Beyond Your Touch by Pat Esden Page A

certain it is not ensorcelled?”
    My face went hot, anger flooding through me. “That was a brilliant move,” I snapped at him.
    Chase’s voice hardened. “It isn’t anything special. She gave them to a bunch of people, even to the kid sitting next to me.”
    A headache thumped behind my eyes. I pressed my fingers against the bridge of my nose, trying to ward it off. “Yeah, fine. But you really should have said something. Considering how important she could be”—I looked him full in the face—“to us —as in all of us.”
    His eyes went flinty. He folded his arms across his chest.
    â€œIt is probably an innocent gift,” Olya said. She pressed the feather between her fingertips and closed her eyes, breathing in and out slowly, her lips moving in a silent prayer. “The girl’s presence is on it and also the presence of a hummingbird. No magic, light or dark. I see blue water. Red flowers.” She opened her eyes. “There’s no danger here.”
    Chase’s gaze slid toward me.
    I shrugged, and mouthed, Sorry . I was, too. In fact, now that I’d gotten the anger out of my system, my guilt was stronger than ever. I really shouldn’t have bitched at him in front of everyone. But I couldn’t have stopped myself. He really shouldn’t have taken it from her.
    Hugging myself, I watched silently as Olya passed the feather to Kate. She did the same focusing thing and came to the same conclusion. She in turn gave it to Selena to test. And an odd-man-out feeling settled over me. All this witchcraft and otherworldly stuff came as second nature to them, even to Chase. But everything about it was painfully unfamiliar and disconcerting to me. Just like the emotions Lotli had sparked.
    * * *
    After supper, I went out to the terrace with Selena and Olya to watch them scry with the feather. Chase had wanted to come. But Olya told him it could take hours and he’d promised to help Zachary with his kickboxing moves before he took over Tibbs’s patrol shift.
    Olya set three candles in the middle of the glass-topped table where Selena and I sometimes ate breakfast. She motioned for Selena to come closer, then the two of them chanted and stared at the flames, meditating to get into the zone. I watched, and thought about the Santeria priest in New Orleans that Dad and I had sold a Victorian funeral portrait to and about the tour guide witch we’d met in Salem. I’d never dreamed that I’d be directly involved with this kind of thing. Still, despite how little I knew and how in the research room I’d felt like the odd man out, sitting here now felt right, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Maybe it was the night air. Or how open and relaxed Selena and Olya were about everything. Maybe the universe had shifted or, perhaps, my emotions had simply settled back to normal.
    Finally, Olya took out a black crystal egg and gazed into it while holding the feather, hoping to see Lotli’s whereabouts. When that failed to work, she poured water into a silver bowl with a black interior, sliced her finger with a bone-handled knife, and let a drop of blood fall into the water. The blood flared outward, iridescent in the candlelight. With great care, she floated the feather on top of the water in the very center of the bowl.
    All around us, the evening shadows deepened as twilight faded. Solid darkness closed in. No owls hooted. No crickets chimed. Only the muted rush of the ocean waves sounded in the distance.
    Olya cradled her hands around the bowl, her eyes rolling back in their sockets as she and Selena murmured an incantation. The sound raised the hair on my arms and a light-headed sensation came over me. I smelled something cold and shivered, wondering if the chill came from a ghost or spirit guide.
    The blood on the water shimmered bright red and the feather moved, the quill’s tip remaining motionless as if it were