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Marc’s first reaction to his prima’s words was utter shock…but then he did his best to reassure himself by recalling that Zoe had said “tried to.”

So…all those magical books and grimoires were still safe?

“But you’re all right?” Tricia asked, even as Levi and Allegra scooched closer to her so they could also see the de la Paz prima.

“I’m fine,” Zoe replied, and now she sounded more irritated than anything else. “They didn’t get in. The books are safe. But I thought I should give you a head’s up that there’s a rogue witch or warlock out there who’s decided it’s a good idea to help themselves to some magical goodies.”

Next to him on the couch, Bellamy shifted positions, her expression almost nervous. Marc thought he could see why — he highly doubted that Connor and Angela had told Zoe about the amulet, figuring it was safe and McAllister clan business, nothing that the de la Pazes needed to worry about.

Clearly, though, it was. Or rather, he had a feeling the attempted thefts must be connected.

The work of the Collector?

Why else would the wind have been whispering at Bellamy, warning her about that very person?

“Did you see who it was?” Levi inquired.

At once, Zoe shook her head. “No. This was more a magical attack on the wards we have set up, someone trying to brute-force their way past them. Luckily, they held — I and the other witches and warlocks who set them up worked really hard to make them as strong as possible, and I have a feeling this person, whoever they are, wasn’t expecting them to be that tough.”

Had the Collector…if that was who they were really dealing with…somehow learned about the way the books had been pilfered from the de la Paz clan before and thought the grimoires must be an easy target?

Well, they’d just learned the hard way that his clan wasn’t about to get caught with their pants down again.

“We also had someone try to steal an artifact from us,” Levi said, his tone precise, controlled, as if he hoped by speaking carefully that he might be able to defuse some of the tension in the situation.

“‘Artifact’?” Zoe repeated, voice sharpening. “What kind of artifact?”

The elders looked at each other, and once again, Marc got the impression they would have preferred to keep this information within their clan.

However, if someone was going around trying to steal any magically charged objects that weren’t nailed down, then it sure felt as if it was time for the Arizona clans to close ranks and protect everyone against the interloper.

“An amulet,” Tricia said. “Something that was brought to us out of the past by one of our clan members. It strengthens the magical gift of anyone who holds it, so you can see why it might be a target.”

“Like Hayley’s talent?” Zoe asked, voice still far too sharp. Most of the time, Marc thought her the most laid-back prima he’d ever heard of, even more casual than Angela, but clearly, she was disturbed by this information.

And he wondered, not for the first time, exactly how Zoe felt about Hayley McAllister. Sure, all that had happened more than twenty-five years ago, and yet, once upon a time, Zoe had summoned Levi to this plane when she was desperate and sure her consort search had gone completely sideways. She’d been happily married to her husband Evan ever since then, but did she ever feel a twinge when she thought about Levi, about what might have happened if Evan hadn’t turned out to be her soul mate?

Well, whatever Zoe’s feelings on the subject might be, Marc doubted he had the guts to come right out and ask her. Some topics were better left alone.

“More or less,” Levi said. “I’ll admit we haven’t done many tests with the amulet to determine the exact scope of its powers. Angela and Connor both thought it safer to keep it locked up.”

“But someone tried to steal it.”

“They did,” he replied, his voice still calm, soothing. “They didn’t succeed, however.”

He stopped there, and Marc wondered if he was going to confess that the thief had managed to break into the prima’s house. Sure, the wards had prevented him — or her — from removing the safe and its precious contents from the premises, but the incident had still proved that their magical defenses weren’t quite as impregnable as they thought.

“I suppose that’s something,” Zoe said. She paused there for a moment, expression more troubled than ever. “We’ll all need to be on high alert until we find the person responsible. Any other valuable artifacts lying around that I should know about?”

Her dry tone seemed to suggest she wasn’t too thrilled with the McAllisters for keeping such an important matter from her. Although Marc was sympathetic, he also knew that whatever information the Arizona clans shared amongst themselves — or with the Castillos in New Mexico, since their prima was Angela’s younger daughter — was done purely out of mutual understanding and not because there was some sort of formal treaty or other agreement in place that might compel them to do so.

