by Teri Harman
He passed the pumpkin patch and continued out into the open land behind the yard. The house had several acres around it, most left to their own devices, trees and field grasses growing wild. He stepped off the manicured lawn into the tall grass and kept going until he was lost in the privacy of the land.
Simon stopped, took a long, loud inhale and then pushed the air out. It did nothing to quell his frazzled nerves. His mind flopped back and forth between two questions, afraid to confront either one. What if Amelia was the old woman? What if she wasn’t?
He didn’t want to wonder; he just wanted Willa to get back and tell him.
Taking out his phone, he checked the time and his text messages for the hundredth time. He slipped it back into his pocket and paced in a circle. He picked up a stick and hurled it out into the grass. He paced more.
Finally, finally, Simon’s phone buzzed. Willa texted, We’re back. Where are you?
He quickly responded and then started to walk back to the house. Another message came. Stay there. We will come to you.
Simon exhaled, lightheaded from the sudden racing thump of his heart. He sat down on the trunk of an old fallen tree. His right foot bounced, jittering, but he forced himself to stay seated.
Two long minutes later, Willa, Rowan, and Wynter appeared, the swish of the grass announcing their arrival. Willa hurried forward, almost running, and threw her arms around his neck. He closed his eyes as he pulled her tight against him, wincing slightly at the wave of emotions coming off her. “So, it’s that bad?” he asked, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
Willa sat next to Simon, took his hand and looked up into his face. “It’s good and bad.”
Rowan magically pulled another log from its resting place several yards away, floating it to sit in front of Simon’s log. He and Wynter sat, facing Simon and Willa.
“Did you find Amelia?” Simon asked, impatient.
Willa nodded. “Yes, and she answered all my questions. She was the woman who came to your mother.”
A whoosh of air left Simon’s lungs. “And did she somehow give me her gift? Was she a Mind or a Water?”
Willa frowned. “It’s more complicated than that.” Simon listened closely as Willa related the story about the cave and the curse and Solace, his heart beating faster with every twist of the story.
“Solace, too?” Simon asked, shaking his head and clasping his hands together. “Holy moon! So I have Solace’s Mind gift and Amelia’s Water? But I don’t manipulate water any more than a regular witch.”
Rowan stepped in. “Simon, I think you actually have three gifts. Your own, which I believe is Water—not Mind—and then Solace and Amelia’s. I think you were originally gifted with a powerful ability to heal, a talent reserved for Water witches. That’s why you could heal animals in utero. When your own gift merged with Amelia’s, it turned you into a True Healer, someone who can heal animal and human, any injury large or small. The healing pushed aside the normal water abilities, and Solace’s strong Mind gift further masked them.” Rowan stroked his beard and then added, “If we worked on it, I think we’d unearth yet another great talent with water.”
Simon flinched at the word talent. More like another problem, another thing I don’t know how to control. He exhaled, trying to keep his emotions in check. Three gifts! He turned to his logic. “Okay, so now that we know what I am, how does it help me control it? Witches are supposed to have one gift; how do I control three fighting for attention? Is there a way to fix it?”
“Lots and lots of training will aid in controlling it,” Wynter offered. “You’ll need to get to know, understand, and perfect all three, together and separately. It won’t be easy, but I think doable.” She frowned briefly. “As far as fixing it—we don’t know of any way to do that.”
“You will need to be careful—all the time,” Rowan added.
Something in his tone hinted at more information. “Why? I mean, besides the obvious.”
“How do you think you controlled that witch with your voice at the cave? How you threw those others without any effort?” Wynter asked.
Simon frowned at the question but answered. “I’ve always assumed it had something to do with my Mind powers. I used my Mind to control them. Is that right?”
Rowan shook his head. “We don’t know much about True Healers, but Wynter and I received a call from an old friend in Scotland just yesterday. He called to talk to us about that weird business with the monks, but we also got into True Healer lore.” He shifted on the log and hesitated.
“What is it?” Simon asked, stomach cold with anticipation.
“You didn’t do what you did at the cave because of your Mind gift, you did it because you are a Healer,” Rowan said slowly. He met Simon’s eyes and held them. “True Healers have the power to heal, to change a body, but that means they also have the power to control it.”
Simon blinked several times. “As in control the person? Manipulate them? Take away free will?”
Rowan and Wynter nodded. Willa tightened her grip on his arm. He looked over at her, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. She whispered, “Yes, that’s exactly what it means.”
“But . . . but,” he stammered, mind a blur of confusion. “You guys always said that the magic couldn’t affect free will, couldn’t force.”
“It appears there is one exception,” Wynter said delicately.
So, not only was he a three-gift-freak, but also capable of the most terrible thing he could think of. Simon continued to look at Willa, her understanding face a steadying force, but something inside him was spinning, teetering on an edge.
What do I do with this?!
