Page 19 of Wind Called

“She says she’ll get Jeremy right on it,” Bellamy announced after looking down at her phone’s screen. “So I guess about all we can do now is just sit tight and see if he can dig up anything.”

That would be the simplest outcome, of course. Not that Marc was too happy about the prospect of a clan halfway across the country trying to meddle with the Arizona witch families, but it would still be a lot easier if they could at least pin down a possible suspect.

If there was one at all. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that his dreams were never wrong, and yet sometimes the interpretation could be a little difficult to nail down.

He looked around, but the other patrons of the tasting room were clustered near the bar rather than here in the sitting area, despite the spectacular views.

“What else do you know about the amulet?” he asked.

Bellamy’s lips pursed, but she seemed to realize there wasn’t anyone close enough to hear what they were saying because she replied, “Not a whole lot beyond what I’ve already told you. I guess making those sorts of things was kind of in vogue during the Renaissance, and the people who created them poured their own life energy into the artifacts. Sounds like it was sort of a dangerous process, and some people died during the process. That might be why the practice fell by the wayside over the years.”

No, he supposed a method that might deplete your life force enough to end up killing you was probably better left abandoned.

“Does anyone know how many of them are out there?”

At once, Bellamy shook her head, and her loose coppery hair slid across bare shoulders revealed by the sleeveless blue top she wore. Not for the first time, he thought of how beautiful she was…and how she appeared to be utterly oblivious to that fact.

“Honestly, I’d never even heard of the things until Devynn and Seth showed up with the one they found in the 1880s. Sounds like it was a surprise to them, too, so I have a feeling artifacts like that amulet mostly got lost in the mists of history. Probably they were mislaid or maybe fell into civilian hands, and since a civilian wouldn’t even be able to sense the power they contained, they were probably treated like harmless trinkets.”

Maybe that was a better outcome. Although Marc didn’t really like the idea of a bunch of regular people acquiring objects they didn’t understand and couldn’t possibly use, at least that way, they couldn’t be employed against the magical population.

“Here’s hoping,” he said, and drank some of his Chupacabra. It was a smooth, fruity red, a nice change from the whites he’d drunk earlier in the day. “Because I’m not sure I want to think about what it would be like if these things started popping up out of nowhere.”

Bellamy grinned, a flash of white teeth against the peach-toned lip gloss she wore. “No, that would kind of suck, wouldn’t it? But if that was even a possibility, you’d dream about it, wouldn’t you?”

He wished it was that easy. The dreams came when they willed, and he didn’t have much control over when they decided to appear. Also, it wasn’t as if he had a prophetic dream every time something bad was going to happen in his clan, or otherwise his sleep would be filled with car crashes and cancer diagnoses and all the other thousand and one things that could go wrong in a person’s life.

“Not necessarily,” he said. “I mean, in this case, it seems like a warning of some kind, but I still can’t figure out exactly what the dreams expect me to do.”

“I think you’ve already done it,” Bellamy replied, still smiling. “That is, you let your grandmother know what’s going on, and I’m sure she’s talked to the other elders, and to Connor and Angela, too. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.”

Marc supposed she had a point there. Even so, he couldn’t quite rid himself of the niggling sensation that the universe expected something more from him…despite his not knowing what the hell it was supposed to be.

Not for the first time, he found himself wishing he had a simpler gift, something like making plants grow or healing people or even just being able to soothe a crying infant, like his cousin Lorelei, who was hugely in demand as the de la Paz clan’s babysitter. Something cut and dried, something tangible, rather than receiving images from beyond and doing his best to interpret exactly what they were trying to say.

Since he wasn’t sure of the best way to respond to Bellamy’s comment, he only nodded and then drank some more of his wine. Just as he was setting his glass down on the table in front of them, his phone buzzed from within his jeans pocket, and he hurried to pull it out.

A text from a 928 area code number, one he didn’t immediately recognize.

However, the content was clear enough.

He looked up from the screen to see Bellamy watching him, brows puckered slightly, as if she somehow knew this was no ordinary text.

“It’s from my grandmother,” he explained.

“Someone just tried to steal the amulet from Angela and Connor’s house.”

7

Everyone was assembledin front of the big Victorian on Paradise Lane — the three elders, Tricia and Levi and Allegra Moss, along with Angela and Connor themselves. Their presence startled Bellamy for a moment…until she remembered that the two of them had the power of teleportation, so even though they’d been spending the summer at their house in Forest Highlands just outside Flagstaff, they could be here in the blink of an eye as soon as someone sent the alarm.

“They didn’t get the amulet,” Levi was explaining as they all went up the porch steps and inside the house. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, which made Bellamy feel a little better about the situation. The home was gorgeous, with its carefully restored oak floors and understated locally made furniture and Connor’splein airlandscapes on the walls, and she knew she’d been worried the intruder might have ransacked the place.

“But they got past your wards,” Angela said. She was in her early fifties, but you’d never know it to look at her, since her dark brown hair didn’t have a single trace of gray and she only had a few laugh lines in the fair skin next to her brilliant green eyes.

“They did,” Tricia replied briskly. She didn’t look too happy about the situation, but she also appeared ready to deal with the problem head on and try to figure out what had gone wrong. “No one should have even been able to get past the front door. But then there’s that.”

She pointed to the safe, which sat on a coffee table of burnished juniper in front of one of the big leather couches that dominated the living room.

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