Windburn

“The Tower,” Giselle said, her voice aging as she spoke, leaving behind the girlish tones. “Violent and destructive change comes your way, Larkspur of the Rim.”

Her words echoed my own vision that Spirit had shown me. “I know. But that does not answer the question I asked.”

Giselle put her finger on the Tower. “This is a picture of the Tower of London. I think that is a clue as to where you will find the Tracker.”

The air tensed around us and for a moment I thought the dark spirit was back, but it was not that one. Giselle’s guides whispered around us.

The lion and the unicorn

Were fighting not to drown

The lion saved the unicorn

When they hid in Shire town.

Some struck them on the rump,

And some just frowned;

Some gave them magic

While drumming out of town

Cactus let out a low whistle. “Damn, my skin is trying to crawl right off my body.”

I didn’t take my eyes from Giselle. The song was twisted from the version most people knew, but it had originated in England, giving credence to her suggestion of the Tracker being there.

“I want to ask another question.” What I wanted to know was if there was anything else she could tell us about the journey. Anything helpful.

“Pick a card.” She held the deck out to me again. I paused, letting my hand hover over the cards before picking the one on the far edge. I gave it to her and she flipped it over. A gruesome creature looked back at us, blinking up at me with tiny pig eyes. Ram horns curled off his head, and his bottom half was that of a goat. A curling forked tail wrapped around his waist, flicking here and there. He opened his mouth in a silent roar.

Peta peered over the edge. “That can’t be good.”

Giselle turned the card over. “Someone else is searching for the Tracker. They,” she frowned and her eyes went distant, “they don’t have anything to do with you on this journey, but on another journey they will interfere with something important to you. Right now they want to kill her. That doesn’t make sense.” She closed her eyes, a frown tight on her lips.

“Someone wants to kill . . . her? The Tracker is a woman?”

Giselle blinked up at me. “Yes, that’s what I see when I look at this card. The monster is after a woman with long dark hair.”

Well, goose shit, that was something of a surprise. “In London?”

“That is my best suggestion. I’m sorry I can’t be more sure.”

I stood. “Time to go, then.”

The kid scrambled to her feet, then reached a hand out to me. “There is something else.”

We stopped and I looked at her. She swallowed hard. “I don’t understand it, but when I look at you . . . there is so much swirling around your aura. I have to speak it.”

“Then do it,” I said, not unkindly.

“I’m sorry.” She paused, swallowed again, and then went on. “The world will balance in your hands not once, but twice before your life’s journey is through.”

Peta gripped my vest hard. “All nine of my lives are going to be used up on you, Lark. Why am I not surprised?”

Giselle glanced up at her. “You will save her, time and again. And in the end, she will save you.”

Peta shook her head rather violently. “No, it doesn’t work that way.”

Giselle gave her a tiny smile. “You don’t have a say in it, former bad luck cat.”

I had to give it to Giselle, she was good at what she did. There was no way she could have known Peta’s former moniker.

My cat’s claws dug in until the leather creaked under her grasp. I reached up and ran a hand down her back but directed my words to the Reader. “Thank you.”

She shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t think I could have broken free on my own. I hope what was dispelled does no harm to anyone else.”

I didn’t want to burst her bubble. What I knew of dark spirits was not a lot, but a simple rule of thumb was they were never truly destroyed until they realized the error of their own ways. So in other words, the only thing we’d done was spread it out.

Giselle lifted her hand in a forlorn wave. “I wish you could stay a while. With Talan gone, I don’t have anyone to talk to.”

Loneliness rolled off her in a wave so strong I couldn’t have missed it even if I didn’t have Spirit pumping through my blood. I looked at Peta, knowing how much comfort she brought me in the dark hours of my life even in the short time she’d been with me.

I wasn’t sure I could find Giselle her own Peta. But maybe something close. “Wait here a moment.” I touched Giselle on the shoulder and headed to the door that led to the backyard. Cactus lifted an eyebrow and I motioned for him to wait too. Peta butted my head with her nose. “What are you thinking?”

“She’s lonely. What can we do to soften our leaving?”

“I’m not staying with her,” Peta said.

“No. But . . . you know the human world better than I do. Is there something we can do? A form of comfort we can leave with her?” The last thing I wanted was for Giselle to struggle after we were gone. She had a hard enough path ahead of her as it was.

Peta leapt from my shoulder and landed with a thud on the grass. “Maybe. Wait here.”

She took off, a streak of gray and white, bounding across the lawn and then up and over the wooden fence. She didn’t make me wait long. A few minutes later Peta leapt over the wooden fence once more, though this time in her snow leopard form. In her mouth was a dead dog. Its head flopped at a bad angle and its legs swayed with every step she took.