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For all that Marc did his best to act natural at dinner — which they had at the Mesa Grill, and got an amazing sunset view for dessert — Bellamy could tell he was on edge, not sure what to expect from sleeping right on top of an outflow vortex.

To be fair, she didn’t quite know what was going to happen, either. The increase in her powers had been so subtle that she hadn’t even realized what was going on until that unsettling episode at the Devil’s Bridge. She still didn’t understand why she’d been in a near-trance when she heard the voices that time, although she was beginning to have her suspicions.

Maybe the boost to her powers had already been starting to fade after she’d spent the night before at Marc’s Airbnb, and the voices had put her in a slightly altered state of consciousness so they could still get through to her. Although she didn’t much like the idea of outside forces having that kind of an effect on her mind, she thought that theory might be the right explanation, even if she couldn’t completely say how the voices had done it.

Or who…or what…the voices actually were.

However, Marc’s obvious unease hadn’t prevented them from making love before they went to sleep — slow, gentle, different from some of the more intense sessions they’d shared over the past couple of days. That was all right, though, since Bellamy could tell he wanted to confirm the connection between the two of them, that she’d be there next to him, no matter what happened.

That was for sure. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Several times during the night, she awoke when he shifted position, but because he settled right back down, she had to believe it was all just the normal sorts of movements anyone might make when they were dead asleep. And each time she’d adjusted her own position as well and then fallen into slumber almost immediately.

After all, it had been a very long day, with some ups and downs she would have preferred to avoid.

But a little after four — she knew that because she instinctively looked over at the clock on the nightstand to check the time — he sat bolt upright in bed, staring out into the darkness.

“The cave,” he whispered, and she stared at him.

Was this a normal dream…or a vision?

And was it like sleepwalking, when you weren’t supposed to startle the other person or do anything that might make them wake up?

She’d also raised herself to a sitting position, but gently, so the bed wouldn’t squeak too much. Marc was still staring at nothing in particular…although she noticed how his gaze was fixed to the north and east of their current location.

His hands were curled in the sheets, tightly clenched, and his breathing came so fast, it sounded as if he’d just completed a heavy-duty rock climb rather than merely sitting there in bed.

“Have to….” The words trailed off, and his chest rose and fell as he continued to pant.

Bellamy hated to stay still and not respond, but she honestly didn’t know what to do. It sure seemed as if he was having a vision of some kind — or at least some sort of spectacularly bad dream — but if she disturbed him in any way, would he lose the thread of the vision and not be able to remember any of it when he awoke?

That would sort of defeat the purpose of this whole experiment.

Then his eyes opened even wider, and he let out a heavy gust of a breath. He sat there like that for a moment before something about his body appeared to sag. Whatever he’d been staring at didn’t seem to hold his attention any longer, because she could just barely see his brows pull together before he looked over at her.

“It worked,” he said.

“The outflow vortex?” she responded, and he nodded.

“I had a dream…but it wasn’t a real dream. It was a vision.”

Bellamy didn’t exactly sag with relief — she was too concerned about Marc, about what having that dream-vision might have done to him. “You said something about a cave.”

He released his grip on the sheets and instead rubbed his palms on the covers. “That’s what I saw. A cave somewhere deep in the red rock wilderness. Our thief is staying there.”

Well, that was one way to avoid notice. If the person had some kind of hidey-hole out in the middle of nowhere, then it wasn’t as if anyone could have used occupancy records from the various hotels in the area to track them down. Sure, that was Forest Service land and you weren’t supposed to camp there except in designated areas, but Bellamy sort of doubted their would-be magical thief cared too much about that kind of thing.

“Did you see them?” she asked, and Marc nodded again.

“Sort of. I didn’t see their face, but they were tall and had sort of dreadlocked hair pulled back in a ponytail.”

“They were Black?” she responded, now a little surprised. As far as she knew, you’d have to go far to the south and east to find any witch clans that were African-American. How would someone from one of those families have even ended up in Sedona?

For a second or two, Marc hesitated. Then he said, “I don’t think so. I think it’s a white person with that kind of hair.”

There were several regulars in Sedona and the surrounding areas who affected dreadlocks as part of their crunchy-granola personas. However, Bellamy knew they were all civilians, so there was no way they could be the Collector’s minion.

“Well, that’ll make them easier to identify,” she said, taking care to keep her tone light, “even if you weren’t able to catch a glimpse of their face.”

“Do you have any idea where a cave like that might be located?”

She didn’t even have to stop to think about it. “Probably out in the Secret Canyon wilderness somewhere. We were on the edges of it when we went on the Devil’s Bridge trail, but it goes much deeper than that. It’s all been mapped, of course, and we can use an app to guide us around. Still, it’s a good thing that you and I are both experienced hikers, because it can get pretty rough out there.”

Marc must have picked on the implications of that comment right away, because he said, “You think we should go out to the Secret Canyon wilderness and find this person?”

