Fire Fall (Old School Book 4) Read online

  “Seth.”

  “You are helpful.” He picked up her pack. “More than you realize. But if I explain how, it will reveal something about me, about my magic, that you can’t share with anyone. You can’t ever tell anyone what I tell you or what you can deduce from that information.”

  She shrugged on her pack with his help. “Now I’m dying of curiosity.”

  He touched her neck briefly, beneath the fall of her ponytail. “Do I have your promise?”

  “Of course. I’d never repeat your secrets.” Her loyalty to him felt so natural she didn’t question it.

  He blinked. “Okay, then.”

  They started down the valley. He set a slow pace, checking that she kept her footing on the slope. “Josh Brosky is a wizard specializing in barrier spells. If he’s in the mountains, as I believe he is, we have to assume he’ll have set up wards and warning spells. I would expect that most of those spells won’t react to a mundane walking through them.”

  She stared at her boots, determined not to slip, but her concentration was on Seth’s words. “I’m not a threat to Josh or to whatever Svenson is using him for. In fact, I’m good camouflage. A man and a woman hiking through the Rockies in summer is normal.” She stopped so that she could raise her gaze from her feet to Seth. “Except you’ll trigger the barrier spells. You have a ton of magic.”

  “I do, but I can also mask it.”

  She mightn’t have magic, but Minervalle School had ensured she had a solid understanding of its principles. “How?”

  “It’s an aspect of my magic, a twist on pulling null-space around me, but nothing so powerful. Unfortunately, it works both ways. Other wizards can’t sense my magic, but it can also distort my perception of their magic.”

  She walked on, catching up with him as she thought about the problem. “How can I help with that? I’m mundane. I won’t trigger the spells.”

  “You won’t trigger the spells set to alert Josh, or whoever is with him, to the approach of a wizard. But given Josh’s abilities with barrier spells, there’s a high probability that the first barrier spell will be a general look-away spell aimed at mundanes.”

  She nodded in swift understanding. Her ponytail bounced against the top of her pack. “For privacy. Because even if we—mundanes like me—can’t affect his magic, it’s safer for him and whoever is with him if mundanes don’t stumble over whatever they’re doing. Reports of odd occurrences would make it easier for someone like you to zero in on them.”

  “Exactly. So if you feel an aversion to walking in a particular direction or start veering away from the trail…”

  “You’ll know there’s a look-away spell at work.” She didn’t ask what he’d do then.

  As they descended into the valley, wildflowers increased in profusion: asters and fireweed, Queen Anne’s lace, blue-flowering flax and paintbrush. Butterflies and buzzing insects also increased. A hummingbird flitted away at their approach.

  I’ve never heard of null-space. She was curious, but Seth’s opening remarks had discouraged questions. What type of magic did he have? She’d assumed that, like most wizards, his magic was general.

  A wizard’s power was in the spells he or she mastered. They couldn’t directly affect the world as a weathermage or geomage could. Instead, they had to channel their magic through spells. Weaker wizards had fewer spells, and lesser spells, at their command. Powerful wizards, like Seth, commanded the major spells, usually no more than two or three, along with a range of minor spells.

  Working for Stag, she’d have expected his spells to be combat and investigative in nature. But null-space? What was it?

  “Lunch.” They reached the edge of the aspen grove and Seth halted.

  Vanessa stared back to the top of the valley, astounded at how far they’d travelled while she’d been lost in her thoughts. However, now that she was paying attention…she groaned as she slowly lowered herself to the ground in the shade of an aspen.

  They ate the sandwiches they’d made at the cabin. The bread was slightly stale from being frozen then defrosted, but she was too hungry to care. “Peanut butter and raspberry jelly. Food of the gods.”

  “Fresh raspberries over there.” Seth nodded in the direction of a wild raspberry patch.

  She thought how good they’d taste, sweet with an edge of tartness and warm from the sun. Then she thought of getting up. She gave a tiny grunt and concentrated on her sandwiches.

