“But we had a lot of demolition in the aircraft. Would a curse just ‘roll off’ of C-4?”
“No. Magic and high explosives don’t mix well. A curse might have set it off prematurely.”
Mike nodded. “That makes more sense.”
“But it doesn’t explain why only our equipment was affected. Ariel’s chute and rifle worked fine.”
“Didn’t all the Israeli team’s personal equipment have some sort of protection?”
I had dismissed the tiny Hebrew glyphs engraved on the Israeli team’s equipment. With a werewolf’s arrogance toward magic, I had assumed these were useless.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “As a magician, I should have known they had a purpose.”
Another hour of slogging through sand got us ten kilometers of progress.
Mike was breathing heavily, so we took a five-minute break.
“You sure you don’t have a magic spell to make this easier?” he asked.
“I could probably whip something up, but throwing magic around might attract the wrong kind of attention. There might be other genies out there.”
“Wasn’t the oasis a big display?”
“Not really. The water wanted to come out there.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe Mother Nature used me to make it happen.”
“You know Mother Nature?”
“No, Mike. It’s just an expression.”
“I never know when you’re joking. Hell, since meeting you I’ve met fairies, werewolves, magicians, kitsune, demons, and now a genie.” He laughed in glee. “How would I know if Mother Nature was real or not?”
We saved our breath for walking. The next two hours got us fifteen kilometers closer to our meeting point, and we found a convenient rock outcropping to rest on for another MRE and water break.
With the night, the desert temperature had dropped to about sixty degrees—chilly for this country. This far from any cities, the sky was studded with stars, providing plenty of light for Mike and me to navigate.
I took a deep breath and cataloged the foreign scents, vastly different from the forests of Wyoming or the Nevada desert. The sounds I had grown used to, the clamor of cities or insect chirps, were absent here. I slipped into a meditative doze for a few minutes.
Mike read my mood and stayed silent.
After ten minutes of meditation, I felt refreshed and jumped to my feet. I pulled up and buckled my pack, then gave Mike a hand up.
After we had crossed the next dune, I asked, “What time is our contact supposed to meet us?”
“I told him midnight, plus or minus an hour.” Mike looked at the GPS strapped to his wrist, then added, “We’re more than halfway now and should make it in about two hours, if we keep up this pace.”
“No problem.” I kept my silence about relying on a GPS. My instincts and senses were much more accurate, but Mike was a stickler for extra safety measures. I only would have spoken up if we had gone off track.
“So, this sleeping spell of yours. Why didn’t you use it before?”
“Sleeping spell?”
“The one you used to knock me out. If you can do that, you could use it on anyone. Hell, with a megaphone, you could have put the demon horde and that coven that attacked us to sleep.”
“It only works on someone who trusts me, like you, Mason, or the cubs. As for witches, I’ve never tested it on them.”
“Too bad. And anyway, you don’t have a loudspeaker.”
“Of course, I have a loudspeaker spell. I can shout louder than thunder.”
“I didn’t know that.”
So many things we had never had time to discuss. “I used it during the demon attack on our compound. I used focused sonics to break the Plexiglas eye shields on the Army troops’ facemasks. That’s what knocked them out.”
“You can scream loud enough to break Plexiglas?”
“With that spell, yeah, but I don’t like to use it. It tears up my vocal cords and makes it impossible to speak spells until they heal. It’s a last resort.”
Mike mulled over our discussions. “This magic is hard to get my head around. Sometimes it seems you can do anything; other times, you can’t do anything.”
“Magic is fickle here on Earth.”
“Let’s set up some hand signals,” Mike said.
“Why?”
“So you can let me know if there’s a way you can use magic to solve a problem.” At my puzzled expression, he continued. “For example, in a hostage situation, I’ll need to know if you’re going to zap the assailant.”
“Zap? I wouldn’t use lightning in a hostage situation. The assailant might convulse and hurt the hostage, or the current could leak and injure someone.”
“You can shoot lightning?” He shook his head again, reminding me of all the times I had done the same during Mason’s lessons.
“How would you handle a hostage situation?” he asked.
“It depends,” I puffed out. “I would try to talk them out of it first. Like a hostage negotiator.”
“Really? Talk them out of it? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“My therapist wants me to explore non-violent options before doing what I do best.”
“Okay. Sweet talk doesn’t work. What do you do next?”
“If the assailant had a gun, I’d use my transmutation spell to render the bullets inert. Then I’d beat them to a pulp. If the assailant had a knife, I’d overclock and disarm them before they could move. If—”
“Wait. ‘Overclock?’ What kind of spell is that?”
“It’s not magic. More like self-hypnosis, plus increased oxygen to rev up my metabolism. It makes me faster than almost any werewolf.”
“Why haven’t I seen you use it before?”
“It’s dangerous. The first time I used it nearly killed me. I burned off fifteen pounds of body weight in five minutes. The next time I broke some bones from the stress. I didn’t dare do it while I was pregnant.”
Mike rubbed the spot on his chest over his heart, where Mason and I had tattooed a magical glyph that gave him the equivalent of my gas-mask spell. “Sometimes I forget how versatile this spell is. I’d like to learn to do this ‘overclock’ thing. Can you teach me?”
“It takes meditation and a bit of self-hypnosis to master. I can try to teach you,
