The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(45)

“I have to do this, Gabriel.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, her gaze trained on the ring and the black lines in her palm. “It might stop the quakes, might . . .”

“Might. Fine word. Or it might—”

Destroy her. He needn’t say it out loud. Silver, in the presence of power, tarnished. Too much tarnish and it became useless.

“It’s not a choice I’m making. I have to.”

“I know.” Anger and frustration laced his voice, but it wasn’t loud anymore, and she risked looking up at him then. He had turned away, looking east, the morning sun warm on his face, highlighting the lines at his eyes, the faint strands of grey in his scruff, features as familiar and dear now as any she’d known since birth. “I don’t like it, but I know.”

“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t quite sure what she was apologizing for, but there was something under his words, dark and swift, that made her ache.

And then she was engulfed, his arms around her shoulders, the familiar, comforting smell of him wrapped around her, and she let her cheek rest against the rough cloth of his shirt, feeling his breath rise and fall.

“Ah, half the time we’re chasing into or after things pell-mell, we haven’t the chance to set things to order first. This’ll make for a nice change,” Gabriel said, his voice the rough drawl she hadn’t heard since the saloon, the one that made him sound charming, harmless, made a person think he wasn’t smart or dangerous.

But he was—smart and dangerous. And he trusted her to be the same.

“It’s just a cleansing,” she told him, intentionally flippant, to match his tone. “Nothing different than draining a crossroads or calming a spell-beast with blood in its mouth.”

“Oh, yes,” and the drawl was definitely on full display. “Nothing to worry about there at all.”

She twisted slightly, and he let her go, stepping back a pace. “How do we do this, then?”

She had no idea. “Take the horses a bit farther off. In case?—” She looked at the roped-off ground where the grass had died, where she could still see faint traces of steam rising from the ground, even if Gabriel couldn’t. “In case something happens.”

He nodded, neither of them discussing what that “something” might be. Her relief at not having to explain was measured by a desire that he would stop her, refuse to let her do this.

She knew he wouldn’t, that wish only the remnant of her fear, burnt to ash but still clinging to her skin. Something here had scraped power from the Territory. Scraped it, taken it . . . and kept it here. By what, or for what purpose, she could not tell, but even if the haint had not lingered, that much power threw things off-balance, perhaps enough to shake the ground, scare away those who lived near it. A magician might claim it, or a marshal might drain it, but neither of those were here now.

And the haint . . .

She felt again the aching, sorrowful rage, and shuddered.

“Salt.”

Gabriel, in the middle of moving the horses and their packs to the requested distance, reached into her pack and tossed her the cloth-wrapped bundle that contained what was left of her salt stick. She held it in her hand, weighing it against how much she might need, then walked to where she’d felt the presence most strongly before, at the edge of the browned, dying grass.

The last time she’d done anything like this, she’d been driven by something other than her own will, the knowing of what to do rising up from within her when she needed it. She felt none of that now, as though she were still cut off from the bones, the deep stone, leaving her bare and alone.

“Boss? A little help, please?”

She waited, a breath caught in her chest. No whisper filled her ears, no sense of what to do slipped into her thoughts, only her palm, itching, and the weighted awareness of something lurking, tied to this meadow, this ground. Not the haint: something deeper, warmer. A whisper of resignation, then a tentative touch of strength, protection, belonging, followed by the tingling prickle of the wind over bare skin.

Isobel exhaled. Something had changed. She didn’t, couldn’t stop to question it; whatever had responded wasn’t the boss, but it was enough to know that she had allies here, somehow.

She crumbled some of the salt into her hand and started walking out a circle, then stopped. “No.” She licked the salt off her palm, then took a few steps back and handed the stick to Gabriel, who, finished with the horses, had been waiting, watching. “Draw it around me.”

His gaze flickered from the salt to her, then he picked up where she had left off, leaving a faint, glistening line of salt in a circle just outside where she’d roped off, white against the grass where the dead turned to green again.

While he did that, Isobel walked inside the circle, letting an awareness of the protection he was laying down flutter against her skin. She was within, contained but not constrained, the warding silent until something came to rouse it.

“Be at ease,” she whispered to whatever watched them. “Be at ease; I bring no harm.”

Dead grass above, something seething below. Isobel worried her lower lip between her teeth, not-thinking, not-feeling, simply walking, careful of where she placed her steps, watching where the steam rose in narrow tendrils, then faded into the clear. Walking an inner circle until she felt the sense of whatever had attacked her ease: not gone, but no longer quite so vigilant, so tense.