“No, only the amulet,” Tricia said. Her tone was very businesslike, and Marc had the feeling she was doing what she could to defuse the situation. “Or at least, that’s the only one we know of. But I have to believe if any McAllister had stumbled across something powerful, they would have let us or Angela know about it.”

Wishful thinking? Marc didn’t want to think so, mainly because everything he’d seen or heard from the McAllister clan seemed to suggest they were forthright people, not the kind who would keep secrets from others.

Especially if those secrets might turn out to be dangerous.

Zoe seemed to take Tricia’s words at face value, because something about the tense set of her shoulders appeared to relax a little, and although she didn’t allow herself to lean against the back of her office chair, she also didn’t seem to be sitting so rigidly upright.

“I suppose that’s something,” she said. “None of my security cameras caught the person who tried to break in, so either they have the power of invisibility in their bag of tricks, or they have some kind of other talent that can interfere with technology. You’ll need to be really on your guard.”

Next to him, Bellamy pressed her lips together, looking even more troubled. Marc, on the other hand, wasn’t too surprised by his prima’s revelation. After all, it seemed as if Connor and Angela had a pretty sophisticated security system in place at their house, and yet the thief appeared to have bypassed it without any trouble.

“We’re definitely on our guard,” Levi said. “And we’ll pass this information along to Marie Begonie and Lucas Wilcox as well, since they’re the ones who keep an eye on things in the Wilcox clan when Connor’s here in Jerome.”

Right — the Wilcoxes didn’t have elders the way the McAllisters did, or even like the de la Paz clan had had in place for generations. True, Marc’s clan wasn’t quite as formal about it, but every de la Paz prima had a group of experienced witches and warlocks from within the family whom she could consult when her own experience and intuition failed her.

“I suppose that’s all any of us can do,” Zoe replied. She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’ll keep you posted if anything else happens. Have a good one.”

The FaceTime call ended there, and the elders looked over at Bellamy, who once again shifted uncomfortably on the sofa.

“I think you had better call in to work,” Tricia said gently, and at once Bellamy’s brows drew together.

“I started less than a month ago,” she protested. “Do you want my manager to think I’m a total flake?”

Levi suddenly looked very stern, an abrupt change from the pleasant expression he usually wore. “Clan business supersedes any outside work,” he told her. “You know that.”

Everyone in all the witch clans knew that — it was part of the reason why so many of them owned their own businesses or worked as independent contractors. While they did their best to function in the modern world, if something major was going down with their family, they knew they had to put all other considerations aside and focus on that.

And even though Bellamy’s chin was stubbornly set, Marc could tell she’d realized she was on the losing side of the argument here. If your clan elders told you to do something — well, as long as it wasn’t illegal — then you did as they said.

Even if it meant pissing off your manager.

“Fine,” she said, although her tone indicated it was anything but fine. “I really don’t see the point, though. It’s not as if this Collector person is going to come barging into Sedona Vines or something.”

“No,” Levi replied, his mouth twitching just the slightest bit. “But I need you available if I do manage to find someone who can help guide you to Sedona’s more powerful, hidden vortexes. If you’re able to hear the voices better when you’re standing in one, it just makes sense that you should be there to see if you can find out more about the witch or warlock who seems so bent on taking our valuable artifacts away from us.”

For a second or two, Bellamy didn’t respond. Marc could almost see her turning the various arguments over in her head, trying to decide if any of them would have any effect on Levi or the rest of the elders.

“I’ll call him,” she said. “But only once we’re done here.”

“Oh, we’re done,” Tricia said. “We have Zoe’s warning to keep in mind, and Levi has some research to do. At this point, we’re in sort of a holding pattern.”

The mutinous set to Bellamy’s jaw signaled she thought there shouldn’t be any reason why she couldn’t go into work if all they were doing was sitting around and waiting. But Marc thought he saw his grandmother’s point — maybe they didn’t have anything concrete to go on right now, and yet if Levi found the vortex expert they needed, it would have looked even worse for her to have to drop everything in the middle of her shift and disappear.

“Then I suppose we’ll head back to Sedona and wait,” she said, and got up abruptly from the couch, slipping her purse over one shoulder as she rose. “Marc, let’s go.”

He wasn’t about to argue, not when she sounded like that. Most of the time, she seemed like the most easygoing person in the world, but everyone had their limit and he supposed she’d just hit hers.

