Fire Dancer (Spellbound in Sedona #2)

Chapter Seven

INGO

I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel of the government-issued Jeep, then checked my watch. It wasn’t like Nash to be late. What was keeping him?

I’d checked and rechecked my messages, but nothing. Of course, reception was spotty out where Nash lived, and work took him to equally out-of-the-way places, so his messages had a way of pinging through hours after he sent them.

I was in the supermarket parking lot, not far from the Y intersection that had become the center of my compass rose for Sedona. People skittered in and out of sight in my rearview mirror, pushing empty shopping carts into the store and full ones out. The coffee shop Stacy frequented was over to my right, just a few doors down from Red Rock Vistas Real Estate.

I scowled at both places, then glanced back at the office of Desert Skies Balloon Adventures.

Five minutes passed, and still no Nash.

I called in to the agency, following up on the license plate trace. I’d never had one take this long or been put on hold so many times.

“Sorry for the wait,” the woman at the agency finally came back on the line. “I’ve been told to direct your inquiry to Captain Edwards.”

I frowned. Edwards was way up the chain of command. Why him?

“Um, did I do something wrong?” I asked, only half joking.

The woman’s laugh straddled the same line. “Ask Edwards. Do you want me to put you through?”

A dusty orange Subaru pulled up beside me. I glanced over, did a double take, and hastily ended my call.

“I’ll call back, thanks.” I put down the phone and stared at the new arrival.

Not Nash.

Pippa.

Joy and hope swept through me, as they did every time we met. My mind went blissfully blank, and my inner wolf bayed as I slid out of the Jeep.

“Hi.” Pippa’s greeting was flat, but that didn’t stop my inner wolf from wagging its tail.

“Pippa,” I murmured, then glanced at the office. “Here to book another flight?”

A few weeks ago, I’d taken a balloon flight to get an overview of the area for my initial risk assessment report. I hadn’t accomplished as much as I’d hoped, because Pippa had joined the same flight, and my mind had been too busy filling in a totally different risk assessment — the one estimating the chances of us ever reconciling.

She glanced at the balloon office with a dry chuckle. “Another flight? If I could afford it, I would.”

Had it not been for recent events, I would have laughed. Instead, I positioned myself between Pippa and the real estate office before she got it in her head to go stomping back in there and set the place on fire. Pippa was a kind, loving soul, but once you got on her bad side…

The wind pushed her lavender scent toward me, and my throat went so dry with longing, it ached. My heart ached too.

“Are you here to meet Erin?” I asked.

“Nope. I’m here for you.”

Words that had featured a thousand times in my dreams over the last too-many years.

“Erin said you needed someone to show you the back roads,” Pippa said in a carefully neutral tone.

I cleared my throat, but the words still came out all husky.

“I did.”

She looked at her watch. “Well, we’d better get started. I have an hour and a half, tops.”

A fib, and I knew it. Pippa calculated time by the sun, not by a clock. But she was right. This was about business, and I had a schedule to keep too.

Still, my wolf did a happy dance as I motioned to the vehicle. “Well, then. We’d better go.”

She hopped into my Jeep, and I followed suit.

“What exactly did you want to see?” she asked, all businesslike.

My wolf nearly made me blurt a totally inappropriate answer. Something like, you, asleep, with your arms around me.

Pippa was a beautiful sleeper. Well, a beautiful everything, but beautiful sleeper was high on the list.

But I doubted that was what she meant.

“I’ve been to all the main vortexes.” I pointed toward the stunning rocky outcrops around town. “Cathedral Rock, Airport Mesa, Bell Rock, and Boynton Canyon. I didn’t feel a thing, but I’ve been there.”

Pippa chuckled. “Not everyone can feel them.”

Well, a bunch of New Age types I’d found beating drums at Bell Rock had insisted they could. I was skeptical, though. Most humans couldn’t tell a vampire from a turnip. Were the vortexes they claimed to sense wishful thinking or the real thing?

I fired up the Jeep and headed for the parking lot exit, watching Pippa out of the corner of my eye. “Can you feel them?”

Her eyes got a cagey look I’d rarely seen.

“Sometimes. When they’re going, at least. They seem to slumber more than they fire off, though.” She tilted her head. “Do you want to check one now?”

“No. I want to get out around the back roads. Not the ones they follow.” I pointed to a passing Jeep tour. “Quiet back roads that might be used by someone looking to keep a low profile.”

She gave me one of those looks that said, There you go again, suspecting everyone . “You mean, the kind locals use to keep away from tourists?”

I nodded. “And maybe a couple of overlook points, so I get a sense of how things fit together around here.”

The light turned green, and I waited, looking at Pippa. Her nose wrinkled a little as she thought — one of her many irresistible quirks. Then she pointed left. “Okay, turn here, then go right at the Y.”

Lots of lefts and rights followed over the next few miles, which brought us to a fancy development called Cactus Point Manor .

