It was beautiful—a working of magic so far beyond my abilities I felt as if Mason had been looking over my shoulder, assisting.
I blinked back to mundane reality. My left hand was dry, the water long since evaporated. My right hand was on the vibrating pommel of the magic dagger, still stuck hilt-deep into the rock.
A wave of dizziness passed as the sun beat down on my bare head. When had I lost my hat?
Mike was staring despondently at the damp spot on the sand where the last of our water was quickly disappearing.
“It doesn’t seem to have worked, Luna.”
I took a deep breath and smiled. “O ye of little faith,” I said in my best stage magician voice, then jerked the knife from the rock.
A jet of pure, icy water burst from the crack, splashing me from head to waist in freezing liquid. I stepped back quickly as the flow slowed to a steady stream, quickly filling up the bottom of the cave like a basin.
I smiled at Mike, waiting for congratulations. He seemed dazed, staring at me.
No! He was staring at my breasts! The icy water had made my nipples erect, and they stuck out through the soaked cloth. Werewolves have no use for modesty, but this was a bit much.
“Mike!” I snapped. The dagger quivered in my grip.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he turned away quickly.
He mumbled something even my werewolf hearing couldn’t decipher. One of his Latin prayers?
“Forgive me, Saint Luna,” he said as he turned back to me. Instead of looking at me, his gaze was pointed above my head. “You’re right. My faith was too little. I should not have doubted you.”
I pulled the shirt away from my body and flapped it a few times. It was soon dry enough that it wouldn’t fit like a second skin.
“I’m no saint, Mike,” I said as I dried off.
“‘I’m no saint,’ she says while bathing in water flowing from a cleft rock.” A deep sigh. “I won’t stare again. It was rude, and we have a mission to complete.”
I handed the dagger back to Mike, pulled off my glove, and cupped my hands under the water. I drank five handfuls, then realized that Mike might want to drink.
Mike was looking back and forth between me and the dagger in his hand. “You still trust me at your back with this dagger?” At my puzzled expression, he added, “You seemed really angry.”
“Of course I still trust you, Mike. Sorry I overreacted. Just don’t stare at me like that again.”
Mike sheathed the dagger and put away the gloves. He seemed hesitant to drink.
“Go ahead, have a drink. The water’s pure.”
Mike drank his fill and started filling up our canteens. “‘For I was lost in the desert and thirsted. And water burst from a cleft rock and saved me.’”
“‘Cleft rock.’ I’ve heard that before. Is that a quote from somewhere?” I asked.
“From an old book,” he said.
8
“What old book?” I asked, then held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind. Let’s eat again, fill up our water bottles and talk about the mission.”
In minutes, we were back under the awning eating more MREs, our meal accompanied by the cheerful splashing of our impromptu fountain. This time I had the meatballs in marinara sauce, and Mike had the beef ravioli in meat sauce. I really missed Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que, but bringing pork takeout on a mission to Israel and Saudi Arabia would have been problematic.
Mike savored his last bite, took a long swallow of cool water, and sighed.
The sound of the water changed when the basin began to overflow. “Will this place become an oasis?” asked Mike. “Or will it stop when we leave? Should we try to stop it up to prevent waste?”
“An oasis? I don’t know. The trickle is pretty slow.” I tilted my head to listen. “But I won’t stop it up. The water yearns to be here, to be free.”
Mike snorted. “As if water has emotions.” Then he jerked his head. “Does water have emotions?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “It’s just a way of expressing something that can’t be expressed in English.”
I had a flash of inspiration. “Mike, do you still have the rest of that apple from this morning?”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the slightly smushed fruit.
I took the apple and used my claws to dig a hole in the damp sand under the overflowing basin. The fruit—with its seeds—fit snugly into the hole. I covered it with more sand.
I looked at Mike, then gestured over the seeds and whispered a spell.
Mike watched with doubt—a doubt that turned to amazement when the first shoot thrust through the sand and twisted, unfurling tiny leaves to capture the sunlight.
“You can do anything with magic,” Mike said.
“Not really,” I said. “The water wanted to come out. The seeds wanted to sprout. The magic just helped them along.”
Mike took a long drink of water and said, “We have a few hours. Tell me about magic.”
Could Mike understand magic?
I started with the basics. “Everything I tell you about magic is a lie.”
“Is that some kind of Zen puzzle? Anyway, I thought you didn’t lie.”
“It means that understanding magic, working with magic, is an individual quest. We each must find our own way to grasping the power. Some magicians, like Mason, think of magic as a series of equations. Others think of it as music. I think of magic as the dance of energies.”
“But I’ve seen you do a lot of math. Even Ashton was impressed.”
“For Ashton and Mason, the math is the ultimate goal. For me, the math is a way to reach my goal. I think of the math part as… I don’t know, the calculations you make to double or halve a recipe.”
“A recipe?”
“Here, let me show you.” I smoothed over a patch of sand and used
