Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

CHAPTER 13


HIKING BESIDE A ROAD WAS nothing new to Kelsa. Even when the feeling that her every step healed the world began to fade, dandelions and fireweed glowed in the road’s grassy verges, and magpies flashed their elegant plumage in the brush.

“I still think we need to find someone to give us a ride,” Raven grumbled, tramping along beside her. “Otter Woman has probably been awake most of the day. This is taking too long.”
Kelsa was worried about that too, but…“Otter Woman is almost twenty-four hours’ travel behind us. And when your picture is on every newscast as a wanted fugitive, trying to hitch a ride is stupid. The sight of two kids hiking in the summer is so common, no one will think twice. And we don’t look much like our pictures, especially with those streaks in your hair.”
The red and orange swatches matched the flames around the skull on his stretchie. They looked good on him, but Kelsa saw no need to tell him so.
“But anyone who takes a close look at me will call the police,” she went on firmly. “That would slow us a lot more than walking into town where we can rent … Is that squirrel watching us?”
“Maybe it is,” said Raven. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a shapeshifter. It’s almost four.” He was looking at the sun, instead of her watch. “I hope your town comes along soon.”
Kelsa had to agree. Without her com pod she had no access to the maps of the net. She remembered the basic route—only one road led to the Alaskan border, after all—but she had only a vague memory of several small towns along the way. They were bound to reach one of them eventually.
They still hadn’t hit a town two hours later, when they came to a long curve in the road, and another beautiful north-country lake stretched before them.
“Dinner,” Raven decreed. It was his turn to carry the pack, so when he went over to a nearby boulder and began digging out energy bars, Kelsa had no choice but to join him. Even though…
“I think I see some buildings on the shore.” She squinted against the distance and the reflection off the waves.
“We’ll do a better job of negotiating for a vehicle after we’ve eaten.” Raven was already peeling the wrapper off an energy bar, and in truth Kelsa was tired too.
The lake was bordered by low tawny mountains, and the quiet emptiness of this rock-strewn valley seeped into Kelsa’s soul. Even the cars that occasionally whooshed by had no power to disturb the silent, wild peace.
“Is this valley connected to a nexus or something?” Kelsa asked.
“No.” Raven’s voice disturbed the stillness no more than the cars did. “It simply is.”
Kelsa nodded, and let the silence fall once more.
***

The cluster of buildings she’d seen beside the lake were farther away than they’d looked. It was past seven when they finally reached the turnoff and read the sign: Pinewood Cabins and R.V. Park. Fishing, boating, water sports, and bait were listed in the fine print. It said nothing about vehicles for rent.

“We’d better keep going.” But Kelsa couldn’t stop the dismay from creeping into her voice. Her feet were tired. She’d have been happy to stop for the night, but Raven was right about losing time. Here in the Yukon it would be hours before the sun set.
Raven looked as tired as she felt and even grumpier. “We’ll check it out. Maybe they rent off-road vehicles or something.”
“If they did, wouldn’t they put that on the sign?”
He was already tramping down the driveway. Kelsa shrugged and followed. When he was in this mood, she was in no hurry to catch up with him. She was several yards behind him when he froze, then slipped into the bushes beside the road.
Kelsa looked around. No animals that might be shapeshifters. At least, none that she could see. They were nearing the first building, and the RV lot, about two-thirds full, was off to the left. The tired chug of a washing machine came from the long building ahead and to the right. There was no reason to hide.
Turning, she made her way into the brush and came up behind Raven, who was peering through a clump of willows.
“What are we hiding from?”
“Shh!” Kelsa followed his pointing finger to the back of the long building, to a three-wheeled ATV parked there. It clearly serviced the campground, with its open bins of tools and cleaning supplies strapped to both the front and back of the vehicle.
“We can’t take that!” she whispered. “The people who own this place use it all the time. They’d miss it in an instant.”
“Not till morning. I think it’s been parked back there because they’re finished for the day.”
“I’m not letting you turn me into a thief,” said Kelsa. “Not more than you already have. The people who own that buggy need it. And it’s pretty old. They probably can’t afford a new one.”
“But it will be returned to them,” Raven said persuasively. “Possibly by the end of the day. We can leave them some money as a rental fee. More than it’s worth if you like.”
