Beacon's Spark (Potomac Shadows Book 1)

by Jim Johnson

“I…I can sort of see blue strands, in my mind.”

  “Good! That’s good, Malcolm. That means you’re starting to See with something other than your normal eyes. Focus on that. Can you see the ley thread in front of you move?” I gently waved the thread back and forth in front of him.

  “Yes, I can see that. Are you making it move?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I’m moving it back and forth. I’ll stop now.”

  “Okay, now what?”

  I paused, then said, “Focus on the threads, and try to imagine your sister, what she looks like, what she feels like, how you imagine she looks in your head. Can you visualize her?” I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to believe that if we focused and meditated, maybe this crazy idea would work.

  “Okay, sure. I’ll try.” He took a few deep breaths, settling into a deeper meditative state. I don’t think he even realized it. Which I guess was cool—maybe he was a natural at this.

  I focused the threads in my hands and moved them to weave into Malcolm’s aura, thinking I could augment his senses and abilities with my own. “Do you have an image in your mind, of your sister?”

  He nodded. I said, “Okay, then I’m gonna take these ley threads and sort of play them around, and use them to start touching some of the different cars around here. If you get a sense of your sister from any of them, let me know, okay?”

  He nodded again, too focused to speak. I focused my energies and offered a silent prayer that this would work, and then extended the threads toward some of the vehicles parked all around Banneker Park. I started with the bigger, more likely candidates—minivans, large sedans, panel trucks.

  One after another, I touched the threads to the vehicles and opened my senses to try and detect if there was anyone inside them. Most of them were empty, though a couple had a driver or passenger, or both, inside. I didn’t linger to determine what anyone was doing in their cars—none of my business. I just focused the threads on the vehicles and also on Malcolm, looking for a sign that he had detected anything.

  As I was running out of cars to test, I started to despair that maybe this wasn’t working after all. Then, Malcolm shot out a hand and grabbed my wrist. “Wait! Go back. That crossover—the gray one over by the seafood place. Try that one again.” I heard the rising excitement in his voice.

  I moved the threads in that direction and focused on the car in question. “This one?” I opened my senses as well. There were three people in the car—two male and one female.

  “Yes! Yes. That’s her, I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s great, Malcolm!” I opened my eyes and grinned. “Holy crap, that actually worked!”

  He opened his eyes and nodded, his expression turning dark. “Sure as hell did.” He reached out and popped open his door, and was out of the car and rushing down the road faster than I had expected.

  “Shit!” I clambered out of the car and starting running after him. “Malcolm! Malcolm, wait! Don’t do anything stupid!”

  Malcolm ran straight toward the crossover, and even at the distance he had put between us, I could see the smoke starting to rise from his hands. I switched focus to my Eye and saw the ley threads he was gathering up in his fists. He had to be doing it unconsciously. Crap. He was out of control again.

  He reached the crossover unmolested and wrenched open the driver side door in a burst of sparks. A few people walking down the sidewalk nearby screamed and ran off. People inside the car also yelled. The driver fell out of the open driver side, the sleeve of his jacket smoldering.

  Malcolm stared at the driver. “Get the hell out of here before I burn you down.”

  The driver cradled his smoking arm to his chest and backed away from Malcolm and then turned around and ran off down the street.

  I gathered ley threads around me and quickly wove them into a rough cocoon and readied it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I had it at the ready as I rushed up to Malcolm’s side.

  Malcolm yelled into the car. “Buster Jay! Let go of my sister! She’s coming home, now!”

  Inside the car’s backseat, a beefy brown-skinned man in a long black trenchcoat and jaunty beret had a thick arm around a young black girl in a loose blouse and miniskirt. The girl looked mostly out of it, her eyes glazed and lids heavy.

  “Sandelle? Sandelle, can you hear me?” cried Malcolm.

  The girl lolled her head toward the sound of his voice, but said nothing. I called out, “Malcolm, be careful!”

  The beefy man in the backseat fumbled his free hand around on the seat next to him. “Get the fuck out of here! This is my girl!”

