Page 40 of Wind Called

“Boynton Canyon is more than a mile from the Devil’s Bridge,” she pointed out. “How much area does one vortex cover?”

The three elders looked at one another. Tricia inclined her head toward Levi, as if to let him know he should be the one to answer.

Maybe he’d studied the vortexes. Although Bellamy had spent plenty of time at their house when she was hanging out with Bree, it wasn’t as if she’d ever felt the need to sit down and have a scholarly talk with her friend’s father about the Sedona vortex situation, so she had no idea how much he actually knew.

“It depends on the vortex,” he said. “Some are quite large, while others are smaller.” He paused there to study the map on the laptop’s screen. “This only shows the largest vortexes, the ones that attract tourists and hikers. That doesn’t mean the area isn’t dotted with more.”

“Which means we should maybe find an expert on them?” Marc suggested. “Someone who’s really studied them and knows a lot more than the publicly available information shows?”

This sounded like a great idea to Bellamy. Surely there must be someone who’d made the vortexes their life’s work and would be able to offer a lot more in-depth details about their exact locations.

However, none of the elders looked too thrilled by that prospect.

“Reaching out to a civilian could open a whole new can of worms,” Tricia said, both her tone and her expression doubtful. “They’d certainly want to know why you were asking for such detailed information.”

“Then I’ll lie,” Bellamy responded, crossing her arms.

Did they think she was some stupid kid who didn’t know how to be circumspect around a civilian? She was twenty-two years old, not twelve.

Come to think of it, even her twelve-year-old self would have known not to let any information like that slip out around a nonmagical person.

“Bellamy’s right,” Marc said, his voice warm, reassuring. It felt so good to have him sitting there next to her, to know that he didn’t think she was crazy…and that he’d help her do whatever was needed so they could get to the bottom of all this. “We don’t have to be entirely honest about why we want this information. Heck, we could just tell the guy we wanted to find someplace that was super-energetic for us to have our wedding ceremony or something.”

Had he really just said that? Sure, he’d told her he loved her but….

It’s just a story we can use to tell the vortex expert,Bellamy reminded herself.It’s not as if he actually asked me to marry him or anything.

Her inner voice didn’t sound very convinced, though. In the witch clans, once you realized you had this sort of connection to a person, you generally made it formal sooner rather than later.

Well, she could worry about that after they’d dealt with their more immediately pressing matters.

Surprisingly, none of the elders looked too put out by Marc’s suggestion.

“It’s true that lots of people go to Sedona to get married,” Allegra said.

“And it’s also true there are plenty of woo-woo types who want to make sure their vows are in harmony with the universe, or whatever,” Tricia put in. “So I don’t think anyone will ask too many questions. No, the hardest part will be finding someone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t a complete crackpot.”

Levi smiled. “I can manage that part. Let me do a little research, and then we can see how to proceed from there.”

“And this ‘Collector’ person?” Marc asked then.

“I’ll talk to Connor and Angela and see if they’ve ever heard of anyone like that,” Tricia replied. “Asprimaandprimus,they have access to information that even we elders don’t.”

“And possibly the de la Pazprimaas well,” Allegra suggested. “She has a huge library of magical books her clan has collected over the years. There might be something in one of those volumes that could provide some information.”

Right. Bellamy slipped a sideways glance at Marc, but he only nodded, as if he thought reaching out to his clan’sprimaseemed a logical thing to do, considering she was sitting on a repository of knowledge unmatched among the witch clans of the Southwest.

A ringing sound came from Tricia’s laptop, and she pulled it toward her, frowning slightly.

“I’m getting a FaceTime call.”

“Well, go ahead and answer,” Levi told her. “It could be important.”

Brows still pulled together, she touched a button to accept the call. From where she was sitting, Bellamy couldn’t see much of the screen, but she caught a glimpse of a dark-haired Hispanic woman in her middle forties, heavy dark hair pulled away from her face into a thick ponytail that fell over one shoulder.

“Hi, Tricia,” the woman said, and even though the words were casual enough, her strained tone was anything but. “This is Zoe Sandoval. I thought I should reach out and let you know that someone just tried to break into my library.”

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