Badlands Witch (Cormac and Amelia 2)

“I’m not convinced you know what you’re doing.”

“Quit stalling,” Durant said. “Pick up the jar.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

This was Amelia’s spell. Cormac was sure of it. Which raised a new question: how much did he trust Amelia? How much would she love to have his body without him to argue with over it? Maybe she didn’t need him. What would this spell do, really? Did he trust her? They had walked out of prison together. She had called them partners.

He flexed his hands. Tried to settle his mind. Be calm. Imagine the valley. Build up that space. That safety.

Durant pulled something else out of her bag. A 9mm handgun, pointed at him. “Pick it up!” she screamed.

In the end, he had only to ask himself one question. Which of them was stronger, Isabelle Durant or Amelia Parker? No question there, no question at all. He knelt by the jar and filled his mind with the thought: Amelia, I’m here.

He wrapped both hands around the pot.

Now. Now now now.

Imagine a rope and throw it to him. Cormac, grab hold. Grab hold, now!

They were now two minds with no body, and they needed an anchor.

He responded to her voice instantly.

Now imagine an anchor, holding them fast. Hold on to me, hold on.

I’ve got you, he said, and she could very nearly feel his arms around her. She almost laughed.

Where are we, where, where. . .

They stood in a valley, high in the Rockies. A pine forest bounded the grassy bowl through which a stream rushed and sang. Above them, blue sky. Home.

He stood before her, gripping her arms. His eyes were closed. She clung to him.

“Cormac,” she murmured.

His eyes opened. They darted, taking her in, all of her, and his hand cupped her cheek. “Amelia,” he breathed out.

She fell into his arms, laughing, and he held her tight. This was not real, this was only thought, but she felt him, a powerful embrace, full of desperation.

“What the hell happened?” he whispered to her ear.

“A bloody mess is what,” she answered, holding him. She didn’t want him to let go. May he never let go. . . “Where are we? Cormac, where are we?” She forced herself to pull away, but he kept his hands on her arms. An anchor.

“You don’t know?”

“There was a chance it could go wrong. Horribly, awfully wrong. I tried to anchor us to your body, but if I missed, if I got it wrong—” They might have ended up back in the jar. She tried to reassure herself that at least they would be together—

But Cormac donned a slow, sly smile. A hunter’s smile. “I think it’s time we have a word with Isabelle Durant.”

And he opened his eyes.

No more than a couple of seconds had passed. Durant was still standing here, backlit by washed-out streetlights, pointing the gun without conviction, waiting. She might have been holding her breath. Gregory waited in front of the shop, hands clenched into fists. The burnt smell of tension in the street was the same. Everyone waited to see what the trap had caught.

Cormac rubbed his fingers along the surface of the jar, its rough clay, the symbols in raised paint. It was inert now.

Amelia? he queried the back of his mind.