Page 28 of Raven's Instinct
“I gave hersomegood taste.”
Alan played with the raven in his hand and wondered if her good taste extended to him. It seemed unfair that she knew about his desire while he was still unsure about hers. He thought that she seemed interested in him but understandably cautious. While instinct suggested they’d be great together, he didn’t want to leap to conclusions.
“I want to know more about magic,” Kendra said firmly. “What’s the range on that thing? Have you made others? Did you leave it in moonlight on an equinox or something? Are we talking Wicca and pagan witchcraft, or some other kind of Voodoo? Incantations? Are these sacred Native secrets?”
“I’ve made a few of these, and they work over a mile or two. Maybe from here to Nickel City, but maybe not. My team each has one, but I’m not getting anything off of them now that they are a few hundred miles away. I’ve never had one act thisspecificway before, either. We just sort of know when we need each other. None of them mentioned being tapped into my emotions, and I think it would have come up.”
“Have you always been able to do this? To make these things? Did someone teach you?”
“This is where things get a little unbelievable,” Alan said cautiously.
“I just told you that I could feel what you were feeling. We are well past unbelievable.”
“There are magical things in this world that aren’t shifters.”
“Dragons?” Kendra suggested. “I know one.”
“Really?” Alan reminded himself not to get distracted. “I’ll have to go down that rabbit hole shortly. But I was thinking of elementals, like the dryad of Belle Lake, who I understand is a poorly kept secret in Nickel City.”
Kendra nodded slowly. “I’ve met Isadora’s daughter at the day care, but I don’t know much about them,” she said.
“What do you know about permafrost?”
“I assume you don't mean the cinnamon and peppermint liquor that causes really wicked hangovers?”
Alan chuckled. “No, I meant the frozen blocks of ice beneath the tundra in some places in the world.”
“I’m very vaguely aware that it is a thing.”
“It is much more than just a thing.” Alan took a sip of his tea. Earl Grey, only warm now, not hot. “Trees aren’t the only things that can host elementals.”
“I’ve heard of fire elementals,” Kendra said warily. “There’s a kid at Tiny Paws that can control fire.”
“Fire,” Alan agreed. “Air. Water. Andice.”
“Oh. There are ice elementals?”
“Are there ever. All the elementals seem to be rare, but ice elementals are one of the rarest and leastfriendly. The surface elementals around glaciers are for the most part benevolent, but there are areas of northern Alaska and Russia that are millions of acres where elementals have been safe and secret, sometimes living as much as four thousand feet deep under the ground.”
Alan could see Kendra doing math in her head. “That’s a lot of ice.”
“An oil drilling operation on the north coast of Alaska hit a patch, and they were experiencing a whole lot of supernormal activity that I was sent to work out. It was one of my first assignments with the agency since I’d retired from the Marines.”
“You don’t look like a Marine,” Kendra said, giving his hair a skeptical look.
“Five years. Three tours. Seven medals,” Alan said briefly. “Being a raven shifter was intensely useful to my superiors.”
“They knew?”
“I was in a special unit. Shifters recognize each other, so it was easy enough for them to recruit selectively.”
“I don’t need a magical totem to guess that you did some uncomfortable things,” Kendra said, and her hand briefly found his arm and gave a squeeze.
“War isn’t pretty,” Alan agreed mildly. “If I let myself think too hard about the things I’ve done, it would be easy to fall into a spiral of regret and self-doubt.” Some of his cohorts had, and he still missed them and wondered if he could have done more for them. “I did a lot of time in therapy to make certain I put my demons to rest and I forgave myself for actions outside of my control. And I’m glad I did that work, because if I hadn’t, my encounter with that elemental would have gone much differently.”
“Most guys don’t admit to doing therapy,” Kendra observed, her voice carefully neutral.
“I’m not most guys,” Alan said firmly. “And machismo pride can only take you so far.”
