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Bellamy wasn’t sure why she felt so upbeat right then, unless it was the way the voices had whispered in her ears a while back.

You can.

Two simple words, but in this case, maybe they would be enough.

The sun was higher in the sky now, beating down on them, but off to the south and east, she could already see thunderheads building, fulfilling the promise of the dew earlier that morning. Most likely, the storms wouldn’t arrive for hours yet.

Still, if it rained, the hike back to Marc’s truck might not be as blazingly hot as it would be if the sun continued to rule uncontested in the heavens.

On the other hand, she recalled how they’d crossed a couple of dry creek beds on their way out here. Those creeks wouldn’t be nearly so dry if they got a good downpour, and they might be forced to wait on this side until the waters subsided.

The rocks that were their destination grew steadily closer. Despite that sensation of certainty from earlier, unease crept its way down her spine, telling Bellamy that at least part of her wasn’t quite so confident about this confrontation as she wanted to believe.

But she had Marc with her. He walked a few feet ahead, clearing the way as best he could, and the set of his shoulders and the lift of his chin let her know he wasn’t going to back down from whatever confrontation might be looming.

And that meant neither would she.

The ground began to slope upward as they grew closer to the big pile of red rock with its assortment of caves. Now that they were nearer to the formation, she thought she could see a barely visible path zigzagging its way upward.

“He practically left out the welcome mat,” Marc said with a grin as he pointed at the trail in question, which he must have spied right around the same time she had. “That’ll make it a lot easier to figure out which cave he’s holed up in.”

Bellamy had to agree with that assessment…even as she thought they were going to be awfully exposed climbing up those rocks.

But they were almost there, and it wasn’t as if they could turn back now.

Or rather, while someone else might have thought they’d gathered enough information that they could take back to the elders and Connor and Angela and let them decide how to deal with all this, Bellamy knew neither she nor Marc was about to do such a thing.

Not when they’d come this far.

When they got to the rocks, she was glad of her sturdy hiking boots, since she didn’t think any lesser footwear could have managed to maintain a purchase on the slippery, gravelly soil beneath her feet. And it was a damn good thing that both she and Marc had experience with this sort of activity, or she had a feeling they would never have managed to keep following their quarry’s trail.

But even though they weren’t in much danger of sliding down the hill, she couldn’t help but wince at the amount of noise they were making, with small rocks tumbling off the path no matter what they did. The sounds seemed loud as thunder to her, even as she tried to reassure herself that it wasn’t too bad, and if the thief was close by, maybe he’d think it was only a wild animal, a coyote or a javelina or even a deer.

Not that she thought any of those animals would be stupid enough to come up here where there were barely any plants for them to forage.

They kept going, however, and if Marc was worried they were giving their position away, he didn’t show any sign of it, everything about his posture clear that he intended to see this through to the end.

No matter what.

The only good thing was the way the rock formation had so many funky outcroppings and half-formed caves and other geological features, so they weren’t quite as exposed here as she’d feared. Yes, one slip and she’d probably fall at least twenty or thirty feet before she hit another shelf where she’d be able to stand, but so far, they were both hanging in there, moving quickly enough to cover a decent amount of ground while doing everything they could to maintain their footing.

They passed between two tall rock spires and then out into an open, flat area partially shaded by a rock ledge far overhead.

Tucked up against the back wall of the opening — Bellamy couldn’t really call it a cave, not when it only had rock overhead and to one side — was a sleeping roll, a large rucksack, and a camp stove.

“Do you think that stuff is his?” she asked in a whisper, and Marc straightened his backpack, even as his eyes narrowed, taking in the rough encampment.

“Could be,” he replied, also keeping his voice low. “Or someone who just wanted to camp way off grid.” He stopped there and looked around. “I don’t see any sign of him, though.”

Maybe he went off to pee behind a bush, Bellamy thought, and fought the incongruous urge to chuckle.

There wasn’t anything funny about their situation.

“Do you think he might be setting snares for rabbits or something?” she asked, still in an undertone. “Doing what he can to supplement any food he might have brought along?”

Marc surveyed the campsite. “I suppose it’s possible. He’s got a camp stove, so he could definitely cook something like that.”