“Assuming they spend it before it vanishes,” Kelsa muttered. He didn’t have to explain why they couldn’t try to rent it openly. Anyone who did something that unusual would certainly be examined closely—and the owner would demand to see their IDs. Her feet were throbbing, and the rest of her body ached with weariness. And he was right; even if the money vanished the ATV would be returned.
“The key’s in the ignition,” he murmured in her ear.
On Kelsa’s insistence, Raven left most of the money they had tucked into the bin of cleaning supplies she’d unstrapped so quickly and quietly.
The ATV might be old, but the engine hummed to life with well-maintained quiet. It was only in Kelsa’s guilty imaginings that shouts rang out behind them and someone called the police.
In reality, Raven settled onto the long seat behind her, and they rode up the drive and out onto the road with no trouble at all.
“Don’t look so grim,” he told her. ATVs weren’t designed for speed, so they could talk over the wind. The enforced slowness was probably a good thing, since they had neither reinforced clothing nor helmets.
“I’ll bet they won’t even notice it’s missing till morning,” he went on. “By the time it’s reported we’ll be long gone.”
“You don’t care about them at all, do you? How angry they’ll be. How worried and upset. They live in a place where people are so trustworthy they can leave the keys in the ignition, and we’re breaking that trust.”
Even at thirty miles an hour she couldn’t turn to look at him, but she saw his puzzled frown in the rearview mirror. He didn’t understand. Either that, or he didn’t care.
But the “you don’t value humans” fight had cost them too much already. Kelsa sighed and turned her attention ahead. She had to admit, driving was better than walking.
Eventually they left the lake behind, and soon after that the road curved away from the valley between two green-clad hills, wending up to a narrower valley. The asphalt surface, hitherto smooth, began to roll in a series of low waves.
“It’s like driving over a giant curling ribbon.” Kelsa had heard of frost heaves, but she’d never seen them. Not like this.
The valley eventually widened to more open ground, dotted with long shallow marshes and rocky slopes above. It was past ten, and the sun was finally settling into the northwestern horizon, when Kelsa saw a huge tawny lump in the grass at the roadside and brought the ATV to a stop.
“That’s a grizzly bear!”
There could be no doubt about it. Its thick fur was pale gold, the same color as the dry grass on the hillsides above, and its shoulders rose in the characteristic hump.
It was twice the size of a black bear, and Kelsa was very glad that after one incurious glare it ignored her.
“It’s not a shapeshifter, either,” Raven said. “Why are we stopping? Don’t tell me you have to piss again.”
“No, but … It’s right beside the road.” And on the open, slow-moving ATV she had no desire to get closer.
“There’s something in the grass that it likes,” Raven said impatiently. “Go by on the other side. If it wanted to eat you, it would be paying more attention.”
The great bear had been keeping an eye on Kelsa between bites, but not with the fixed gaze of a predator. And this was the only road to the border, so she hadn’t much choice.
Kelsa set the ATV in motion, swerving over as far as she could without going into the ditch.
The bear’s tawny head lifted as she approached. If it charged, Kelsa decided, she would use the lights and horn as her first two weapons, and then the ATV itself. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
But the bear only watched her roll past. Kelsa twisted on the seat to keep an eye on it until they were far down the road and the bear had returned to its meal.
Adrenaline sang through her body. There was a fine tremor in her fingers as she turned back to the road, and her senses seemed sharper than usual.
“Oh, my God. That was a grizzly!”
“I’m surprised we haven’t seen one before,” Raven said calmly. “They’re pretty common in the north.”
Kelsa’s elation drained away. “You said taking over an animal’s mind is hard, because they rely so much on their instincts. A grizzly bear is one of the few animals that will stalk and prey on humans. How hard would it be for your enemies to convince a passing grizzly that human would make a good meal tonight?”
Raven was quiet for longer than she liked. “I don’t think Bear would let them overshadow the mind of one of his. Unless he’s finally made up his mind which side he’s on.”
“How very reassuring,” Kelsa said. “Your allies … Who are your allies, anyway? They couldn’t prevent that?”
“Probably not,” Raven admitted. “We tend to make up our own minds. And we don’t change them easily.”
“So your enemies aren’t going to change their minds, no matter how many leys I heal? And who are your enemies? I need to know that!”
“Why? It’s not like Bear, for instance, couldn’t shift into a hawk if he wanted to. Abandoning the form this ley prefers would cost him more energy, but he could do it. And it’s the neutrals, like Bear, who I’m trying to convince.”