  Malcolm took a couple steps and wrenched open the backseat door in another burst of bronze sparks. “No, I don’t think so.” He pushed the door open wide and stared into the backseat.

  The man I assumed to be Buster Jay produced an ugly-looking handgun from the seat and aimed it at Malcolm. Without a thought for what I was doing, I launched my hastily-created cocoon at the gun. The ley threads squashed into the gun, partially covering it.

  I heard a muffled pop, and saw a little brass casing escape Buster Jay’s gun and arc in the street lights. The ley threads around the gun sort of bubbled, and then condensed around the gun and Buster Jay’s hand. He stared at the gun in confusion and then I realized he couldn’t see the threads—just that the gun had somehow stopped working.

  “Malcolm, now! Get your sister!”

  Malcolm glanced at me and then reached into the car with both his long arms and pulled his sister right out of the backseat and into a cradle in his arms. I moved over to him and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Now, go. Walk back to your car. Don’t say a word, don’t look back.”

  He stared at me, fire in his eyes, and an argument on his lips. I lifted a hand and raised a finger in his face. “No! Get your ass back to the car. You got your sister. Go. Enough damage for one night.”

  He stared into my eyes. I did all I could to stand tall, to stand firm. I could not back down from this, not now. He must have seen the steel in my eyes because he nodded, turned on his heel, and headed back to his car. And he didn’t look back.

  Thank God for small favors. A muttering behind me made me turn and lean down into the crossover. Buster Jay was leaning back in the seat, staring at his gun, working the slide. He glanced up at me. “What the hell, bitch?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Get the hell out of here. I just saved your ass. The least you can do is say ‘thank you’ and drive off.”

  He stared at me, the confusion clear on his face. Sensing he wasn’t a threat, not with a pile of ley threads gumming up his handgun, I turned my back on him and followed Malcolm toward his Mustang.

  The three of us got there unmolested. As Malcolm gently placed his sister in the backseat of the car, he glanced at me. “Buster Jay?”

  I shrugged. “I think we knocked the fight out of him.” I glanced toward the crossover. Buster Jay had gotten out of the car and was evaluating the burn damage Malcolm had caused to the outside of his vehicle.

  Malcolm reset his seat and focused on me. “You stopped that bullet. How?”

  I turned and stared at him and then gestured around us with a wave of my hand. “Magic? It’s the ley threads, Malcolm. They’re all around us. I can…harness them to do different things. Like searching for people, apparently.”

  He kept his gaze squarely upon me. “Rachel, you saved my life.”

  I bit my lip and then met his eyes. “Yeah…yeah, I guess I did.”

  He gnawed at the inside of his cheek, and then nodded. “I’m getting kinda tired of saying it, but thank you. I don’t know how to repay you for what you did for me…for my sister.”

  I glanced at Sandelle’s prone form, buckled into the backseat. “It’s okay, Malcolm.” I shrugged. “You’re welcome. Just, you know…all in a day’s work.”

  He snorted, but his expression read nothing but tired relief and sorrow. “Can I drive you somewhere? Maybe get you home?”

  I raised a hand. “Na
h. It’s just a couple blocks to the L’Enfant Plaza metro. I’ll be all right.” I gestured toward the park. “I just gotta clear my head of all…this.”

  He nodded. “I can’t thank you enough for your help tonight. If you hadn’t come around when you did…” He shrugged. “Anyway, thanks, Rachel.” He lifted his hand to his ear. “Call me soon?”

  I waved. “Yeah, sure. Soon. Go on, get your sister home.” I was tired and about done with the brave act. I needed to find a quiet spot to collapse for about a month.

  Malcolm gathered himself into the driver’s seat and started up the car. He gave me a long, quiet look, then gave me a nod that felt portentous, and drove off into the night.

  I glanced around Banneker Park once more, reliving the scene that had just unfolded. I shook my head. I had no idea what to think about Malcolm and the new ability we’d just discovered or whether I should tell Miss Chin. Ugh—I could just imagine that argument.