Simon’s fear of his own powers suddenly changed to disgust. His mind flooded with pictures of his small, childhood self: at five, cowering under the boisterous yell of his father, forced to turn away from a dying cat and leave the poor animal unhealed; later, finding the cold, stiff body and crying as he buried it, terrified his father might discover him; at twelve, locked in his room for a whole day because his mother had heard from another mother that Simon had fallen during a pick-up soccer game and broken his arm, and the woman had seen the unnatural angle of his arm, and then watched as he straightened out the bone, held the arm for a moment, and then ran off to rejoin the game; at sixteen being locked out of the house on several occasions, mostly in the winter, because of an argument about his horrible habits that he refused to give up; kicked out at seventeen; forced to survive on his own.
Control.
Control.
Control.
Reality hit him hard enough to take his breath away. Amelia hadn’t given him a gift; she’d passed on a curse. My powers are the result of a Dark curse gone wrong, and my healing powers have the ability to hurt, to force. Simon pulled his arm from Willa and ran his hands back through his hair. The open field suddenly felt like a small box.
“Simon?” Willa asked, quietly, her voice tense.
He jerked, pulled his mind out of his memories, out of the truth. My parents were right—I’m an evil freak. His head suddenly throbbed, the dull headache surging to a roar in his ears. Another burst of unexpected, unexplained power ricocheted inside him and then exploded out of his body. The grass around the logs burst into a perfect circle of flames. Willa gasped, flinching away from the fire. Simon lifted a hand, rested it on her hot cheek. He opened his mouth to say something, but he could find no words. The pain in his head made it hard to think clearly.
Instead of apologizing, he pulled his hand back and stood up. He walked away, the flames parting to let him pass. Then he ran, ran fast through the field, despite Willa’s calls for him to stay. The late afternoon sun poured down mercilessly, the first day of summer that felt truly hot. Simon ran in the orange heat, oblivious to the temperature. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, why the urge to leave was so strong. He should turn around and go back to Willa, his wife whom he had promised to stay with always; but he suddenly felt trapped, all good feelings from last night turn
ed putrid and rotting, his body achy, antsy.
Simon got into his Jeep, his stomach sick and his head too full. He peeled out of the driveway and took off down the street.
He’d struggled with control his whole life: fighting it, having it, not having it. Needing it. Now he had to face the odd juxtaposition that the same power that helped him keep people alive, that healed, could forcibly control people; and that was out of control. His healing powers were sacred to him, as much as his heart and soul. As strange as it had always been, it was still an essential part of him, a part he clung to—often desperately—because each time he healed someone else, his own pain lessened, disappeared for a few glorious moments. Each healing justified the pain he’d endured as a child. If it hadn’t meant so much to him, he would never have endured his parents all those years. He’d have given up.
Until now he had considered his gift a blessing, a calling.
Simon had always assumed the incident at the cave happened as a result of his Mind powers, that he had somehow reached into the witches’ minds. That made a broken kind of sense to him.
But now, with Amelia’s revelation and the Healer lore . . .
My ability to heal . . .
How could that gift be two-faced?
It’s not right.
Before he realized it, Simon had driven out of town and up the canyon. He rolled down the windows and turned the music all the way up to try to drown out his own thoughts, but it didn’t help. After several miles, he pulled off to the side of the road and got out. He walked blindly, not following a path.
The crunch of foliage and the crisp mountain air helped cool his emotions, and soon he could think clearly. So what are my options? What do I do? Simon sat down on a log, elbows on knees, and looked thoughtfully out through the trees.
Option one: training: listen to Wynter and Rowan’s advice, train his powers so as to use them effectively and minimize the risk of hurting anyone. But what if he hurt someone while training, like he had Willa? And what if learning to use his gift—gifts—more effectively actually made him more dangerous? He had no desire to perfect the ability to force others to do what he wanted.
Option two: suppress—smother his healing gift, push aside his most powerful ability, and never use it. But would it even be possible? He hadn’t done very well at controlling any of his magic lately. Ever since the cliff, everything had been heightened, intensified. He could feel the energy growing inside him, trying to get out, begging to be used. Could he actually manage to suppress part of his powers while trying to be a normal witch? Could he isolate one gift while pushing down the others? And what would he do if someone got hurt and needed help? What if it was Willa? Would he turn his back, not use his ability to heal?
Option three: walk away.
A shiver moved through him. Walk away. Leave the Covenant; leave witchcraft and never use magic again. Run away for real, somewhere far away, and not come back. Maybe the time had come to stop pretending. His powers had never brought anything but trouble and pain. Why should he persist? It sounded like the safest option, but it would also be the most painful.
How could he walk away from Rowan, Wynter, and the Covenant? And worse, how could he ask Willa to leave? He couldn’t go without her, and he knew she wouldn’t let him leave alone.
Another thought hit him, and his stomach turned cold with nausea. If I give up magic, should I give up Willa too? The space behind his heart throbbed so painfully that he had to lean forward and concentrate on his breathing. No. I could never give her up. That’s not an option.
The wind teased the leaves of the trees over his head.
A bird called out to the forest.
Simon stared off into the trees, his heart ice, his hands twisting around each other.
Something rustled in the foliage to his right. Simon turned his head. Limping badly, a gray wolf moved out of the trees toward him. Simon inhaled sharply. Wolves don’t live in Colorado. There had been rumors of sightings for years, but the closest known population lived in Yellowstone.
What are you doing here?
