Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
KAEL
“One week in, and the woman’s already got me figured out,” I complain into the cell phone.
Mags laughs in that way that says she’s already planning. Seeing into futures that aren’t there. That will never be.
“Bacon and eggs over easy for breakfast. Coffee, black—strong enough to polish shoes. Chili, ribs, cornbread fresh from the oven.”
Mags chuckles. “She’ll turn you fat.”
“Soft. That’s what she’ll make me. But I won’t let her,” I grunt, thinking back to Clemson. My gut tightens.
“She’s caring for you, then? Anything else?”
My throat tightens. “What are you getting at? Abomination?”
“Not all people see it that way, Kael. We wouldn’t be here if—”
“Your Pa was right about you. Nose always buried too deep in those romances. Not how real life works, though.”
My tattoos pulse, painful despite my employer’s current location—in town at the café. Like the flesh wants to argue. But it won’t win.
“She’s got me bathing daily. Though I’m still holding out on showers.”
“Hot showers.” Mags laughs. “Only the best invention in recent memory.”
“Still prefer the watering hole. Cold but refreshing.”
“Can you hold a minute?” she asks. I wait, listening to her speak with a man in the background.
When she returns, she asks, “Any signs of… strangeness? More unexplained things happening on the Wakefield property?”
“Herd’s good. I sleep by them nightly. Alfalfa’s still growing, though askew.”
“And no more from the government men?” Mags doesn’t hide the disgust in her voice.
“Nothing out of place, just the humming of the Starborn. Never too far away. Stronger now.”
“Because of Ash...”
“Ash? What do you mean?”
“He and the Reyes’ granddaughter. Bonded, though no one here saw it coming.”
Blood rushes through my temples, ears humming. “Bonded? You can’t mean—”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“But it’s been decades,” I say, pacing a distance from the herd.
“It has. But something’s different now. Wildbloods getting called home. Finding their mates.”
Her planning again. Always planning. Seeing way out to where nothing’s happened yet.
My heart thuds.
“Honestly, I was kind of hoping that you and Eliza—”
“Never.”
The line goes quiet.
“Not a Wakefield. Not a human.” I don’t know which is worse.
“Okay, okay. Point taken. Calm down.”
“I’ll be out of here before the apples even drop.”
“And where will you go?” she challenges.
I shrug, more habit than thought. “Back to the life that suits me best. Away from people…. and civilization.”
“But what if you’re meant to be back here with us?”
“Ash bonded.” I lean against a rock, trying to steady myself. Doesn’t help a sharp headache’s pressed into the back of my neck and shoulders all morning.
I can’t decide if it’s better when Eliza goes away or stays. Both feel excruciating for different reasons.
“Yes, he did, and you won’t believe what happened.”
“I don’t want to know,” I counter.
“You do—”
“Magdalena, stop it. I want no part of it. Of this.” The hum. The way the mountains called me back. Now I understand. Ash awoke something bigger than he can comprehend. Bigger than this ranch or county. Something that should’ve stayed dormant.
“Well, you will come to the wedding?” she asks, hope threading her voice.
“Human customs. Human ways. Mere bandages that won’t stop a festering wound.”
“Guthrie,” she scolds. “You know better.”
Damn, I regret agreeing to the cell phone. Making myself available to communications like this. But Eliza wouldn’t have it any other way, calling it a company phone. To reach me when she needs me—what she’s paying for.
In the distance, columns of dust rise from the sinewy black asphalt. A raised white dually, beat up by too many miles and horse trailers, appears.
“Have to go. Back to work.”
“Kael, you will come to the wedding.”
More like break it up.
“Best stay far away, Mags.”
“Guthrie? What are you thinking?”
“Don’t want to know.” I pull the phone from my ear and end the call. Wildbloods breeding with humans again.
My guts tighten, face a grimace by the time the dust cloud and Eliza reaches me.
“Howdy,” she greets, jumping down. “Morning gone all right?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Let me get changed and throw together some lunch. Then, we’ll ride out together. I have something I want to show you.”
Her brown eyes burn like cinnamon, sweet as dark honey. Her button nose scrunches as she eyes me. “Not even halfway through the day, and you already need another bath.”
“Comes with sleeping in fields,” I drawl.
She puts a hand on her hip. “That’s why you should start sleeping in the house.”
“No way.”
She freezes for a moment, mouth working as if she wants to say more. Instead, she shakes her head, hissing under her breath, “Stubborn as all get out.”
“Alfalfa’s almost straight again,” Eliza says, side-eyeing me from the saddle.
“If straight’s cattywampus.” I cock my head to the side.
