The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(37)

Nothing above, where men would stand. Something below the surface, but something above as well, some movement in the air, unseen yet present. Lingering.

Some haint, not yet bound to a boneyard? Some mountain version of a dust-dancer, driven by instinct to move, destroy? No. It didn’t feel right to her in the marrow and gut, where she’d known other things, and she had to trust herself, especially now, when other strengths were kept from her.

The devil had chosen her, Gabriel’d said. She needed to trust that.

Their guide had said white men. Coming down from the north? Trappers and hunters came down often enough but rarely meaning harm, unless one were a wolf or beaver. And she could think of nothing a trapper might do to cause the earth sorrow or anger. She thought again of the buffalo she had seen, and shook her head. The coureurs des bois were not so foolish, nor would their métis cousins be so wasteful, and even if they were, that had happened days from here, where the earth did not quake, days before Duck’s people said the first quake had struck. She could not see how it was related.

And yet. She could feel a cord running through them all, a thread stitching the fabric, connecting them . . . and she had been stitched into the cloth as well, drawing her to this place.

Were these more men of Spain come across the border, from the northernmost of their lands? She had allowed the surviving monks to depart the territory unscathed; had that been a mistake? Or had the strangers come from the east? It was not unknown for scouts to venture in from the States—she and Gabriel had seen a rider wearing American colors, not so long ago?—but to ride so far from their shared borders? Unlikely, but not impossible, and if it was possible . . .

Isobel felt something curl inside her, and she recognized it for anger, hot lashings needing expression, a target.

“Many men, not together,” she said out loud. “A meeting.” The thought of others coming from outside, gathering here where the devil’s hand could not see, sent a shiver down her spine. Nothing good could come of that.

“But how could a meeting of anyone cause the ground to shake and the animals to flee?”

“Animals are your first warning that something’s amiss,” Gabriel said, and she hadn’t realized he was standing so close to her, his voice quiet near her ear. “If the birds go silent, if the hare freezes, or deer stampede, you’d best look to your horse and knife.”

She knew that; he’d taught her that.

“The animals fleeing, the ground shaking, they’re the wound, not the weapon?”

“Or a symptom of a disease,” he agreed. “Like swelling of the pox, or fever. Ignore them now, Isobel. They’ve told you everything they can.”

Gabriel fell silent, and she stepped forward, hesitated, then took another step, past the unseen line in the grass, into the circle. The smell intensified, the impression of something bubbling under the surface growing stronger. She remembered what Gabriel had said, about the hot springs lurking under the crust, boiling hot enough to scald flesh from bone, and paused, fighting the urge to move backward, cross back over the line, to safety.

Except that safety was an illusion. She needed to know what rested below the surface.

“Isobel?” Gabriel, paces behind her. He called to her, not to call her back but remind her he was there.

She was afraid to reach, afraid to feel the stillness again or, worse yet, rejection. But she hadn’t been given a choice. Isobel took hold of the anger that thought brought, stoked it, and then fed her fear to it until it snapped and crisped into ash.

Nothing remained. Not fear, not anger. She risked exhaling, then took a deeper breath in, tilted her head and let her eyes go hazy, waiting.

Nothing. The air remained still, silent, not even the sound of the breeze around them entering the circle. She looked down, and where the grass was lush and green outside the circle, here at her feet it was sere and cracked, a crusted grey froth seeping through the dirt. She thought if she bent to touch this earth, it would sear her skin, melt her bones.

The air smelled the same. But the longer it wrapped around her, stroking its way into her nostrils, the less it reminded her of home, the acrid tinge tickling the back of her throat and making her want to sneeze.

Something burning, but not the smell of the kitchen or the forge, not quite the same. What did it remind her of???

Isobel looked up, away from the ground, letting her vision haze as she stared at some point halfway between there and the nearest mountain as her right hand reached for her left, fingers curling, thumb stroking gently across her palm. The sigil hummed to her; she could almost feel it as a separate thing within her, sliding like a fish under water.

The thought should have bothered her, but in that moment it simply was. Everything dropped away, her center spinning so slowly she felt motionless. Isobel took her right hand away, knelt down, and despite her earlier fears, pressed her palm against the ground.

Her lips formed two silent words: maleh mishpat.

The next thing Isobel was aware, she was on her back, blinking up at the wide expanse of sky and noting that the moon was visible already, a pale white ghost overhead. Two sets of eyes were blinking down at her, the blue ones concerned, the brown unreadable.

“Iz? What happened?”

She blinked back up at them. Her head hurt. Her back hurt. So did her ribs, she realized when she tried to take a breath and coughed instead.

The last time she’d ended up like this, she’d gotten thrown off the back of the pony Marie used to pull her little cart. The pony hadn’t liked being ridden. The pony hadn’t liked much except Marie, actually.