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Afterward, they did their best to act normal — although Marc was glad that Bellamy was just fine with stepping into the shower together and indulging in some playful intimacies there — and then got dressed. He wasn’t quite sure how she managed it, but she was able to repair the damage to her admittedly minimal makeup with whatever she carried in her purse.

By the time they returned to the living room, it was almost seven o’clock.

“We should probably think about getting something to eat,” he said.

She sent him a look that managed to be amused and lascivious at the same time. “I would have thought you’d just had plenty to eat.”

Who knew she had such a dirty mind? He grinned at her and said, “Yes, and it was delicious. But I think I could go for something a little more solid.”

“Do you want to do takeout again?”

That would probably be for the best. Not that he was worried about being seen in public with Bellamy McAllister — just the opposite, in fact — but if they were alone together at the house, they wouldn’t have to worry so much about anyone overhearing what they were saying.

“If you don’t mind.”

Her gray eyes twinkled. “Well, I could complain about having to stay in when I just went to all that work to put my face back together, but it’s definitely better when I don’t have to worry about every single word I’m saying.”

Exactly what he’d just thought, so at least they were on the same page there. “Then I guess we just have to decide what we’d like to eat — and who around here does takeout.”

“Just about everyone unless it’s someplace really fancy,” she said. “So it’s more what we’re in the mood for.”

They decided on Thai, and Bellamy got out her phone and called in the order, since she knew the restaurant and he didn’t. Not for the first time, Marc thought about how much easier it made things when you were with someone who had plenty of local area knowledge.

Not that he would have cared if she’d been as new to the Verde Valley as he was. They could have discovered everything together.

As it stood, though, her familiarity with Sedona helped a lot, since it only took about fifteen minutes from deciding what to eat to getting back to the Airbnb with their bags of food in hand. Before they’d left, they’d set the table, so everything was waiting for them — including one of the bottles of wine they’d picked up during their winery excursion that afternoon.

He’d even found a box of candles and some candlesticks in the sideboard in the dining room, and he thought they added a nice touch. The owner of the vacation rental had told him anything in the house was fair game, so at least he didn’t have to worry about using something that might turn out to be off-limits.

“I like it,” she said as she sat down at the candlelit table and Marc followed suit. “I had no idea you were into the romantic stuff.”

“Well, I’m not sure I’m ready to strew rose petals everywhere you walk, but my mom always had candles at dinner, so I suppose I’m just used to it.”

A grin, and Bellamy lifted her glass of wine. “Then let’s drink to always dining by candlelight.”

He thought he could get behind that idea, so he raised his glass as well and touched it to hers. “To candlelight.”

They both drank — a gorgeous red blend they’d bought at Page Springs Cellars right before they left — and then they got down to the serious business of divvying up the wontons and spring rolls, the hot and sour soup and pad thai and cashew chicken. Everything smelled great, and was about as different from the pizza they’d had the night before as you could get.

A comfortable silence fell as they took their first few bites. Usually, these sorts of moments right after being intimate for the first time had always felt awkward to him as he and his partner did their best to settle into a transformed version of their relationship. With Bellamy, though, Marc could only think again of how right this felt, as if it was all new and shiny and old and cozy at the same time.

Was this what it felt like to find your soul mate?

Maybe so. He just knew he never wanted this to end…and that he had absolutely no regrets about telling Bellamy he loved her, because he did.

And she’d said she loved him, too, the ring of truth in her voice so clear that it might as well have been the tolling of a temple bell.

“So, any strategies for tomorrow?” she asked as she dunked a wonton in the bowl of sweet and sour sauce they’d set out, and he blinked at her.

“‘Tomorrow’?” he repeated, wondering if she was asking about the hike they had planned.

Her smile bordered on indulgent but wasn’t quite there. “When we meet with the elders.”

Oh, right. All he could do was lift his shoulders. “I suppose we just tell them everything that’s happened and see what they think.”

A flicker of a dimple appeared next to her mouth. “Everything?”

Several of the activities they’d just indulged in flashed through his head, and he found himself very glad that his olive complexion wouldn’t allow him to blush in a highly visible way. “All right, not everything, ” he replied, and raised an eyebrow at her.