Although neither of them had turned on a light, and the only real illumination was from the clock on the nightstand a few feet away and maybe a little glow from the landscape lighting outside that had slipped past the blackout curtains, Bellamy thought she could still see enough of his expression to know he was frowning.

“The vision came to you, didn’t it?” she said simply, and he gave a reluctant nod.

“I guess it did.”

“We can do this,” she went on. She couldn’t say for sure whether the confidence building inside was false bravado, or whether some deeper, subtler instincts were at work.

Maybe the voices still whispered on the wind, only this time so softly that she heard them with her soul and not her ears.

“Who else?” she said, when it seemed Marc was all right with merely sitting there and listening to her argument rather than trying to comment. “I suppose Levi wouldn’t have a problem hiking out there, and maybe Connor and Angela wouldn’t, either. Sure, they can teleport, but not when they don’t know exactly where they’re going. No offense, but I don’t think your grandmother could manage a hike like that, and I know Allegra Moss sure as hell couldn’t.”

Definitely not Allegra, who some days seemed as though she could barely get up the stairs of her front porch. More than once, people had tried to convince her that she should sell the house to someone else in the clan and move down the hill to a more manageable home in the 55+ community in Clarkdale, but she always adamantly refused. She’d lived in that house for more than fifty years, raised her children there…sat at her husband’s side as he moved beyond the veil and on into the next life…and she wasn’t leaving until they carried her out on a stretcher.

Her prerogative of course, but she also was not a candidate for hiking around in some of the roughest terrain Sedona had to offer.

And Tricia seemed to be in decent enough shape, but she was also getting up there and probably shouldn’t be put in a position where she might fall and break a hip, or worse.

No, it definitely seemed as if Bellamy and Marc should be the ones to handle this.

“If we go out there and don’t find anything,” she continued, “then sure, we’ll pass along everything we know and see if Levi or Angela or Connor can figure out how to track down this person. But it just seems to me that if you had the vision now, then we should act as well.”

For the first time, Marc smiled, teeth flashing in the darkness.

“Do you think we could get a couple more hours of sleep first?”

Bellamy couldn’t help smiling in return, and leaned over so she could give him a kiss. Not the kind of deep embrace that would signal she was open to other activities, but one that, she hoped, would tell Marc she loved him and would always be there for him.

And that she would also listen to him when he was intimating that they didn’t need to go running off half-cocked. Yes, the sun rose early at this time of year, but she knew if they woke up around six-thirty and got ready quickly, then they could still be out in the Secret Canyon wilderness less than an hour later.

After that?

Well, she supposed they’d just have to see.

They went to sleep again, although Bellamy had reached for her phone and set an alarm. If they were going to go traipsing around the back of beyond, they needed to be up early enough that they could beat most of the heat.

It started beeping away at six-thirty, and she sort of reached over to swat the thing, almost knocking it to the floor.

“I’ll get in the shower,” she said, leaning over to kiss Marc before she pushed herself out of bed.

A quick one, since she was out of the bathroom ten minutes later, already dressed, her coppery hair pulled back into a ponytail. “It’s all yours,” she announced as she started rummaging through her overnight bag.

“On it,” Marc replied, and swung his legs over the side of the bed so he could get up. The vinyl plank floor was cool against his feet, and he hurried over to the bathroom, which was still warm and steamy from Bellamy’s brief shower.

He did his best to be as quick as she had been, and decided he didn’t need to worry about shaving today. Most of the time, he’d let a few days pass before he broke out the razor again, since he preferred to be a little scruffy, but he should have tackled the task today.

Oh, well. Hopefully, Bellamy wouldn’t mind the way the scruff was about to become a beard if he let it go much longer.

A comb through his damp hair and that was it. She hadn’t washed her hair, either, because time was of the essence this morning. Marc had to hope their quarry would have no idea they were coming and would stay hunkered down in the cave he’d seen in his vision, but if he — or she — didn’t, then better to go chasing after them before temperatures climbed out of the eighties.

However, even though he hadn’t seen the unknown thief’s face, he’d gotten the impression it was a man. Maybe that supposition would turn out to be totally wrong, since there were plenty of tall, broad-shouldered women out there, but the feelings he got from his visions were usually correct.

Bellamy was already dressed in shorts and a tank top and hiking boots, and was rubbing sunblock on her arms when he emerged from the bathroom. “Almost ready?” she asked, and he nodded.

“Just about,” he replied. “Let me get some clothes on, and then I’ll probably want some of that sunblock, too.”

He moved fast, however, and they were both out the door just a little after seven, well ahead of schedule. The little breakfast area adjacent to the reception desk had coffee and Danish out, though, so they paused just long enough to pour themselves some go-cups and pick up a couple of pastries before heading over to his truck. A bit of dew sparkled on the roof, telling him that humidity levels had come up a bit. The sky was clear, but he still wondered if they might be in for some storms later today.

