Page 76 of Wind Called

“Or it would have taken too long, and he realized the longer he stayed there, the greater the chance that someone might have detected him,” Tricia said. “Either way, we were very, very lucky.”

“I suppose that thing will have to go in the safe as well,” Allegra added. “If it takes our powers away, we certainly need to make sure it’s locked up.”

Marc didn’t know for sure if that was exactly what the orb did. To him, it had felt more like it was chipping away at the magic of his spell rather than attacking the gifts he held at the core of his being. However, since the end result was similar enough, he supposed there wasn’t much point in arguing about it. Most likely, the elders would study the thing — maybe with some help from the Wilcox clan’s more powerful witches and warlocks — and then realize Allegra was right, that it needed to be locked away and, with any luck, forgotten.

“So, you encountered the would-be thief, and he used the orb on you,” Levi said then, clearly determined to stick to the narrative as much as possible. “What happened after that?”

Bellamy’s lips tightened, and Marc gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. He knew she was beating herself up about the man’s death, but she shouldn’t. If the winds hadn’t come to their rescue, he very much doubted they’d be sitting here in his grandmother’s living room and relating the tale.

“I could tell we were in big trouble,” she replied, “because the guy had knives with him, and maybe worse. So…I called to the winds, and they came to us and knocked him right off the edge of the cliff. And that was the end of it.”

The elders exchanged another of those glances, and Marc got the impression they knew there was much more than that to the story.

“What about his body?” Levi asked.

“It stayed invisible,” Marc replied. “We’d been thinking about calling the authorities, trying to give them some story about how we were hiking in the area and stumbled across the corpse. There wouldn’t have been any sign of foul play, obviously. Any autopsy would have shown he died from a fall, which wouldn’t have been so strange, considering where he was camped out.”

“But then when he didn’t turn visible again,” Bellamy said, picking up the thread of the story, “we knew that wasn’t going to work. So we gathered a bunch of rocks and built a cairn for him. Maybe someone will come across it one day, and maybe not. The place where we buried the guy is way off the trail, so I don’t see any reason why anyone would even be out there.”

All three elders were silent for a moment, as if none of them was quite sure how to respond to her tale. But then Allegra spoke.

“It sounds to me as if you did everything you could,” she said, giving him and Bellamy an encouraging look. “And you brought the orb back, which can only be a good thing.”

“It is,” Tricia said briskly. “All the same, if you can give us the GPS coordinates of the cairn, we should probably have someone go out and make sure it’s not something that can easily be found.”

“I can do that,” Marc replied. “I had my tracking app going the whole time.”

The elders appeared satisfied with that response, although Levi said, “This thing with the vortexes…it’s not something we’ll want to advertise. Say nothing to anyone. I’ll talk to Bree and make sure she understands how important it is for her to keep it secret.”

Although Marc hadn’t planned to go blabbing about the connection between witch-kind and the vortexes to anyone, he nodded anyway. “No problem. We both understand now why the McAllisters and the Wilcoxes wanted to make sure no one from a witch clan lives in Sedona permanently.”

Levi’s gaze shifted to Bellamy, who sent him a lopsided smile. “And you don’t have to worry about me, either,” she told him. “I heard from Ike, the owner of the place I’ve been caretaking, as Marc and I were driving over here. He just sold the house, so I couldn’t stay there anyway. No more nights in Sedona for me.”

This news seemed to relieve all three elders. However, Tricia sounded sympathetic when she said, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. But I’m sure we can find you someplace.”

“Oh, it’s not a problem,” Bellamy replied. “I’ve already started poking around.”

Which wasn’t exactly true, since Marc knew she had been waiting until after this interview to look for Airbnbs or any other furnished rentals in the area. Still, it was close enough.

“I’m sure this whole thing must have been an ordeal for you,” Allegra said in her wispy voice. “Is there anything else you need help with?”

Marc glanced over at Bellamy, whose expression was carefully neutral. Although she was doing her best to hide it, he could guess that all she really wanted right then was to get the hell out of there.

However, it seemed she also wanted to make sure they weren’t keeping any secrets from her clan’s elders.

“We also found a lottery ticket and a twenty-dollar bill on the dead man,” she said carefully. “Would you like to keep those as well?”

“Are they magical?” Levi asked at once, and Bellamy shook her head.

“Not that I was able to tell,” she said. “But maybe you can see if you can sense anything from them.”

She sent Marc a significant glance, so he pulled the ticket and the twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed them over to Levi, who held them for a moment, his expression thoughtful.

“These are ordinary civilian items,” he told her before he gave them back to Marc. “There’s no need for the elders to watch over them.”

Bellamy watched as he shoved them back in his pocket, her expression almost conflicted, as if she’d been secretly hoping Levi might take them off their hands.

“Just wanted to check,” she said, then glanced over at the oldest elder, who’d watched the whole exchange with shrewd, faded eyes. “But thank you for asking, Allegra. I think what Marc and I want the most is to just put this whole thing behind us.”

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