Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,56

pride.

"No." Raven's voice was calmer too. "A thousand feet is pretty high, this far north."

Kelsa remembered the map she'd looked at on the train. Gnat Pass..."We're almost to the Yukon." Her voice was hushed with awe. She'd never expected to get that far, not really. She set the bike in motion once more.

"You sound surprised," Raven said critically. "You've driven almost every foot of - "

Perhaps it was fortunate that at that moment the bike heaved up like a bucking bull. Kelsa's teeth slammed together, but she managed to stay on her seat and keep the bike upright as they rolled to a stop. She kicked down the stand and looked.

"Carp." She could see where the tire had ruptured, a long split in the groove of the tread. "There's no way to patch that. We need a new tire."

They had to walk the bike for over an hour before an old-fashioned pickup truck pulled up behind them, though on closer inspection, it wasn't so much old-fashioned as simply old. The driver's broad, high-cheekboned face looked like a mature version of Raven's, but when Raven spoke to the driver in some rippling tongue, the man looked blank and answered in English.

He was very kind, not only offering them a ride but helping them drag the bike up onto his truck, a process that left Kelsa exhausted and all of them smeared with mud. The driver not only took them all the way to Deese Lake, but also dropped them off at Charlie's Garage and Salvage Yard, and called Charlie on his own com pod to bring him out to make the repairs - even though the garage had closed over an hour ago.

"I don't mind coming in." Charlie was a hard-muscled man in his fifties, with pale eyes and the weathered skin of a man who mostly worked outdoors. "I was just watching d-vid, and I can always use the business."

To Kelsa it looked like everyone in Deese Lake needed business. The town advertised itself as a resort for off-roaders, but it appeared to be a bit too far off the road. Almost a quarter of the buildings along the main street were closed, and those that were open had the rough, untidy look of a town on the edge. At least a town that could be reached only by off-road vehicles had a wide selection of tires.

Charlie plugged her bike into a flash charger while he replaced the shattered tire with a new one, and he was balancing it when the charge finished. When the bike was back on the ground, good as new, he wiped his hands and said, "That comes to $217.58, with tax."

Raven had already reached into his pocket, and Kelsa saw the blank expression sweep over his face. He controlled it before it turned to panic, but she knew what had happened. His counterfeit money had poofed, just like he'd said it would.

Kelsa's heart began to pound, but her mind was clear. She was already reaching for her charge card, but she had less than a hundred dollars left in her account. Raven had some real money, but it wouldn't be nearly enough. Charlie might be willing to leave his d-vid to help them, but he wouldn't let them abandon a bill that large half paid.

He would call the police.

Kelsa met Raven's eyes. She pulled her hand out of her pocket, empty, and he nodded. Charlie would call the police, and Raven had another man's ID in his pocket and no way to shapeshift to match that card. Kelsa was in this country illegally, a fact the police would certainly check, no matter how slack Canadian security seemed to her.

"I'll have to charge it." Raven's smile, the charming one, flashed at Charlie. "Where's your reader?"

Kelsa knew what she had to do, but regret pulsed through her as Raven pulled Charlie toward the back of the shop, and she quietly straddled the bike and rolled it out of the repair bay.

It was a rotten way to repay Charlie for helping them, and guilt clutched at her as she keyed the motor to life. Charlie's startled shout rang in her ears as the bike sped off into the northern dusk.

She would pay him back, eventually. She'd borrow the cash from her mother and spend the rest of her life working it off if she had to. With interest.

A shapeshifter could always get out of jail, and Kelsa couldn't.

If she was arrested, the healing would end. Even if Raven