Fifteen minutes of driving brought Peyton farther down the bumpy country road and within five miles of Morris Farms according to his GPS. He hadn’t seen a sign or another vehicle for the last ten minutes.
This is as good as time as any.
Peyton slowed his SUV and pulled to the side of the road. Driving straight into a farm that might be hidden by magic and asking around would probably end with him being turned into a toad.
He killed the engine and pressed a button to open the back hatch. Whistling, Peyton wandered to the back to pull out one of the drones he’d brought. Whatever magic was being used to shield the farm obviously worked from thousands of feet up, but he suspected a closer inspection might reveal the truth.
“Just here for a few photos,” Peyton murmured to himself. “In and out. No fuss, no muss, no guns, no getting turned into a toad. No guy calling me bad names in German.”
A few minutes later the drone buzzed away from Peyton, flying low to the ground. He sat inside the car taking deep breaths, his attention focused on the feed on his phone.
What if the gnome has some sort of spell where he can zap me through the drone?
Peyton’s stomach tightened and he swallowed, remembering how he’d almost ended up getting killed in a parking lot in Madison on a previous venture outside LA.
Surviving the experience had only reinforced in Peyton’s mind that he harbored no hidden danger fetish. Shay could fight crazy Australian monsters in the desert, but he’d mostly stick to his computer.
Peyton slapped a hand to his forehead. “What the fuck am I doing? The Midwest is my kryptonite.” He took several deep breaths and shook his head. “Nope. Keep it together. Sometimes you just have to verify things on site. I just won’t get near them. There have been no mysterious deaths reported in the area, so it’s not like the gnomes are killing everyone who snoops around them.” He winced. “Unless they covered up the deaths with magic. Oh, shit. Maybe I will die a toad.”
The drone continued zooming along fifty feet off the ground. Few trees lined the road, and the open, flat land offered nowhere to hide. After a couple of miles, Peyton stopped the drone’s advance and increased its altitude.
Being closer to the farm would have been preferable, but the custom camera he’d installed would get him decent images even at a distance. He was there to verify the presence of the gnome, not sell pictures to tabloids.
Peyton magnified and enhanced the image of the farm. He saw nothing but the pure excitement of rows and rows of corn, along with ancient trucks and tractors.
Peyton focused on one of the trucks and then a tractor. The old designs were consistent with what he could make out in the satellite photos, but the vehicles looked spotless, as if they’d been sitting in a vault for decades and had been deployed to the farm the day before.
“Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all.”
The image shimmered for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” He repositioned the drone, but the shimmer didn’t reappear.
Shay has to concentrate to find the gnome’s shop in the mall, and she said the gate at Alison’s school screws with people’s minds. There are tons of other examples of mental and physical illusion magic that can be beaten by knowing what you are looking for. Could the gnome be pulling that off even through a drone feed?
Peyton gritted his teeth and stared at the image, ignoring the feel of the phone in his hand and the flight data. He let his eyes grow unfocused like he was trying to spot a hidden picture in a colorful pattern, but kept his mind on the idea of gnomes and Bosvid.
Something moved on the phone, breaking his concentration. He wasn’t even sure what he’d seen since the feed revealed the same boring eternally-unchanged farm as before. That might be proof of something strange, but it wasn’t proof of a hidden gnome.
Peyton rewound the drone footage. A distortion had hit the feed, but he had no idea of the source. He rewound the footage again and started advancing it frame by frame.
Corn, tractors, trucks…nothing special. There wasn’t even a fake human or two in the images.
“What the hell?”
Peyton blinked at a single frozen frame. If he backed up or advanced one frame, there was nothing but the same unchanging farm. The image in between was a slice of a different reality.
Dozens of gnomes wandered the farm, many sitting around long tables that didn’t appear in any of the other images. Although some of the rows of corn remained, many newer buildings with odd curving designs stood in what should have been corn fields. There were no tractors or trucks.
“Huh,” Peyton murmured. “So I didn’t just find Bosvid, I found an entire hidden gnome colony.” He grinned. “I’m so damned good.”
Chapter Eight
Shay nibbled on her salad, smirking at James. He was glaring at his salad as if the very concept of a non-meat-based course offended him. The man needed to get over it. The nice little family diner they’d picked for their meal had something for everyone, and she wasn’t going to eat barbeque or burgers every meal. She didn’t even want pizza for every meal, and she adored pizza.
You’re going to win in the long run anyway, James, since Alison’s trying to eat more meat. Soon, we’ll never go to a place that isn’t a steakhouse or barbeque joint. I’m with you, James, but I’m never going to love barbeque like you. She felt a pang, remembering Lily and shook it off. She had only known the girl for a short amount of time. Let it go. Everyone ends up where they belong in the end, anyway.
Alison sipped her lemonade. “I’m so happy