  He grinned. “The trail heads on through the aspens. I want to cross the stream.”

  It looked more like a river to Vanessa.

  “I’ll leave my pack with you while I scout for a safe place to cross. Don’t move from here.”

  “I won’t.”

  He moved off quickly, sandwiches in hand.

  She finished eating and lay back. The ground was hard beneath a thin layer of grass. She used her pack as a lumpy pillow. Birds flew across her field of vision and she didn’t care to identify them. Her eyelids felt heavier and heavier. Seth would be back any time. She needed to be ready to set off.

  “There’s a crossing a bit down from here.”

  She blinked up at him.

  “The stream widens and grows shallow before it drops away again. The rocks at the bottom look smooth. If you don’t mind paddling, we can wade across.”

  “Paddling?”

  “The water shouldn’t come higher than your knees. In the center, the deepest part, there are a couple of rocks we can balance on as we cross.”

  She was still stuck on paddling. Her feet were hot and sweaty in socks and boots. “Paddling sounds brilliant.”

  Tiny fish darted in the clear creek water. The water was cold, but not icy, especially not where the sun warmed the slow-moving shallows by the stream bank. Vanessa balanced on a wide, central rock, smooth from millennia of water erosion and breathed deeply. “This is what I imagined hiking the Rockies would be like.”

  They were days of hiking away from the cabin. Not that they’d hiked for days. They’d cheated and driven her rental car to a campsite Seth had identified as a base. He wanted to do a loop that included overnight camping before returning to the rental car to drive on for more supplies and a new starting point for investigation.

  She was sure he had a method in the routes he’d planned and now she was along for the journey, fulfilling the role of canary in the coal mine. Here and now, she detected no sense of resistance to her presence in the valley. She simply felt alive and yet at peace.

  On the far side of the creek, Seth put her pack down and waited for her to finish crossing. Then he waded back to the first rock leading to the center of the creek, hopped from it to the next, then lowered himself to wade back and retrieve his pack.

  Vanessa hadn’t argued that it was prudent he carry the packs across.

  He was simply more sure-footed.

  They reached the site Seth had selected for their overnight stop with daylight to burn. Since they weren’t allowed a fire and they carried their food and water, setting up camp simply meant pitching their tents and stashing the food bag on a tree far enough from them to reduce the likelihood of a bear attack in the night.

  He unfolded a map and wrapped the cord for a pendulum around his index finger.

  “Dowsing?” She edged closer. Then paused. “Will it distract you if I watch?”

  “No. It’s a simple scrying spell, scarcely a pulse of magic in it.”

  Watching the crystal pendulum simply hang from its cord, unmoving, as Seth slowly covered the detailed map, Vanessa lost interest. The cry of a hawk brought her attention up to the sky. The animals would be on the move at dusk. Rabbits would be out. Birds would be returning to their nests. She hadn’t seen an elk yet, and she’d expected to.

  “Nothing.” Seth folded up the map.

  Now that she wouldn’t be distracting him, she had questions. “Is there a distance limitation to the scrying spell? Couldn’t you have used it at the cabin?”

  “If I was using the scrying spell t
o find Josh, I could do it anywhere—although proximity can help to break some barrier spells. But I wasn’t using the scrying spell in a traditional manner. The magic I put into it wasn’t sufficient to register above the level of ambient magic in these mountains. The San Juan Mountains south of us are a significant magical hotspot and they’re near enough to hide minor fluctuations in magic use. I was using the scrying spell as a focus for where something—a barrier spell—pushed back against it, and because of the tiny amount of magic I used, I needed to be close. I’ll try again when we descend into the next valley.”

  “May I have the map?” She unfolded it and traced her finger along it. “That’s tomorrow’s hike, isn’t it? Down into the next valley then west till we pick up the main trail, here.”

  He nodded. “It’ll be a long hike, but the main trail will be easier travelling than today. Hopefully.”

  She smiled ruefully. “No guarantees in hiking.” She folded and returned the map to him. “I’m tired enough to have an early night, so I think I’ll eat now.”