  Abbie was working late again tonight, so I knew I had the night for myself and my thoughts and fears. Maybe I’d practice my warding abilities and then try a little meditation. I sighed, feeling the fatigue down to my toenails. “Maybe just go home, take a hot bath, and get some freaking sleep, Rachel.”

  Yeah. Sleep sounded good right about now. I started toward the few blocks toward the Metro station.

  It’d be another long, lonely night. I decided to cheer myself up by visiting grandpa in the morning. What else could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 46

  “HEY, RACHEL! MY GOODNESS. I DIDN’T expect to see you again so soon.”

  I closed his room’s door behind me and walked over to him to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Really? I see you one day a week for over a year and now that I’ve seen you three times in the space of a week, you complain?”

  He raised a hand and apologized around a covered smile. “No, I really do appreciate the visits.” He looked me up and down, sizing me up, taking in the crystal pendant that hung from my neck.

  “That’s a beautiful necklace. Where did you get it?”

  I touched it with my right hand. I had grown weirdly attached to it. “My friend Bonita got it in the shop from a friend of hers, to sell it on consignment. I saw it on the shelf a few days ago and liked it so much that Bonita said I could have it.”

  “Sounds like a good deal. Do you do that crystal hoo-doo? Can you tell fortunes with it?”

  I covered my reaction by grabbing the wheeled stool and wheeling it over to Grandpa. I schooled my features and sat down. I forced a skeptical grin on my face. “Pssh, come on, Grandpa, it’s not that kind of crystal.” I made a point of looking out his window at the falling rain as it hit the grass and trees in the little garden outside in the courtyard.

  I threw a sidelong glance in his direction. “Besides, what do you know about crystals?”

  He stared out the window, tracking an early robin as it flitted from one tree to the next. “Just curious. A couple of the ladies here in residence have crystals and fancy magnesium wristbands or somesuch. They say the metal and the crystals help regulate their ‘energy flows’. One even said she could read my mind.”

  I grinned. “Could she?”

  “Well, I was thinking of just one thing when I was looking at her.” He shot me a wink. “It wasn’t hard to figure out what I was thinking about.”

  He gave me a funny little smile, and I wasn’t about to ask what he might have been thinking. There were times Grandpa was the stereotypical dirty old man, and I just was not interested in hearing about his weird desires right now.

  “Huh, now that’s interesting.”

  I glanced at him. “What?”

  He nodded toward the window and the courtyard beyond. “Those orderlies running around.”

  I turned to follow his gaze. In the courtyard, a pair of uniformed orderlies were roaming around the small garden, looking under the benches and behind bushes and trees. One even looked up, into the trees themselves.

  I frowned, a tickling through my senses starting to itch at the back of my neck. “I wonder what they’re looking for.”

  Grandpa shook his head. “I betcha...”

  There was a brisk knock, and then the door was pushed open. Another orderly, a young woman with an impressive swath of burgundy in her jet-black hair, poked her head into the room through the doorway.

  “I’m sorry for troubling you, Mister Farran, but we’re conducting a bed check. I see you are present in your room. Is Miss Claudette Miller in this room with you?”

  He turned around in his seat to face the orderly. “Hi Marquessa, no, Claudette isn’t here. Last I saw her was two days ago, at the video game tournament.”

  I raised an eyebrow at that. Grandpa played video games?

  She nodded. “May I come in and check your room?”

  Grandpa spread his arms wide. “Of course. I have nothing to hide.”

  To her credit, Marquessa made short work of the search, checking the only areas an old woman could possibly hide in this small, yet comfortable suite.

  “Sorry to disturb your visit.” She headed back toward the door.

  I glanced at Grandpa and shook my head. “No need to apologize.” A sudden question leaped into my mind and I reached a hand out toward the door.

  “Wait! The missing lady—Miss Miller, what did she look like? Was she, you know, African-American, or…?”

  Marquessa, an attractive young black woman herself, glanced toward me before leaving the room. “She was Caucasian, ma’am.”

  I didn’t care for being called ma’am, but let it go as I chewed on the new pieces of information.