She pulls a notebook from her saddlebag and hands it to me. “Had a friend draw this. Someone good with glyphs and signs. Can almost read them like a second language.”
I peer at the drawing of the symbol in the field. Swirls radiating out from the center, almost like a diagram of an atom, or maybe…
“Sound waves,” I grunt.
Her eyes dart to me. “How do you know that?”
I shrug, not in the mood for a deep conversation.
But it’s still better than saying non-human. Or worse… alien.
Though I get the impression, that’s what some folks around here are hankering to hear.
Human nature. Always looking for what can’t be explained so they can kill it.
I chuckle to myself, shifting in the saddle. As if Raven’s Ridge could compete with the Extraterrestrial Highway or Area 51, anyway.
Eliza arches an eyebrow. “A penny for your thought.”
I frown. “I remember when those were worth something.”
Silence sits between us until her mouth starts working. Don’t want more blindsiding questions. Instead, I surrender to talking.
“That symbol reminds me of something I saw as a kid when the circus came through. A man who called himself a magician. Used to spread sand or salt in a tray,” my hands move now with the memory.
“A real thin layer. Then he’d let different frequencies vibrate the sand or salt into visual patterns.
Strangest thing I’d ever seen… well, apart from the mermaid. ”
“Mermaid?”
“Little figure, about a foot high,” I say, motioning some more. “Half monkey, half fish. Taxidermied. Only fools and youngins—like me—fell for it.”
“Wait,” Eliza says, putting a finger to her lips in thought. “That used to be on display at the local museum. The mermaid freak show exhibit… before the government men came.”
I chuckle, taken aback by the statement. “You and I sharing a memory. Who’d’ve figured?” Thinking about something between us puts heat in my cheeks.
She snorts a laugh. “A real hoax. Used to scare the bejeezus out of me. That and the shrunken head.”
“Shrunken head?”
“Brought back by old McCormick. The richest ranch owner in town. World traveler in his later years.”
The breeze carries rain and sage, dark clouds gathering along the horizon.
I fix my gaze at her. “And what if all this weren’t a hoax?”
“What do you mean?”
Don’t know why, but I have to know. “What if everything you fear most, everything you can’t explain is real, Eliza? Could you sit with that?”
She doesn’t answer. I knew she wouldn’t.
But a part of me hoped.
I squeeze the saddle horn tighter, another surge of hunger passing through me. My skin sizzles beneath the cotton. I’d give anything for a dip in the watering hole, to give it a break.
“Another headache?” she asks.
Guilt squirms through me, mean and insistent. Had to come up with something to explain my feelings around her. Why I have to stay away… though I can’t.
“Barometer pressure. Storm,” I excuse, eyeing the distant ridge.
She squints. “No different than usual.”
“Maybe not,” I grunt, another wave passing through me. I nudge Tempest to the side, putting five good feet between us. It’s not enough.
Her eyes cast to the side, face unreadable for a long moment. Then, she asks, “Do I smell bad?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she says, moving Daisy toward me. I back Tempest up another step. “You always have to keep this certain distance from me. Like you can’t stand to be around me.”
“Not a fan of being crowded.”
She huffs a laugh. “Two’s hardly a crowd.”
“More than I’ve endured for many years.”
Her face darkens, eyes flashing. “Sorry you have to endure me.”
“Not what I meant,” I answer, annoyance threading my voice. But also something like regret. If only she knew what she does to me. How much I’d sacrifice for one taste. “Employer-employee distance. Better that way. Now back to this,” I say, holding up the drawing.
“Any explanation?”
“Ley lines.”
She exhales sharply. “Sound waves now lay lines? You mean like magnetic fields or… musical resonance?”
The last part makes me want to double over. “Not the second word.”
“Resonance?” she repeats.
My tattoos jump, burning anew. I stare hard at the silver sliver around her wrist. The closest I can get to suppression, the dampener still useless in Raven’s Ridge with Mags.
“So, like a naturally occurring phenomenon?”
I frown. “Natural’s just a point of view, Eliza.” I throw the notebook back to her, not daring to draw any closer.
Then I turn Tempest, riding around the field.
“Wait! Aren’t you curious at all? Don’t you want to know what this is?”
“Already do.”
I hear Daisy and her following now. “And what’s that?”
“An anomaly. Something that shouldn’t be. Better forgotten… made extinct.”
“Extinction? But what does that have to do with anything?”
Her last question gets my attention. I sit deep in the saddle, exhaling and freezing my hips. My legs slack, and I grunt, “Whoa.”
But Tempest already stands frozen to the spot as if reading my mind.
I level my eyes on Eliza. “Everything.”