During this sotto voce conversation, they’d moved slowly toward the makeshift little encampment. Now that they were closer, Bellamy could see the rucksack was stained and worn, sporting patches from various national parks that she guessed were partially there to cover up tears and holes.

“You’d think if the Collector was paying him to do his dirty work, he’d make sure his lackey was a little better outfitted.”

About all Bellamy could do was give a puzzled lift of her shoulders. Something about this didn’t feel quite right, and yet….

“Or maybe ‘he’ just doesn’t care about shit like that,” came a new voice from behind them.

She and Marc both whirled at almost the same moment, which she also guessed might have looked amusing to an outside observer. However, with the way her nerves suddenly started thrumming and her stomach wanted to pull itself into knots, she knew she didn’t find anything particularly funny about the way the thief had materialized right there without them even noticing.

As Marc had described from what he’d seen in his dream, the stranger was tall and skinny — not as tall as Marc, true, but still probably just scraping six feet. His mid-brown hair was heavily dreadlocked and pulled back away from his lean face with a leather cord, and sharp blue eyes stared at them from a deeply tanned face.

Her ears rang for a brief second, signaling her that they were definitely in the presence of someone who was witch-kind. And since Marc hitched his shoulders briefly, she guessed he’d experienced the tingle or whatever it was that told him the other man was a warlock.

“Which ‘he’?” Marc said, sounding remarkably calm, considering the thief had just sneaked up on them as if that kind of stealth wasn’t any big deal. “I can’t really believe that about the Collector, not when he was having you try to steal from both the McAllister and the de la Paz primas .”

The thief didn’t seem too moved by that argument. Looking at him, Bellamy had a hard time trying to determine his true age, since, while he had a few creases around those supernaturally bright eyes and cutting down from his nose to the corners of his mouth, he still could have been anything from thirty to fifty.

“What the Collector wants has nothing to do with material wealth,” he said. “It’s all about making sure those magical artifacts have a safe home.”

“They’re safe where they are,” Bellamy put in.

The man only smiled. He had very good teeth, considering how disheveled the rest of him was. “Are they? After all, I didn’t have too hard a time getting into your prima’s house.”

Bellamy’s eyes narrowed, even as Marc said smoothly, “Sure, you got in…but you didn’t get back out with your prize. Was the Collector pretty pissed off about that?”

No response at all to this barb. The thief only stood there, watching them carefully…

…and then he was gone.

Bellamy let out a startled breath, even as Marc blinked and looked all around them, obviously trying to figure out where the man had disappeared to.

“Do you think he can teleport like Devynn’s fiancé Seth?” Bellamy asked, backing up to Marc so they were almost touching. It just seemed much safer for them to stand like that so at least the thief couldn’t teleport directly behind either of them.

“Not exactly,” the man said, appearing out of nowhere next to his rucksack. He knelt down and opened it, then pulled out something.

Oh, shit.

Not just a single something, but a pair of hunting knives, one for each hand. He straightened and sent them an evil smile.

“Nothing personal,” he added. “But I can’t have you telling anyone about me…or the rest of us.”

The knives flew through the air, glinting as they caught the light that filtered into the enclosure. Bellamy started to flinch…

…but then Marc reached back and caught hold of both her hands, as though telling her she needed to stay put. At the same moment, a strange shimmer surrounded the two of them, falling into place just a fraction of a second before both knives hit the odd barrier and bounced off harmlessly, falling to the rocky ground underfoot.

A flash of annoyance crossed the thief’s face. “Nice trick,” he said, the irritated note in his voice belying those words. “But defensive magic isn’t going to get you out of this.”

“Maybe not,” Marc said, still sounding strangely calm. “I can hold this barrier for hours, though. Nothing will get through it. Not your knives, not magic — not even a push from you. So I guess it’s stalemate.”

While Bellamy was very glad to hear that it didn’t seem as if anything could affect the barrier he’d raised around them, she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of standing here for hours. If nothing else, what if the thief got fed up and went to fetch the Collector?

It wouldn’t change anything, she told herself. Not if what Marc said about this barrier is true. No kind of magic is getting through it.

The thief still stood several paces away. If the disgusted expression he now wore was any indication, then he’d also realized that bringing in outside help wouldn’t do a lick of good.

“What does the Collector want?” Marc pressed. “Why are you working for him?”

Now the thief smiled. “You’ll hear nothing of him from me.”

