Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,53

Lynx asked as he returned. That or chipmunk. Also smells of deer and coyote.

Let me know if you scent anything else, Jay said. Especially anything big enough to eat us.

He had almost finished setting up the pulk, when he was startled by another thought, just as clear as Lynx’s but from an entirely different mind.

See the way the branches sparkle where they’re encased in ice, Brina thought to him.

To both of them, Jay realized only when Lynx replied, Slippery to walk on. And sometimes it drops on your head when you sleep.

Brina looked around, as if almost aware of Lynx’s reply but unable to place the sound.

“It is lovely,” Jay agreed.

“I could do a beautiful portrait of the lynx,” Brina remarked. Did she realize she hadn’t started the conversation out loud?

She talks like you do, Lynx replied to Jay’s contemplation. Half in voice-yips, half in mind. And she expects people to hear both, just like you do.

Was that the result of having been telepathic for years, as a vampire? Or just another one of Brina’s quirks?

“We should get going,” Rikai said, staring at the mouth of the path with frustration. After the second time Jay had repacked her bag, she had taken half the items out to accommodate her ritual paraphernalia.

Jay glanced down at the clunky watchlike GPS thing he never would have touched if he had been spending his own money or wandering familiar forests. Xeke had given the device coordinates based on Brina’s best guess as she’d looked at a series of maps, and it currently claimed that their destination was about thirty-five miles to the northeast. With fair weather, good trails, and experienced hikers, that distance could easily be traveled in a couple days, but Jay doubted they would have any of those luxuries.

They didn’t even have a straight path to their destination. Instead, they headed first to the base of the original Midnight, from which Brina believed it was only a short journey to Shantel territory—assuming that her estimate of Midnight’s location was correct, that they could find Midnight without getting trapped in its magical gravity well, and that the magic in the Shantel land didn’t throw them back out.

Rikai believed that the Shantel power would draw them in, because Jay and Brina were now bonded to it, but even she admitted that was just a theory.

Yes, if all went well, they should be able to confront a homicidal immortal very soon.

CHAPTER 22

JAY BECAME INCREASINGLY grateful for Brina’s odd conversational style as they began their hike. The more out of breath Brina became, the more she communicated in mental images instead of speaking aloud, and the clearer it became why she was an artist. A simple s’mores granola bar triggered a deep, meditative analysis of the various tastes and textures.

Her mental energy gave him hope. Her joy at the way the sun sparkled on the snow made the impressions he received from Rikai and Xeke easier to bear.

The comfort Xeke had experienced as a result of Rikai’s work was now fading, and was being replaced by hunger and restlessness. Her rewiring made it possible for him to keep control, but he couldn’t ignore the spicy heat of the witch’s blood, or the coppery tang of Brina’s human blood, or even the syrupy sweet lure of Rikai’s blood—though the last would be poison to him.

Rikai was still shielding her mind, but Jay suspected she was keeping pace with the rest of them out of sheer stubbornness. The only thought she let slip through to him was that she considered Brina’s presence a boon because she could be used as a human sacrifice. She expected him to be reasonable if it came to that.

Jay chose not to comment.

Unlike the woods behind Xeke’s and Kendra’s homes, this forest was vast, teeming with the life one would expect in untouched wilderness. As the group moved farther away from human civilization, Lynx pointed out territorial markers left behind by cougars, bobcats, and other lynxes. He caught a snowshoe rabbit, and lorded it over the rest of them that he had hot, fresh meat while they settled in for a night of dried, packaged foods.

The tent was snug with the four of them, even though Rikai sat cross-legged in a trance instead of sleeping, and Jay had decided that it would take less energy to keep people warm with his power than it would to lug bulky subzero sleeping bags.

That logic had seemed sound, right up until the moment when he had