So no matter which shapeshifter she encountered, she had no way to tell friend from foe without Raven?
“Wonderful.”
“But keeping control of an animal, even if it might be willing to do what you want, is harder than influencing humans,” Raven said consolingly. “I don’t think they’d try that. At least, not yet.”
***

Another two hours down the road, in the rich gray arctic dusk, Kelsa saw a sign and slowed to read it: PICKHANDLE LAKE. CABINS. FISHING. CANOEING.

“We’re getting a cabin,” she said. “There are too many bears around here to sleep outside.”
“You spent all our money on the ATV,” Raven complained. “And I really don’t think they’d offend Bear by—”
“I’m not going to risk becoming grizzly jerky because you think they might not want to offend Bear.”
Kelsa turned down the driveway and parked the ATV in front of the office. Through the lit-up window she could see the night clerk, a girl not much older than she was, with a book reader propped on the counter in front of her. “I’ll go in and find out how much it is while you make us some money.”
She was a little worried that the clerk might recognize her from the newscasts, despite the change in her hair. But Elizabeth Stayner’s PID passed inspection, and Raven came in with a roll of twenty-dollar bills as Kelsa was signing them in.
The cabins were on the shore, farther down the drive. The dark lake was small and shallow, compared with some that Kelsa had seen recently. But as it came into sight, Raven stiffened.
“Chetthel Chi. I didn’t realize we’d come this far.”
Kelsa parked in front of cabin eighteen and looked back at him, startled by the unease in his voice. “What’s wrong with Chettie … Pickhandle Lake? Is it off the ley, or an antinexus or something?”
Raven snorted. “There’s no such thing as an antinexus. And we are off the ley’s main current, but that doesn’t matter. This lake, though, it’s at the confluence of three rivers. It’s been a human rendezvous for thousands of years. That kind of energy … It wants people to gather here.”
“I want people to gather here,” Kelsa said. “The more humans, the fewer bears!”
Raven shrugged, but his eyes still searched the dark woods that surrounded the shimmering water.
“I’m not camping with the grizzlies,” Kelsa told him. “I got practically no sleep yesterday, and we’re both exhausted. Come in and go to bed.”
The cabin held four narrow bunks, so there was no negotiation for who slept where. But it was chilly, and Kelsa was so tired she simply kicked off her shoes and curled up under the blanket with her clothes on.
Even as she slid into sleep, she was aware that Raven lay with his eyes open, listening.
***

When Raven’s hand gripped her shoulder Kelsa came awake all at once, like a soldier in a combat zone. If it wasn’t an emergency she would kill him, but for now…

“What?” She whispered the word, as if someone in the cabin might overhear.
His voice was almost as soft when he replied, “Come here. Tell me what you make of this.”
He led the way to the front window, which looked back up the road toward the office.
Through the relatively thin forest, Kelsa saw half a dozen shafts of light burning in the dark gray twilight of the northern night. At different angles. Bike headlights.
“The biker gang.” It could have been an innocent group of travelers, but Kelsa knew in every atom of her terror-chilled flesh that it was them. “How could they catch up with us so quickly?”
“You lost two days with Otter Woman, and breaking me out of jail.” Raven’s voice was grim but calm, and Kelsa took heart from that. “If they were guided … Well, clearly they could catch up with us because they have. What now?”
“The police!”
Kelsa was moving to the cabin’s com board when Raven said, “The same police who want to question you about a jailbreak? Who under these circumstances will run the DNA attached to that identity and discover that you’re not Elizabeth Stayner?”
“I’ll lie.” Kelsa pushed the power button. “Say they’re trying to break into…” The com board remained dark, even when she pushed the button again.
Every horror vid Kelsa had ever seen flashed through her mind. Her knees felt as if they were turning to jelly. “Have they cut the power?”
She was reaching for a light switch when Raven’s warm hand closed over her cold one.
“If they haven’t, the light will bring them straight here. Get your shoes on. We’ve got to get out. They’re coming.”
The long shafts of light were swinging down the road to the cabins now, turning together like a hunting pack.
Despite Kelsa’s tug on his arm, Raven stopped to close the cabin’s back door behind them, and then hurried her into the shadowy trees. Fortunately, the ground around the cabins was relatively clear.