Well, maybe not, but at least the scruffy minion had confirmed that the Collector was a warlock. They’d already mostly known that, since the voices had also referred to him as a “he,” but still, Bellamy thought it couldn’t hurt to have confirmation from someone who worked for the guy. Sure, there were exceptions like the Ludlow prima over in Northern California…and that awful woman in South Dakota…but in general, when someone from the witch community went bad, it tended to be a warlock.

At the same time, though, she knew she could trust the warlock who had his back pressed firmly against hers with her life. Marc was going to make sure they stayed safe, no matter what.

“And you say that your shield will hold against any kind of magic,” the thief went on. “But I’m not sure it can hold against this.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, round silvery object hanging from a silver chain, maybe a little smaller than the amulet he’d tried to steal only a few days earlier. “You see, while the Collector likes to keep his prizes safe, he also knows when it’s time to send them out into the world to do their work.”

After delivering those words, he held the object by its chain and began to whirl it around, faster and faster. And the faster it went, the more she could see the shield Marc had erected around them beginning to lose its brilliance. For the moment, it still held, but she knew it would only last a minute longer, if even that.

He gritted his teeth and scowled, trying to get it to stay in place, but she got the impression that all the magical will he was throwing against the problem wasn’t changing anything at all. Soon enough, they’d be utterly unprotected…and who knew what else the thief was hiding in his rucksack? Some more knives?

A gun?

Some kind of magical weapon she couldn’t begin to imagine? After all, if the Collector had the guy trying to pick up amulets and grimoires and the Goddess knew what else, what was to stop him from grabbing all the enchanted weaponry he could find?

A shiver of worry went through her, and then she heard it.

You are not defenseless.

The words came to her on the wind, gentle, almost chiding, as if the voices wanted her to know this was not the time for self-pity.

No, it wasn’t.

It was a time for action.

She raised her hands, knowing they would emerge outside Marc’s rapidly disintegrating barrier…but also knowing they only had this one chance.

Her kind of magic didn’t need anything more than that. No invocations to the four quarters, no crying out to them to save her.

No, she only had to think of fierce breezes sweeping down the canyons, gathering strength, coming to protect the one woman in the McAllister clan who could hear their voices on the wind.

She called it to her now, imagining hurricane-force gusts, the sorts of frightening, swirling downbursts that came when the monsoon storms were their strongest. It was desert strength she needed now, born of Sedona’s red rocks…and yes, its vortexes.

It came out of nowhere, tugging strands of hair loose from her ponytail. No, not at full strength yet, but she knew that, even if she was the one who’d summoned the wind, she still needed to treat it with the proper respect.

“Get down!”

She pulled Marc with her as she fell to her knees and then flattened herself against the floor of the not-quite cave. He didn’t protest, as though he could tell she knew something he didn’t…and that he had better go along with whatever she told him to do if he wanted to survive.

All this had happened quickly enough that the thief barely had time to react before the winds reached him, howling, hungry, certain they’d found their prey. He also dropped to his knees, but because he wasn’t lying flat the way Bellamy and Marc were, the gale was still able to catch hold of him.

For a moment, it pushed him up against the rear wall of the protected space, splaying his limbs wide as if propping him up in one of those awful spinning carnival rides her cousin Roy had convinced her to go on when they were both little kids. But then the wind seemed to understand that wasn’t the desired outcome and instead pulled him away from the wall, turning him over and over again as he rolled across the floor of the place where he’d taken shelter.

His fingernails scrabbled against the red rock, trying to find some purchase, trying to find something he could hang onto.

And then he disappeared again.

But Bellamy could still hear the horrible sound of his nails scritching against the rocky floor, and it came to her.

He couldn’t teleport like Seth.

No, the thief was a warlock who could turn himself invisible.

A terrible scream hit her ears then, sounding far too high-pitched to have come from a man’s throat. One moment of even more awful silence, followed by a thud that had a horrible note of finality to it.

Both Bellamy and Marc remained pressed against the cave floor for a moment longer, as if neither of them could quite acknowledge what had just happened. But then he pushed himself up to a standing position and looked around, brows pulling together.

“I think he’s really gone,” he said.

Bellamy got to her feet as well. “You’re sure?”