  “Okay, thanks.” Shoot. I was worried that maybe the new missing person was Malcolm’s grandmother. But then it dawned on me that I didn’t know Malcolm’s last name. I glanced at Grandpa. “You okay if I make a phone call?”

  Grandpa nodded and turned back to the window to watch the orderlies outside work their way through the garden.

  I pulled out my smartphone and then rummaged around in my satchel for that business card. I moved aside my wallet, paperback, a bunch of random loose papers, and then swore to myself. My satchel somehow liked to turn itself into a black hole, and inevitably the one thing I was looking for is what always ended up at the very bottom.

  With a glance toward Grandpa that ended in an eyeroll, I headed over to his small table and upended my satchel on it. My random trinkets, spare tampons, makeup case, and other detritus of my life spilled out all over the place, some rolling out onto the floor.

  I sifted around through the stuff and finally latched onto the cream-colored business card with the simple embossed lettering stating it was from Detective A.J. Bello. It listed one phone number and had an odd logo in the upper left corner—a woven three-armed cross—which I guessed was his company logo, or maybe the police department he worked for. I didn’t recognize it and it didn’t look like any police shield I’d ever seen.

  The phone picked up promptly after the second ring. “Bello.”

  I paused half a beat, wondering if he had listed his personal phone. “Hi, I, uh...”

  “Who is this?” His tone sounded more curious than annoyed.

  I cleared my throat. “This is, ah, this is Rachel Farran. You and I met at Branchwood Estates a couple days ago.”

  “Ah yes! I remember you. Wandering, excuse me—exercising up and down the stairwell.”

  I nodded into the phone. “That’s right.”

  “What can I do for you, Miss Farran?”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure I should call you, but...”

  “Did something happen?” His tone changed to a more professional attitude.

  I nodded again. “Another resident of my Grandpa’s nursing home turned up missing last night.” I glanced out the window toward the garden. Most of the security types were heading toward the doors of the hospice, their search in the garden apparently at an end. “Looks like they’re not having much luck finding her.”

  Bello sighed on his en
d of the phone, sending a little static through the connection.

  “Thanks for letting me know, Rachel. Where are you now?”

  I glanced at Grandpa. “I’m at Branchwood now, visiting with my grandpa. They just ran a room check looking for the missing person and they also checked the courtyard outside.”

  “All right. I’d like to come by and ask you some questions. I can be there in ten minutes. Are you willing to wait?”

  I glanced at the phone and then at Grandpa. “Sure, I’ll be here. Don’t know that I’ll be much help, though.”

  He chuckled once, a short, sharp laugh and then went back to his professional tone. “You’ve already been a huge help just by calling. I’ll see you soon, Rachel.”

  He hung up. I glanced at the time—just after ten in the morning. I joined Grandpa in watching the orderlies check the courtyard.

  I reached up to cup my crystal, a sudden premonition striking me. I had a real bad feeling about this.

  Chapter 47

  BELLO KNOCKED ON THE DOOR IN under ten minutes, which raised the hackles on my neck. Where exactly was his office?

  I opened the door. Bello stood in the hallway, as professional in appearance as before, in his military-cut hair and civilian navy blue suit. He had on a gold and white tie and a lapel pin that matched the strange cross logo on his business card.

  I ushered him inside, “Jeez, that was fast.”

  “I was actually on the way here, to continue my investigation.” He shrugged. “I guess I have something new to investigate.”

  I frowned. I didn’t remember hearing any car noise in the background when I had talked to him on the phone, but wasn’t sure enough to call him out on it. Grandpa turned to face us with the worry evident in his eyes. “How many does that make, Detective? Four, five?” His voice quavered on the last word.

  “Six, including one late last year.”

  I frowned. “You don’t think they’re all related, do you?” I glanced at Grandpa and then back to Bello.

  Bello gestured toward the small table. “Mind if I sit down?”

  I shrugged and joined him at the table. Grandpa got up out of his window seat, grabbed a juice box out of his small fridge, and then joined us as well.