“It will take them a few minutes to find the right cabin,” he said, steering her toward the water, “and a few more minutes to break in, search the place, and realize we aren’t there. Then they’ve got to figure out where we’ve gone. Though they’ll probably have some help with that.”
His voice was grim, but being out of the confining walls and moving had broken Kelsa’s paralyzing fear. She was still terrified, but her mind was working again.
“We should go into one of the other cabins. Wake someone. They could call the police on their com pod.”
Raven shook his head. “Everyone around here has been pushed into sleep. That was what alerted me. You won’t be able to wake them. We’re better off running.”
They were moving steadily away from the ATV, which couldn’t outrace a drug gang’s bikes anyway. “Run how?” Kelsa demanded. “On foot in the woods?”
The grizzlies were looking better to her now.
“No.” They emerged from the trees as he spoke, only a handful of yards from the cabins’ dock. Half a dozen sleek dark shapes were lined up on the sand. “We’re taking the old road out.”
Kelsa’s father had been a botanist. She’d gone canoeing only once in her life, at the age of seven or eight, but Raven claimed he was an expert. Remembering his smooth leap onto the back of that horse, maybe he was.
Kelsa dragged one of the canoes into the lake, indifferent to the cold water that filled her shoes. One of the few things she remembered about canoeing was that the person in front steered, so she climbed awkwardly in and settled herself on the back bench. Raven picked up a big wedge-shaped rock and proceeded to crack open all the other canoes with the methodical calm of a cook breaking eggs. Only a lot louder.
“They’re coming,” Kelsa said. “They don’t know what they heard, but they’re following the sound.”
“Just one more.” Raven turned the final canoe over, lifted the rock over his head, and smashed it down on the keel. Fiberglass cracked once more, and several bikers shouted. The headlights were turning toward the dock.
Raven splashed out and climbed into the canoe, setting it rocking. He snatched a paddle, and with several deep strokes pulled them farther from the shore.
“Do you know how to handle these things at all?”
“No,” said Kelsa. “But I think I can paddle if you tell me which side.”
She could almost hear her father’s voice shouting, “Paddle on the right. Paddle on the left.”
“Good,” said Raven. “First, let me turn us around.”
He did so with a smooth speed that made it look easy, though Kelsa was pretty sure it wasn’t.
The moon chose that moment to rise over the trees. It was only half full, turning the small waves to rippling silver on the far edge of the lake. Soon it would light up the water like a stage.
Raven muttered something in a liquid tongue Kelsa didn’t recognize, but she had no doubt of its general meaning. She wanted to swear too. She gripped her paddle, trying to remember. One hand over the top, and the other went…?
“On the left,” Raven ordered, digging his own paddle into the dark surface.
After a dozen or so strokes it began to come back to her, the smooth rhythm of sinking the paddle’s edge straight down, pulling it toward her, and circling around for the next stroke.
In the front, Raven switched sides. Kelsa twitched, but when no further commands came she went on paddling on the left side of the canoe. Paddling was easier than steering, and Raven’s claim that he knew what he was doing must have been true, for the canoe drew swiftly away from the shore.
Focused on their progress, Kelsa didn’t look back till the snarling shout rang out behind them.
“You can’t run from us forever, bitch! And when we catch you, you’re gonna regret like hell you even tried.”
The bikers had reached the shore, their rides gleaming in the moonlight. Two of them had dismounted to check the broken canoes, but most were still perched on their seats. A chill ran down Kelsa’s spine. There were nine of them. The original four must have sent for reinforcements.
“If you come back here,” the leader yelled, “maybe we’ll leave you and your pretty boy alive when we’ve finished with you. But if you don’t come back…”
Kelsa thrust the paddle in once more. “That encourage you?” She wanted to sound dry and ironic, but her voice cracked on the words.
“Not in the least. Any chance you can keep them talking?”
“What good will that do?” Did Raven have some clever plan?
“Probably not much. But if they’re talking to you, they’re not trying anything else. On the right now.”
Kelsa switched hands to paddle on the other side. It wasn’t much of a plan, but…
“I called the police on my com pod,” she shouted back. “They should be here any minute. You’re all going to jail!”
Several more of the bikers had dismounted, milling at the water’s edge, but it didn’t look like they’d found a way to follow her. Kelsa’s heart began to rise.
“Your face is on every newscast in western Canada,” the biker shouted. “Accomplice in a jailbreak. You don’t dare call the cops.”
