouth to say I changed my mind… and then I
saw Astrid through the window. She beckoned me out, excited about something,
and then disappeared.

“We’ll go Saturday morning, okay?” I asked. I could
only see Astrid at night.

“Sure,” she answered, still not sounding normal.

I went upstairs and crawled out my window. Somehow,
Astrid had managed to get back to her room and was sitting on her ledge by the
time I got there. “I got you something,” she said excitedly. She held out a
large, shiny, green, paperback book called
Grimoire for the Apprentice
Wizard
by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart.

“What is it?”

“It’s a magic book. You can learn magic to keep your
dad from hitting your mom.”

“He said magic wasn’t real.”

“He lied,” she said. There was no doubt in her words,
so how could I doubt her?

*          *          *

I woke to a sharp tapping and hit my head on the
steering wheel as I tried to get away from the window. I cut off the first
couple of cuss words, gasped for air, and rolled the window down when I
realized who it was. “Don’t do that!” I exclaimed.

The headmaster laughed. “I believed you would be
harder to spook than that.”

“I’ll give you spooked, you old bastard.”

“Not a morning person?” he asked.

It was actually hours past the time I normally woke
up, but the night classes at the university had my sleep schedule all messed
up. I opened the door, missing the wizard by an inch, and stepped out of the
car. My back made several ugly cracks as I stretched. “I’m getting too old to
be doing stakeouts in the car.”

He gave me a sour look. “I am more than three times
your age.”

I hoped he was joking.

“Hey, now, it’s not a contest,” Remy said as she
approached us with a paper bag and tray of three coffees. “I hope you like it
black.”

“Thank you.” I took one of the coffees and drank half
of it before I stopped for breath. Remy shoved a napkin-covered glazed donut at
me, which I took gratefully. Doughnuts weren’t my favorite breakfast, but they
went great with coffee. “So, she hasn’t come out yet?”

Remy shook her head and yawned. Even tired, with her
hair pulled up in a sloppy ponytail, the woman was gorgeous. Her exotic green
eyes caught the sunlight beautifully. After a few seconds, I forced myself to
look away. She and Flagstone were happy together, whether Hunt liked it or not.

We finished our breakfast standing up and tried not
to be too suspicious about watching the door. When we were done eating, we got
back in the car, but after another two hours, I knew something was wrong.

“Go knock on the door,” I told Hunt.

He was hesitant, but finally started across the
street. Remy and I stood in front of the diner, chatting casually to disguise
the fact that we were waiting for the trouble. When nobody answered the door,
Hunt opened it, presumably using magic, and disappeared inside. He stepped back
outside a moment later and shook his head. She was gone.

“Let’s get a room and we can try again,” Remy said.

I ignored her as a presence approached me. I didn’t
move, even though my instincts screamed of danger. Whether I knew how to use my
powers well or not, I never forgot a mind. Despite the fact that it was my
usual defensive reaction, I wasn’t about to reach out for this mind; I knew
what I would find.

Only it wasn’t the red-headed woman. The manager of
the hotel passed us casually on the sidewalk as he returned to the hotel. Remy
didn’t look twice, but I knew what was under that skin. The manager passed Hunt
on the street and they glanced at each other suspiciously before moving on.

“New target,” I said when Hunt reached us.

“I know. We’ll follow him.”

“Huh?” Remy asked.

“The manager,” I explained. “I don’t know how, but
he’s got the same aura as the woman we were tracking. I still suggest we
capture and interrogate.”

“I disagree,” Remy said. “We need to follow him back
to his leader.”

Out-voted, I shook my head even as I followed them to
the truck. The manager was just pulling out of the motel in a beat up old
Station Wagon when I started the SUV. There was a heavy stream of traffic as people
headed to work, but the man kept taking the deserted streets, which made it
much more difficult to stay undetected.

After about ten minutes, the Station Wagon slowed and
I had to pass him or risk suspicion.

“What are you doing?” Remy asked.

The Station Wagon turned into an alleyway, so I
pulled into the next one and circled back. I stopped the SUV right by the
backdoor of an old restaurant and got out, motioning for Remy and Hunt to wait.
Of course, they both ignored me. There was a dumpster on wheels just around the
corner, so I got down, careful to avoid the dubious stains on the pavement, and
peered under the dumpster.

There were several cars lining the alley. I heard a
door open and saw two feet step out of one of them. The man was close enough that
I couldn’t see above his knees, but my instincts told me he was the one I was
after. He opened a door just a few feet from the dumpster and went into the
building. Fortunately, I had thought to look at the front of the building when
I passed and knew it was a pawnshop.

I stood. “Remy, go around to the front and act like a
browsing customer. Hunt, take a wide scope around the place. I’m going to
follow him in.”

“Here,” Remy said, handing me her gun.

“You might need it,” I argued, only to stop when she pulled
a second gun out from a strap on her thigh. “What the hell? How did I not see
that?”

She grinned. “That would be my womanly powers.”

“She uses concealing spells,” her father explained.

I covered Remy until she got around to the front of
the building before I went to the back door. It was propped open slightly from
a brass door stopper that was broken and wedged between the door and the wall.
My instincts warned me this was a bad idea. Hunt kept telling me to trust him,
but I had never been led astray by my instincts.

I opened the door, the gun ready, and looked around.
It was a storage room full of boxes and cleaning supplies. Once I entered the
room, I stopped the door from slamming shut behind me and let it close quietly.
I went to the door on the far side of the room and tried it.

Locked.

Why the hell would they lock a storage room?
Something’s not right about this.
The sensation of danger increased and the
overhead light switched off. I pulled my penlight from my pocket, clicked it
on, and shouted.

“Jesus-fuck! Don’t do that!” I whispered loudly. Hunt
was lucky I was experienced enough with guns not to keep my finger on the
trigger. I almost wished I wasn’t so safety-conscious when he didn’t have the
decency to look even a little apologetic.

“I saw the man in the back window of the restaurant
next to us, so there must be a joining door,” he said. “He was in a kitchen
that looked like it was never finished.”

“I think this is a trap. Can you get the door open?”

He grabbed the knob and a bright spark made me blink.
When he opened the door and light flooded the room, I put my penlight away and
aimed my gun. It looked like any old junky pawnshop, except we were alone.

Between the jewelry case and laptops was another
door, which Hunt went for first. I trekked across the crowded shop, barely able
to squeeze through the narrow aisles to lock the door. Once again, my instincts
flared up and my magic reacted automatically. I felt the mind of the man who
had been outside the club.

“Get down!” I yelled. The door opened to the big man,
who had a gun in his hand. Hunt put his hand out as if to ward the enemy away.
When the gun went off, the bullet struck something invisible instead of Hunt.