  They dined on canned tuna and cold baked potatoes that Seth had cooked in the microwave that morning. Dessert was chocolate bars thickly studded with almonds.

  “I might look around for a bit,” he said. “I won’t go far.”

  “Good. I don’t want to have to rescue you.” She grinned tiredly because all the rescuing went the other way, and they both knew it.

  “I’ll be careful.” He didn’t mock her.

  She didn’t hear him return to camp, but in the morning, she woke to the sounds of him moving around, humming with an occasional snatch of song. She smiled. There were definitely worse ways to wake up. The morning held a chill and she wished she could believe there’d be a fire and hot coffee, but there wouldn’t be, not with the mountains so dry they could go up in flames.

  Seth had a surprisingly good voice, his humming tuneful and the tune maddeningly elusive. Till he came to the chorus.

  She laughed as she crawled out of her tent. “You’re a pirate king?”

  He swung around from zipping up his pack. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” It was a beautiful morning. The air was still and it seemed as if they could see for miles. “Is that an elk?” She stared across the valley to where a large animal, dwarfed by distance, grazed near a stand of aspen.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow!” When she tore her gaze away, she smiled at Seth. “I wouldn’t have guessed you were a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, or that you sang.”

  “I’m a man of mystery.” A smile lurked in his eyes.

  “I don’t doubt that.” The singing was a nice surprise.

  He collapsed her tent and repacked her pack while she finished a quick breakfast of protein drink and granola bar.

  “I’ll eat more as we walk,” she said in answer to his chiding look.

  After a steepish climb, they descended into the next valley. The creek here was narrower, but more violent. She was glad the route he’d mapped meant they could avoid crossing it. Another elk moved away before they got close.

  “What else do you sing? Opera?” She wouldn’t put anything past Seth.

  “Blues. Motown.”

  “Cool.”

  He glanced back at her. They were beside the creek, the path narrow. “Do you sing?”

  “Absolutely.” She laughed. “In the shower or driving in a car where no one can hear me. I sound like a banshee with laryngitis.”

  “That good, hey?” He faced forward to watch his footing, but not before she saw his amused grin.

  She stretched out her hand to catch the spray from where the creek dropped precipitously onto rocks. Already the day was warming up and the cool water felt good.

  Mid-morning, he called a halt. “The main trail is a mile away to the south west. You just need to stay on this path.”

  She lowered her water bottle. “I have to stay on the path?”

  “I’ll catch you up. It’s a long day to make it back to the car without camping another night, and we’ll burn daylight if you come with me over the creek to that high point.” He indicated the rocky protrusion in the valley. “Running water can be part of a barrier spell.”

  “Then you need me to sense if there’s a look-away spell.”

  “No.” He chewed jerky. “Remember, I had this planned before I found you hiking, here. The scrying spell has to be active for me to sense anything, but it will work. You’re simply more efficient because you’re a mobile mundane look-away alarm.” A hint of teasing in there.

  She nodded reluctantly. For all that she’d intended to be alone in the mountains—insisted on it—she didn’t want to leave him. But he could travel faster than her and she’d worried yesterday about delaying him. “Okay. I’ll follow the trail back to the car.” Even the minor trail was clear enough, and she had her own maps. It wasn’t like she’d get lost.

  “I won’t be far behind you.”

  Embarrassment flushed her face that he’d so easily read her reluctance to continue on alone. She deflected his concern. “It’ll be worth it to reach the cabin tonight. A hot shower and hot food.”

  “Excellent motivators.” He clasped her shoulder briefly before hiking past, headed back to the creek.

  The faint sounds of his progress faded swiftly and the ordinary sounds of the woods seemed to grow louder. A squirrel watched her from an oak tree.

  “What am I? The squirrel whisperer?” She didn’t offer it any of the bag of mixed nuts and dried peach slices she was eating.

  It turned, swished its tail in apparent disdain, and ignored her to go about its day.

  “So, not the squirrel whisperer.” But her own nonsense restored Vanessa’s mood. She hiked on.