So much for that bluff. But as they made their way farther and farther out, it looked like Raven’s basic plan was working. If he could get them a few miles down the river that drained this lake, they’d be safe in the forest.
Grizzly bears seemed almost irrelevant now. The fact that her back and arms were tiring meant nothing at all. Paddling with a will, Kelsa was beginning to feel almost hopeful—until an icy wind eddied around them.
Raven stopped paddling and looked around. “What was that?”
“Just a cold wind?” But even in the cool night it had felt like the breath of a glacier. Then it vanished, in a way no natural drop in temperature ever did.
A biker’s astonished cry drew her attention back to the shore. It was several hundred yards away now, but the moonlight gleamed on the rim of white spreading out from the muddy banks.
“Tarnation!” Kelsa had never heard that word spoken with so much force. “They’re freezing the lake!”
“That’s ice? But how…? Who…?” Both answers were obvious. “It’s the beginning of June! How could they freeze a whole lake?”
The white was spreading.
“They don’t have to freeze the whole lake.” Raven dug his paddle into the water once more. “Just enough to close the mouth of the river and trap us. Some help here, please. Left!”
Kelsa fixed her gaze on the dark opening at the far end of the lake, paddling with deep hard strokes as he went on. “And they only have to freeze the surface hard enough for those thugs to reach us. It may not be a clear violation of the physics of this world, but they’re drawing a lot of power out of the ley. Maybe enough to tip some of the neutrals in our direction. They’re gambling a lot here.”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? If more neutrals go over to your side you’ll have more allies, right?”
“Only if I survive long enough to recruit them.” Raven’s voice was grim. “That’s what they’re gambling on. If they can kill me—”
“Then the fact that they bent the rules hardly matters.”
The first biker stepped tentatively onto the ice, and Kelsa felt as if the ice was spreading into her heart as well. The white rim that encircled the lake was slowly closing the gap that opened into the river. She couldn’t see the ice sheet grow, but if she looked down for a few moments and then back, she could see a difference.
“How long do we have?”
“Not long enough.” Raven was watching the closing river too. “I’m going to try to slow this down. You’re on your own for a while.”
He set down his paddle, then bent forward and thrust both hands into the water.
Kelsa looked back at the bikers. They were too distant to shout at her now, but all nine of them were mincing carefully across the ice.
Kelsa swore under her breath and turned her attention to paddling. When she paddled on the left side the canoe swerved right. When she paddled on the right it went left. She could control it fairly well, except when the shifting breeze shoved it sideways or set it spinning.
She thought the ice was growing more slowly, but she couldn’t be sure. It hadn’t stopped. Every time Kelsa looked up the rim of white had crept farther out, closing the river’s gap. She heard a crack and a yelp as one biker pushed his luck a little too far, but no splash followed and she didn’t look back.
Sweat slid down her back, despite the cold air that made her lungs burn. Her hands were blistering, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the sweat trickling down Raven’s taut face and the two edges of ice creeping out to meet across the river’s mouth.
Raven swayed, and a shudder shook him. He sat up and ran wet hands over his face. “I can’t stop it. Not alone.”
Kelsa had known that for the last three minutes. She turned and looked back. The ice covered more than half of the lake’s surface, and the bikers were now closer to the canoe than they were to the shore. They’d stopped a dozen yards from the edge of the ice sheet, sensing—being told?—t hat it was still too thin to bear their weight. They waited in silence now, like the predators they were.
Kelsa took a tighter grip on her paddle. She could stab with the edge and split a skull if she was lucky. She could swing it like a baseball bat, breaking arms and ribs. And with Raven fighting too … They would be overwhelmed in minutes. Nine men were too many, even if none of the bikers was armed. Which didn’t seem likely.
“I’m afraid,” Raven sighed, “that it’s time to call in some help.”
“You think?” In the few moments she’d hesitated a thin skin of ice had formed around the canoe’s bow. Kelsa leaned forward and cracked it with her paddle, then turned the canoe back toward the unfrozen center of the lake, working by herself. Raven had turned around on the seat, and now he sat perfectly still in the front of the canoe, his hands and face lifted toward the moon.
Perhaps it was her imagination that the light seemed to gather in his hands, intensifying before it poured into the rippling water. Even when she wiped the sweat out of her eyes, Kelsa couldn’t be sure.
All she knew was that eventually a really annoying smirk crossed his face, and he opened his eyes and said, “There. That should do it.”
