Page 49 of Scout’s Honor

The woman patted Bonhi on the shoulder. “Careful, he bite.”

Bonhi took a step away.

The woman threw her head back and laughed. “He say ‘don’t you tell that pretty girl not to touch me.’” She wagged her finger at the wolf. “You leave her alone. She got her a good man.”

Bonhi blushed. Dallas wasn’t hers, even if she wanted him to be.

The woman took Bonhi’s hand and patted it. “Sit down, bébé.”

Bonhi sat at the little table, nervous as hell. The old woman puttered around her shop, her back to Dallas and Bonhi, gathering objects into a bowl with her bony hands, humming.

“It’s you,” Dallas said, sounding certain. “You’re Mama Soline.”

Bonhi gasped, hoping it was true.

The woman bowed her head but didn’t answer either way, continuing what she was doing. After a while, she waved at Dallas. “Mama Soline see no glow, only feel your lady’s magic.”

Mama Soline turned to Dallas, her eerie gold eyes squinted like she was checking him for a glow. Bonhi watched them both stand there, silent and staring at each other. After a long minute, Mama Soline clucked her tongue and came to the table with a bowl. She reached into the bowl again and dropped a hodgepodge of items onto the white cloth.

Bonhi scanned the mess, her eyes bouncing from bit to bit: bones, a shark tooth, pebbles, crystals of all colors, a scrap of fabric with a dark red blotch in the center, eggshells, a tiny bottle of what looked like water, a shiny brass whistle, a snow-white feather, a piece of jagged silvery rock.

“Pick one, cher.”

Bonhi put her hands in the pile, sorting through it. Something shocked her! She pulled her hand away, but Mama Soline motioned she should try again. Bonhi put her hand in the pile and was shocked again, but this time she held on to whatever it was, and the sensation stopped.

The trinket was a rough crystal formation about an inch long that looked like a finger of bony white coral. It wasn’t pretty but Bonhi loved it on sight.

“It’s fulgurite,” Dallas said, his voice awed. “It’s what’s created when lightning strikes sand.”

Bonhi caught his eye and he seemed shaken, like the trinket she held had affected him as much as her.

Dallas watched the exchange between Mama Soline and Bonhi, his mind working over the situation. Mama Soline glowed a shining white around her entire body, head to toe. Dallas stared at her until he could let the glow fade into the background, which he’d learned to do with Bonhi’s glow. It helped him focus.

When Bonhi chose an exact tiny replica of the lightning sand that Dallas had trekked across the country with him, and turned into the handle of a knife, he realized Mama Soline was the real thing. She might not be a switch, but she had real magic… somehow.

On a hunch, he pulled the cuff that Warrior Woman had given him out of his pocket.

Mama Soline eyed it. “Where’d you get that?”

“I don’t know. You tell me?” he said.

Mama Soline pressed her mouth into a thin line and glared at the wolf carving, saying, “Why you say that? I don’t need to know that.” She flung a hand in Dallas’ direction. “‘No, this scout here, tell him that.”

Bonhi reached for Dallas and he took her hand, unsure what was going on. No one said anything for a few moments.

Dallas tried to catch Mama Soline’s eye. “You gave a man some-ah-some real magic two months ago. His name was Thorn Severn.”

Mama Soline’s brown skin paled. Her cheeks went slack and her eyes dropped to stare at the table. There was no hiding her reaction. She knew exactly who Dallas was talking about.

Mama Soline took the cuff from Dallas’ hand but didn’t answer his question. She turned the cuff over in her hands, looking at it from every angle, then spoke. “Some magic live inside other t’ings. That man want magic to keep his secrets.”

“Secrets?”

Mama Soline straightened her back and lifted her chin. “He say he need a place to hide t’ings, even he can’t get them back.”

“His clothing spell lets him hide things from himself?”

Mama Soline nodded.