The wolf, whose head had been hanging down in pain, looked up and met Simon’s eyes. The creature whimpered softly. The animal was ragged and dirty, skin stretched tightly over its ribs.
Simon remained seated, watching the crippled wolf make its way forward. The options churned inside him, unprepared to face the choice so soon. The animal stopped and held up its foreleg, bloody and deformed, most likely crushed. It would never heal on its own, and soon the animal would starve to death. Simon sighed heavily and rolled his eyes skyward.
The wolf hopped closer.
Dull golden eyes were locked on Simon’s, silently begging for help. Simon stayed still, staring back. He balled his hands into fists, so hard they started to tremble. All he had to do was reach out one of his hands, place it on the wolf’s head, and heal it.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
For the first time, Simon wondered if he had the right to heal. Was it his place to step in and change the course of a life? What gave him the right? It was all the result of Dark magic anyway. Every animal, every person he’d ever healed moved across his mind, each a flash of regret. Each action had been rooted in a mistake, a curse.
The wolf whimpered again, nudged Simon fists with its dry muzzle.
Simon met its eyes once more, swallowed, and pulled his lips into a thin, tight line.
He stood up and walked away for the second time that day.
Chapter 31
Blessing Moon
July—Present Day
Willa sat in the shade on the front porch, staring out at the road, waiting. Waiting. One of her grandmother’s grimoires rested on her lap, but even the allure of ancestral knowledge couldn’t keep Willa’s mind focused. She rubbed her hand on the cover, fiddling with the leather tie. Pulling her eyes from the road, she opened the book. On the first page, in a compact script, she found, Tara Algood. Gift of Air. Willa inhaled. Proof. She held in her hands real evidence that her grandmother had been a witch, that she had inherited the magic.
Tara Algood had died in a car accident when Sarah was only seventeen. Sarah never spoke of her mother. Willa had never thought much about her grandma. Tara Algood had always been just a name and a single battered photograph of a dark-haired smiling woman holding a newborn version of Sarah. Willa wondered what had happened between them to make her mom so bitter.
Willa wished she’d known Tara, seen the true color of her eyes, heard her laugh, sat in her lap, seen her work the magic of her Air gift. At least the grimoires could be a window into her life and her magic.
At the sound of a car, Willa stiffened and looked up. But it wasn’t Simon.
With a sigh, she sat back in the porch swing and rubbed at the ache of worry just inside her skull. The truth had not been as comforting as she hoped. Could he handle it, reconcile it? Willa bit her lower lip and looked down the street.
It was just the shock. Right? He just needed time to process, to logic everything into place. Like he always does. But this was so big and so complicated. Willa wondered if maybe she should have left well enough alone. Maybe this time answers were not a cure but an infection.
The look in Simon’s dark eyes when Rowan told him the awful truth about his healing powers filled her head. Even now it made her heart drop. Simon had never vocalized it, but Willa knew how important that gift was to him. Could he recover from this?
The sound of voices drifted from the house, the Covenant deep in conversation about the bodies in the ground at the cave and Amelia’s revelations. The skin on Willa’s neck prickled. Something big was going to happen. It’d been building for months, many strange little incidents, like drops of poison in a cup of water. Now she felt the cup was about to spill over. Right down their throats.
At exactly the same time as Simon’s mental breakdown.
Rocking slowly, smoothing her hand over the grimoire, Willa couldn’t forget the look on Simon’s face as
the fire had erupted around them in the field. His surprise had been equal to hers, but there was something else, something . . . resigned, a look of realization, the realization that his worst fear had been confirmed. His powers were the product of a Dark curse. She knew the words must be thundering in his brain: My parents were right.
Willa exhaled; anger at the Howards was heating her blood.
But there had been something else in Simon’s eyes in that moment, something angry and dark. A look so foreign she didn’t know what to think of it.
Another image plowed through her thoughts, one she’d been trying her best to keep buried over the last few days—the witch with moonlight eyes. Since that first horrible nightmare right after Simon was attacked on the cliff, she’d dreamed only of him. All night, she’d watched his life play out. Horrible things she had never imagined were possible. At the end of each event, she’d stand face to face with him, just staring, her body growing colder and colder until, finally, she woke shivering. As soon as she managed to fall asleep again, it started all over.
Willa yawned and checked the street again, then her phone, and her unanswered texts and calls.
“Any sign?” Charlotte pushed opened the screen door and sat next to her on the swing.
“No,” Willa signed. “I hope he’s okay.”
Charlotte handed her a tall glass of ice water. “I’m sure he is. Knowing Simon, he’s up there,” Char nodded toward the mountains in the distance, “thinking everything out.”
Willa sipped the water and nodded. “I know.” She exhaled. “So how are things inside? Any progress?”
Char scoffed. “Not really. No one can even comprehend the idea that Archard might still be alive, so they are thinking about every other reason in the world why all those bodies are buried in the clearing.” Charlotte put a hand on Willa’s arm. “I’m sorry about this whole deal with Simon. I can’t believe the poor guy is stuck with three gifts. That’s total overload. No wonder he’s been a little nuts. Sometimes I go crazy with just my one.”