“Do what?” Kelsa’s voice was ragged with fury and fear. They’d almost reached the center of the lake. She couldn’t go much farther.
Raven finally looked at her, taking in her terrified exhaustion and the ice that walled them in.
“Forget the bikers,” he said. “Look at the shore.”
It was hard to look away from her enemies as they picked their way carefully closer, but Kelsa dragged her gaze away and focused on the nearest shore, just in time to see dozens, hundreds, of small black dots slither onto the ice. They were so tiny, if they hadn’t been moving she wouldn’t have spotted them.
“What’s that?”
“Frogs.”
Kelsa had no idea why he sounded so smug about it.
“Frogs can’t fight men, no matter how many there are. We need a wolf pack.”
“If a wolf pack shows up we’re going to be sorry, because Wolf’s on the other side. Frogs are exactly what we need.”
“How can frogs help us?”
“Watch,” Raven said. “What do you see?”
Kelsa looked at the bikers, who were still waiting for the ice to thicken a bit more so they could close in to rape and kill her. No change there. She looked at the frogs and frowned. The dark dots seemed bigger now. She could see them, even though they weren’t moving.
“Are they growing?”
“No. What you’re seeing is water around them. Or to put it another way, holes in the ice.”
Holes in the ice that were expanding even as she watched. “They’re melting it? How? Frogs are cold-blooded.”
“Well, Frog People is giving them some help. He sees no reason to let the leys get worse if we can make the situation better instead. And he owes me a favor. This pays it back, I’m afraid.”
Kelsa cared nothing for his karmic balance sheet. “Frog People? He?”
“Frog People is a many-in-one kind of guy.” Raven’s voice was absent. “But he’s good at balancing.”
Kelsa didn’t think he was talking about physical balance. There was a ring of water all around the shore now, and the ice had stopped reaching toward them. She leaned down and put a hand in the lake. The water wasn’t exactly warm, but it wasn’t as cold as it should have been.
A crack rang through the night, like a big branch breaking. Or an ice sheet. The bikers, focused on their prey, paid no attention.
“Who are your other allies?” Kelsa asked. “And what can they do?”
“It’s complicated,” said Raven. “Are those bikers likely to be good swimmers?”
“Stop trying to distract me!” Kelsa said sharply. “I need to know this stuff. Who are your other allies?”
“Ah … besides Frog People, well, Goose Woman is leaning my way. Though she’s mostly a seductress,” Raven added. “Not as useful as Frog People. Unless you want someone seduced.”
Kelsa waited.
Raven said nothing.
“That’s it? Frog People, who no longer owes you any favors, and maybe Goose Woman? Everyone else is on the other side?”
“There are a lot of neutrals,” Raven said. “More neutrals than people who’ve declared themselves. If I can—”
“This is why you kept putting me off when I asked about your allies, isn’t it? Because you don’t have any—”
This time the cracking of the ice sheet was too loud to ignore. The bikers looked around, yelped in alarm, and started running toward the shore … or more accurately, toward the growing rim of dark water that now lay between them and the shore.
Kelsa picked up her paddle and began pushing the canoe slowly back toward the dock. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
The melting ice was slippery. The bikers skidded and flailed their arms as they tried to run. One fell, and the ice broke beneath him sending up a great splash. He bobbed up in the hole and threw both arms onto the ice sheet, yelling for help. One of them hesitated but didn’t go any closer. The others ran on.
“They’ll all be in the water soon.” Raven had taken up his paddle too, guiding them through the rapidly dissolving ice. “Pity it’s not cold enough to … There! We can get through there.”
Kelsa’s hands burned with broken blisters, but she ignored the pain, paddling hard while Raven steered.
They bumped into several chunks of floating ice, but it wasn’t enough to impede their progress, and only once did they encounter a piece of the ice sheet large enough that they had to maneuver around it.
No bikers were visible now, but Kelsa knew they were there. When a hand rose out of the water and curled over the side of the canoe she was ready, bringing up her paddle and smashing the blade down on the gripping fingers.
A man’s voice screamed and the hand vanished. The swimmer splashed away, swearing and choking.
Kelsa kept watch after that, paddle raised at ready until Raven had pulled them well past the point where a swimmer might overtake them.
Then she returned to paddling. Raven put in a steering stroke occasionally, but he wasn’t pulling his weight.
“A little help here?” Kelsa said. He was supposed to be the expert, after all.
