Under Witch Aura (Moon Shadow Series) (35 page)

As I affixed the special
gifts, I
recalled how the heliotrope had smelled of White Feather after he
used it.

“Touch this with your
wind,”
I requested. “Both of these.”

He raised an eyebrow, but
sent a gentle
breeze. Instead of wafting over and past the rock, the rock soaked
it up.

Both his eyebrows jumped.

“I had no clue it would do
that
either until last night after you threw it with your wind.”

He inspected the larger
piece while I
affixed the smaller piece to the deerskin. Having his aura around was
reassuring. Plus, the closer he was tied to my protective sand
painting, the better.

A squirt of hairspray
affixed the sand
temporarily so that spraying on a stronger lacquer didn't scatter the
sand. “Okay, as soon as it dries it's ready.”

White Feather asked, “How
do you
expect to find them?”

“Lynx left a message. I
haven’t
decoded it yet.” I lifted it carefully. The ingredients smelled
of tea or sage, maybe both.

The tea leaf spell was
similar to one I
had used in the past for White Feather; a sharp odor that reminded
him of the particular church where we would meet. Lynx’s spell
wasn’t as potent as mine, but that was common with less
expensive spells—or beginners. “Let me boil some water.”

The burner in my lab heated
water
quickly. Reading tea leaves wasn’t a particularly complicated
spell, especially when it was only set to convey a sense of place.
Had the kid actually learned it himself?

I dipped the packet in the
water and
released the hemp string securing it, but even before the chamisa
scent hit, I was certain. There was a secondary sense of sand baking
in the sun. “Tent Rock.”

“Isn’t that where your
friend Martin ran into trouble?”

“He’s not--” I
started, but there was no point in arguing Martin’s status.
“Yes, that’s the place.”

Now for the other news. “We
have
to take Tara.” I slid two extra silver bracelets on my arm,
including the one with a silver ring that attached to my
grandmother’s turquoise bracelet. I longed for an extra copy or
two of the recent spell that was my most lethal.

“My sister is staying here
if I
have to tie her to your kitchen table!”

“Mom isn’t wrong about
things like this even if her reasons sound crazy. She has something
of the eye in her, a seer talent. I always thought it was limited to
Kas and me, a mom thing, but apparently not.”

“A seer thing.” His voice
grated as if his lungs were chewing concrete particles instead of
air. “That’s why she touched her eye.”

I nodded. “She has the
sight.
Sometimes.”

“Great.” He sounded
anything but. “Let's get this over with.”

I grabbed the last few
things I needed,
called Mom and left a message telling her Lynx had indicated “Tent
Rock,” and hurried to catch up with White Feather.

Tent Rock had a serene
quality to it,
but with the towering tent guardians, you were always watched. As a
national monument, fires were never allowed. Nevertheless, the smell
of smoke was a part of the early morning fragrance. Of course, it was
against every law of nature to call otherworldly spirits and let them
run amok, but that apparently didn’t concern Claire or her
buddy Jack either.

We parked next to the empty
Mustang.

Lynx greeted us by stepping
around the
trunk of a tree a few feet from the Mustang. His cat eyes glowed
yellow. “I tracked Claire here early last night. She met up
with Petunia-man, his buddy and another guy named Jack. Jack came in
a back way with some horses and a mule. He said the bait would draw
in some guy named Gomez. Then he gave the orders for Petunia-man to
ensure you were locked up for tomorrow night.”

We'd already deduced the
thugs had
planned on holding me captive. “They didn't get me.”

Lynx tilted his head
briefly, a curious
cat. “When you weren't at home this morning, I thought they
might have brought you here so I came back to check.”

“Have you been up there?”
White Feather pointed to the top of the ridge. Thin tendrils of smoke
puffed and spread from one end.

Lynx nodded. “They're
drawing it.
Big square thing. They had a bunch of stuff stored there.”

“How long does it take to
get up
there?” White Feather wanted to know.

Lynx hesitated, so I
answered. “Too
long. An hour at a fast pace. Tough to cut it down because the last
leg is very steep.”

