Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,22
the humans he encountered, most of the time. And that couldn't be said of some of the other spirits.
In truth, the Native American spirits reminded Kelsa of the ancient Greek gods - quarrelsome, selfish, greedy, and jealous. Way too "human" for comfort, if you were forced to admit they might not only exist but really have some kind of supernatural power.
She also tried to research leys and promptly found herself deep in the nut-net. If Raven wanted her to sacrifice a rabbit and examine its entrails, he was going to get a very rude refusal.
But she did find some sort of reference to magical currents flowing through the world in almost every human culture. So maybe those leys of his really did exist.
Her foray into the nut-net destroyed any impulse she might have had to talk about this to Carmina or Andi or any of her old friends. If she started sounding like the people whose sites she'd seen ... well, she wouldn't have any sane friends, that was certain.
Wasn't isolating their victims from others one of the techniques abusers used to control them?
She wasn't a victim, Kelsa told herself firmly. She was going to run up to Idaho, do what Raven wanted with the first nexus, then take two weeks to camp in the wilderness her father had loved.
She hadn't realized how exhausted, how drained she'd become until the possibility of two weeks' camping on her own had occurred to her. Now that it had, she craved the healing peace of the open places like a drought-stricken plain craved water. Peace to mend her tattered heart. Peace to say goodbye.
After she got home, Kelsa waited till her mother had gone to bed, then she went on the airline's site and canceled her ticket. Transferring the money into her own debit account took a bit of work, but her account was a subset of the family's master account. She had all her mother's account numbers and knew the answers to all her security questions, even the name of her first pet.
Her father's com pod was still in the box of his possessions the hospice had packed for them. Neither Kelsa or her mother had wanted to deal with it, but she needed a pod - and explaining how hers had ended up at the bottom of the river was way too complicated.
Her father's pod was a bit big, and the matte black finish too masculine. It took only a few moments' work on the house com board to make sure all calls sent to her pod would now come to this one, though changing her father's ID to her own made her heart ache. After a moment's hesitation, Kelsa clipped her father's pod onto the cord that held the medicine pouch, which Raven had insisted she wear. Two talismans, one of which she might even be able to keep.
Next morning she made a board call to Aunt Sarabeth's office from school. Kelsa managed to catch her aunt between meetings on the second try, but Sarabeth was clearly in work mode and a bit distracted - just as Kelsa had hoped.
She managed to sound genuinely disappointed when Kelsa said she'd changed her mind, that it was too soon for her to leave her mother and Joby now.
The genuine sympathy in her face when Kelsa said that her mother wasn't up to dealing with her late husband's family right now made Kelsa feel guilty - but not guilty enough for her not to cancel the trip to visit her aunt.
She had two days to pretend to pack everything she'd need for a trip to Chicago, while really packing for solo camping in the wilderness.
If her mother hadn't been avoiding her it would have been a lot harder, so Kelsa did nothing to ease the stiff formality between them.
She still couldn't talk her mother out of driving her to the airport.
"I can get on a plane by myself." She got out of the levcar and dragged her bag off the back seat.
"All right." Her mother got out and came around to the curb.
She looked like she wanted to hug her daughter, but didn't quite know how.
Kelsa's throat tightened. "I'll be fine."
She picked up her bag, holding it between them, and her mother's arms fell back to her sides. "All right. Take care. And say hi to Sarabeth for me."
Her mother and her father's sister had never been close.
"I'll be fine." Kelsa turned to go.
"Kel ... All you can do is the best you