Page 47 of Wind Called

“Probably,” Marc replied. “At least, he looks like he’s waiting for someone, so it makes sense.”

He pulled into the space next to the Wrangler and then turned off the engine. The two of them unfastened their seatbelts and got out, even as the man standing by the Jeep sent them an expectant look.

“Bellamy McAllister?” he asked her, and she nodded.

“Yes, I’m Bellamy, and this is Marc Trujillo.”

Clint Greaves extended a hand. His skin was tanned and lined, his nose beaky, and he looked like someone who’d spent most of his life outside.

“I’m Clint. I hear you want to know more about vortexes.”

For some reason, Marc hadn’t expected the older man to put it that baldly. Then again, there wasn’t anyone around to overhear what they were saying, and it was probably better to get right down to business.

He shook the man’s hand, and Bellamy did the same.

“Yes,” she said in reply to Clint’s comment. “We were wondering if there are more vortexes here in Sedona than the ones you see on the maps online.”

The other man’s eyes glinted. They were bright blue, startling against his deeply tanned skin.

“Oh, there are plenty,” he replied. “The stuff you find online — that’s for the tourists. But those who really know Sedona, know her well, understand that’s only scratching the surface.”

“And there’s a vortex here?” Marc asked.

Clint nodded and swept an arm toward the creek, barely visible from the parking lot. “Pretty much all of Oak Creek is a vortex, but it’s stronger in some places than others. I’ve got something to show you.”

After delivering that remark, he opened the door of his Wrangler and pulled out what looked like one of those old-fashioned little folders schoolkids might use to hand in a report. He pulled back the cover to reveal a detailed map of Sedona with a clear plastic overlay.

That overlay was covered with bright blue starbursts, some larger, some smaller.

“Are those all vortexes?” Bellamy asked as she peered over the man’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Clint said. “We’ve been mapping them for a long time. This is the latest version — it was just updated last month.” He handed the folder to her and she took it from him, eyes scanning the map and all those blue starbursts. “You can study it later, though. For now, I want to take you to the beach.”

“‘The beach’?” Marc echoed, a little startled. Weren’t they at least three hundred miles from the nearest ocean?

Bellamy smiled. “It’s a place along the Red Rock Crossing trail called Buddha Beach.” She paused and looked over at Clint. “The vortex is stronger there?”

“A lot of people think so. Come on.”

And he began walking toward the edge of the parking lot, where a trail wandered away into some cottonwood trees. He didn’t look over his shoulder, indicating that he was going to go where he wanted and it was up to them whether they wanted to follow along.

Marc shrugged, and the two of them hurried to catch up to their guide. It was a good thing they’d dressed casually and put their hiking boots back on before they left the house, because even though the trail was relatively flat and easy enough to traverse, it was just rocky and uneven enough that it wasn’t the sort of place you’d want to be wandering around in while wearing flip-flops or something similarly flimsy.

The landscape was beautiful, though, and even if it turned out that this little hike was a wild goose chase and nothing more, he wasn’t sorry they’d come. In fact, he thought he’d like to return with Bellamy at some point so they could explore it on their own.

Funny how his mind was already imagining a future with her here, as if his stay at the Airbnb didn’t have a fixed endpoint…and even though they hadn’t made any concrete promises to one another beyond that single exchange of “I love you.”

Maybe that was all they needed.

Clint didn’t seem too disposed toward conversation, and definitely wasn’t playing tour guide, possibly because he was waiting until they reached their destination to prove more explanations about the vortexes. Bellamy also remained silent, as if she’d decided it would be better to get to their destination and see what happened next. As beautiful as their surroundings were, they’d come here for one reason and shouldn’t allow themselves to get distracted.

The trail eventually emerged into an open area where they had to traverse a span of smooth red rock, pocked here and there with little hollows that still held some rainwater from the storm two nights earlier. And beyond the red rock was the quiet murmur of the creek as they came down onto a rocky beach dotted with little cairns made of river stone.

Now Clint looked almost disapproving as he paused on the beach. “The tourists like to make those,” he said as he nodded toward the stone constructions, some of them only a few inches high, some of them almost as tall as his knees. “We try to discourage it, since the whole point is not to disturb the landscape, but they keep building the damn things anyway.” He paused there, his back toward a large red rock formation in the distance that Marc recognized as Cathedral Rock, even though he’d only seen it in pictures before now. “But the vortex energy is strong here, so I wanted to see how you reacted to it. No right or wrong, of course — different people experience different things.”

Which was also what Bellamy had told him, that one person might feel a tingling along their skin, while someone else might experience a surge of energy and yet another would have nothing more than a deep feeling of calm, of belonging.

Marc looked around at the creek and the brilliantly green cottonwood trees and the red outlines of Cathedral Rock off in the distance, but he had to admit he didn’t feel any different. Then again, this was more about Bellamy than it was about him. As far as he could tell, the vortexes hadn’t affected him at all. Was that because the magic he carried inside was very different from hers, or simply because she’d spent more time in Sedona than he had?

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