He flashed her the smile she’d come to know and love so well. “Since no one’s throwing knives at us right now, I have to believe your winds pushed him off the cliff.”

Holding hands, they walked as close to the edge as they dared, then looked down.

No one was there.

How could he have survived a fall like that? Could the thief also fly as well as turn invisible?

Marc passed a thoughtful hand over his stubbled chin. “I think we’re going to have to head down there and see what we can find.”

From the ledge almost a hundred feet above, there hadn’t been much to see. But down here, Marc could easily spot the clump of crushed manzanita almost directly below the place where the winds Bellamy had summoned had pushed the guy off the cliff.

And when he reached out, he could feel one sprawled arm…and the rest of the man’s body.

“He’s really there?” Bellamy asked, her voice barely a whisper, as if she was afraid the mere sound of it would be enough to bring the Collector’s thief back from the dead.

“Oh, yeah,” Marc replied. “But don’t worry…he’s not going anywhere.”

Although she didn’t reach out to touch the body — he guessed she wasn’t willing to go quite that far — her expression was troubled. “It’s weird that he didn’t turn visible again when he died. I’ve never heard of someone’s magic holding on after they were dead.”

Marc hadn’t either, but he knew there was a whole lot about the magical world he didn’t know. Probably just a strange quirk of the thief’s particular talent.

“What do we do now?” she said, worried gaze fixed on the crushed manzanita bush and its grisly burden. “I mean, I guess we should call the police?”

Judging by the way those words ended on an upward inflection, he had to believe she wasn’t entirely sure that contacting the authorities was the best option.

And Marc knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“What are we supposed to tell them?” he responded, hoping he sounded reasonable as he made the argument. “The guy’s invisible, Bellamy. That’s not the sort of thing we can easily explain away.”

Her mouth pursed, and she gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose so. But what…are you saying we should just leave him here? I don’t know if I can do that.”

Marc wasn’t sure he could, either. Or rather, while he wouldn’t report the man’s death to the authorities, he wouldn’t leave him to be pecked at by vultures, either.

Somehow he had the feeling they’d still find the body, even if it wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

“We’ll bury him,” he said, and Bellamy now looked aghast.

“With what? It’s not like either of us packed a shovel.”

No, they hadn’t, and despite the rain from a few days earlier, the ground was hard-packed and dry. On the other hand….

“There are plenty of rocks all over the place,” he said. “We’ll make a cairn.”

She still didn’t appear too thrilled by the suggestion, but because she couldn’t really argue with him on that point — not when there were red rocks and other stones scattered pretty much everywhere you looked — she only nodded. “Okay.”

First, though, they needed to get the body off that manzanita bush. Luckily, Marc always kept a pair of work gloves in his backpack, since you never knew what you might find along the trail.

However, he’d never expected to use those gloves to move a dead body.

Because the guy had been so thin, it wasn’t as difficult as Marc had feared to lift him off the manzanita and lay him on the ground. Bellamy had already headed out to collect rocks, coming back with some likely specimens before ranging a little farther afield to grab some more.

And even though the last thing he wanted was to rifle a dead man’s pockets, he knew he had to check to see if the thief had any I.D. on him. Probably a long shot, since he doubted the guy would want to carry anything that might identify him, but he still needed to check to make sure.

Assuming those things wouldn’t also remain invisible.

No wallet, no driver’s license, not even a library card. In one pocket, Marc found a folded twenty-dollar bill — one that appeared to him clear as day as soon as he removed it from the dead man’s pants — and in another, a small, folded piece of paper.

When he opened it up, he saw it was a ticket for this past Tuesday’s mega-millions drawing.

What in the world was a magical thief doing with a lottery ticket? Hoping for a big win so he wouldn’t have to be the Collector’s lackey anymore?

Marc couldn’t begin to guess. Rather than waste time on speculation, he stuffed the ticket in his pants pocket, figuring they could check the numbers later.

“What’s that?” Bellamy asked as she set some more rocks on the ground next to the small pile she’d begun making.

“A lottery ticket,” he replied, and she blinked.

“From our guy?”

He nodded.

A frown touched her brow. “He didn’t seem like the type of person to be interested in material stuff like that.”

No, he didn’t, but people had their odd quirks. Maybe the guy just liked picking up a ticket every time he got gas, or something like that.

