Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,60

could take safely even in Canada.

Cold certainty swept over Kelsa. This forest wasn't on the ley at all, and Otter Woman had brought her back here deliberately.

She wasn't Raven's ally. She was the enemy.
CHAPTER 11
KELSA'S PULSE THUNDERED IN HER ears. "I must have picked the wrong tree." She looked into the woods, concealing her expression as her mind raced.

"Most humans can't sense the leys at all." The old woman's voice was thoughtful, and so cold that Kelsa shivered. She couldn't just deny it, but...

"I was almost certain I felt something, at least once. But I have to admit, the other times it was hard to be sure, and Raven had to confirm I'd done it. Did you feel anything?"

"No." The warm brown eyes searched her face. Raven had never been good at reading human emotions. Kelsa could only pray his enemies were worse.

"Raven did say some nexuses would be quieter than others," Kelsa went on. "Maybe you could pick out the right tree?"

"Maybe I could." The old woman turned and led the way farther up the trail. She stopped five minutes later, at a tree with a sign in front of it: BIG TREE.

Kelsa remembered Raven's comments about unimaginative human names, and fought down a pang of fear and loneliness.

"All right," she said with a bright smile. "This time I'll try harder."

She pressed her hands against the tree, inhaling deep breaths of the damp air, taking a minute to think. Assuming she succeeded in bluffing her way past this moment, then what? Since Otter Woman hadn't simply killed Kelsa or stolen the medicine bag while she slept, Kelsa had to conclude the rules still applied. So if the enemies wanted to keep Raven from rejoining her, they'd have to use the tools of this world to hold him, which meant he was probably still in a cell in Deese Lake. How they were keeping him there Kelsa had no idea, but she knew where to start.

And she didn't dare stall much longer.

"Child of time, watching the ages pass..."

Kelsa repeated the incantation like a prayer, with all her heart in it, then cast a pinch of the precious dust over the tree trunk. This time the lack of response didn't surprise her. She pasted a hopeful expression on her face and turned to Otter Woman. "Did it work? I thought I felt something that time, but I wasn't sure."

The suspicious gaze searched Kelsa's face once more, then the old woman nodded. "Yes, you got it right that time. The ley is healed and we can move on."

"Good!" Kelsa tried not to overreact, but it was hard. A human would have realized that she was lying. Otter Woman simply started down the trail toward the road.

Kelsa followed, her gaze darting around for a club-size stick or even a convenient rock, but the wet verdant forest didn't produce much in the way of weapons. Even if she found something ... In their human form shapeshifters had human weaknesses. If Raven had been knocked out when she pushed him into the river, he'd have drowned. Kelsa's father had been careful to point out that the d-vid version of knocking someone unconscious, where they were out for a few hours and then suffered nothing worse than a headache, was pure fiction. If you hit someone hard enough to knock them out, you stood a good chance of killing them. That might be less true of a shapeshifter, but it was probably more true of someone who wore the body of an elderly woman. Kelsa might be willing to defraud a bank, but murdering an old lady - or even a being who looked like an old lady - wasn't something she could do.

Then how could she escape? Just running was out. If Otter Woman couldn't shift into something that could fly, she had friends who could. In human form they had human weaknesses. They got hungry, thirsty, tired. Would they react like a human to human drugs?

By the time they reached the bike, she had a tentative plan.

"Since we're close to Smithers," Kelsa said, "would you mind if we went back there and did some shopping? We're getting low on food, Raven will have to leave his bike gear in a jail cell, and you're going to need some for yourself before we go much farther. According to the map the next big town is Whitehorse, and that's too far."

And going south, to Smithers, would take Kelsa farther away from Alaska. At least this time