Badlands Witch (Cormac and Amelia 2)

Isabelle Durant had been a servant to vampires. She didn’t seem to hold her own soul in much regard. He wasn’t too sure about Gregory.

“I’ll text you tomorrow when I start things rolling,” Gregory said. “I’ll text again when she arrives. You’ll want to be close when she does. This will likely only work once.”

Handing over his phone number seemed even more momentous than giving the man a hair. Well, why not? This whole thing was already too personal.

“Till tomorrow then,” Cormac said, and walked out.

Somehow, he had to sleep, but he didn’t want to close his eyes. He should probably find a room, but he didn’t want four walls around him. He wanted to be able to run, if he needed to. Run from what, and to where, he didn’t know. His own mind wasn’t secure, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

He had stopped b

eing able to make decisions without that feminine voice adding her opinion. He had thought he resented that voice.

Finally, he broke down and found a run-down motor lodge outside of Deadwood. The walls were thin and didn’t block the sound of motorcycles roaring down the highway. Sturgis was an hour away, and it didn’t seem to matter that the rally wasn’t for another month, the hills still filled up with the machines.

He found some take-out Mexican, took a long, hot shower. He’d started smelling rank. Watched TV for the rest of the night, old movies on HBO that left no impression on him. He should sleep. But he didn’t want to sleep. Usually, at night, she talked to him.

The only place he felt truly safe was in the mountains, so in his mind he came here, built up this memory of a valley ringed by a pine forest, a rocky creek tumbling down the middle, thick grasses where elk sometimes grazed. He could sit at the edge of the meadow and be calm. Back in prison, the memory had become the chink in his armor. This was how Amelia had reached him. He’d tried to keep her out, but when dark magic, a demon feeding on pain and blood, invaded the prison itself, they had to work together to defeat it. Since then, this valley in his mind became theirs. She would stand right there, by those rocks, her hands folded in front of her. . .

Without her, it no longer felt safe.

He could not see the sky overhead. It ought to be searing blue, he ought to feel the sun on his face. Before, he could always hear the rushing, trickling water in the creek, smell the pines. Feel the grass under his hands. Now, the vision became dreamlike, and not in a good way. Some form of vertigo overcame him, as he squinted out to a scene that wasn’t any clearer than a faded picture. He could not feel the ground under him.

Several times that night he started awake and didn’t know where he was. Yesterday. It had just been yesterday that he lost her.

In the morning, he found breakfast at a coffee shop. Around the same time, Gregory sent him a text message: trigger pulled.

Cormac parked the Jeep in an alley the next street over from the tea shop, out of sight. Waiting gave him time to think. His mind felt empty and hollow, with nothing rattling around but his own neuroses. The trick to getting along was never giving himself time to look at his own head. He didn’t much like it in there.

Maybe he should read one of the books lying discarded on the passenger seat. They were Amelia’s: a history of Jerusalem in the twentieth century. The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis. A Georgette Heyer novel. They read together. She used his eyes. Now, his eyes were his own again.

He waited.

He didn’t know if Gregory could do what he said he could or if he played the odds and hoped for the best. He had seemed confident. Cormac wasn’t sure, but what did he have to lose? Magic was influence, not science, Amelia always said.

His phone dinged. Text message: now. Which meant Isabelle Durant had walked through the door.

Cormac took a deep breath, got out of the Jeep. Closed the door, locked it. Patted his pockets for the charms Amelia always made him carry, protections against curses, magic, evil eyes, whatnot. Could never protect against everything, though, could you? He checked for a gun in a belt holster that wasn’t there, years after he had stopped carrying. Never mind. He’d strangle Isabelle Durant with his bare hands if he had to.

Calmly, he walked around the block and up to the door of Tea on the Range. Couldn’t see much through the front windows, past the reflection of sky and street. He opened the door, strolled in, like he was just another customer on any average day.

She was there at the counter, in tight designer jeans, tall boots, and a silk blouse, hair bound up with a jeweled clip, her face perfectly made up. This was just how she’d looked when she was with Lord Edgar. A brown packet of herbs or tea sat in front of her, while Gregory typed something into a tablet. They both looked up at his entrance; Gregory backed away a step.

Durant’s eyes widened, and her hand went to her chest.

Cormac moved toward her, away from the glare of the front windows. Just in case she hadn’t gotten a good look at him.

“You,” she whispered in a choked voice.

He grinned. “That’s right.”

“No. . .”

“Yup.” He advanced, intending to close on her.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” she yelled, very much like she had seen a ghost. “I took your mind, why aren’t you dead!”

He hesitated. “What do you mean, you took my mind?”