The First Step

Chapter 11.

"For the love of everything, can you please try to fly a little smoother?"

It wasn't the first time Odette was telling me that, probably closer to the eighteenth, but that just made it even more annoying, and I tried not to grit my teeth as I once again attempted to breathe slower and quell the feisty magik in my chest. That's all magik was, really. Breathing and energy control, sometimes from me, sometimes from other things, but if I wanted the broom to drop from going at a painful twenty miles an hour to an even more painful fifteen, then I had to manage both. My favorite.

"I'm sorry. Here, let me cater to the inanimate object even more." I rolled my eyes at the little bullet of rose quartz hanging between Odette's fingers, held out to swing back and forth from where she sat at the very front of the broom's handle. "There. Is that better, crystal? Are we going too fast for you?"

"It's not the crystal that needs it. It's me," she clarified, and even if I couldn't make out her face from where I was pressed up behind her, I could hear her getting more and more exasperated. Again, she reached to pinch the edge of her pendulum still, and the flavor of sour, blue raspberry candy hit me as the girl pulled at her magik once more. "Dowsing is meant to be done in steps. You stand still, picture what you want to find, and let yourself be gently led towards it. Not fly around at jet engine speed and try to translate whether you're getting yanked to the left because of magik or because your stupid chaperone thinks that going at mach twenty is going to make us find Dustin any faster."

"All I'm hearing is that you should fly yourself next time." I shrugged, then I sighed, looking out at the ground. We'd been at this for hours now, the sun almost set with the very red tail ends of it peeping over the mountains in the distance. It was getting to harder to see the landscape below us. Then again, it didn't seem to matter, since it was just trees upon trees in the middle of nowhere, and I would've been lying if I said I wasn't expecting matching results.

I mean, I'd grabbed my broom just because I hated walking, not because I planned to be soaring back over the mountain range for the second time in two weeks. As far as I'd assumed, Dustin had been kidnapped, thrown in the back of a truck and tied up in a basement. Yet, when I leaned forward to see Odette closing her eyes, focusing all of her energy on the chain pinching between the sides of her middle and ring finger, it still rocked more to the left, even further away from civilization, even more into the massive forest, and my heart sank even further. Because, if I was supposed to dump my faith into an all-seeing chunk of rock, then that meant he was out in the wilderness alone.

The perfect place to dump a body.

It was a lot darker now, stars starting to appear as the sun finally dipped, and I was about to ask Odette if she wanted me to shine my phone to see the pendulum better, but she cut me off before I could say anything.

"It's circling."

"What?" I asked, and even when I finally jerked the broom to an unnatural stop, if I squinted enough in the fading light, I could see it.

The bullet was spinning, all aimed at some spot right below our feet.

"It's circling," she repeated, and when she turned to me, there was a grin on her face, a complete opposite to my nervous frown. "Come on, he has to be right below us! Quick!"

Something about her shout made my heart jump, and with a wordless nod, I nosedived. For a moment, everything suspended, like that two second, surreal dip a rollercoaster makes in the beginning, right when the chains stop clicking. Then it broke, and with an excited whoop from Odette, we were plummeting, wind seizing at my hair, my shirt, the wetness of my eyes as the treetops rose up from below at a reckless pace.