But first, they scattered the remains of their spell, all trace of magic at the cabin. At Amelia’s direction, he went around the clearing, taking down all the bits and pieces of her spells, kicking dirt over the symbols etched into the dirt, burning the last bits of string and sage, then stomping out the ashes. He left Peterson’s body where it was—let that be someone else’s problem.
No one else would starve on Donner Pass. At least not like this.
He charged his phone and made calls as they roared down the mountain in the Jeep. Domingo’s phone still wasn’t picking up. But Trina’s was.
“Trina. You get ahold of Domingo?”
The girl sounded exhausted. “Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, I tried to call but you weren’t picking up your phone.”
“Never mind, is she okay?”
“She’s okay. I mean, she was in bad shape when we got here, but she’s okay now.”
“I told you not to go near her.”
“But we had to, she was sick.”
Trina. Fluffy, happy, gossipy, heroic Trina. God. “You with her now? Tell me where you are.”
She gave him the address. He raced on.
Trina was making soup in the cozy, trim kitchen of Annie Domingo’s own Forest Service cabin, down near the visitor center. “My grandma’s soup,” she said, smiling. “Good for anything.”
The plain chicken broth was the perfect food for people who’d been starving.
Domingo had been struck after Cormac. She collapsed, and Trina and her neighbor found her curled up on the floor, groaning. And then. . .it had gone away. Cormac found a piece of rib bone on her front porch and smashed it under his heel.
Now, the ranger sat at her small kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket, regarding Cormac with confusion. Her cheeks were gaunt, her skin ashen, but growing more flush and lively by the moment. “I don’t understand.”
Neither did Cormac, really. He could explain what he’d seen, explain to her what she’d experienced. But that didn’t mean the explanation ma
de any sense. Not to someone in a uniform who had to write a report about it.
“If you’re looking for a culprit, it was Peterson. If you’re looking for a cause of death—call it poisoning. Whatever it is, it won’t happen again.”
“You sure?”
“I’m not real sure about anything these days. But yeah, I think it’s done.”
“Wow,” Trina said from the sink, pausing in the middle of washing dishes. “That’s wild.”
Domingo smiled weakly. “Trina hon, you probably shouldn’t go telling this story around to everybody.”
She huffed. “Yeah, I know. Who’d believe it?”
Domingo scrubbed her hands over her face and sighed. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or disgusted. Peterson? Nebbish annoying Peterson? For God’s sake, why? Why would he want to kill anyone?”
“He wanted this,” Cormac said, gesturing around the cabin, and by extension to the land outside, the visitor center, all the bronze plaques and pine forests, the creeks and mountains around them. “He was obsessed. He wanted to be a part of it. Take some of the glory for himself.”
The ranger stared. “There’s nothing glorious about the Donner Party. What they went through—it was five months of hell.”
“But can you name a more famous set of settlers?” She pressed her lips together; she couldn’t. Very few people who knew about the Donner Party could name any of the other tens of thousands of people who’d made that journey west. However horrible their ordeal, it and the sensational reporting of it after had made them famous. “He thought their fame made them great. And he wanted it.” He’d made a mistake so many made: no one could understand this thing as well as he did, therefore it ought to be his.
Trina shook her head. “I knew something was off with that guy. He’s from Fresno.”
Domingo sighed. “Thank you, I suppose. The police will probably want to talk to you again—”
“I’d rather not.”