Her boot toe snagged on a lump of limestone, going up, then hunted around for the top of it coming down again. Gotcha, you mother. Her other foot inched up, found a hairline ledge and twisted sideways to stick by sheer inertia. She shifted weight from point to point gradually, never committing to any hold before she tested it, just moving one thing at a time. It was a dance, a vertical tango with her bod spread all over her gritty lover. Get to the top, and it would be orgasm time.
She ought to find that ledge any move now, that wide place in the road that would look like downtown Boston in comparison with the microscopic holds she'd been using. Her right hand relaxed and backed out of the crack, fingertips exploring for her lover's hot-spots in the dark. There was the swell of the ledge. She turned her head sideways to look up for the best approach.
The movement pushed her body out from the rock, maybe half an inch. Her left hand jerked and pebbles rattled down the cliff. Jo plastered herself against the stone again, holding on by body-friction and feeling the coarse surface against cheek, breasts, belly, hips. It flowed past her, grain by scratching grain, and then her boots popped loose from the wall and she was falling again.
Her head snapped forward, and she looked into a surrealist parachute ride, the tumbled boulders floating up to her like bubbles in a scuba movie. "Don't land on that one," the image said. "It's sharp and unstable."
Suddenly she felt like a flying squirrel gliding sideways to hit the one over there--it was solid and smooth and firmly rooted. She planted both boots just so, broke her fall with bent knees, threw her weight back just so, and kicked out into a back flip that carried her into the soft cradle of the pool again.
The cold water smacked her in a belly-flop that burned from her toes right up to her forehead. She snorted water and gasped, flailing her way to the edge of the pool and crawling over moss-slick rock to lie dripping and panting at the bottom of the hole again.
Right under the frigging waterfall. That was appropriate. The land showed its amusement by pissing on her head.
Back to square one. She didn't even have enough breath to do a decent job of cussing.
She also didn't have a clue about what she'd just done. That dreamlike sense of flying couldn't have been real. But it had saved her ass again. She reminded herself to quit asking questions. She might not like the answers.
Something tangled with her left hand. The fucking bush. She still had her latest portable handhold, about four feet of scrub, dripping wet and bleeding clear red sap from its mangled roots. No wonder she couldn't swim worth a damn.
It was probably poison ivy. She didn't know what that looked like, but it would just fit right in. She tossed it on the remains of her fire and glared at it. Traitor bastard plant.
Water sizzled from the coals of her fire, and the bush sparked into flame. She blinked at the apparition. It shouldn't burn. It was green and soaking wet. It steamed and spat and smoked like a smoldering rag-pile, but it burned. Maybe it was her hatred burning.
She crouched over its heat, stripped off Maureen's jacket, and gave three cheers for modern synthetics. If it had been goose down, it would have cost twice as much and turned into a sodden worthless mess when it got soaked. Polyester fiber didn't absorb water, and it had held enough air to act as a lifejacket when she first fell into the sinkhole, hurt and stunned.
She wrung out the water in streaming sheets, stripped off her sweater and did the same, then the boots and socks, then the pants. Shivering, she danced naked around the fire to warm up, cussing the world in general.
"You would be the sister."
Her head jerked up with shock at the voice. A thin shadow moved against the sky and her first thought was, I'm saved!
Her second thought was, That's a man's voice. She blushed and grabbed her pants and shoved legs into cold wet denim. Yecch. Ditto for the clammy top. At least her embarrassment would help to steam the water out. Literal em-bare-ass-ment, she giggled to herself. Soaking wet, her sheer underwear gave about as much cover as Saran wrap. Well, a free show was a cheap enough price for a rope out of this hole.
Minimally decent, she looked up again. All she could see was a silhouette, dark against the afternoon sky, hands casually in its pockets. Watching.
Her ears burned again. "Do you have a rope?"
She sat on a rock and squeezed water from each sock, again, before putting them on, and then squished her feet into the sodden boots. The silence hung a little too long for comfort.
"Oh, I could probably conjure one up. I think my sister left me that much power."
The shadow didn't move. Jo felt the hair on the back of her neck start to prickle. What the hell was wrong with the schmuck? This smelled like one of Maureen's paranoid psycho daydreams, enemies all around.
"Look, I fell in here and can't get out. I'd really like some help."
"It looked to me like you were doing fine: a little flying, burning wet wood with a glance, that sort of thing. Why don't you witch your way out?"
"Left my broom back at the gingerbread house," she muttered. Then she raised her voice again. "A rope would be a lot easier."
The shadow shrugged, and a coiled snake flipped down, splashing in tangles across the water and rock. She stared down at salvation, lying at her feet. Jo relaxed for an instant before she realized something was wrong.
Both ends of the rope had come down. Bastard had thrown the whole thing. Hadn't held on to one end, hadn't tied it off or looped it around a