Marc shrugged. “True, but it’s definitely a lottery ticket. The only other thing I found was a twenty-dollar bill, so I have a feeling he paid cash for it.”

Which meant there wouldn’t be any kind of paper trail to connect the man to the ticket. He hadn’t signed it, so that made the ticket pretty much open season for anyone who found the thing.

“We can check the numbers when we get back in town,” he said, and Bellamy sent him a wide-eyed stare.

“You’re not seriously keeping it, are you?”

“Of course I am,” Marc replied. “Look at it as compensation for having the guy throw knives at our heads and do his best to kill us.”

That argument seemed to get through to her, because she looked down at the pile of rocks at her feet, rather than staring at him like he’d just suggested they knock over a bank or something. “Okay,” she said. “I mean, it’s just a worthless piece of paper, right?”

Considering the odds of winning the lottery were just slightly lower than getting struck by lightning in the same place at the same time two days in a row, he couldn’t really argue too much. “Probably,” he replied. “But let’s get this finished.”

She went off to gather more rocks but returned only a moment later, something silvery dangling from her hand. “I found this. I think it’s that whatever-it-was he was using to mess with your magic.”

Up close, the thing looked smaller than Marc had expected, about the same diameter as a half-dollar. It wasn’t all silver, either, but instead was bisected around its equator, so to speak, with the lower half glass, or maybe rock crystal. Both the silver and the crystal were smooth and unmarked, with none of the runes that Bellamy had told him were engraved in the amulet Devynn Rowe and Seth McAllister had brought back from the past.

Remembering how it had affected his powers, Marc was loath to touch the artifact, even though it looked harmless enough. “I suppose we can figure out what to do with it later. Can you put it in your backpack?”

“Sure,” she said, and coiled up the chain before depositing the thing in one of the pack’s outer pockets.

With that handled, he supposed they should return to the task at hand. Now that the man’s body — still invisible, and apparently planning to stay that way — was now lying safely on the ground, Marc ventured out to gather his own pile of rocks. It took quite a bit more than he’d thought to have enough to create a cairn that would cover the dead man and protect his remains from wild animals and the elements. They were sweating and tired by the time they were done, but at least they’d made sure to treat the body with as much respect as they could.

“Should we say a few words?” Bellamy asked. She pulled off her hat so she could wipe some perspiration from her forehead, then set it back in place.

“I guess so,” Marc replied, although he wasn’t sure of the best way to handle this. He’d attended enough funeral masses that he could probably fake some kind of prayer, but he had no idea whether the dead man had been Christian at all, let alone Catholic. It seemed kind of disrespectful to lay him to rest using the words of a religion that wasn’t his. “I’m not sure what to say, though.”

Bellamy was silent for a few seconds, expression somber as she gazed down at the cairn that concealed the man’s remains. “Be at peace, wherever you were,” she murmured. Then she looked back up at Marc, face a little too pale for someone who’d just been laboring in the heat for the greater part of an hour. “I killed him, didn’t I.”

It wasn’t a question…but Marc knew he was going to answer it anyway.

At once, he went over to Bellamy and pulled her into his arms. “You did not kill him,” he said fiercely. “You called the winds to protect us, which is exactly what they did. And you wouldn’t have even done that much if it hadn’t been a matter of life and death. It was self-defense, nothing more.”

She held on to him tightly for a moment. Then she let go and stepped away, face still pale but now almost resigned. “Maybe so. I still hate the idea of just leaving him out here.”

“I know.” Marc paused, wishing he could think of the right words to reassure her that there was nothing else they could have done, not when they couldn’t possibly tell the authorities that an invisible man’s body was lying somewhere in the depths of the Secret Mountain wilderness. “But you know his soul has moved on, right? This is just a…shell. That’s all.”

“That’s what I’ve been told,” she replied, then shook her head. “Okay, it’s probably a little more than that, just because I know an afterlife exists, or Angela wouldn’t be able to talk to ghosts.”

Well, hopefully the man’s spirit wouldn’t see any need to linger in this desolate spot, and instead would move on to a new life with a new set of lessons to be learned.

Or, considering how he didn’t seem to have done much good with this one, maybe a life where he needed to learn the lessons he’d ignored here.

Marc went over to Bellamy and took her hand in his, then squeezed it gently.

“Let’s go home.”