More than a hundred years ago she had known she was dealing with dark, powerful, unpredictable magic. Had it been even more powerful than she thought? Had she somehow removed her own soul from the possibility of death? No, that wasn’t it. She still had form, boundaries. She was restricted in some physical, concrete way. Trapped. Her soul hadn’t been set loose—it had been put somewhere.
The clay pot. This had happened when Cormac picked up the artifact. Oh. . .this made sense. This was the anchor holding her in place. With this image firmly in mind she was able to collect herself and identify the boundaries trapping her, like some genie in a bottle. Her mind was contained, which meant she could use her thoughts for other things.
The woman, the archeologist, Aubrey Walker. She had not seemed magical to Amelia. She wore no charms or talismans and had seemed exactly as she appeared. But she had done this. She must have lured them out, set a trap—and captured Amelia.
But how could the woman have known about Amelia? Nothing about this made sense.
Unlike her time in the prison, she could not reach out to try to touch some nearby mind. To communicate, however little she was able. There was no one here, and the walls of this prison were secure.
Damn. Damn damn damn.
Impossible to tell how much time passed, without the body to mark heartbeats and breath, or eyes to watch sunlight come and go. She could count seconds ticking by, if she wanted to do nothing else. Amelia had spent years counting the seconds, in prison.
She had survived prison once and would do so again.
As it happened, she had not been abandoned here. She had been made captive. It stood to reason that a captor existed, and Amelia had only to wait for her captor to make itself known. And it came as lightning. A bolt of pain, scattering the self she had worked so hard to keep whole. The strike came once, a streak and flash launching through her prison. The second time it came, she was ready for it and was able to watch. The third time, she stood fast against it.
This was magic, it had to be magic. All that was left of Amelia was her magic, the soul of her that made magic possible. This was not physical torture; this was designed to tear at her soul. By the same token, one could not bind a soul as one could bind a body. She could resist in ways a tortured body could not. Magic was thought, was visualization, so she made herself a wall, a shield between herself and the torture. A prison within the prison, in a sense, but this one she controlled. The soul-blast came again, and Amelia was insulated. It did not touch her. Then it struck again, even more fiercely. Her shield held. Three more times, faster and harder, as if whoever cast the bolts was growing frustrated. As if they tried to shake Amelia out of her defenses.
Then the attacks paused. Amelia counted this as a victory and waited for the next assault. Her captor was active and meant to punish her. She would be ready.
The next attack came as heat, a slow simmering, as if she sat in a cook pot waiting for the water to boil. Clumsy and inelegant. The same defenses she had used before held.
Then came nightmares, but they were mere illusion, black swarms of demons, showers of knives, as insubstantial as she herself was. Amelia was able to step aside, detach herself from the onslaught directed at her, and observe.
Then came the voice. You can’t resist you can’t stop me how are you doing this how are you surviving. . .
So this was what it was like, having a voice in the back of one’s mind, nagging.
Her captor expected some reaction that Amelia was not delivering. This gave her satisfaction. But she knew nothing of her captor’s purpose, why the torture was happening at all. Her attacker expected her to be helpless, to have no experience of magic, of the occult practices that were required to stage such immaterial tortures.
If only Amelia could reach out, find some way to discover what was outside her prison. Think, she had to think. But she felt like she was a small fox hiding in an even smaller cave while the hounds bayed outside. If she moved, she was finished.
No, she was bigger than this, better. Whoever her torturer was, was clumsy, unskilled, using brute force instead of precision. Amelia represented a hundred years of magical experience. This was a duel, and she had the advantage, because her attacker didn’t know she had initiated a battle. That the lioness was unchained. Amelia rolled up metaphorical sleeves and got to work.
She imagined sending a message. She imagined all the ways she might scry, looking for such a message from the beyond, and then thought of the process in
reverse, sending instead of receiving. Trying to control which way the runes turned up or how the tea leaves scattered at the bottom of the cup. If she could not reach any nearby minds, could she reach out to magic itself? Magic trapped her here; she was half magic herself. Surely she could use that. She must.
Trying anything was better than trying nothing. She would start with a simple S.O.S. A cry, I am here, I am still here. She did not know if Cormac was still alive to hear it. But they had other friends, other magicians who might be receptive to her call. If they heard her, they might be able to help.
For now, she only wanted to be heard. S.O.S., S.O.S., S.O.S.
Cormac expected, maybe he hoped for, a classic Hollywood image of an Old West town with dusty storefronts and maybe a tumbleweed or two rolling down the street. But he drove around the curve and into the steep, wooded gulch where the town lay, and his heart sank. Casinos, everywhere. Too many shiny new buildings, tour buses with tinted windows, dozens of weekend motorcyclists. Another mountain town turned into a tourist gambling center, just like Black Hawk back home. Place like this wouldn’t have enough magical savvy to fill a shoe. What was Judi thinking, sending him here?
A billboard hung on a corner of a building: Witness the Thrill of a Main Street Shootout! Realistic! Fun! Family Approved! Live shows three times a day recreating the murder of Wild Bill Hickok. Well, there was that, he supposed.
The address Judi gave him was at the end of the old main street, several blocks away from where the bulk of the casinos and T-shirt shops and crowds gathered. He parked, which was a challenge in itself in a town like this. He tried not to get annoyed. Trouble was, he’d started annoyed and was edging into rage.
Even though he knew exactly where it was, he walked past the place three times before realizing he’d arrived. The storefront was unassuming, weathered brown, with a closed door and dusty windows. A small sign hung above the front door, words painted in a touristy old-timey font: Tea on the Range.
The tourists walking up and down the sidewalk didn’t seem to notice it. No one went inside. Frowning, Cormac pulled open the door and entered.
The floorboards were worn from decades of feet passing over them. The ceiling was high, and had what must have been the original pressed-tin decoration. The sunlight coming in through the windows filtered hazily through dust that might have been hanging in the air for years.
To his right, what must have once been a bar now served as a counter. An old mirror, worn and pitted, hung behind it, surrounded by shelves, which didn’t hold bottles of booze but rows of labeled tea tins, along with mismatched cups and saucers and mugs. A display case of pastries sat nearby. A half a dozen bistro tables and chairs spread out in the front half of the shop. The place was empty of customers.
The back half of the store looked more like what he expected, what the back half of the Manitou Wishing Well looked like: shelves of books, handmade soaps and herbal sachets, crystals and tarot cards, all of it innocuous enough you could take it as seriously or not as you chose. Cormac looked around for the signs that he ought to take this place seriously: charms hanging above the doorway, spells worked into the signage. The pressed-tin ceiling was mostly made up of a flower motif that repeated, nothing mystical to speak of, but here and there a newer piece had been placed over the old, symbols that didn’t go with the other decoration.