Page 44 of Wind Called

They passed the highway and drove past the planned community of Verde Santa Fe, and then wound down into the river bottom where Cornville was located. It was a small town of only a few thousand residents, but it did have a couple of hidden treasures.

Including G Burgers, their current destination.

Because it wasn’t quite noon yet, the parking lot wasn’t too crowded. They headed inside and walked up to the counter to place their orders, then went off to one side to wait for their food to be ready.

“We can sit outside,” she suggested.

“It’s still pretty hot today,” he pointed out.

Only the truth, although she thought it was probably going to be a few degrees cooler than yesterday.

“Yes,” she said, “but most people are going to stay inside and enjoy the air conditioning, which means we’ll have more privacy on the patio.”

An eyebrow lifted, but he seemed to see the wisdom of her suggestion, because he replied, “That makes sense.”

The cooks at G Burgers were fast, so they only had to wait a couple of minutes for their food to be ready before they headed outside. Calling the outdoor dining area a patio was probably a stretch, since it was just a slab of concrete with some shade overhead and a few metal tables with matching chairs, but since no one else was out there, she thought it was the best place to eat their lunch.

She waited until they’d both had a few bites of their burgers and washed them down with iced tea before she said, “Do you really think some vortex guy is going to help with all this?”

“The mythical vortex expert?” Marc returned with a lopsided grin.

Since she’d thought about the same thing, she couldn’t help smiling in return. “Well, Levi seems to think he can find someone like that, so I suppose we have to trust his intuition. Still, even if that kind of expert does exist, I’m not sure whether he’ll really be able to help with our particular problem.”

Marc dunked a fry in the little paper cup of ketchup that sat on the tray in front of him, his expression now thoughtful. “I don’t know. I mean, Levi does have a point. If you can find a vortex that’s powerful but also isn’t overrun with tourists, that might give you a chance to let the voices speak to you.”

“If I should even be listening to them,” she said sourly. “For all I know, they’re some kind of weird magic this Collector person is using to put me off my stride.”

Judging by the way Marc’s brows pulled together, Bellamy could tell he hadn’t considered that particular angle to the problem.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “On the other hand, you’d think the last thing the Collector would want you to know is any particular details about him. It’s pretty obvious that he’s trying to operate in stealth, to slip in and take what he wants without anyone knowing who he is or what he’s up to.”

Marc had a point there. Bellamy supposed she might have been thinking precisely the opposite because she wanted a reason to avoid exploring this any further, to take a step back and say she didn’t think it was such a good idea after all to listen to the voices.

Ever since her gift had manifested when she was eleven, it had been reliable and simple and, she thought, kind of boring. It wasn’t as if she could call a tornado into being or make it rain or do any of the stuff a real weather witch could do. No, she could summon some serious straight-line winds when necessary — like she’d done when a brush fire was threatening some homes on one of Jerome’s lower levels and she’d made the winds reverse direction and have the fire double back on itself, effectively putting it out — but it had never done anything terribly out of the ordinary.

Until now.

And if she could blame the vortexes for this sudden shift in her abilities, well, then, that had an easy enough solution.

She’d just get the hell out and go back someplace neutral and safe, like Jerome or Cottonwood.

Except that she had an agreement with Ike to watch the ranch until it was sold, which could take months. The money wasn’t a huge amount, just two grand a month, but when you added that to the free housing and the stipend she got from the McAllister clan, well, it would definitely be enough to keep her going if it turned out she had to take too much time off and annoyed her boss enough that he had no choice but to let her go.

Marc reached over and laid a hand on her knee. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Was I being that obvious?”

He smiled. “Let’s just say that I could tell you were thinking deep thoughts.”

She supposed she was. While she wasn’t the sort of person who tended to fall into a doom spiral, she also had to admit that she’d never encountered this sort of situation before. Witchy talents were supposed to be what they were, not start morphing into something very different.

Something frightening…something she wasn’t sure she could control.

“I guess it feels like I don’t know myself anymore,” she said. “Have you ever heard of someone’s witchy gifts suddenly turning into something else?”

“No,” he replied at once. “But then, it’s not like I’ve made a study of those sorts of things, either. There’s one thing I’ve noticed, though…and myprimahas, too.”

“What’s that?” Bellamy inquired, glad to focus on something outside herself for a bit. No one else had come to join them on the patio, probably because it was pretty toasty today and she could already feel sweat beginning to drip down her back.

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