Not a cactus in sight — we were at way too high-altitude — and definitely no manor, just a bunch of faux-adobe McMansions.

“Um…” I started.

“Be patient,” she assured me. “Not far now.”

She reached back, resting her arms on the back of the seat, roughly where her foot would have been that time we’d had sex in the back of a similar vehicle, almost a decade ago.

My foot went a little heavy on the gas, and the engine revved.

“Whoa, boy,” Pippa chuckled.

Which only made my jeans feel tighter. Same joke as back then, totally different context.

I gulped, shifting in my seat.

Seconds later, she pointed. “We’re coming to the turnoff. Right…about…here.” She indicated a narrow, overgrown trail.

I hit the brakes. “That’s private property.”

She shook her head. “The folks who live around here do their best to give that impression, but it’s a public right of way. It was grandfathered in to protect access to Dead Man’s Creek. Go ahead.”

I hid a grin. This was exactly the kind of local knowledge I’d hoped to tap into. And the fact that the local was Pippa was icing on the cake.

A hundred yards down the rough track, we came to a steep gully, and I stopped again.

“You want me to go down this?”

That was the thing about being with Pippa. It came with joy, heartache, and massive leaps of faith.

She patted the doorframe. “This is a Jeep, you know.”

Ah, just like old times, with her daring me and me taking the bait every time.

I put the Jeep in four-wheel-drive mode and eased over the edge, thrilled and a little scared — which also fit everything I did with Pippa. Including falling in love.

My hands tightened over the steering wheel as we careened down what felt like a vertical drop. Pippa whooped in glee.

Then, splash! We hit the puddle at the bottom, ground over a couple of rocks, and rounded a turn on a steep incline with no hint of what lay ahead.

“You sure about this?” I hollered over the creak of the chassis and grind of the engine.

Her hands were thrust up against the dashboard, but her smile was a mile wide. “Trust me, baby. Trust me.”

Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, Pippa was right. It was that leftover one I was wary of… But, whew. The moment we rounded the blind corner, the Jeep track was no lumpier or steeper than any of the popular trails around town. The only difference was, we had it all to ourselves.

“My aunt used to take us to an old cliff dwelling up here,” Pippa explained.

I’d never met the aunt, but I had the feeling she was a lot like Pippa. Coming all the way out here with three little girls… I tipped an imaginary hat to the woman.

“So, it winds around for a while…” Pippa narrated the route for the next fifteen minutes, pointing in the jerky way the vehicle’s movement dictated. “If you went down that way, you’d come to a dead end. An hour’s walk brings you to the cliff dwelling…”

An hour. The aunt’s idea of a good time, I figured. No wonder Pippa had a thirst for adventure.

“And if you took that track, you’d have to be real careful, because it got washed out, and you’re likely to roll most of the way down.” Pippa pointed left casually.

I hugged the right side of the trail and continued climbing. Hairpin after hairpin, with gravel grinding under the tires and scrub oak scratching the sides of the Jeep.

“Now turn left…” Pippa pointed.

I stared. Maybe on a mountain bike. There wasn’t enough space for a Jeep.

“Oh, come on,” she goaded. “You wanted a lookout point, right?”

“I also want to make it back to town alive.”

Pippa chuckled, smacking my knee. “That’s a good one.”

Little, er — neutrons? Protons? Something very small but packed with a ton of energy — zipped through my body, and my wolf side sighed.

My mate…

I abandoned my last scrap of good sense and revved onto that side track. It was narrow and bumpy as hell, but Pippa was right. We could get through.

Which brought me one step closer to hitting that one out of a hundred times Pippa was wrong. I made a mental note.

“Is there a place to turn around?”

She shook her head, not at all perturbed. “You have to back out.” She narrowed her eyes at my double take. “I can drive if you want.”

I clutched the gear stick possessively. Pippa drove the way she did everything else: leap, then look.

“Not necessary,” I grunted.

Five minutes of driving later, we’d thoroughly tested the suspension and started ascending to heaven, or so it seemed. The track angled upward, and all I saw was sky. More and more of it as the shrubs around us thinned out.

“Keep going… Keep going… Stop!” Pippa threw an arm across my chest when we reached the crest of the trail.

I hit the brakes, pitching us both forward.

Pippa unbuckled her seat belt and slid out of the car, casual as can be. “There’s a drop-off.”

As in, the five-hundred-foot cliff I was staring down now.

I followed her slowly, inching around the Jeep until we met at the front bumper, where we had about three feet of safe space before the cliff fell away. I kept my right hand open behind Pippa, ready to grab if she took one more step.

She didn’t, thank goodness. She just led me into the scrub until we emerged at a ledge.

“There’s another vortex over here. Hardly anyone knows about it, though.”

Over here was up a narrow, iffy trail that would make a mountain goat pause.

Pippa charged ahead.

