Badlands Witch (Cormac and Amelia 2)

Amelia was missing information.

She had to get out of here.

Cormac got back to the motel for another hot shower and another sleepless night.

In the morning, he went back to looking for Durant’s car. Checked the rearview mirror frequently—and yes, as soon as he left town he had a tail, an unmarked car. Two men sat in front, one of them talking on a phone most of the time. Cormac stayed five under the speed limit just to annoy them.

He had a couple of spots left on his map and took his time with them. Some of it was rangeland, some of it out-of-the-way forgotten places with trailers and junked cars around. Cormac searched for the tan SUV. The cops kept their distance—letting Cormac do their work for them.

On a forested road in the choppy foothills, he found Durant’s car, seemingly abandoned. Parking some ways behind it, he got out, approached cautiously. It had been recently washed, so any evidence of the hit and run was erased. A forensics team might be able to get something. The inside was empty. Even the usual detritus that collected inside most cars—coffee cups and food wrappers—had been cleared out.

Another dead end. Well. Nothing to do but turn around and find the next road. He walked away without touching anything and called Nielson.

“You can tell the officers you’ve got following me that I found Durant’s car,” he said. “It’s been washed and looks abandoned. No idea where she could have gone.”

“Damn,” Nielson muttered. “I suppose you expect that calling me gives you points in your favor?”

“Naw, the fact you’ve got me doing your leg work is all the points I need. I’ll talk to you later, I’m sure—”

“Mr. Bennett.”

He hesitated. He could pretend he hadn’t heard and just hang up. But he answered. “Yeah?”

“If you find her, call me. Don’t confront her.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Detective,” he said and hung up.

He’d talk to her after he confronted Durant on his own terms, to get Amelia back.

Amelia could not save her captor. She should not need to. She wanted her body back. To do this she had to get the woman, the cage where she was keeping Amelia’s consciousness, and Cormac all in the same place. And she had to do it with no body of her own and no voice. By mere mental persuasion. She had to lay out a path and hope this woman followed it.

And then hope Cormac anticipated her. How well did the man know her, really?

Her captor had to sleep. No matter who she was, how mad she was, she had panicked herself to exhaustion and had to rest. This made her vulnerable, and Amelia came to her in dreams.

Tauntingly, Amelia’s mind whispered to hers, “You want him, not me. So how are you going to get him? Draw him out. Try your spell again—”

Too hard, too hard.

“Ah yes, a very dangerous, difficult spell. Where did you learn it? Very few who know such spells would dare to teach it.”

Paid. I paid.

Which meant somewhere in the world was a dangerous, unscrupulous magician selling their knowledge, unmindful of the risk. A problem for another time. “You might think of trying. You’ve come too far to give up, don’t you think? You would need to make a new vessel from scratch, enchant it, arrange another meeting it, get him to pick it up, except that he’ll be ready this time, cautious. On the other hand. . .”

What?

“You wouldn’t need to work the spell from scratch, perhaps. Perhaps. . .”

What? What?

“Oh that would never work,” Amelia thought slyly, prodding, withdrawing, pulling her captor closer.

What?!

“You could simply swap us out. Send me out and take him. It wouldn’t even be hard. I could show you.”

Her captor’s mind settled into something like planning. Strategizing.