Dammit. That alone would have told me if it was from one of the looted graves. But I won’t know that unless I can get my hands on it, and get the “feel” of it, to see if it matches the “feel” of any of the gravesites.

The stag feinted toward the right again, and this time movement there, movement in the spirit world, made her focus her attention in that direction.

Oh hell. Oh no—

Little People. Lots of them. In human form, in the dress of her people from the time of the first French traders, but with faces too wild and too hungry to ever pass for human. Waiting and watching, avidly, their eyes glowing with a feral, anticipatory light that made her shiver. They crouched in a group, making her think of a waiting pack of coyotes, or a mob of crows. Waiting for dinner to kill itself. Watching some supremely stupid young creature, who was just a heartbeat away from doing something fatal.

Fatal?

She turned her newly sharpened spirit-sight back toward the medicine-pouch, following the gaze of the Little People. Yes, that was what they were watching; it looked as if they had been waiting for this man to find it—

Fatal? She strained her abilities to the limit, and prayed a little for good measure—and knew, suddenly and completely, what it was that was “fatal” about the pouch.

It was the bait to a very mundane trap—it was wired to a bomb!

She didn’t stop to think; she just acted. She flung herself across the intervening space, hurled herself at him, tackled him and rolled him sideways, just as he started to reach out to pick it up.

Together they rolled right into the crowd of Little People, who flowed about them in confused eddies, momentarily deflected from their purpose.

She felt their anger, hot on her skin; their rage, at being cheated of their rightful victim. And she looked up to see them surrounding both her and the stranger.

David had intended to head straight for the portable office on the site, but something made him take a little detour instead. A feeling that there was something out in the “forbidden” area that he really should know about.

He hadn’t been certain about the hunch, but it was too strong to be denied. But he’d stopped, right by a pile of dirt, feeling a little stupid at following a “hunch,” and played his penlight over the area—

A flash of pale blue caught the light, and he aimed the circle of illumination there, expecting to see nothing more than half an old plastic cup.

Instead, the light shone on the deep reds and blues of really old beadwork, surrounded by the remains of quill-work, all set into what had to be a truly ancient medicine-pouch.