I glanced down the precipice on our left, wondering if she had more dragon shifter in her than she realized.

“Pippa…” I warned.

“We’re almost there.”

Famous last words?

“It’s not worth it,” I said, hanging back.

“Oh, of course it is. It’s for your job .”

And oh, the subtext.

I followed slowly and eventually found her in an open slot between two jutting rocks high on the hill. The drive up had been shady, but now, the late-afternoon sunlight bathed Pippa from behind, casting her shadow out over the lower slope of the mountain.

“So, there’s the Y intersection… Cathedral Rock… The road to Slide Rock…” Her finger tapped the air here and there. “The ranch is way back there…”

The ranch was her ranch, a place she’d raved about as long as I’d known her. Losing it would destroy her.

She went on to indicate other points of interest, such as a spot with a hidden sinkhole — a portal to the underworld, according to some indigenous cultures. Then there was a mountainside that had burned in an alleged act of arson, and the location of the vet who checked on Roscoe and the other ranch dogs.

She must have noticed my consternation at that last one, because she thumped me on the arm. “What? It’s important. Besides, you’re a canine too.”

Yeah, but way, way, way above Roscoe’s line in the evolutionary hierarchy.

“Oh, don’t be so snooty,” Pippa chided.

There she went again, reading my mind, as fated mates and closely associated supernaturals were capable of. The question was, what category did we belong in?

She edged forward. The rock we stood on ended in a diving-board-sized ledge that stuck out into nothingness, and that was where Pippa went.

“Here it is. The vortex.” She tapped a foot.

My pulse went through the roof as I imagined the ledge collapsing. Plus, if that was a vortex, it didn’t seem like a good idea to stand right on it. What if thousands of volts of energy suddenly came jetting out?

“Um, I take it it’s not on right now?” I asked as neutrally as I could.

“Oh, it’s on,” she said. “Just not very powerfully.”

Like that made me feel better.

I inched out beside her. “What do you feel?”

She looked at me askance. “You can’t feel it?”

I shrugged. “What am I supposed to feel?”

“It’s an upflow vortex with a light, pulsing sensation.” She held my hand over the middle of the rock.

I felt her hand, which was nice, but no vortex.

“Oh, wait.” She stepped to the safe end of the ledge. Whew. “It’s more powerful here.”

She felt around with her eyes closed, hovering her free hand over different parts of the ledge.

“Oh. Wow,” she murmured.

I peeked sideways. Was she serious?

Yes, because her eyes were half closed, and her expression was that of a person listening to a symphony.

For fear of sounding like an idiot, I said nothing. I did keep hold of her hand, though. For research purposes.

“Yep. Much more powerful here,” she murmured.

A raven flew overhead, cawing.

Pippa frowned, felt around for another minute, then sighed. “Now it’s off again. They tend to come and go.”

Her tone was as casual as if she were talking about fashion trends or Texan tourists. Then she smiled and pointed. “Look. Our shadows.”

Good old Pippa. She had the ability to find wonder in anything. Flowers. Scampering puppies. Even her own shadow.

I had to agree this was especially cool, though. The sun cast a shadow of the rocky outcrop onto the landscape, and nestled in the slot between the two jutting rocks were two small figures. Us.

Pippa waved, and her shadow waved back.

“You have to wave too!” she said.

I did as I was told, and my shadow waved back just as obediently.

A bittersweet feeling snuck up on me as I looked down at our two shadows. The two of us together — that’s how we belonged. And with nothing but our silhouettes down there, you could almost buy into the fantasy. A happy young couple, looking at a promising future together.

A thick, lumpy feeling registered in my chest, like it always did when I thought about Pippa.

She started forming letters with her arms and singing like The Village People. “Y-M-C-A…”

I chuckled.

She tried the Macarena next, but that didn’t show up in her shadow.

“Oh, here! Make a star!” She slipped in front of me, holding her arms to the sides.

Like a loyal dog intent on pleasing its master, I stuck mine up at forty-five-degree angles.

“Is this appropriate behavior around a vortex?” I scolded.

“Well, seeing as the vortex is off…” She went on trying other shapes.

Eventually, though, she slowed down and simply gazed over the landscape.

“So beautiful here…” Her chest lifted and fell.

Mine too, because we’d ended up pretty close, and my hands had landed on her shoulders.

“Beautiful…” I whispered.

“That’s the thing about Sedona,” Pippa murmured. “Even if you close your eyes, it’s beautiful.”

I tried it. Yep. Still beautiful.

“The wind…the clean air…” Pippa murmured.

My mate in my arms, my wolf side whispered.

My thoughts blurred. A pleasant buzz tickled my skin.

Pippa swayed gently, moving with the breeze or the vortex or whatever it was she was tuned in to.

It was like a slow dance, but out in nature instead of on a dance floor. Every beat of my heart brought me closer to peace…and closer to Pippa.