Fall into Fire (Shamans of the Divide, Book 2)

Chapter One

It was a hot morning and the breeze through the open window woke me up.

Well, not the breeze, really, but the voice on the wind I heard.

She's coming.

The pitchy, disembodied voice repeated a few more times until I was wide awake and staring at the textured ceiling.

She's coming, July.

She's coming.

The trouble was, I didn't know who she was. Or why she was planning on visiting the area. Sight seer? Not likely.

I'd started seeing, and occasionally hearing ghosts, earlier this summer. One had shown up and nearly given me an aneurysm in the middle of a long shift at my grandmother's truck stop diner. Turns out, the recently and not-so-recently dead seem to fancy me some sort of ally. Or target. I hadn't decided which one yet.

Stretching my legs free of the quilt, I pushed myself to my elbows and looked around Billie and Leonard's guest room. It was bright and cheery with yellow gingham curtains across the windows and a blue and yellow quilt on the queen-sized bed. A large desk in the corner held a lamp, my laptop, and a notebook I'd been using in my daily writing sessions with Billie.

I was here to learn more about my abilities and how it all fit in with their council of guardians who protected the power of the Continental Divide, but mostly I'd been writing about my feelings for the past week.

Feelings were lame and frustrating.

She's coming.

God, not that again.

"I heard you the first three times," I muttered back to the breeze. The voices and the visions weren't very helpful if I didn't know what they meant and disembodied voices were more annoying than you'd think. Especially first thing in the morning.

"And some details would be helpful."

But I knew better. Details and straight answers weren't really part of the deal when it came to the council. They dealt in half-truths and silence.

My room was part of an entire separate guest house on the Whalen ranch. They had an extra room in the house, but Leonard had filled it with so much clutter that it would have taken a week to get the boxes of papers and trinkets cleared out.

I preferred the guest house. Situated close, but not too close, to the main house, it had everything I needed. A kitchen with a stocked fridge, cable, Wi-Fi, and my very own room. What more could a teenager ask for?

If I was being perfectly honest, I'd ask for Renn, actually.

He'd left me in the hospital room in Cheyenne three weeks ago, certain that he was no good for me and I was no good for him. Right now, Renn was somewhere deep in Idaho Shoshone territory with Coyote. Off the grid and off limits to me, just as Coyote had wanted all along, I suspect.

I felt the familiar sting that came with thinking about Renn and I pushed it away. Some days I let myself remember that amazing kiss we'd shared in Coyote's fishing cabin while we waited out the dzoavits last month.

Anger started burning in my chest. It was a new feeling for me when I thought of Renn and I tried to push that one away, too. It was more stubborn than the sadness, though. On my really bad days, I felt toyed with and abandoned. Used. Cast aside.

And I didn't like it.

Pulling on shorts and a tank top, my uniform since arriving here last week, I hobbled with my healing leg and old man cane across the large yard into the main house. The doctors said I was healing just fine, but it would take about six to eight weeks before I'd feel closer to normal. They'd actually used the word "closer" and not just normal. Chances were that the leg might never feel the same again and this nagging pain and soreness when I overdid it would always exist in some form.