“I can make it faster,”
Lynx said.

Of course he could. The
problem was,
this wasn't a one man job. Of all Mayan Curses, it wasn't even a
several man job. This was something the gods should handle.

White Feather turned to me.
“Tell
me how you make the flying spell.”

“The spell might not go
that
high,” I protested. “Given my method of canceling it,
that height would be suicidal, and the helium might run out before I
reach the top.”

“Helium at your feet?
That's the
basic formula?”

“Magnets are the catalyst
for the
first boost. The helium shoots me higher. It's compressed. Very
compressed.” I lifted my left foot and showed him the special
storage area for the spell. “I step down to break the
initial membrane.”

“You have it here now?”

I nodded. “It’s in all my
shoes.”

“Both of them?”

“Well sure. Without the
magnets
in both shoes, I’d be off balance.”

He returned his attention
to the mesa, a
thousand feet straight up. “I won’t need much. Just the
start of your spell to direct what I extract from the air. I'll need
to contain it in something like your container, only in something
more controllable.”

Control was a big problem,
I had to
admit. The spell released all at once and rocketed me up until I
canceled it, which was just a dispersal of the helium. Even without
canceling it, the helium wouldn't last forever, which could leave us
short of the mesa top.

“How about the heliotrope?”
I suggested. “It gathers wind and holds it to some extent.
Maybe you can use it as a conduit.”

Lynx groaned. He changed it
to a
sub-audible growl when I glared at him. “Some of your tests
don't go so well,” he said. “You tell me what you want
done up there. I get up there. I do it. You pay me and we're done.”

“You can’t do this one
alone.”

“I’m not flying. I'll meet
you up there. That way you don't make it, I still have a way back
down.” Lynx didn't wait for agreement.

Tara said, “Wait!”

He disappeared without
flicking even
his ear in her direction.

Tara's head dropped.
Whatever promise
she had broken or whatever words she had said earlier, she regretted
now.

I reached out and gripped
her hand. Mom
had seen something. Not only that, if someone didn’t give Tara
another chance, she’d self-destruct. If she had to die...I
don't know. If I had to die, I'd rather do it fighting than waiting
on a porch somewhere, waiting for people who might never return.

White Feather gave a low
growl that
would have done Lynx proud. He accepted the heliotrope from me and
clasped Tara’s other hand. There was incredible power in
family. Granted, I wasn't exactly family, except by the vows said in
his grandfather's hidden retreat. Close enough. A promise was a
promise.

The circle closed. We were
a dome that
shut out all but his focused wind.

That didn't mean I wasn't
scared out of
my mind when I gave the Word of Power and broke the helium capsule in
one shoe. Luckily, White Feather was ready. He directed the helium
as if he'd been practicing his whole life.

He did a far better job of
fine tuning
our ascent than I ever dreamed of. Side breezes weren't an issue and
since the direction was straight up, it was easy to stay on course.

My original spell drew
helium from the
air into the spell to keep it going. The result was like rocket fuel.
White Feather's effort was a calculated, controlled process.

It worked fine until we
reached the top
of the cliff. Having not been able to scout it ahead of time, we
didn't have a landing pad. The ledge itself was fairly narrow, and
looked even narrower when I scanned it hoping for a hidden spot that
would allow us an element of surprise.

Surprise might have been
possible too,
except for one thing.

Claire and Jack had been
practicing and
calling wind. Maybe they sensed the controlled wind or maybe they
sensed White Feather.

Either way, one minute we
were
drifting, the next we were sucked into a vortex racing toward a huge
bonfire even faster than if I had canceled the spell.

I heard Claire before I saw
her. She
chanted like a demented rooster. She resembled one too with her arms
whirling in a parody of taking flight. As her arms flapped so did we
twirl, spinning upside down, sideways and in a circle.

I hung onto White Feather
and Tara for
dear life. Neither seemed inclined to let go of me either.

It took White Feather
several seconds
to regain control.