An inquiring glance at Bellamy, and she tilted her head up at the pale morning heavens above.

“The wind is from the east,” she said. “So yeah, we might get some more monsoon action.”

Which could be good or bad, depending on how you looked at it. Sure, a sudden downpour would help with the August heat, but gulleys and dry creek beds filled up fast in those sorts of conditions. The last thing they needed was to get swept away in a flash flood.

“All the more reason to get this over with,” he said, touching the fob to unlock his truck.

Her lips pressed together, but she didn’t say anything as she got inside. Instead, she directed him to take much the same route they would have if they were going back to the Enchantment resort, except this time they’d turn right and park at the Boynton Canyon trailhead.

“From there, we can head back into the Secret Canyon wilderness,” she explained. “But I wanted to ask if this was the cave you saw in your vision.”

She held up her phone, which showed an image of a cave mouth, clearly taken from inside, since it looked out onto a spectacular vista of red rocks.

Because he was letting the truck drive itself, Marc didn’t have to worry about looking away from the road so he could study the photo.

At once, he could tell it wasn’t the place he’d seen in his dream. “No,” he said. “That one is a lot bigger. The place I saw was barely big enough for a tall person to stand upright. I’d probably hit my head against the ceiling if I tried that.”

Bellamy didn’t look too disappointed. “Well, it was worth a shot. I had a feeling this one couldn’t be the cave you saw, though, just because the Birthing Cave is a popular destination for hikers, even if it’s kind of hard to get to. So I suppose we’ll just have to keep looking and let instinct guide us.”

He nodded, then said, “It’s a little better than that. At the beginning of my dream, it was almost as if I was watching a drone fly over the landscape before it zeroed in on the cave where the thief is hiding out, so I’m hoping what I saw will be enough to get us where we need to go.”

At once, her face lit up. “That’s great news. I think we’ll really be able to do this.”

Marc didn’t want to say anything to dampen her enthusiasm, but, even though he’d agreed to go along on this expedition, he couldn’t help feeling they were taking an enormous risk. They still had no clear idea as to what the Collector’s minion was even capable of, and it wasn’t as if his magical talents were the kind that would allow them to mount any kind of real offensive.

But he did have his shield magic, which he hoped would be enough to provide some kind of protection for the two of them. True, cowering in a corner while the thief threw fireballs or lightning bolts at him and Bellamy didn’t seem like the best way to handle such a confrontation, and yet Marc couldn’t think of what else he could possibly do if the unknown warlock…or witch…went on the attack.

If they even found the person at all. His vision of the night before had provided some decent clues, and yet, they were still heading into pretty rough country. It seemed all too likely that their prey would elude them, and they’d have to go to the elders and Connor and Angela and say, sorry, we tried, but it looks like the big guns should have handled this in the first place.

Marc didn’t voice any of those doubts to Bellamy, though. She looked utterly hopeful about the outcome of their expedition, and he wasn’t sure whether that was over-confidence in the sort of intel he’d be able to provide, or maybe a tendency to underestimate their opponent. The thief had gotten past the wards in Angela and Connor’s house and had also attempted to break into the library at Zoe’s home in Scottsdale, an indication that they were good at stealth and unraveling wards, at the very least.

If it was even the same person who’d committed both crimes, something no one seemed to be very sure of yet. The winds had told Bellamy that the Collector had many servants, so they had no idea how many of them could be lurking out there.

For all they knew, the dreadlocked thief he’d seen in his dream could have an accomplice somewhere nearby, which would make this whole confrontation a lot more dangerous.

Quite a few cars were parked at the trailhead, so many that Marc counted himself lucky to snag the last available spot.

Would having this many people around make their mission that much more difficult?

“Don’t worry,” Bellamy said in an undertone after she came over to join him on the driver’s side of his Nissan truck. “Most of these people are probably headed toward the Birthing Cave, or maybe the Three Sisters, which is a rock formation about a mile down the trail. We’re going much farther than that.”

Marc supposed he should be glad that they wouldn’t be tripping over hikers while they were trying to apprehend the thief. All the same, he still found himself hoping they wouldn’t have an audience during that magical confrontation.

Trying to cover it up afterward would be a real nightmare.

But he and Bellamy were prepared, with lots of bottled water and a couple of Kind bars she’d slipped into her overnight bag when she was packing.

“You never know,” she told him as she handed one over so he could put it in his pack, and he couldn’t help smiling.

He liked a woman who was prepared…and who understood that, while the pastries they’d snacked on during the drive over here were tasty, they weren’t exactly the sort of meal to sustain them during an extended hike.

“No, I guess not,” he said, then settled his backpack a little more firmly on his shoulders. A pause as he let himself take in the landscape, the red rock formations on all sides, the scrubby junipers and cholla cactus and other native plants that helped make the trail harder to see.

“Let’s do this.”