“Thank you, Mr. Bennett.”
He gave her a lazy salute and headed back to the Jeep.
Peterson was waiting for him at the bottom of the hill. His truck was pulled across the road; Cormac didn’t have a choice but to stop.
Elton Peterson stood by his truck, arms crossed. His manner was still hunched over and squirrelly, like he was on the cusp of something earth-shattering that was weighing him down and fraying his nerves. Cormac didn’t have time for this. But, as he expected, Peterson got right in front of him and stared him down.
“So. Did Bellamy ask you to be on his show?” Peterson demanded. He was probably trying to be calm.
“You mind pulling the truck over so I can get by?”
“Who are you, that he asks you and not me?”
He doesn’t really expect an honest answer to that. . . .
“I don’t know,” Cormac drawled, looking off into the trees, giving one of his country-boy shrugs. “Don’t really understand those Hollywood types.”
“No, I mean it,” Peterson said, stepped forward. “Who are you?”
If he got any closer, Cormac would be very tempted to deck the guy. Assault charge, that post-conviction ticker in the back of his head reminded him. So he took a breath and just stared. “I’m just looking into some things for Annie Domingo.”
“Art Weber? Is that what you’re looking into? He was just as bad as all the rest of them, he didn’t understand, not really.”
“And what is it we’re all supposed to be understanding?”
“The possibilities.”
Cormac tilted his head, asking silently. What was it the guy had found, or thought he’d found?
Peterson shook his head, as if acknowledging that he’d said too much. “You won’t find it. People have been in this valley for a hundred and fifty years looking for something. They haven’t found it. None of them.” His eyes blazed, and the tiniest smile twitched on his lips. “Stay out of my way, Mr. Bennett. Everyone needs to stay out of my way.”
He clambered back in his truck, roared down the road.
What has he done? Cormac—what has that man gone and done?
“I have no idea,” he murmured, watching the dust kicked up by Peterson’s departing car.
Amelia paced back and forth, her skirt swishing through the lush grass of their shared meadow. “I wouldn’t have thought the man had a magical bone in his body, much less the knowledge to evoke. . .well, whatever it is that’s been evoked.”
“The memory of starvation,” Cormac murmured.
Frowning, she looked at him. “Well yes. Exactly.”
They’d argued, after Peterson drove away. Cormac wanted to go after him right that moment, run him off the road, put his hands around his throat and demand answers. Amelia argued for restraint, and not just because Cormac couldn’t afford to get caught assaulting someone. “If he really did do something that resulted in Weber’s death—on purpose, even—we hardly want to confront him directly. Neutralize his power first.”
Which sounded good, but they didn’t know what his power was. The hint of a magical vortex, the open knife, the scrap of bone. Nothing in Amelia’s catalog of experience accounted for it. She needed to think. They needed to plan.
And so, however much he hated the idea of doing nothing, he went back to the motel, had dinner, and went to bed early. Sort of went to bed. Rather, he dreamed, and watched Amelia pacing.
In the valley in his mind, the one place he could look at Amelia—or at least an image of her, whatever that meant—he studied the map she’d spread out on a rock. She’d reproduced their map of the area—or drew on his memories to create an image of it, he still wasn’t sure of the mechanics and didn’t think about it too much. She’d marked it up with circles and diagrams to show what they’d done, what spikes of magic they’d found, and speculated about what might happen next. The Alder Creek campsite, all by itself on the upper right corner, had a star in a different color. They’d encountered something there, but it wasn’t connected to the magic centered around Weber’s cabin. Probably.
It should be her with the body, dealing with all this. He felt like a poor translator.
“Does it bother you?” he asked.
“Of course it does, if Peterson really is some amateur would-be wizard dealing with powers of which he has no idea and little control—”
“No, I mean. . . this.” He gestured around at their meadow, the place in his mind they shared, this strange dream-place existence. The one place they stood face to face.