He could only imagine what his grandmother would think if she learned that he’d jumped into bed with Bellamy McAllister only a few days after meeting her. True, he was a grown man and no one in his family had any real say in his personal life, but still….

“But most of it,” he said. “The voices you heard, the way you’re not sure whether being here in Sedona is affecting your powers somehow.”

Her expression abruptly sobered, and she reached for her glass so she could help herself to another swallow of wine. “Maybe we should try an experiment,” she said, and he found his eyebrow lifting again.

“‘Experiment’?”

“Well, we’re both planning to go hiking tomorrow morning, right?”

He nodded.

“Then how about we swing by my place after dinner, and I can pack my hiking gear and a few other things so I can stay over here tonight? That way, I might be able to tell whether what I experienced at the ranch was a Sedona thing in general or something that’s only connected to that particular property.”

Marc had been hoping they’d spend the night together, so he wasn’t put off at all by this suggestion. Since he hadn’t slept at the Airbnb yet, he had no idea whether the Sedona energies would affect him as well, or whether this was something that seemed to be focused solely on Bellamy, for whatever reason.

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Because you’re right — it’ll help to know whether the ranch has its own powers, or whether this is all about Sedona in general.”

“Or whether I imagined the whole thing.”

“I don’t think you did,” he said, knowing how serious he sounded now. “You’re not the sort of person to make up that kind of thing.”

Their gazes held for a moment. Her expression was thoughtful, and he got the feeling she was glad that he hadn’t discounted her concerns, hadn’t tried to tell her it was all in her head the way a lot of other guys might have done.

“Okay,” she said. “It’s a plan.”

They returned to their food, and after they were done eating and had cleaned up, they got in his truck and drove over to her place. She had a small overnight bag packed in a very short amount of time, and once again he found himself thinking how easy she was to be with — no drama, no fuss, just doing what needed to be done.

And, it seemed, more than happy to spend the night with him.

The alarm went off way too early the next morning. Bellamy opened her eyes and blinked, staring at the ceiling overhead. It was plain white drywall, not the tongue-and-groove that covered the ceiling in the main suite at the ranch, and for a second, she couldn’t quite recall where she was.

But then Marc rolled over and slapped his hand on the alarm clock and she remembered everything — the way they’d come home from wine tasting yesterday and made love in this very bed, how they’d decided it would be better if she slept over…how they’d stayed up far too late, exploring one another’s bodies until they passed out from sheer exhaustion.

No wonder that alarm clock going off had sounded like a fiend from hell. They’d probably gotten six hours of sleep at the most.

Marc leaned down and pressed a kiss against her temple. “How’d you sleep?”

“Just fine,” she said. No strange whispers in her mind, nothing to make her think there was anything particularly different about the night that had just passed.

Well, except she and Marc Trujillo had made love. More than that, they’d declared their love for each other as well. No plans for the future yet — it felt too early for that — and still, Bellamy knew everything about her world had changed.

“Good to hear. How about some coffee, and then we can get ready to hit the trails?”

Right then, she was questioning their decision to go hiking so early. It seemed like it would have been much more fun to stay in bed and have an encore of last night’s activities.

But she knew Marc really wanted to go hiking, and it wasn’t as if they wouldn’t have tonight to snuggle in this bed and get acquainted with each other all over again.

“Okay,” she said, and pushed back the covers so she could find her panties and put them on. “Time to explore the great outdoors.”

Marc could see why Bellamy had chosen this hike. It cut through the Secret Mountain wilderness, traversing rocky trails that eventually led them to the aptly named Devil’s Bridge, a span of natural rock that led from one side of a canyon to the other, with a dizzying drop beneath.

Good thing he wasn’t afraid of heights.

Neither was Bellamy, it seemed, because she went out in front of him, sure-footed as a mountain goat. It was something of a marvel to watch her walk across the slender rock bridge, stray strands of hair bright as a new penny in the morning sun, her lightly tanned legs slim and yet sturdy at the same time as she took one step after another.

