Page 1 of Wind Called

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“You’re really goingthrough with this,” Bellamy McAllister’s father Kirby said, and she somehow managed to prevent herself from rolling her eyes. It wasn’t that she was annoyed with him for caring. No, what irritated her was how he’d been like a dog with a bone about this whole thing, and even now, when she was getting ready to load her stuff into her car, he didn’t seem able to let it go.

“Dad, we’ve been over this, like, a million times,” she replied as she zipped up her overnight bag. “It’s not even permanent. I’m just house sitting until the place is sold, and then I’ll be right back in Jerome.”

Or maybe Cottonwood or Clarkdale, depending on what was available when she was looking for a place to land. That day could be a month or six months from now —impossible to say for sure, since she had no idea how quickly the sprawling ranch property she’d lucked into would be off the market.

“We’re not supposed to live in Sedona,” her father said, a factoid he’d also helpfully brought up a rough dozen times over the past few weeks.

And yes, it was true enough that witch-kind weren’t supposed to spend too much time in Sedona. The McAllisters and the Wilcoxes had managed to hammer out an agreement more than a hundred years earlier that neither witch clan should lay claim to Sedona’s red rocks…which supposedly possessed their own power…so no one from either clan had ever lived there full time, although magical folk certainly visited to shop or dine or hike. Frankly, Bellamy thought all the talk about Sedona’s mystical powers was mostly a bunch of hooey designed to bilk tourists out of money for vortex tours when they came here to achieve their version of enlightenment, so she wasn’t about to let herself be too troubled by the way she was ignoring a century-plus of tradition.

“The ranch isn’t even inside Sedona’s city limits,” she said, unperturbed. “So I don’t think I’m breaking any rules. Besides, staying there makes my commute a lot easier.”

Only a month earlier, she’d gotten an awesome job as assistant manager at Sedona Vines, a wine bar in West Sedona, and although she’d been thrilled by the step up in responsibility and pay, she had to admit that commuting there from Jerome five days a week had been kind of a pain. Now she’d only have to drive ten minutes to get to work, and she was going to enjoy every second of it, even as she understood her current situation wasn’t going to last forever.

Her father frowned. Although he was pushing fifty now, he still looked as boyish as ever, with wavy brown hair and laughing blue eyes. Bellamy knew she didn’t resemble him very much, with her coppery hair and gray eyes, and assumed she must have taken after the woman who’d donated her egg to the process and also acted as a surrogate. The red hair was definitely a McAllister thing, though, and she figured the recessive gene had shown up in her after skipping a couple of generations.

“I’m still not sure I like it,” her father said slowly, and she stepped away from the bed so she could go over to him and give him a quick hug.

“I had to move out sometime,” she replied, which was only the truth. It had been easy to remain at home while she was getting her enology certification at Yavapai Community College down the hill, but no one could have expected her to live in the apartment over the candy shop forever. The place was a decent size, just a hair over eighteen hundred square feet, and yet being here with her two dads, she’d thought it was starting to feel a little tight.

Time to grow up and move on. She was twenty-two, after all.

Her father cracked a grin. Her other dad Jordan was downstairs watching the store so Kirby could say goodbye to Bellamy since she and Jordan had already shared a goodbye breakfast earlier that day, but she knew Kirby couldn’t linger here in the apartment forever, not on a busy August day with lots of tourists hitting the former mining town.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t want any help taking this stuff over to the new place?”

He’d already made that offer multiple times, and her answer was still the same.

“I’m good,” she replied, even as she sent him a smile she hoped would communicate her gratitude despite not needing the assistance. “Bree’s going to take some of the bulkier things, since she has a bigger car.”

A huge gas-powered Suburban that was a hulking relic from the time before smaller, more efficient vehicles. But Brianna McAllister was always hauling a bunch of instruments and amplifiers and whatnot from one gig to another and needed the room, and she’d offered to help Bellamy move her things since Bree was going to be playing at one of the resorts in West Sedona that evening anyway.

Kirby seemed to realize any additional arguments he put forth would also get shot down, so he shrugged, saying, “Well, it looks like you’ve got it all figured out. You make sure to call if you need anything, though, okay?”

“I will,” she promised.

The doorbell at the back entrance to the flat rang then, and Bellamy sent her father a smile. “Gotta go.”

“But you’ll be back for dinner on Sunday.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” she said.

Seeming to understand that it was time for him to go, he ducked his head at her before heading downstairs, and Bellamy hurried over to the door to let in her friend.

Bree was about ten months older than Bellamy and spectacularly blonde, with the kind of looks that always seemed to lead to at least one person each day asking her whether she was a model or an actress. Those inquiries seemed to embarrass her more than anything else, although she did her best to act as if there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about her looks.

Of course, the people asking could have no way of knowing that her amazing beauty was a gift from a father who just happened to be an otherworldly creature summoned to this plane to be the consort of the de la Paz clan’sprimamore than two decades ago.

Not that Bree’s mother Hayley was exactly a slouch in the looks department, either, but still, it was Levi who’d contributed the most to his daughter’s genetic makeup.

“Ready?” Bree asked as she stepped inside the apartment. No point in her looking around, not when the two women had been friends since they were little girls and the flat where Bellamy had grown up was almost as familiar to Brianna as her own house.

“As I’ll ever be,” Bellamy said, reaching for her overnight bag so she could sling it over her shoulder. “I want to make a quick getaway before my dad tries to come up with yet another reason why I shouldn’t be living in Sedona.”

Bree grinned and grasped a couple of suitcases. “Well, it is kind of breaking tradition.”

“Yeah, and Angela and Connor cleared it, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

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