Page 18 of Wind Called

“Yes. He said the clan there was the Olsens, but obviously, since they’re such a long way from Arizona, it’s not as if any of the clans here have had any interactions with them.” She paused there, and her eyes narrowed. “What…you think your dreams are signaling that the Olsens are sniffing around, trying to get the amulet back?”

“I honestly don’t know for sure,” Marc replied. “But it sounds like not many people in your clan even know the thing exists, so Bellamy and I were trying to figure out who else might have access to that information.”

Even as he spoke, he thought of what a long shot the whole thing was…especially since Angela and Connor should have known if any interlopers were wandering around in their territory. Sure, Bellamy had said that Devynn could mask her witch nature, but since Marc had never even heard of such a thing until she mentioned it, he had to believe it was a very rare gift.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Seth said, his tone now almost musing, as if he was trying to put the pieces together as he spoke. “We always thought that Lawrence Pratt must have done his best to keep the amulet a secret, just because if he said something about it to anyone in the Olsen clan, then they’d know he’d been using the thing to work magic in public. I don’t care what witch clan you’re from — everybody knows doing that is forbidden.”

Yes, it was, and the sort of the activity the man probably would have done his best to conceal.

However, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a diary that might have been found by his descendants, or that he might not have made some sort of deathbed confession about the powerful artifact. If that were the case, though, wouldn’t his heirs have come in search of the amulet decades earlier, since to them, it would have been missing for a very long time and not the several months it had actually been here in the mid-twenty-first century?

Maybe, or maybe not. Members of the witch community couldn’t freely roam wherever they wanted, since it was considered proper etiquette to reach out to theprimaof a clan to get permission to even pass through another clan’s lands. Somehow Marc doubted that anyone on a quest to find a forbidden piece of magic would want to tip their hand to the local head of a witch family, especially when those leaders had access to all sorts of magic the rank and file didn’t, and might be able to tell if they were being lied to.

“How accurate are your dreams?” Devynn asked then.

Next to him, Bellamy shot Marc a worried look, as though she wasn’t sure whether he would take offense at such a point-blank question.

However, he could see why Devynn had asked him that. She knew nothing about him or his gifts, and probably thought there wasn’t much point in getting all riled up over something that might not even be real.

“Very accurate,” he said. “That is, I sometimes have to stop and figure out what they’re really trying to tell me, but they’ve never shown me anything that was outright wrong.”

“He dreamed the house I’m staying in, and he’s never even been there before,” Bellamy put in. “So I’m pretty sure we should take his dreams at face value.”

Devynn didn’t respond right away but only gazed at him for a moment, as if doing her best to take his measure by reading his expression.

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “It sounds like you’re the real deal. And I guess I should be glad you wanted to warn us that something might be coming down the pike. I’m just not sure what else we can really do, since we’ve taken all the possible precautions.”

Well, other than maybe burying the safe ten feet under and hoping for the best. Marc still wasn’t sure he liked the idea of the thing being kept in an unoccupied house, even if it was protected by as many wards as the McAllister elders could conjure.

Including ones cast by Levi McAllister, who wasn’t exactly your garden-variety human being. Or at least, while his body was human, the spirit it contained was something utterly different, far more powerful than your regular run-of-the-mill warlock.

“Maybe that’s all that’s needed,” Marc said. “For all I know, giving you a warning will be enough. I just wish we had a better idea of who else might know about the amulet.”

Devynn’s lips parted to reply, but a family group came into the store right then, mom and dad and three little kids who seemed intent on touching everything they could lay hands on, and that seemed to signal the end of the conversation.

So Bellamy said, “Thanks for the help — just let us know if you think of anything,” and then headed outside with Marc following right behind.

The sun overhead was fierce, and he immediately unhooked his sunglasses from where they’d been hanging from the neck of his T-shirt and put them on, while Bellamy did the same thing as well, except that she dug them out of her purse.

Once they’d gone a few paces down the sidewalk, she said, “I’m not sure if that helped any.”

His shoulders lifted. “Well, at least we know the clan Lawrence Pratt came from was the Olsens. It’s too bad my talent isn’t for computer hacking, because then I might be able to find out a little more about them.”

“It’s not mine, either,” Bellamy said, although she didn’t look too dismayed. “But there’s a warlock in the Wilcox clan who’s supposed to be a genius at that kind of thing. I can text Devynn and ask her if she can have him look into the Olsens and see if he can dig up anything useful.”

Deep down, Marc had a feeling that wasn’t going to accomplish much. However, since he didn’t have any better ideas, he only nodded.

“That could work.”

“Well, let’s duck into Caduceus and grab a glass of wine, and I’ll send her a text,” Bellamy suggested. “The views there are incredible.”

Even though they’d already shared a glass back at her house, Marc thought that sounded like a great idea.

“Sure,” he said.

So they went inside and made their way to the seating area at the back of the wine tasting room, which, as she’d promised, offered a wall of windows that overlooked the Verde Valley all the way to the red rocks of Sedona and beyond.

After they both got glasses of the Chupacabra — Marc didn’t think he could resist a wine with that name — Bellamy got out her phone and typed out a quick text. The reply came back almost immediately, which seemed to signal that Devynn wasn’t completely overwhelmed with customers right then.

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