Below, the ranch spread out in a series of outbuildings, paddocks and a main house with a satellite casita. Still sleeping, all of them. Even the horses were silent, slouching in the sunshine to shake the chill of the high desert night.
He wondered if his brother had made it this far.
Leave it alone. You’ll never know.
He shouldn’t have come back. He could do nothing more than draw attention to her, and he’d seen how unprepared she was, how resistant to warning—how reactive to his very presence. But here he was, sitting on the crest of a ridge with his legs crossed and his hands relaxed on his knees, watching for the movement he already knew as hers.
He’d come here the day before, too. Fool. Lured by nothing more profound than her very presence, the tangible self she’d imbued into this land along with her love of it—just as her mother had. Lured by the hope that she might change her mind, if he could find the right moment to approach again. More fool yet.
He’d known her just as surely as she’d known him. He hadn’t needed the research, the driver’s license photo from sources that didn’t know they’d been tapped, the old online yearbook from her high school. Glossy dark hair, wiry form with a scarcity of curves, a narrowchinned foxy face and almond eyes, so heavily lashed as to look sooty. He’d known her, all right. And he’d—
He lifted his shoulders, tensed, and let them drop—literally shrugging away the memory of his unexpected response to her, the ache he could still feel.
Or trying to.
Best not to go down there again in any event. He didn’t have the time to convince her to delve through painful memories in hunt of the tiniest clue. He definitely didn’t have the time to sort out his response to her—a stupid, foolish response from someone who had every reason to know better.
He’d have to hope that the remains of the fading wards on this land were strong enough. They’d already failed in the untamed areas, but here, right around the heart of the ranch, they held. “You’re on your own, Meghan Lawrence,” he murmured out loud, and then wondered whom he was trying to convince.
Knowing the answer just made him mad.
He came to his feet in one swift motion, turning his back on the sharpening sunlight. Too bad it couldn’t burn away the persistent ethereal haze of the Atrum Core’s presence—he knew he’d see it out there again once the sun rose high enough, hovering over the spring dust devils of the lower grasslands. They wanted what he wanted, and they wanted it badly: the indestructible Liber Nex. They’d wanted the ancient manuscript since they lost it, back when the Spanish conquistadors were foolish enough to use its recipes and wisdom against a new land, stealing ancient native strengths, twisting power they hadn’t understood.
That particular expedition had consequently destroyed itself, leaving the Liber Nex on its own among the land’s own people, obscure and mostly forgotten, but recognized as an object of great evil by those with the vision to see. The most recent rumors of its existence—from the eighteen hundreds—placed it in northern Mexico. And nearly twenty years earlier, talk of it had revived, making its way into the Sentinel archives on nothing more than the whispers of hope growing in the Atrum Core. Whispers grown loud enough to act on, however belated. Fifteen years ago.
Dolan didn’t have any trouble believing the Liber Nex had made its way just north of the border. Or that it had even somehow been found during the mess of an operation that followed. Found and hidden again, by someone who didn’t live to tell of it.
Such a person would have to be tricky of mind…would have to enjoy puzzles. Not necessarily a powerful Sentinel, not necessarily even a proficient one. Just good at mind mazes, and good of heart.
Just like the coyote shifter who had once lived on this land.
And the Atrum Core had finally figured it out, first chasing the whispers, then infiltrating Sentinel intelligence, and now, finally, racing Sentinel reaction.
Well. Racing Dolan.
As far as he knew, the brevis regional consul still debated over the best team to send, no doubt cursing his willingness to act without them. His brother had taught him that—not to count on them. He’d learned it again when the local Core drozhar had gotten his hands on Dolan, and the Sentinels had assumed Dolan dead…leaving him to escape while they pondered the most politic response to the situation.
Hard lessons, well learned.
Dolan’s gaze flicked to the horizon. There was the haze again, thicker than ever, right where it had been during the two days Dolan had hunted the manuscript. Margery Lawrence had died on this land; the manuscript couldn’t be far if she’d truly been the last to hide it.
And Meghan Lawrence might know of it, and yet he was supposed to sit in Sonoita and wait as the Core closed in, led by Fabron Gausto…a man with a grudge.
He wished truly that he believed Meghan knew of the manuscript, though he feared she didn’t. But he did believe she knew her mother’s ways better than any of them, and that she might hold latent, buried clues to the manuscript’s location. He took a sudden deep breath, beset by the urge to return to the ranch, to talk to her…to convince her. But there was no time for that, so instead he let that breath go in a harsh gust, giving the ranch one last lingering look before he turned away. “Be careful, Meghan Lawrence.”
And Meghan Lawrence lifted her face to the still air of the morning, standing in the eastern doorway with the sun streaming over her hair and face, warming the huge old flannel shirt she’d thrown on over her skimpy night tank top. Cold desert nights, welcome dawn. A faint contact brushed over her skin, as subtle as the sunlight—but it tingled over her entire body, including the skin well hidden in flannel. Without thinking, she followed impulse; she ran out into the hard-packed dirt and dust of the yard, bare feet a stupidity in this climate of things that bit and stung and pricked. She couldn’t have said why she searched the steep slab of ground west of the ranch, but search it she did.
And far up the slope, gliding upward with power unhindered by the steep, rocky ground, she saw the sinuous black shape of a big cat.
She wanted to say good riddance or get lost or don’t come back. She wasn’t sure why she instead murmured, “Be careful, you.” Or why she stood bare-legged in the yard watching for a black form long since gone, her fingers clutching the flannel shirt closed and Jenny’s dog investigating her toes.
“Meg, you all right?”
Meghan looked at Jenny in surprise, then down at the rubber currycomb and stiff rice-bristle brush in her hands. The horse cross-tied before her—a sweet little mare still regaining her health after her former owner nearly neglected her to death—had obvious swirls of curry pattern in her shedding spring coat, not yet brushed smooth. It was a task Meghan should have finished half an hour earlier…if she hadn’t been staring at the oddly hazy nature of the eastern horizon.
That tingle between her shoulder blades…she wasn’t sure, any longer, that her Sentinel visitor had caused it. The Atrum Core uses many forms, her mother had once said, patiently teaching a young girl what feeble wards she could muster, what faint healing skills. They are just people, but they do things that would horrify you and me.
It had been too much for her at six or eight or ten, but now that she was twenty-five, those words lived deep within.
And warned her.
Meghan gave Jenny a little smile, full of sheepish chagrin for a job half finished and hiding thoughts she could never share. “Woolgathering,” she admitted.
“More than that.” Fair Jenny had a knack for seeing through those little white lies, even the ones people told themselves. She also had the knack of