Page 10 of A Fae’s Guide to Tactical Botany

And he still couldn’t put her from his mind.

Women don’t take naps in the middle of the desert, he reminded himself. Women don’t have wings like embroidered silk. Women don’t sink into the ground like ghosts. You’re seeing things. And you’re seeing women because you’re single for the first time since grad school.

He wasn’t able to rationalize why the dream woman his brain had conjured up seemed to hate him, but there was probably a reason for that deep in his psyche. Something Freudian, or maybe Jungian? It had been well over a decade since the philosophy class he’d grumbled his way through as an undergrad, but one of those old fusty buggers would surely have had some insights into his apparent unconscious desire to be despised.

Or why remembering her feminine rage turned him on, made him want to get up close and personal with her trembling curves. Despite the Titian painting reminding him of the torn-apart-by-dogs flip side of that rage.

But he finally managed to set her image very slightly to the side, her imaginary popsicle-green eyes watching disapprovingly as he sketched rough diagrams. Carpentry had never been his art, but he’d watched his friend Ivan craft enough boxes and camp beds to understand the principles of joints, supports, and braces. He knew how to use the basic tools. And since his goal was function and not an attractive form, he didn’t need to fuck around with crap like mitering and finishing.

He didn’t need a work of art. He needed a siege engine.

And by the time his stomach reminded him he hadn’t had his nightly meal, he had a crude but workable design for one.

He shoved back in his chair without thinking, hastily sitting up straight again when the wooden legs groaned beneath him. Cheap motel furniture tended to the rickety, that was for sure.

A quick check of the motel brochure told him the diner attached to the building was already closed, so he went back to the Jeep to grab a protein shake, considering his supplies. He’d still been in the brainstorming phase when he’d stalked through the home improvement store, given the lumber associate cutting instructions, but for the most part he’d chosen well. If anything, he had more supplies than needed—enough to construct three or four of what he’d designed.

He’d spend the next day in the motel’s parking lot doing what he could off-site, then head back to the mysterious hill once he and his tools were fully recharged. In the meantime, he could enjoy a good night’s sleep on a mattress very slightly more ergonomic than the one folded up in his tent, have a good diner breakfast in the morning—or maybe a mediocre one, one could never tell, but at least it wouldn’t be hardtack—and replenish his stores of water.

It was going to work. He could feel it in his bones.

The desert was not going to defeat him. Not now.

***

The clearing where he’d parked the Jeep before was gone.

Ethan frowned at his GPS, his maps, the photos. He was in the right place. He remembered that saguaro in particular—it had a hole in the side where a woodpecker had made its nest, and an arm that pointed crazily perpendicular instead of reaching for the sky. He even recognized the shape of the shadows cast on the hill by the midmorning sun. But where he’d once found a convenient bare shelf of rock was now a thick patch of creosote bushes. Not small ones, either. These seemed to have years of growth, maybe even decades. Nothing record-breaking—it wasn’t unheard of for the hardy evergreens to live centuries—but certainly nothing that could have happened in the two days he’d been gone.

Half of him thrilled to the mystery. There was something happening here, something that he had to get to the bottom of.

The other half of him was fucking pissed.

He growled and turned the Jeep around, driving back a few hundred yards, until he found another stable-looking spot. It would be a longer walk, and his siege equipment wasn’t light. But he’d be damned if he waved a white flag now.

He’d left the motel well before dawn, gauging his journey so that he’d arrived at his offroading exit from the dirt roads right when the sun was peeking over the eastern mountains, and had been able to move swiftly, following his own tire tracks most of the way.

They’d disappeared just as he’d been approaching his destination, wiped clean as if by a mystical broom. Just ended. And now, with his campsite eliminated, the pieces were all falling into place, becoming a revelation.

None of it was an accident. It couldn’t be.

If it had just been the cacti, he might have brushed it off as coincidence. But no, there was too much happening. Too many incidents to be accidents.

Someone was directly fucking with him. He was sure of it now.

The question was who.

Also how.

Also why.

The only things he was sure of were what and where—and he was starting to think he didn’t know those, either. Hell, maybe he’d accidentally gotten some jimson weed in his protein shake and he was actually lying on the desert floor in the throes of a vision. Maybe his real body was dying of hallucinogenic poison and dehydration while he gallivanted about having adventures in his hallucination body.

But this was the reality he had to deal with now. And the anger that was settling in the pit of his stomach, spiteful and petty, was all the impetus he needed.

Whoever or whatever was blocking his way? Whether it was a green-eyed goddess or a grouchy local or fucking aliens taking a detour from Roswell? They were going to get to know Ethan Jacobson. Who was not a goddamn quitter.

No, he was ready for battle.