Clearly, she hadn’t been lying about being an experienced hiker. Not that he’d any reason to believe she hadn’t been telling him the truth when she’d said she was familiar with this trail, but he supposed he’d been wary because he’d had a couple of rough experiences in the past when a girl he’d been dating had sworn up and down that she loved to hike, only to find her practically freezing in fear the first time she had to make her way across some even slightly rocky ground.

No worries about that kind of paralysis with Bellamy, that was for sure. And she’d appeared cheerful and upbeat this morning despite the lack of sleep, which seemed to tell him that either the Sedona vortexes had taken the night off or there had been a completely different reason why the Wilcoxes and the McAllisters had agreed all those years ago not to make the red rock city their home.

Maybe there wasn’t any need to talk to the elders after all. He didn’t like the idea of canceling at the last minute, but if it turned out nothing was going on here —

Bellamy froze a few feet in front of him, body stiff, hands dangling at her sides. He hurried over to her, wondering if she’d had a sudden agoraphobic episode or something. It happened sometimes, even to experienced hikers.

But when he stopped next to her and took her hand in his, he could feel how cold and clammy her skin was, how oddly nerveless her fingers appeared to be.

“Bellamy,” he said, his tone urgent, “are you okay?”

She didn’t even look at him. Instead, her gaze was fixed on something deeper in the canyon, although he couldn’t see anything except scrub juniper and patches of cholla cactus and a few spindly cottonwood trees, their leaves fluttering languidly in the soft morning breeze.

“He’s out there,” she said, her voice oddly emotionless, like videos he’d seen of people speaking while hypnotized.

“Who’s out there?” he asked. Her blank tone and expression were jarring, considering how animated she usually was, but he did his best to sound reassuring, calm.

Behind her sunglasses, her eyes closed, then slowly opened again. “The voices are trying to tell me.”

“What voices?” he said. It occurred to him that he should have encouraged her to keep moving, that trying to hold a conversation while standing in the center of a narrow, rocky bridge wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Unfortunately, she seemed rooted in place, and he wasn’t sure how she would react if he tried to gently urge her along.

If they lost their balance, it would be a very long drop to the ground below.

“The voices you heard at the ranch the other night?” he asked, and at least she nodded.

“Yes. The voices on the wind are trying to tell me he’s out there.”

The sun beating down on them was already hot, even though the hour had barely inched past seven-thirty, but right then, Marc thought he might as well have been dunked in a tub of ice water.

“Who’s out there?” he asked again, trying not to sound overly urgent so he wouldn’t upset her. She seemed to be in thrall to the voices she heard on the wind — well, more like a breeze, just enough to play with the ends of her hair as she stood there on the stone bridge — and he didn’t want to do anything that might make her react violently.

“The Collector,” she replied, then pulled in an odd, hitching breath, almost as if she had something caught in her throat.

The Collector? Who the hell was that?

But then she blinked, and gave him a curious glance. “Marc, what the hell are we doing standing in the middle of the Devil’s Bridge? We should keep going — this really isn’t kind of place where we want to be hanging out and having a chat.”

No kidding. “You don’t remember what just happened?”

Her russet brows drew together. “No…what are you talking about?”

“We can discuss it once we’re off this bridge.”

She seemed to realize that was the only sensible thing to do, because she nodded, even as she still looked confused.

“Okay. Let’s get going.”

Tricia McAllister sent Bellamy a worried look. “You really don’t remember anything that happened?”

They were all sitting in the living room at Tricia’s house — Levi and Allegra and Tricia, the three elders, with Marc and Bellamy close to each other on the couch as he held her hand. She was glad of the contact, glad how he felt so real, so reassuring, because that whole episode on the Devil’s Bridge had scared the living shit out of her.

Never in her life had she had anything like that happen. When she’d heard the voices the other night while standing on the patio at the ranch house, the experience had been somewhat unsettling, but she’d still remembered who she was and what she was doing.

Today, though…today it was as if the voices had put her in some kind of a goddamn trance.

“Nothing,” she replied. “I mean, I remember going hiking with Marc, and I remember starting to walk across the bridge, but after that, everything just went…dark…for a few minutes.”

“It was frightening,” he put in. “It felt like she’d completely checked out.”

