Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller by Alexes Razevich Page A

want to reach a phone. She’s promised to give you a fast paddler for your canoe. She’s never broken her word.”
    His breath caught in his throat. Is this what it came down to, the fate of hundreds, maybe thousands of people rest ing on the whim of a thirteen-year-old girl? Jake toyed with his watch. “Is there a ceremony of some sort?”
    She sat down next to him again, the sides of their legs almost touching. “Naheyo will give you some drugs. She’ll call the good spirits to you and ask for their help in driving out the demon. You’ll do the same. You’ll get a sign about what to do next, how to get rid of the demon.”
    “ And if it can’t be driven off?”
    “ Naheyo rarely fails at anything.”
    “ Lucky for me.” Sweat pooled under his armpits. “When does she want to do this?”
    “ Tomorrow morning. Tonight you need to be properly prepared, your soul nourished and made strong for the battle.”
    Jake sighed, nervous and resigned. “What do I have to do? Eat ritual food? Be scourged with nettles?”
    She looked at him a long moment, her eyes narrowing. “Nothing so bad as nettles,” she said, and started toward the doorway.

Nine
     
    Pilar returned carrying two beat-up-looking plastic tumblers—one green, one orange—the kind his family had used on picnics when he was young. Whatever was in them smelled like wet fur.
    “You’re supposed to drink this,” she said. “It’s a natural, light sedative. It’ll help you relax and then sleep.”
    He took the cup she offered, reaching out two hands, still half-surprised that with his new, larger hands he needed only one. Small twigs and leaves floated in an oily black brew. The wet fur smell grew stronger with the cup closer to his face, and he wrinkled his nose.
    “ Try it,” she said. “It’s good.”
    He shot her a skeptical eye, but raised the cup to his lips and tasted. It wasn ’t bad—lukewarm, and milder and more floral than its look and smell had made him expect. Pilar sipped at her own drink. She’d sat on the cot beside him again, and it struck him that she could have sat in the faded blue chair that was still in the room. She could have kept some distance if she’d wanted.
    Outside the compound, in what Jake guessed was the courtyard beyond the door at the end of the hallway, the women were singing, their voices low pitched and sweet, every voice holding the same note. He realized that what he’d thought drumming was in fact the sound of many feet slapping the ground in unison.
    “ Are they singing for us?”
    “ For you,” Pilar said. “They’re calling the helpful spirits, telling them that tomorrow Naheyo will ask them to drive out the demon that has possessed the pale foreigner. They have to sing extra hard since you’re not quite human and the spirits might be reluctant to help. They’ll probably sing all night.”
    “ Do you believe in this”—Jake turned up his palms, at a loss for a polite word—“hocus-pocus?”
    Pilar shrugged. She didn ’t seem to take offense. “I’m a scientist. I’m supposed to be non-judgmental about cultural differences.”
    “ You’re human,” he said. “So you have an opinion anyway.”
    Singing voices wove th rough the small silence. Pilar smoothed her hair away from her face and sighed.
    “ There are spirits here,” she said. “And magic is real.”
    He stared at her.
    “You know it too, Jake.” She looked hard into his eyes. “You’ve seen things. Say the truth, do you believe Mawgis is a man or something else? How can you explain your growth, except by magic?”
    He opened his mouth to answer, then shut it. He ’d been afraid to tell her all that had happened in the Tabna camp, afraid she wouldn’t believe him, and here she was talking about magic like it was one of the physical laws of nature. Then again, with Pilar beside him, the women singing outside, the wood-and-flower night scents of the forest floating in the room, and the brew providing its own