He made a note to take her north into Metís territory during spring, when the trails were passable again but snow still blanketed the ground, and wondered if they would still be traveling together then.
The meal finished and the horses rested, they remounted and picked up the trail again, finally heading down. The path now was nothing more than a deer track, overgrown at both sides and more rock than dirt underfoot, occasionally falling away on one side to a deep ravine.
They’d just come off one such turn, the sun directly overhead, when he heard Isobel’s voice behind him soft but urgent. “Gabriel. Hold up.”
He half-turned in the saddle, calculating how long it would take him to load and be ready, his hand settling on his knife instead. Mounted, the blade didn’t give him enough reach, but if there were another ghost cat looking for desperation prey . . . And if it were another magician, at high sun, neither gun nor knife would do him any good.
But the look on Isobel’s face when he glanced at her wasn’t worry or concern but amusement. She might have felt him looking, lifting her chin to draw his gaze to a narrow rock overhang just ahead of them. “We have company.”
It took him a moment to see what she meant, then he couldn’t believe he’d missed it: dun-colored and elongated, clinging to the side of the rock like a lizard, its head cocked at an angle that was more curiosity than threat: demon.
Back east, the gimcrack novels wailed of the terrible cruelty and malice of demons, that they existed for nothing more than to lure humans to their death and damnation, that they were tools of the devil himself, with eyes of fire and teeth like a tiger. The truth was that demon were creatures of stone and dust more than fire, and while fierce?—he would not wish to fight one?—they were more mischief than damnation. To a rider alone or a homestead in the wrong place at the wrong time, that might spell disaster. But he rode with the Devil’s Hand and had less concern.
“Good day,” he said, tipping his hat as he would if they’d met a matron mid-town. “Are you collecting toll for this passage or merely passing the time of day?”
It had been a long while since he’d had cause to be flippant, and nearly as long since he’d heard his companion giggle.
The demon merely stared at them, alert but seemingly unconcerned, its head swiveling uncannily on its neck as they rode by.
“You think there are others?” Isobel asked.
“In these hills? Likely. But they’re not liable to challenge us”—she knew that, having encountered demon before, trailing after the Spaniards—“and we should be coming down out of the rocks soon enough and be past them.”
“You can tell?” She sounded surprised, then there was a long silence, followed by a relieved-sounding noise. He thought that in her place, he would not have been eager to reach for the Road either.
He waited until they had left the demon a dozen paces behind, the trail widening enough that they could ride side by side, before asking, “Can you still feel . . . it? The valley, I mean.”
The haint, he meant.
He couldn’t read people the way she could, not natural like breathing, but tension practically shimmered in the way she held the reins, turned her face away from him. “A little. Faintly. Like . . . like thunder in the distance, at night. And there’s a . . .” She hesitated. “A sense that I’m not done?”
“Something you’ve forgotten?” His own hands tightened on the reins, and he felt something in his jaw pop. He would tie her to her saddle and lead the damn mare on a rope all the way back to Flood if she even hinted at wanting to go back there.
“No. Not forgotten.” Her voice dropped, darkened. “Just . . . undone. Waiting.”
He looked at her again, but her head was down, and all he could see was the top of her hat and the edge of her chin before it sank into the collar of her jacket. He was reminded of a turtle he had seen once, half-buried in mud, contemplating the riverbank before him, thinking deep and mournful turtle thoughts.
“We should be through this pass well before dusk,” he said, not looking away. “Plenty of time to find a decent-sized stream for bathing, maybe even one deep enough for swimming. You need another lesson or three before I’m satisfied you won’t sink like a stone.”
That lifted her head up sharply, and the glare he got at the reminder of her single attempt to swim made him urge Steady on to a faster pace, just in case she decided to chuck something at him.
But even that little easing of the tension disappeared when they crested that last bony ridge and saw the warriors waiting for them in the valley below.