“But she spoke to you.”

Marc nodded, and his fingers tightened on Bellamy’s. “Yes, she answered me when I asked her a question. She said the voices on the wind were trying to tell her that the Collector was out there.”

The three elders exchanged worried glances. “Have you ever heard of someone like that, Levi?” Tricia asked, and he shook his blond head, which now showed a few strands of silver.

Odd to think that he was aging like a regular person, even though he’d always said his body was just as human as anyone else’s. Still, this was the first time Bellamy truly understood that Levi’s claims of mortality had been the simple truth.

“Not that I can recall,” he said. “Not in this world…or the one I came from.”

Allegra’s sparse brows drew together. Her pupils looked oddly dilated, and Bellamy wondered if that was an after-effect from her visit to the ophthalmologist the day before.

“I’ve never heard of such a person, either,” she said. “This is…concerning.”

That was one word for it. Bellamy thought the “Collector” must be someone pretty scary, or she didn’t think the voices on the wind would have been trying so hard to warn her about him.

“But you say nothing happened at Marc’s Airbnb the night before?” Tricia asked then.

Color flushed Bellamy’s cheeks, even as she thought, Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘nothing.’

However, she knew that wasn’t what Marc’s grandmother had meant. She guessed this must be pretty embarrassing for him, to all but come right out and say they were sleeping together, but she supposed he was a big boy and could handle whatever he needed to. Besides, he was obviously single, and so was she, and if two consenting witch-kind decided to get together, then it was nobody’s business but their own.

“No,” she said. “Everything was quiet. I didn’t hear any voices, or have any bad dreams, or anything like that.”

For a moment, the three elders didn’t say anything. Levi looked particularly thoughtful, though, so Bellamy wasn’t too surprised to hear him speak first.

“Are there any maps of the vortexes in Sedona?”

“There must be,” Tricia replied. “They’re a big draw for the tourists. Why?”

“Because if Sedona energy is involved in all this — I’m not saying it is for sure, but that’s the only theory we have to work with right now — then it’s possible Bellamy heard the voices out on the Devil’s Bridge because there’s a strong vortex in that area,” Levi replied. “Likewise, it could be that the property where the Airbnb is located is relatively quiescent. We’ll need to do more research to be sure.”

In a way, those words felt oddly comforting to Bellamy. If something outside her was trying to reach out and communicate, to use her magical power of harmony with the winds to send an important message, then she sort of liked the idea that she’d gotten hit so hard out on the Devil’s Bridge because the vortex energy in that area was insanely strong. True, she’d never heard of the vortexes sending people into a trance, but their effects did tend to vary from person to person.

“Let me get my laptop,” Tricia said, rising from her chair. “I should be able to find something online.”

“How did you feel after you got back to the house?” Allegra asked then, probably thinking she should do something to fill the awkward silence that had fallen after Tricia left the room.

“Fine,” Bellamy replied at once. “I mean, I was a little tired from the hike, but after I took a shower and had something to eat, I was ready to get going.”

Marc gently released her hand, saying, “I asked her the same thing. Once we were away from the Devil’s Bridge area, she seemed fine.”

“I am fine,” Bellamy told him, then returned her gaze to the two elders. “I’m not going to lie — the whole thing was a little creepy. But it’s not as if I’ve had weird voices in my head ever since or anything like that.”

That wasn’t to say she hadn’t been on edge the whole time, wondering if those strange whispers were going to start up again. If, as Levi had postulated, the Airbnb sat on neutral ground, they wouldn’t have been able to reach her there, and once she and Marc had left Sedona to drive over to Cottonwood, she would have been well out of range of the vortexes and any influence they might have on her.

Small blessings, she supposed.

“Here we go,” Tricia said as she came back into the living room. She set her laptop down on the coffee table and then opened it, showing that she’d already found an online map of the various vortexes in the Sedona area. “There’s a huge one in Boynton Canyon — ”

“But we had lunch at Enchantment yesterday morning and nothing happened,” Bellamy protested.

“True,” Levi said. “You were in a public place, though, and often, the mere presence of others can be enough to protect you from those sorts of forces.”

Maybe that was something of an explanation. Still….

