She folded the bills, and they disappeared into the top of her blouse.
“Ah, could you come back later to clean? I really need to get in the shower and get this stuff off of me,” I said, as I unbuttoned my shirt.
“Si, just let me take the bed clothes. I need to get them soaking, so the blood will come out.”
“Certainly,” I agreed. I waited by the window until Estella departed, closing the door behind her.
As soon as she was gone, I threw the privacy latch and went into the bath. I hit the light switch and stripped off my torn and ripped, bloody shirt and stared at my reflection in the narrow mirror. My chest was so covered in dry blood that I couldn’t see where the last blade had gone.
Turning the water on in the shower, I finished stripping and climbed in. The water hadn’t gotten warm yet, and it was tepid at best. I let the flow cascade through my hair and down my back while I gathered my thoughts.
Damn, I was going to be a Wanderer. How cool was this? Tess and Rafe had impressed the hell out of me. The only drawback to meeting them was the loss of my mother. They’d managed to save me from whatever had possessed Mom and me but hadn’t been able to save her. It took me months to get my head around that, but eventually I came to understand that not even someone as powerful as a Wanderer could save everyone.
I opened the little shampoo bottle that came with the room and lathered up my hair.
A couple of weeks after Mom died, the internet and all of the news channels were frantically reporting on the events in Colorado. Apparently, someone had opened one of those portals Tess had told me about and all sorts of nasty critters invaded our world. The entire world seemed to be caught up in a fever of mythological proportions. Every creature caught added more and more excitement to the discovery.
The only one that no one ever found was an enormous red dragon that had flown off on the morning everything went to hell. Authorities had searched the front range of the Colorado Mountains for a month before giving up. All of the other creatures were killed or captured in the first couple of weeks. I could guess what happened to the dragon, but Rafe and Tess hadn’t been seen since that first morning. They’d disappeared from the battlefield while a news crew was zoomed in on them. One moment Tess was bending over Rafe’s mutilated body by the carcass of a black dragon and the next moment, they and their familiars just vanished. In their place, a pair of hawks leapt into the air and the camera lost them.
I’d thought Rafe might actually have died, but since his body wasn’t found, I assumed Tess had managed to get to him before he died. Tess having her own limbs regrown by magic had left me confident that they could heal any wound, if they survived the blow.
I switched from shampoo to soap and scrubbed my skin until the drain ran clear. Pushing back the curtain, I stepped out. The mirror was too steamed up for me to see my reflection at first, but once I’d dried off, I wiped down the mirror. I studied my wounds. All had disappeared beneath new pink tissue. The one in my chest was still tender, but other than that, I looked fit. I also looked a little gaunt, like the flesh under my skin had shrunk. I looked a little older than yesterday, but I knew that was a side effect of Wanderers using a lot of magic.
I was also starving. I remembered how much food Tess had scarfed down while her injuries were healing. It was to be expected.
I felt for power. There might not be a ley line nearby, but I felt energy flowing toward me from everything around me. It wasn’t as strong as when I tapped a ley line, but it’d have to do until I could find one.
Once the flow was in progress, I shaved and dressed.
I wrapped my bloody clothes together and put them in a laundry bag.
I was putting my wallet and hotel key in my fresh shorts when a thought occurred to me. Why hadn’t my killers taken my room key? Oh, yeah, they wouldn’t have known what room I was in and they couldn’t just go from room to room checking to see what it opened. Or could they? Why had they been kidnapping that girl? For that matter, why had four more shown up as soon as I confronted the first one? I hadn’t noticed anyone else on the roof when I went after the kidnapper, but that didn’t prove anything. Still, it was almost as though they were waiting for someone to intrude. But that was crazy, wasn’t it?
My stomach growled and I left other concerns alone while I went looking for food.
I was sitting on a barstool, overlooking the pool and dozens of young men and women my age having fun, while I devoured two hamburgers, fries, a chocolate malt, and a large piece of key lime pie when a thought occurred to me.
Rafe and Tess must already be on their way to find me. Tess had told me the other Wanderers had been wiped out and now it was just Rafe and her. Since Wanderers started out as apprentices, then Rafe would be having two apprentices. The thought of seeing Tess again had me grinning.
I still had trouble wrapping my mind around becoming a Wanderer, but partnering up with Tess was something to look forward to.
Chapter 7
Therese
There was movement in the branches above my head and a dusting of needles fell around me. I gazed up