“We’ll wait for your call,” he told Levi, and the elder inclined his head.

“Hopefully soon.”

Tricia and Allegra both murmured goodbyes, clearly wanting to be polite without setting Bellamy off any further. Once they were safely inside the cab of his truck and pulling away from the curb — in general, Marc liked to drive manually when he could, but this time he thought it was probably a better idea to let the vehicle take over — Bellamy let out a huff of a breath.

“It’s like they don’t even realize that I just started this job a month ago,” she said as she fished around in her oversized bag to locate her phone. “I mean, sure, if I fell and broke my leg or came down with bubonic plague, I probably wouldn’t get too much grief for calling in. But some vague ‘family business’ kind of bullshit?”

“Is your manager really that much of a hard-ass?” Marc asked, and she sighed again.

“Not really. Or at least, I’ve never run into a situation where I’ve seen him come down on someone at work. Then again, it’s not like any of us has given him a reason, either.”

She stopped there, phone in her hand, and stared down at it for a long moment.

Then she said, “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

The phone rang twice, three times, and Bellamy found herself hoping it would roll over to voicemail. Sure, that was a chickenshit way of getting out of her shift at the last minute, but at least then she wouldn’t have to find out right away whether Jack Hardy, her supervisor, had a short fuse or not.

But then he picked up, saying, “Hey, Bellamy. What’s up?”

He didn’t sound upset or suspicious, which she supposed was a good thing. Still, there wasn’t any easy way to do what she needed to do.

“Hi, Jack. I hate to do this, but I’ve had some urgent family business come up and I won’t be able to come in to work today.”

A surprised pause on the other end. Then he said, “Is everything okay?”

Probably not. She said, “Um…I’m fine. But my family really needs me. Hopefully, it won’t be too busy today.”

As soon as those words were out of her mouth, she wanted to wince. True, Tuesdays and Wednesdays tended to be pretty slow at Sedona Vines, but it was never a good idea to suggest that you might be wishing for a quiet day when those were the times when the wine shop barely broke even.

However, Jack didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he’d just decided it was better not to call her out on the comment. “It’ll be fine. Marcy was saying she wanted some more hours, so I’ll get in touch and see if she can come in today.”

Marcy Phillips only worked part-time because she was getting her enology certification at Yavapai Community College, just as Bellamy had. However, she probably had enough wiggle room in her schedule that she could take Bellamy’s shift today.

“Oh, that’s good,” she replied.

“Should I see if she can come in tomorrow, too?”

As much as Bellamy wanted to say no, that everything should be handled today, she had no way of knowing if that was even the truth. It might take Levi longer to find the vortex expert than he’d expected, or it was possible that even if she was directed to the exact right spot to communicate with her voices, they might send her down a rabbit hole that would consume a huge amount of her time.

Either way, it seemed as if she should be cautious here.

“That’s probably a good idea,” Bellamy replied. “But if this is going to take any longer than that, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. Keep in touch.”

He ended the call there — presumably so he could reach out to Marcy — and Bellamy returned her phone to her purse. By that point, they were down the hill and driving through Cottonwood, and she had to admit she felt a little better now that she had the dreaded call over with.

“That sounded like it went okay,” Marc ventured, and she nodded.

“Yes, Jack seemed cool with it. And I’m taking tomorrow off, too, so with any luck, we’ll have all this handled by then.”

“Good.” He was silent for a moment. “It’s almost noon — do you want to grab some lunch somewhere?”

Her stomach had been so knotted during the conversation with the elders that food was about the last thing on her mind, but she realized now that she was hungry. They’d each had a breakfast bar while they were hiking out to the Devil’s Bridge, and she knew that wasn’t enough to hold her until dinner.

Not even close.

“Maybe we should have stopped in Cottonwood,” she said.

That ship had sailed, though, since they were well past Old Town and heading toward 89A. Yes, she supposed they could have turned around, but then another idea occurred to her.

“We can go to Cornville.”

Marc hadn’t been driving, but he’d still had his eyes on the road, keeping watch in case anything cropped up that might require him to take over from the truck and steer manually. Now, though, he looked over at her, expression one of faint surprise.

“Where’s that?” he asked.

She couldn’t help smiling. Yes, his mom’s side of the family might have come from Jerome, but she got the feeling they hadn’t done a whole lot of exploring in the Verde Valley when they’d traveled here to visit the grandparents and instead had gone straight to the place where his mother had grown up.

