Page 37 of Demon Loved
“Three,” she replied at once, since that was an easy enough question to answer. “I’ll finish up around five-thirty.”
And she stopped there, not sure if she should say anything else.
Bill, on the other hand, didn’t seem nearly so reticent. “Then possibly we could get something to eat afterward?”
The very question she’d been hoping he’d ask. “Sure,” she said, doing her best to seem as if this was all off the cuff and not something she’d been thinking about for most of the afternoon. “But since it’s going to be kind of early, how about we go into Sedona instead of heading back to Cottonwood? That way, you’ll still be able to see something of it.”
And such an outing should be safe enough. Yes, Bellamy and Marc had pretty much established that sleeping overnight in Sedona near one of the energy vortexes there enhanced their inborn witchy powers, but just being there for a few hours didn’t appear to affect anything. She and Bill could have dinner someplace with a view — maybe the Mesa Grille, up by the airport — and at least that way he would get a chance to see the red rocks. It just didn’t feel right to her that he’d traveled all this way and didn’t seem to have made any effort to spend a few hours exploring Sedona’s beauties.
“I think I’d like that very much,” Bill replied. “Will we need a reservation?”
“On Sunday night? Probably not,” she said, answering her own question. “At least, not where I’m planning for us to go.”
“Then I’m looking forward to it.”
She smiled and took another sip of her wine. In a moment, she’d need to head down to the lawn and pick up her guitar again, but for now, she was content to simply be here with him.
However long it might last.
12
He realized he had made a huge mistake in not traveling to Sedona before this, even though he doubted he could have justified such an expedition to himself…let alone to the voice or whoever else might be watching his movements.
Sunset was still half an hour off or so, but the rocks that rose on either side of the town’s main thoroughfare blazed with their own reddish light nonetheless. There was power here, the power of the earth itself, concentrated in certain spots that seemed to glow like beacons on the landscape.
Could Brianna sense any of that? She certainly seemed matter-of-fact enough as she guided them through surprisingly heavy traffic and then turned off onto a winding road that led up to a spot called Airport Mesa, according to one of the signs they passed. However, he guessed that just because she was a witch didn’t mean she was able to sense the energies that seemed to swirl all around them.
Those energies only grew in strength as the oversized vehicle climbed what felt like at least five hundred feet or maybe more. In fact, the pressure from those energy sinks was so overpowering, he had to force himself to take a breath.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she sent him a worried sideways glance.
He hadn’t said anything, but it seemed she’d been able to detect something of the way the landscape around them was acting upon him.
“I’m fine,” he managed. “This place is…breathtaking.”
In every possible sense of the word.
“It is,” she agreed. “Every time I come into Sedona, I ask myself why I don’t visit more. Then I get stuck in traffic and remember why it’s sometimes a good idea to stay away.”
He was able to chuckle. The pressure on his body was beginning to lessen, although he had a feeling that was more because he was becoming acclimated to those energy sinks than because the power they were emitting had diminished in any fashion.
“I think it’s worth the traffic.”
She smiled. “Maybe you’re right. Anyway, I took a gamble and figured it shouldn’t be so bad on a Sunday evening, especially since this isn’t a holiday weekend or anything.” A tilt of her head toward the parking lot they were approaching, and she added, “There aren’t a ton of cars, so it looks like I was right.”
An assertion that was proved correct in the next moment, since the hostess took them to a table right away rather than making them wait to be seated. It was placed up against the windows that created a wall of glass on one side of the restaurant, windows overlooking a small runway.
“Sedona Airport,” Brianna said in response to his questioning glance. “We might see a few planes coming in for a landing, but I doubt anyone will be taking off because we’re so close to sunset.”
“The airport isn’t open at night?”
Not that he had any great knowledge of such things, but some of the movies he’d watched with Elena had shown the characters coming and going from airports at what appeared to be all hours.
“No,” Brianna replied. “Too dangerous. The runway isn’t very long, and with the airport perched up here on the top of the mesa, there’s too much risk of something going wrong. If you need to land at night, you’d need to go up to Flagstaff, or maybe over to Prescott. I have to admit I don’t know too much about it — I’ve never flown.”
This was possibly not that strange a comment coming from someone who didn’t seem to have ever left Arizona. Something about her words had sounded almost challenging, though, as if she wanted to underline that her experience of the world wasn’t very large.
Well, neither was his. He’d learned new things every day he was here, and yet he understood that this world held so many treasures, it would require lifetimes to explore them.
