“Yeah?”
A tear slipped down my cheek, leaving a cold trail. “I’m really, really sorry. I should’ve trusted you from the start.”
The rush of tires over asphalt filled the quiet between us. Miserable and aching inside, I shuffled my limbs, trying to get comfortable.
“It might be better that you didn’t tell me,” Aaron whispered. “Kai and I promised Ezra … No matter what you’d said, I’m not sure we would’ve waited.”
I stared at him, my chest tight, then closed my eyes, knowing it would be a long time before my thoughts calmed enough for me to sleep.
“I don’t get motion sickness,” I told Aaron as I pressed the brakes and guided the SUV through a turn, the tires roaring over the packed gravel-and-dirt track. “But this is the windiest road I’ve ever driven on, and I think I’m getting motion sickness.”
Clutching the handhold on his door, Aaron kept his unblinking stare on the road. “You could slow down. That would help.”
“We’re already going so slow,” I grumbled, following another tight bend. “We’ve been driving on this crap road for, what, forty minutes? Fifty? How much farther?”
“A few more miles. But Tori, there’s snow on the road and you should really go a bit slower.”
“This little dusting? Aaron, I grew up in Ontario. I know how to drive in the snow.”
He pressed his lips together so hard they turned white. Bet he wished he was driving. Grinning, I kept the SUV’s speed steady.
Aaron had taken the first three hours of the drive, and in Seattle, we’d switched so he could get some sleep. Seattle to the Oregon border had been a breezy two-hour drive down a straight highway, but then it had gotten unpleasant.
Don’t get me wrong, the Oregon Coast Range was beautiful. Thick forest covered the low slopes, and the winding roads followed wide, snaking rivers bordered with white snow. But therein lay the problem: winding roads.
Our progress had slowed, and by the time the morning sun had lit the mountains, Aaron’s GPS had directed us from a two-lane highway to a wide single-lane road with no center line and a lot of potholes. No sooner had I complained about the shit road conditions than the asphalt had transformed into dirt. And maybe it was just me, but the road seemed to worsen the farther we drove.
It was truly the middle of nowhere. Aside from the occasional house right off the nonexistent shoulder, I hadn’t seen a single town or village. Not even one of those teeny hamlets with twelve houses and a general store. If I were going to hide a collection of brainwashed mythics and underage demon mages, yeah, this would be a great spot. Frankly, I was surprised the Keys of Solomon had ever found it.
“All right,” Aaron muttered, shuffling through printouts of routes and maps I’d prepared yesterday. “Which one of these … Here’s the map for Enright, but—”
“But we’re not going to Enright.” Which Google Maps didn’t know how to reach by vehicle anyway. “You want the directions from the Wheelie Wanderer blog.”
Enright wasn’t really a town. It’d been one once, but now it was just a stretch of abandoned train tracks and rusting equipment. Our destination was a nearby private property.
Aaron found the instructions to access Enright—provided by dirt-biking enthusiasts—as well as the information I’d dug up, with a little help from Darius, on the property where the demon mages had been found. I slowed the vehicle as we began searching for the turnoff.
Guess how excited I was when we finally found the turn and it put us on an even narrower, dirtier road?
I clutched the steering wheel as the vehicle bounced over the uneven ground. Luckily, the weather had been mild lately. Though a few inches of snow lingered in the sheltered forests, the roads bore only a thin layer that didn’t obscure its borders.
“Who,” I growled as we bounced, “would want—to live—here?”
“People who don’t want to be found,” Aaron replied grimly.
We followed what I assumed was a logging road past a clear-cut patch of forest, then turned onto another track that wound along the side of a mountain. We descended into a valley, and our view of the peaks disappeared as winter-bare trees hemmed in the road, so close that the occasional branch slapped the SUV.
It took another fifteen minutes to find the correct driveway, obscured by overgrown trees. The road, winding into the forest, was little more than two strips of dirt where tires had packed down the earth.
“This is it,” I muttered. “Let’s do this.”
I turned onto the track—and discovered the true and bone-shaking meaning of “bumpy.”
The wheels dipping and suspension rocking, I steered along the road at a crawl. I couldn’t tell if it had been maintained since the “extermination,” but at least it was clear of debris. Fallen branches and tree trunks lined the sides, but nothing blocked our route.
We bounced along for almost ten minutes, rounded a bend, and there it was.
Ezra’s former home. The twisted prison he and his parents hadn’t realized they’d fallen into. The scene of a massacre where sixty-eight people had died, including the summoner who’d doomed Ezra.
I shifted the SUV into park, cut the engine, and threw my door open. Cold air rushed into the vehicle as I jumped out into an undisturbed inch of snow. Despite being deep in the mountains, the temperature hovered just above freezing—not bad for late January.
Before its destruction, the commune had covered the gentle slope of a mountain in several tiers, with a large building at the base and several rows of housing beyond it. A dilapidated fence encircled an overgrown field to the west, and near the ridge at the top, one more structure had stood, but I couldn’t guess its purpose.
All the buildings were rubble now.
I studied the community center at the bottom of the slope, trying to imagine what it had looked like. I tried to imagine adolescent Ezra standing in this same spot when he’d first arrived with his parents seventeen years ago. I tried to imagine the Keys of Solomon storming through, armed and eager to do battle with rare demon mages—the ultimate trophy kill.
The SUV’s hatch slammed shut, making me jump. I turned to find Aaron zipping his coat over his protective vest. Sharpie, in its black case, was slung over his shoulder.
“We’re out in the sticks,” I reminded him. “I don’t think you need your sword.”
“No sense in taking chances.”
Okay, sure. I could get on board with paranoia. Exaggerating my gestures, I pointed the key fob at the SUV and pressed the lock button. The vehicle emitted a short beep as its alarm engaged.
Rolling his eyes, he held out my combat belt. I automatically reached for it, but as my hand closed around the leather, my throat constricted painfully.
The belt, which had once been loaded with all my artifacts, held only alchemy supplies—my paintball gun, an extra magazine of sleeping potions, and a handful of alchemy bombs. With such limited magic, would I be of any use as Aaron’s back up?
Shoving down my doubts, I took the belt and peeked in the back pouch. Hoshi, in orb form, was nestled in the leather, probably dreaming sylph dreams—or avoiding the cold. Who knew, but at least I could count on her help.