“It’s a little town sort of on the other end of Page Springs Road,” she said. “When we get to the intersection with 89-A, just keep going straight instead of turning left to go back to Sedona.”

“And what’s in Cornville?”

“Some of the best burgers you’ve ever eaten,” Bellamy replied. “I don’t know about you, but after that hike this morning, I’m starving.”

“So am I,” Marc admitted. He looked pleased at the prospect of some solid food, and who could blame him?

This had been a rough morning no matter how you looked at it.

They passed the highway and drove past the planned community of Verde Santa Fe, and then wound down into the river bottom where Cornville was located. It was a small town of only a few thousand residents, but it did have a couple of hidden treasures.

Including G Burgers, their current destination.

Because it wasn’t quite noon yet, the parking lot wasn’t too crowded. They headed inside and walked up to the counter to place their orders, then went off to one side to wait for their food to be ready.

“We can sit outside,” she suggested.

“It’s still pretty hot today,” he pointed out.

Only the truth, although she thought it was probably going to be a few degrees cooler than yesterday.

“Yes,” she said, “but most people are going to stay inside and enjoy the air conditioning, which means we’ll have more privacy on the patio.”

An eyebrow lifted, but he seemed to see the wisdom of her suggestion, because he replied, “That makes sense.”

The cooks at G Burgers were fast, so they only had to wait a couple of minutes for their food to be ready before they headed outside. Calling the outdoor dining area a patio was probably a stretch, since it was just a slab of concrete with some shade overhead and a few metal tables with matching chairs, but since no one else was out there, she thought it was the best place to eat their lunch.

She waited until they’d both had a few bites of their burgers and washed them down with iced tea before she said, “Do you really think some vortex guy is going to help with all this?”

“The mythical vortex expert?” Marc returned with a lopsided grin.

Since she’d thought about the same thing, she couldn’t help smiling in return. “Well, Levi seems to think he can find someone like that, so I suppose we have to trust his intuition. Still, even if that kind of expert does exist, I’m not sure whether he’ll really be able to help with our particular problem.”

Marc dunked a fry in the little paper cup of ketchup that sat on the tray in front of him, his expression now thoughtful. “I don’t know. I mean, Levi does have a point. If you can find a vortex that’s powerful but also isn’t overrun with tourists, that might give you a chance to let the voices speak to you.”

“If I should even be listening to them,” she said sourly. “For all I know, they’re some kind of weird magic this Collector person is using to put me off my stride.”

Judging by the way Marc’s brows pulled together, Bellamy could tell he hadn’t considered that particular angle to the problem.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “On the other hand, you’d think the last thing the Collector would want you to know is any particular details about him. It’s pretty obvious that he’s trying to operate in stealth, to slip in and take what he wants without anyone knowing who he is or what he’s up to.”

Marc had a point there. Bellamy supposed she might have been thinking precisely the opposite because she wanted a reason to avoid exploring this any further, to take a step back and say she didn’t think it was such a good idea after all to listen to the voices.

Ever since her gift had manifested when she was eleven, it had been reliable and simple and, she thought, kind of boring. It wasn’t as if she could call a tornado into being or make it rain or do any of the stuff a real weather witch could do. No, she could summon some serious straight-line winds when necessary — like she’d done when a brush fire was threatening some homes on one of Jerome’s lower levels and she’d made the winds reverse direction and have the fire double back on itself, effectively putting it out — but it had never done anything terribly out of the ordinary.

Until now.

And if she could blame the vortexes for this sudden shift in her abilities, well, then, that had an easy enough solution.

She’d just get the hell out and go back someplace neutral and safe, like Jerome or Cottonwood.

Except that she had an agreement with Ike to watch the ranch until it was sold, which could take months. The money wasn’t a huge amount, just two grand a month, but when you added that to the free housing and the stipend she got from the McAllister clan, well, it would definitely be enough to keep her going if it turned out she had to take too much time off and annoyed her boss enough that he had no choice but to let her go.

Marc reached over and laid a hand on her knee. “It’s going to be okay.”

“Was I being that obvious?”

He smiled. “Let’s just say that I could tell you were thinking deep thoughts.”

