Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
I slept fitfully that night, tossing and turning, accidentally bumping into Bob on several occasions, and whenever I could drift off, I would have a bizarre dream about birds and a burning house. I knew this was because of what Honey had told me during our visit, but it was still weird to be inside the dream she had described.
When I woke up, for a full minute I was sure I could still smell burnt feathers, but the scent disappeared as soon as I pushed my duvet back.
It was early, but the sun was just starting to inch over the horizon. I could already feel the muggy heat that was going to permeate the day. The sky was clear, though, which meant we were in for a perfect Independence Day if all went well.
At least in terms of the weather.
The store was going to be open today despite the holiday, but for reduced hours. We didn’t want to miss the enthusiastic tourist crowd in town for the festivities, and it was going to be all hands on deck for the seven hours we were open.
I wanted to get a run in before it got too gross out, because there was no way on earth I would want to go running later this evening once I finished with a hectic day.
I also suspected that news of Sebastian’s death would have made its way around town by this point, and doubtless I was going to be bombarded with a million questions about that and the missed hike the previous day. That was all enough to exhaust even the toughest soul, so a run this morning would do me good.
Tossing my hair into a ponytail, I donned my usual running gear and slipped my earbuds into my ears.
I needed something upbeat to get me through my run today and to hopefully distract me from the doom and gloom of the day before. One thing had surprised me in retrospect when I thought back to my encounter with Deacon. Even when I’d been alone with him with no way to know if he was there with ill intent, my accidental magic flare-ups hadn’t gone off.
Evidently there was some nuance to my newly discovered magical hiccups: anxiety could trigger it, but fear and anxiety weren’t the same thing. It was apparently more refined than that.
Which just made it weirder and weirder.
To keep the stress and floaties away during my run, I queued up some ABBA, with the steady beat of “Mamma Mia!” ready to keep me distracted. I took my usual short route, though I was out a bit earlier than usual today. That said, some of my beloved neighborhood dogs were already out in their yards, and who can be stressed when there are very good dogs in need of petting?
I made several stops along the way, wishing I’d had the foresight to bring a little pouch with treats. Maybe I’d need to add that to my plans in the future, because it would probably secure me a few new best friends. Though I wasn’t sure how Bob would feel about doggy treats in the house. He might think I was plotting something.
My usual run took about forty minutes, passing through populated and charming neighborhoods and only occasionally dipping into more wooded areas. Most days I really enjoyed those diversions over wooden footbridges and along paths dense with overhead foliage, but this morning, with it barely being dawn, I felt nervous, stricken with an unusual sense of dread.
More than once on my run, I paused for a non-dog-related reason, getting the distinct feeling I was being followed. A tickling sense of foreboding wouldn’t shake off no matter how hard I tried to tell myself I was just being paranoid.
Someone out there had killed someone, and if it had been Deacon, he was proving to be a little too gifted at appearing and disappearing as it suited him. I refocused my thoughts, chasing the jangling nerves off as best I could. Until I better knew how to keep my emotions and my magic separate from each other, I needed to work with some good old-fashioned mindfulness and meditation to keep the disasters to a minimum.
As I jogged through one wooded area, something bright caught my eye—a little flash of blue and yellow that smeared across my line of sight before disappearing into the branches. I drew to a quick stop, trying to find the place among the leaves where it had gone.
There, a little flicker of lemon-yellow feathers bounding from one tree to another. A sharp cry, somewhere between a trill and a song, came from the branches, and it was unlike any birdsong I could remember hearing in the area before. I couldn’t identify birds by their call, but I knew enough that I recognized repeated songs, and this was new.
I inched closer to the edge of the trail. After taking a moment to check my surroundings and make sure there was no one lurking behind or ahead, I pulled my phone out to try to get a photo of the feathery critter. Even with everything that had been going on the last couple of days, I remembered what Sebastian had said during his signing, that there was the possibility of a previously thought extinct bird species living in the area. I knew pretty much nothing about tanagers, but I recalled the page in the guide where they’d been so brightly colored, and this little guy seemed to fit the bill.
The bird moved again, flicking to a lower branch, and as I lifted my phone, the rain-dampened soil beneath my feat shifted under the extra weight and gave way entirely. Soon, with barely enough time to let out a whoop , I was sliding down the side of the hill.
I was only about ten feet down when everything froze, a familiar bit of magic taking over from my sheer panic. The air around me was still, not a breeze, not a single birdsong. It was as if someone had pressed pause on the world and I was the only one still moving.
Motes of dust and debris hung in the air around me where they had been stirred up in my fall, and bouncing rocks were suspended below my feet.
Before I did anything else, I caught my breath, taking a calming gulp of air and assessing my surroundings. I had never really looked off the side of this trail before, but it was a relatively steep drop right down to the river below. It was strange to see the usually burbling water just stuck like it was frozen over. Even in the winter it didn’t freeze over.
I climbed awkwardly to my feet, keeping my balance by clinging to a nearby tree trunk. The hill was steepest at the top, too sheer to climb back up, but below me was a less treacherous angle; this would keep me from getting too bumped and bruised by comparison.
I could walk down the hill from here and hike back to the nearest footbridge.
As I took my first wobbly step down the incline, using other trees for aid, the sound and movement of the world returned with a slight popping of air pressure in my ears. The river continued its lazy meandering, falling rocks skittered down the hill, and someone was yelling.
Wait.
Yes, after I paused a moment to be sure I wasn’t imagining things—stopping time can really mess with your head—I was certain I heard two distinct voices bickering only a few yards away.
While it was still dim within the woods, I immediately dropped to the ground, crouching low to avoid notice and hoping to minimize any sound. Though if they were continuing to verbally spar even after the racket my fall had made, there was a very good chance they weren’t listening to anything going on around them.
I scuttled closer to the sound of the voices, and soon I could hear snippets of what they were saying rather than just the muddled sound of angry tones.
“. . . said there was no risk, and I’d say him dying was not something we had talked about.” This was a female voice that sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“. . . don’t seem to understand the risks. We had . . .” Here I lost what the man speaking to her was saying, the sound of the river and of waking birds in the trees making it hard to hear everything. He picked up again, saying, “. . . careful, or maybe it’ll be your turn next.”
Her response to this was unmistakable. “Are you threatening me?”
His tone lowered, and I could barely make out a single word he was saying, but the menace of his tone didn’t need words to be understood. “. . . be stupid.”
“. . . not stupid, but maybe you should talk to Connor about . . .”
I got close enough to where they were standing that I could catch brief glimpses of them through the trees. The man had his back to me and was wearing a dark jacket and baseball cap, giving me no help in identifying him. I’d thought perhaps I might spot a flash of Deacon’s telltale dark-red hair, but if it was tucked under that cap, I couldn’t tell in the poor morning light.
The woman, however, was immediately recognizable, and my breath caught in my throat.
Melody.