As suddenly as the
whirlwind spun us,
it was gone. For a half second, we existed with no air at all before
a breath rushed back into my lungs.

White Feather’s landing
wasn't
all that much better than mine, but at least it was his, not
Claire’s.

I had expected to hate
Claire on sight
if for no other reason than as my rival she had tried to spell White
Feather. I wasn't expecting the cute elfin companion who had been
hiking with Jack when I experimented with talking to Mother Earth.

Claire laughed, a deep sexy
sound, one
that in hindsight sounded exactly like the throaty chuckle Mother
Earth had echoed, not only at Tent Rock, but also in Mat's store. I
had searched for the hikers with my spell, but relied too much on
sight. I hadn't recognized the laugh then nor when Mother Earth
repeated it in Matilda's shop during the foretelling with heliotrope.
Subtle clues were obvious when they were laughing in your face.

Because she had lured White
Feather, I
had built Claire up into a honed seductress prancing about in a
tight-fitting, come-hither outfit. My imagination had clothed her too
well. As the focus of the sand painting, she was naked from the waist
up, painted with lurid symbols. Chitin ran like plated armor along
her back and around her ribs. She didn’t need a bra because the
thick exoskeleton gave full support where her flesh was still soft.

“Aztec sacrifices!” I
wasn’t completely ignorant of the use of chitin in medicines,
herbals and magic. It was a thickener, a stabilizer and had some
healing properties. But body armor?

“I guess when you leave the
west
side of your sand painting open, and you have a bunch of spelled
scorpions inside your painting, you end up with a few unintended
consequences.” Not only had wind come through and not been
properly contained, Claire had somehow acquired scorpion properties
better left to the insect world.

However Claire had aligned
herself with
the nether world, she was no longer entirely human. Bulging insect
eyes challenged us, and human lips pouted. “I
own
the
wind! And I'll own you!” She flung her arm wide.

White Feather never
flinched. “Not
in this lifetime.” A tree behind us snapped. Dirt near our feet
scattered, but our dome remained intact.

Her pout changed to a
snarl. “You
may have wind, but soon I'll have earth too! Then see how often you
can tell me no! You'll beg me for a taste of wind!”

Martin had not left town
soon enough.
He had probably accepted a business card from Jack when he sold his
stones to Charms, and he was paying for both of those mistakes now.
Leather straps secured him to the center of the painting, positioning
him as an offering to the gods. Claire had better hope the gods were
in need of a drunken, wrinkled prune with oddball earth powers.

Four horses strained
against tethers
outside the circle. The dusty animals were bait for another witch,
but if Dad has his way, that witch would arrive with more than Jack
bargained for.

Jack held the position as the chanter. He met my
glare with a smile. With the bonfire behind him and symbols drawn
across his face and body, he was a plump little planet with stars
all over. “So nice of you to join us. We might need another
earth witch. Our friend Martin isn't so stable.”

Martin wasn't stable on his
best days.
Strapped down and deposited in the middle of the painting, his body
shook violently. The shakes could be due to alcohol withdrawal or
from some other poison Jack and Claire had inflicted upon him. If the
carved beads decorating the leather straps were of the earth, it
might be a mistake that could help Martin, but at the moment it was
doubtful he was in the right frame of mind to speak to any part of
Mother Earth.

“Let him go.” No one
deserved to be part of this.

Jack laughed. It wasn't the
high-pitched giggle of the insane. The baritone was as frighteningly
normal as though he were chatting in his store selling goods. “We
have wind. We're about to gain earth. We'll call the other powers
too.”

Claire flung her arm out
again. “Mine!”

My braid lifted straight
back.

“Bind them!” Jack's words
were nearly lost on the wind, but she must have heard.

Suddenly, instead of being
pushed, we
were yanked forward. Tara's fingers slipped. She dug long nails into
my fingers, but I didn't complain.

White Feather shifted
slightly, letting
us be dragged at least three feet. A half-smile flitted across his
face before it disappeared under furrowed concentration.

We drifted sideways and
then back.

“Is that all?” White
Feather taunted.