He snorted and held up the pair of hunting binoculars he’d taken out of his pack. He pushed back some tree limbs so she could see the water about five hundred yards away. “So you see through the woods and the clearing, over the water? That sort of haze floating a few feet in the air? It kind of looks like the wavy lines you see over asphalt during the summer.”

Dani didn’t need the binoculars. Her hands reached toward the spectacle, though there was no way for her touch it. “I don’t see that at all.”

What she saw was like the aurora borealis if it came down to Louisiana to play five feet over the swamp’s surface. The blending and swirling of colors was so beautiful it almost made her eyes hurt. And yet, she was called to move forward, get closer. Her head whipped toward Zed and a smile broke out over her face. “Don’t you see it?”

“Not really. It just looks a little foggy to me. I just feel, content? Settled, like this is where I’m supposed to be, even though there’s enough pressure to make my ears pop a bit.”

“Can you access it from the water?

“What, like canoe up from behind it? I have no idea. No one’s ever been crazy enough to try it.”

“How close can magique get?”

He pointed to an area far beyond the treeline, in a clearing between them and the water. “There’s another rock line about two hundred yards in.”

“I’d like to see how far in I can go.”

Zed frowned. “I don’t know, cher. I don’t want you to wear yourself out on your first trip out here. What if you get sick? Or you hurt yourself and you can’t do the work you’re here to do in the first place?”

“And how am I supposed to know what my limits are if I don’t test them out in a safe fashion with a partner who can get me medical treatment if I need it?”

“Damn you and your logic.”

Dani raised her arms in triumph. “Scientific method, bitch!”

Zed chuckled. He crossed over the rock line and showed no signs of distress, except for staring back at her as if she was stepping over a trip wire.

“It’s going to be okay,” she reassured him.

Zed grumbled under his breath and if she wasn’t mistaken, those gray eyes of his were slowly changing to a tawny gold. She stepped over the rocks, expecting some sort jolt to her system, but like Zed, all she felt was contentedness. It felt like she was slipping into a bath with just enough heat to bite.

“If you start feeling off, I’m carrying you right back,” he warned her.

“Agreed.”