“Sorry.” But he didn’t lift his paddle. “I put too much energy into trying to warm the water, and it’s turning into a physical drain. I should have known better. I’m not a balancer, not at all.”
“Is that a fancy shapeshifter way of saying you’re tired?”
“Yes.” He turned to glare at her. “I’m tired.”
Kelsa stopped paddling. Raven’s face was no longer the one he’d assumed in the diner, but the one she thought of as his real face. The face she’d first seen. The face of the boy in the newscasts, wanted on felony charges.
“Oh, carp.”
She brought them in by herself, saying nothing more as he slumped wearily on his seat, though he did put in a stroke now and then to correct their course.
Kelsa kept working till her paddle hit the bottom, then she shoved the canoe forward till she heard mud rasp under its hull. The shallow water was almost warm as it splashed around her ankles. She turned to the leafy brush around the shore and spoke with all her heart, “Thank you.”
Raven, climbing out at the front without his usual grace, snorted. “The magic is gone now. They’re only frogs.”
“Even so.”
If he could make snide comments, he could walk on his own. Kelsa waded past him and went up to the biggest, fastest of the gang’s bikes.
“We can’t outrun anyone on that wimpy ATV. How much time do I have before the bikers swim ashore?”
Raven looked back at the lake. “Several minutes, at least. And they’re headed for the nearest land, which is a ways from here. Why?”
“Because I’d like ten minutes,” said Kelsa. “But if I’ve got less, that’ll have to do.”
She was already kneeling, reaching up under the compartment cover, groping for the wire that ran from the ignition keypad.
“My dad taught me how to jump-start a bike, and made me practice it at the beginning of every summer before we took our first trip. He said that sometimes keypads fail, and I needed to know what to do. I can charge the bike with solar sheets, change a bad battery, and replace a tire too.”
“You’re stealing that bike!” Raven’s face lit with delight. “Can I help? I don’t know these machines, but sometimes a strong will to open something can make other things happen. I don’t have much energy left, but opening takes only a wisp of power.”
Hand on the wire, Kelsa hesitated. If he could start it without her having to break things, that would be a much better solution.
“Go ahead.”
Raven laid his hands on the engine cover and closed his eyes. The hard shell of the rear storage compartment popped open.
“Darn it,” he muttered.
“That’s OK.” Kelsa gripped the wire and yanked it loose. Some of the fine strands broke, remaining on the welded connection points, but there was enough for her to work with. She unstrapped the battery cover. “See if there’s anything in there that can puncture a tire. A screwdriver or something. And make sure it doesn’t lock again when you close it.”
Raven dug into the storage compartment and pulled out a knife with a seven-inch blade. “Will this do? Why do you want to puncture tires? Don’t we need them?”
“Not our tires. Theirs!” Kelsa gestured to the other bikes. “Just stab every tire, hard. In the side, not the tread. The side is thinner.”
She was afraid the tires might explode when punctured, but only soft pops and the hiss of escaping air followed Raven’s progress through the row of parked bikes.
By the time he finished, she had uncovered the battery terminals. Kelsa split the wire far enough to stretch between the poles, and applied one wire to the positive head and one to the negative, as her father had taught her.
The engine hummed to life.
Love and gratitude made her heart ache as Kelsa swiftly re-coiled the wire and covered the battery. Would her father keep on rescuing her, teaching her, for the rest of her life? Probably. She prayed that he knew it.
Raven was already seated on the back of the long saddle when she swung her leg over the bike. Kelsa could feel the extra charge rushing to the wheels as it worked its way around the curves, past the silent cabins. This bike was far more powerful than hers, or even her father’s. A gangster’s bike. A road hog. And it would probably take the bikers half a day to get new tires.
She and Raven had gained a lead. She had a few minutes to spare.
Before turning onto the empty highway, Kelsa stopped the bike and turned to look at Raven. He still wore his real face, pale and tired in the moonlight, and he’d been leaning against her more heavily than usual.
“You said they were gambling on killing you back there. But you’ve been alive for centuries. Can you be killed? Really?”
“Yes.” For once he spoke without hedging. “I can be killed. If I was, in a few more years, or centuries, there would be another Raven. But it wouldn’t be me.”
It made no sense, but Kelsa knew truth when she heard it. It was probably the clearest explanation he could give. She turned the bike onto the main road and accelerated into the night.