Page 44 of Magic Betrayed

“But I’m not…”

He cut off my protest with a single glance, amber eyes blazing.

“You are.”

When had this happened? How?

I had no idea how to make sense of it, so it was probably for the best that Callum’s phone buzzed with a text.

He used his fingerprint to unlock it before handing it to me. The text was from Grandma Pearl.

sorry can’t help you

burner phone

“She can’t trace the number,” I announced heavily. “The texts are a dead end.”

So we were back to only one potential lead—the mysterious white van. We just had to hope that we had not delayed too long, and that it would still be waiting for us when we arrived.

TEN

Stinchcomb Wildlife Refugewas a thousand acres of marshland and swamp that bordered historic Route 66 on the far west side of Oklahoma City. After the text from Grandma Pearl, I searched it on Callum’s phone and learned that it contained a maze of trails, woods, and waterways mostly used for hiking, kayaking, and birdwatching. However, it was apparently best known for its many reported Sasquatch sightings, a fact that probably would have delighted me if our errand weren’t so urgent.

My search confirmed that there was a parking lot for hikers near where Grandma Pearl’s drone had found the abandoned van, so I plugged the address into maps and then tried to distract myself by browsing through an online forum dedicated to enthusiastic eyewitness reports of Bigfoot encounters, alongside equally enthusiastic posts by Bigfoot debunkers.

My scrolling got me through the small municipalities of Warr Acres and Bethany, but once the city ended and we found ourselves nearing our destination, I turned my attention to peering through the windows instead. Not that I could see much. There were few streetlights, and once we turned off Route 66 and began making our way towards the trailhead, even the cars thinned out, until there were no other headlights to be seen.

It was nearly nine and completely dark, the road liberally marked by ruts and potholes and overhung in places by bare trees. Even though we were technically still inside the city limits, it felt as if we were miles from anywhere, surrounded by wilderness that might vomit something monstrous at any moment. Maybe even Bigfoot, though after exploring the many alternate theories proposed by skeptics, my money was on bear shifters fishing in the Canadian River.

But whether Sasquatch was real or not, it helped my nerves when I glanced over and remembered there was a literaldragondriving the car. Whatever was out there, he could probably eat it.

During the day, I might have driven right past the parking lot and never given it another thought. It was little more than a small, paved loop with a sign proclaiming “Stinchcomb Wildlife Refuge.” On one side of the lot, a dirt road that was probably the hiking trail made its way off into the trees, and parked there on the margin of the road was a white van with a blue and gray logo that said “Restoration Electric.”

I let out a silent sigh of relief. Our lead had not disappeared.

Callum pulled into the lot, parked near the entrance to the trail, then turned off the engine and the headlights.

“Give me a couple of minutes,” he said quietly. “I’m going to see what I can sniff out without shifting.”

I decided not to argue. As an actual shifter, his nose was far better than mine in human form, and any clue, no matter how small, could make a huge difference.

Once he left the SUV, Callum approached the van cautiously, stopping every few feet to watch and listen and scent the air. He was using the flashlight on his phone, so I could follow his progress, heart pounding as he circled the van and then returned.

“Seems safe,” he reported. “I was afraid they might have set a trap—rigged it to explode, or worse—to keep anyone from following, but there’s no sign of magic, and I don’t smell anything that suggests explosives.”

I glared at him as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached for the door handle. “So you actually went out there thinking you might get blown up.”

He shrugged and grinned. “I heal fast.”

Apparently, even though they existed at the top of the Idrian food chain, dragons still found ways to take ridiculous risks.

“You need to stop putting yourself in danger because of me, Callum-ro-Deverin.”

If anything happened to him…

But he just looked me dead in the eye.

“You’re worth the risk, Raine Kendrick.”

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