  Just before her path ought to have joined the main trail, she heard voices. Instinctively, her pace slowed. After the solitude of the wilderness, humanity seemed an intrusion. Especially this humanity.

  The voices were adult, but sounded young. Male. She counted one, two, three. The third voice laughed in response to the second guy’s obscene comment. College boys, by their conversation, with a far from respectful attitude to the members of some sorority. Just how disrespectful they were had Vanessa coming to a stop while still hidden behind a clump of chokecherry. Her skin crawled. Their conversation concerning their sexual antics had a cruel edge. Even if they were lying to impress one another, why those lies?

  I hate feeling vulnerable. But she did. So she waited out of sight as their voices passed on the main trail and their footsteps struck heavily. She heard another sound, too: the strike of a match.

  She pushed forward unthinkingly, lifting aside a branch to see the shortest of the trio light a cigarette, shake out the match and drop it; not even pausing to grind out the match to be sure it was dead. In a forest as dry as this one, with a total fire ban, it was careless to the point of criminality.

  Her “hey!” of protest shriveled on her tongue. Did she want to confront the boys alone? Was it safe?

  Could she live with herself if their carelessness did set the forest ablaze?

  “Pick it up.” Seth’s voice came from further down the main trail. He must have taken a short cut and thought to catch her up on the clearer ground.

  The boys—men, really—spun around.

  Vanessa was gratified to observe that they were as clumsy as her under the unaccustomed weight of their packs.

  “No fires in the park, and that includes cigarettes if you’re a fool.” Seth kept steadily approaching till he was level with the discarded match. He met the cigarette smoker’s eyes. “Pick it up.”

  The short kid glanced at his friends, but they each took a step back, leaving him to face Seth alone.

  It was one man against three, but even without knowing of his magic, none of the trio wanted to mess with Seth.

  “It’s just a match, man,” the kid whined as he stooped and collected the spent match.

  “Cigarette out, too.” Seth snatched it, dropped the burning tobacco, ground it ou
t, and handed the flattened remains back to the kid before the kid could even get out a protest. “Now, go.”

  The kids went. Their pace suggested they were being hunted by wolves—or by one cranky grizzly bear.

  Vanessa emerged from her hiding spot.

  Seth glanced at the thick shrubs that had hidden her, and nodded approval. “Any other problems, other than the idiots?”

  “Nope.”

  They walked on.

  Within a mile the trio of college boys slowed and she and Seth gradually closed the distance between them. The trio glanced behind them, nudged each other, then stepped off the trail and dropped their packs.

  Vanessa bit her lip to stop herself laughing. “You are sooo scary,” she teased Seth.

  “You have no idea,” he said flatly.

  Her humor died. “What did you find scrying?”

  “Nothing.”

  They reached her rental car in silence. He got into the driver’s seat. Instead of heading for the cabin, he took the road down the mountain. “I thought we could eat in town. Something hot and greasy.”

  “Burger and fries,” she said blissfully. She had a moment’s doubt. “I smell a bit.” Actually, her deodorant had held up really well, but she felt grungy.

  “I’m sure they’re used to hikers, and we can always eat outside.”

  Which they did, sitting at a table with benches at the edge of the diner’s yard. The burger was heaven with extra cheese, the fries crunchy, and Vanessa had a strawberry milkshake. Elvis’s unmistakable voice blasted from a sound system. “I feel like I’m in the 1950s, which isn’t a bad thing.”

  Finally she leaned back, filled to bursting, and feeling comfortably curious about the people around them. There were more college kids—although Seth’s trio had found another restaurant to eat at. There were also family groups and small groupings of other hikers. The atmosphere was easy. People were tired, companionably so.

  She looked at Seth across the table. “This was an excellent idea.”

  He nodded once.

  “Tired?” she asked. It wasn’t that he was usually chatty, but there was a reserve about him that set her at a distance. She didn’t like it.

  “Frank Patel wouldn’t have scared those kids.”