The old Ute shaman smiled and then said something in what I took to be his original language. He touched the top of my head with his fingers, and I felt a small snap of energy.
“You two be safe now and come back to see me when you can. If I can help with the larger issue, I will. Now take care,” he said and turned toward his cabin.
I watched him for a moment, curious about the spell he’d cast and then set my saddlebags across Maia’s shoulders and mounted up. As soon as I was settled, Beast leapt into the night with Maia right behind him.
“Joe likes you,” Rafe said over the noise of beating wings.
“Oh?”
“That was a blessing he cast on you.”
“A blessing? Like when a priest blesses you?” I asked.
“Similar, except few priest can bless as effectively as Joe. You never know what form the blessing may take, it may be that you can’t get sick for the next year, but since Wanderers rarely get diseases, it probably won’t be that. It may give you luck or make you more charismatic until it wears off.”
“Charismatic? Like for instance…” I trailed off and waited for Rafe to explain.
He grinned at me. “Nah, couldn’t be that. You are already too charismatic for your own good.”
I waited, still expecting a better explanation, and then realized that Rafe had been paying me a compliment. Charismatic, eh? Well, well.
The flight across town took less than five minutes.
Landing behind my Aunts’ house, we dismounted our familiars. We climbed the steps to the deck, side by side, and at the top Rafe held out his hand. I clasped it in mine, and in a few seconds, we meshed. As our breathing, auras, and emotions merged, I saw through both our eyes, heard with both our ears, and smelled–you get the picture–Rafe already had his senses tat active and the night brightened to me until it was almost like daylight.
Lights were on in the house, but I heard nothing coming from inside. Rafe and I studied the back door and without warning, he triggered an energy blast into the lock. The steel core door bent as the lock tore free of the doorjamb.
“You could have checked if it was locked,” I said without malice.
Rafe shrugged. “It didn’t occur to me that your aunts’ would leave the back door unlocked. I guess next time I’ll have you check first.”
“Next time? You think we’ll be needing to break into their house again?”
“No, I meant the next time I’m going to force an entrance.”
He pushed the warped door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. I took a quick glance around the back yard, that blast wasn’t noiseless, but saw no sign of inquisitive neighbors.
“Holler if you see anyone,” I said to Maia.
“Yes, mistress.”
Mistress, me…it sounded weird, even coming from a hippogriff.
I followed Rafe inside. The back door opened into a mud room/laundry combination. Except for splinters from the doorjamb, the room was neat. No sign of a struggle. Rafe had already gone into the kitchen, and I hurried to keep up.
The kitchen had seen better nights. Several of Aunt Emily’s All-Clad pots and pans were strewn about the floor rather than hanging in their spots above the center island. A couple of jars had been shattered and flour decorated the side cabinet and part of the floor. I noticed the smell of cordite and then saw a Beretta semi-auto handgun against the molding on the left side of the kitchen. I bent to recover it while Rafe started down the hallway toward the bedrooms.
I sniffed the barrel. The Beretta had been fired recently. Pressing the magazine release dropped the thick, double-stack, .40-caliber magazine into my palm. I glanced at the back and saw that two rounds were missing from the ten it had started with. I decocked the hammer, clicked on the safety, re-inserted the magazine, and stowed the pistol in a jacket pocket.
Aunt Emily might find a use for it when we found them.
I took one more look around the kitchen, glanced into the living room–which was in a similar state as the kitchen–and hurried down the hallway after Rafe.
I found him in the master bath. He had two hairbrushes in his hands. It was obvious whose was whose.
“Either of these will work, but we’ll take both in case they aren’t being held together,” Rafe said as he handed me Emily’s brush.
I stowed it in an inside pocket, and we headed back for our familiars.
Once outside, Rafe handed me his grimoire. I held it on my palms, and he spoke to the book. The pages flipped past until the locator spell was facing up.
“Now read along with me and concentrate on the hair in the brush,” Rafe said.
Together we read the spell aloud and at its conclusion, there was a snap of energy. All of the hair floated off Ashley’s brush and wove itself into a small thread of hair. Immediately thereafter, a glowing arrow appeared around it. The arrow spun around twice and then pointed to the southeast.
“There’s our target,” Rafe said. “Mount up.”
In less than a minute, we were airborne again following the glowing arrow as it led us toward the bright lights of the airport.
Chapter 23
Raphael
The lights of the airport grew larger and more distinct as we followed the tracker’s arrow toward Tess’s Aunt Ashley. When we reached the airport perimeter, I had Beast and Maia fly parallel to the fence while I watched the arrow to see if would narrow the location down without us flying directly toward it. Even behind the hawk glamours of Beast and Maia, there was always a chance of detection by either magical or some technological means that I couldn’t fathom. It was safer to fly an obtuse path and only bore straight in as we neared their location.
It was well after midnight, and the airport terminal was practically deserted. To the east, on the Peterson AFB side of the runway, back from