She supposed she was. While she wasn’t the sort of person who tended to fall into a doom spiral, she also had to admit that she’d never encountered this sort of situation before. Witchy talents were supposed to be what they were, not start morphing into something very different.

Something frightening…something she wasn’t sure she could control.

“I guess it feels like I don’t know myself anymore,” she said. “Have you ever heard of someone’s witchy gifts suddenly turning into something else?”

“No,” he replied at once. “But then, it’s not like I’ve made a study of those sorts of things, either. There’s one thing I’ve noticed, though…and my prima has, too.”

“What’s that?” Bellamy inquired, glad to focus on something outside herself for a bit. No one else had come to join them on the patio, probably because it was pretty toasty today and she could already feel sweat beginning to drip down her back.

And because they were alone, that meant she and Marc wouldn’t have to watch what they were saying.

“My main talent is the dreams,” he said. “I inherited that gift from my mother. But I also got some of my father’s magic as well.”

“Which is…?”

“I can do this,” he said.

For the briefest second, an odd little bubble of light surrounded him before it winked out of existence once more.

“Pretty,” Bellamy commented. “But what does it do?”

“It protects me from magic and physical objects,” he said. “Me, and anyone who’s inside the bubble with me. The field my father can generate is larger, but still, my gifts doubled up because I got them from both sides of my family. And we’ve seen some of the same things in other people whose parents are from two different witch clans.”

“Like my friend Devynn,” Bellamy said softly. “Her father’s gift is being able to hide his witch nature, and her mother can give herself an extra five minutes whenever she wants it. Devynn’s time-travel talent is a little different, but still, she got it double barrels.”

Marc nodded, then took a bite of his mushroom swiss burger. Once he was done chewing, he said, “It’s not always consistent — there are people in my clan whose parents came from two different witch families and they still only got a talent that doesn’t have any relation to their mother and father’s gifts — but it does seem to happen at least half the time. That’s why I think the way our clans have started to commingle is changing us somehow.”

Something about that statement felt vaguely ominous to Bellamy, although she had to admit that having two witchy gifts had to be beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint if nothing else.

Not that she would know. She had only the one because the egg that had helped create her had come from a regular woman, not a witch.

And honestly, right now her one and only talent was causing enough problems. Bellamy wasn’t sure what she would do if she had to deal with more than that.

“Is this something Zoe has talked to Angela and Connor about?” she asked, and Marc shrugged.

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s more of an interesting side effect than anything else.” A pause as his gaze met hers, and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly. “It’s not like I think it’s going to stop anyone in the Arizona witch families from looking for a partner outside their clan if they haven’t found the right one yet.”

His tone was casual enough, and yet Bellamy couldn’t hold back a small thrill of anticipation nonetheless. They were from two different clans and yet had declared their love for each other anyway. Thirty years ago, this would all have been unthinkable, but now it was just part of the way things were.

She supposed the real question was what they planned to do about it.

“No, I guess not,” she said with an answering smile.

He opened his mouth, as though he intended to reply, but then a couple of guys in T-shirts printed with the logo of a local construction company came outside and took the other empty table, and that seemed to be that, at least as far as any confidential witchy conversations went.

Without missing a beat, Marc made a comment about which trail they should hike tomorrow morning, and they went on to a discussion about whether they should head back to the Secret Canyon wilderness, or whether they might want to drive down to the Village of Oak Creek and explore Bell Rock. All totally innocuous, the sort of conversation anyone in the area might have, and it was clear the newcomers had absolutely no interest in it, since they launched into a discussion about whether the countertops that had been ordered for their current job would actually show up today or whether the supplier down in Phoenix would find some way to stall again.

Since she and Marc had already paid for their meal up front, all they had to do was drop their trays back inside after they’d disposed of their trash in the bin helpfully placed near the door.

“My place, or back to the ranch?” he asked as they climbed into his truck.

Maybe it would have been smarter to go to the ranch, just to see if she picked up on any vibes there. But because they might be doing some experimenting along those lines very soon, Bellamy thought she’d be happy to put that off for as long as possible.

“Your place,” she said promptly, and sent him a smile. “I can think of a few things we can do while we’re waiting to hear from Levi.”

“Say no more,” Marc replied with a grin.

With any luck, she’d be able to forget all about this for a few hours.