“Boynton Canyon is more than a mile from the Devil’s Bridge,” she pointed out. “How much area does one vortex cover?”

The three elders looked at one another. Tricia inclined her head toward Levi, as if to let him know he should be the one to answer.

Maybe he’d studied the vortexes. Although Bellamy had spent plenty of time at their house when she was hanging out with Bree, it wasn’t as if she’d ever felt the need to sit down and have a scholarly talk with her friend’s father about the Sedona vortex situation, so she had no idea how much he actually knew.

“It depends on the vortex,” he said. “Some are quite large, while others are smaller.” He paused there to study the map on the laptop’s screen. “This only shows the largest vortexes, the ones that attract tourists and hikers. That doesn’t mean the area isn’t dotted with more.”

“Which means we should maybe find an expert on them?” Marc suggested. “Someone who’s really studied them and knows a lot more than the publicly available information shows?”

This sounded like a great idea to Bellamy. Surely there must be someone who’d made the vortexes their life’s work and would be able to offer a lot more in-depth details about their exact locations.

However, none of the elders looked too thrilled by that prospect.

“Reaching out to a civilian could open a whole new can of worms,” Tricia said, both her tone and her expression doubtful. “They’d certainly want to know why you were asking for such detailed information.”

“Then I’ll lie,” Bellamy responded, crossing her arms.

Did they think she was some stupid kid who didn’t know how to be circumspect around a civilian? She was twenty-two years old, not twelve.

Come to think of it, even her twelve-year-old self would have known not to let any information like that slip out around a nonmagical person.

“Bellamy’s right,” Marc said, his voice warm, reassuring. It felt so good to have him sitting there next to her, to know that he didn’t think she was crazy…and that he’d help her do whatever was needed so they could get to the bottom of all this. “We don’t have to be entirely honest about why we want this information. Heck, we could just tell the guy we wanted to find someplace that was super-energetic for us to have our wedding ceremony or something.”

Had he really just said that? Sure, he’d told her he loved her but….

It’s just a story we can use to tell the vortex expert, Bellamy reminded herself. It’s not as if he actually asked me to marry him or anything.

Her inner voice didn’t sound very convinced, though. In the witch clans, once you realized you had this sort of connection to a person, you generally made it formal sooner rather than later.

Well, she could worry about that after they’d dealt with their more immediately pressing matters.

Surprisingly, none of the elders looked too put out by Marc’s suggestion.

“It’s true that lots of people go to Sedona to get married,” Allegra said.

“And it’s also true there are plenty of woo-woo types who want to make sure their vows are in harmony with the universe, or whatever,” Tricia put in. “So I don’t think anyone will ask too many questions. No, the hardest part will be finding someone who knows what they’re doing and isn’t a complete crackpot.”

Levi smiled. “I can manage that part. Let me do a little research, and then we can see how to proceed from there.”

“And this ‘Collector’ person?” Marc asked then.

“I’ll talk to Connor and Angela and see if they’ve ever heard of anyone like that,” Tricia replied. “As prima and primus, they have access to information that even we elders don’t.”

“And possibly the de la Paz prima as well,” Allegra suggested. “She has a huge library of magical books her clan has collected over the years. There might be something in one of those volumes that could provide some information.”

Right. Bellamy slipped a sideways glance at Marc, but he only nodded, as if he thought reaching out to his clan’s prima seemed a logical thing to do, considering she was sitting on a repository of knowledge unmatched among the witch clans of the Southwest.

A ringing sound came from Tricia’s laptop, and she pulled it toward her, frowning slightly.

“I’m getting a FaceTime call.”

“Well, go ahead and answer,” Levi told her. “It could be important.”

Brows still pulled together, she touched a button to accept the call. From where she was sitting, Bellamy couldn’t see much of the screen, but she caught a glimpse of a dark-haired Hispanic woman in her middle forties, heavy dark hair pulled away from her face into a thick ponytail that fell over one shoulder.

“Hi, Tricia,” the woman said, and even though the words were casual enough, her strained tone was anything but. “This is Zoe Sandoval. I thought I should reach out and let you know that someone just tried to break into my library.”