More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  “But they don’t— I mean the sheriff— I know they don’t use meth. They drink, but no drug use. I’m sure I’d know if they were.”

  He raised his eyebrow at her.

  “The sheriff’s made a point of having his guys casually check up on Old Annie now and then. They see the boys. They’re clean.” She had to grimace at that. “Well, they don’t use drugs, I mean.”

  “I don’t plan on accusing them of using or cooking or anything like that. I know all I need to about that. I need local color. The way they talk. The way they live. The way they deal with their neighbors. Their environment.”

  He was focused on his book again. This was good. “Well, I don’t know if they’re the best example. Annie makes the difference in that family. She’s a real matriarch. I imagine she’s the reason the boys aren’t into anything harder than Jack Daniels.”

  “Great. Can you introduce me?”

  She chewed on her lip. “I—I was planning on going over tomorrow morning to check on her. You could come along if you like. But it’s a bit of a hike over the ridge. Are you up to it?”

  “I feel fine. I feel—” He took a deep breath. “I feel better than fine.”

  “Good. Then you probably don’t need that powder right now. I’d wait and see how you feel tomorrow. If the symptoms come back, we can try the powder again.”

  “Great. That’s—that’s great.” And it was. Already she could see the change in him. His color, his eyes—

  His eyes. “So, in the morning then?” she said. At least he was smiling, even though there was no sign of that dimple. “Right. And thanks for tonight.”

  Instead of thinking she was a horrible tease and leaving in a huff, he was sincerely thanking her? It had to be a side effect of the magic, like Tink. Grace started backing toward the house.

  “Thank you for the wonderful meal and for the…conversation. It was…” the most fun I’ve had in a while. “I’m sorry if I talked your ear off. That’s why I don’t drink.”

  His smile faded.

  “So, goodnight.” She walked away as fast as she could, Pooka running after her.

  But when she looked back, he was still standing there holding that stupid empty champagne bottle.

  Nick fumed, wondering how that cool composure of hers would hold up if he followed after her and grabbed her and kissed her so hard that she forgot whatever had broken the spell out there. Because, no matter what she said, his gut told him she was attracted to him. She was afraid of what she felt for him, but she felt something.

  Still, he didn’t need this. Not now. What had started as a simple plan to get her slightly tipsy and talkative had turned into something else, and then nothing at all.

  And he couldn’t just explode or force the issue. There was still a job to do. The only choice he had was to be polite. She wanted to act like it was a mistake but not hurt his feelings? Fine. He could fake that.

  He watched her walk away. That burnished copper ponytail of hers swaying with each step. It had been a while, sure, but he had kissed his share of women—hell, he had done a lot more than that. But this was different. This was—

  Insane. Unbelievable. Magic.

  That word again. Terrific.

  Matt had warned him about these mountains, these people, but he doubted if Matt could’ve predicted this.

  Slick Nick. On a blanket. On top of a mountain. Under the stars. Falling in love. With a—

  Grace looked back and his heart raced.

  Witch?

  Damn.

  Chapter Nine

  Grace wove her fingers through Nick’s hair, and she was surprised to find it long and curling down to his neck. His mouth was on hers, heated and urgent, and she forgot to think. He tasted like the champagne, full of stars, and he grasped her hands in his and pushed her gently onto the blanket. Then his hands were stroking down her ribs, ghosting across her stomach, caressing her breasts, and he was leaning over her, kissing her neck and licking that spot under her ear that made her—

  “You can fix it, Grace,” Nick said, his breath warm against her skin.

  Grace pulled back, looking around wildly then crawling back on her elbows to get away from him. She was on the blanket, but not in the meadow. They were at Pops’s cathedral overlooking the ginseng. The quivering leaves of gold receded off into the darkness. But there was no blackness boiling in the trees, only the wind blowing leaves around the clearing.

  When she looked back at him, Nick pointed to the crevice beside them. “It’s the mountain’s magic.”

  There was a sigh of sound from behind her.

  Not again. She spun, stomach clenched, but instead of Granny Lily with her hair and clothes whipping about her in unseen fire, there was a baby sitting on the blanket—a pretty red-haired baby, clapping and raising her hands in delight. She wore something handmade and very old-fashioned. Grace reached toward the child and the fabric yellowed and wrinkled. The giggling red-haired child became Granny Lily, who sat on the blanket with her long skirt billowing around her, holding the carefully folded gown and stroking it with her hand.

  Lily held the gown out to Grace, and Grace reached for it, close enough to see the delicate embroidery and lace.

  Grace feared it would evaporate into black smoke when she touched it, but it didn’t. It was soft and real in her hands and she could smell a hint of some gentle fragrance coming from its folds.

  “Fix the mountain, Dr. Grace.” Granny Lily was gone and the voice came from behind her. When Grace looked back to where Nick had been, Tink was there, her fairy wings shivering in the wind. “For Lily.”

  Grace shot awake with a gasp. The wind was making a racket outside, screaming around the eaves, but not loud enough to have woken her. She was used to the wind kicking up—

  The phone shrilled again and she grabbed for it without looking at the caller ID.

  “Yes?” She noticed that her nightshirt was up around her armpits, her breasts felt tingly and other parts of her were swollen and aching. Good grief.

  “Grace?” Daniel’s voice sounded odd, thin.

  “Yes. Daniel? What’s—what’s wrong?” The aftereffects of her dream faded into insignificance. “What time is it out there?”

  He ignored the question. “You’re all right?”

  She looked down at herself, the obvious result of too much champagne, too little satisfaction—and total stupidity.

  “In a matter of speaking. Why?”

  “What do you mean? Are you okay or not?”

  “Yes. Sorry.” I’m madly in love with a guy I met two days ago and I think I cured him of lymphoma and now he might be addicted to me, but— “I’m fine. What is it?”

  “I just—just a bad dream, that’s all.”

  “Bad dream?” She looked at the clock. 4:30. “It’s the middle of the afternoon there, isn’t it?” She heard someone speaking Japanese in the background.

  “Give me a minute,” Daniel responded.

  “Daniel. Sweetie. It’s 4:30 in the morning here. What did you see?”

  “Sorry. Not much. And I don’t know when, but there’s a big snow and some guest at the cabins and you— Well, you both go missing in the storm, without a trace. You, a guest, and your truck. All gone. That’s all. I know it’s early for snow and you don’t even have any guests up there right now and it’s probably just something I ate, but— I got worried.”

  Grace frowned. She swung her feet out of the bed and sat up. Pooka didn’t even twitch. Daniel was halfway around the world and she didn’t want to worry him. “You couldn’t tell exactly what happened?”

  “No. The… They just aren’t very…specific lately,” Daniel replied, sounding frustrated.

  Grace immediately felt contrite. “Specific enough. They are predicting a heavy snow for tonight.”

  “Damn.” There was a long silence. “Well, don’t go anywhere in it, okay? Stick close to home.”

  “Don’t worry, Danny. I didn’t plan on leaving the farm once it starts snowing.
A nice fire, a little popcorn. Snug as a bug,” she reassured him.

  “Good.” Some of the tension went out of his voice. “It was probably just some Japanese food I ate. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Right. Like I said, snug as a bug here.” She tried to sound upbeat. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right. Busy.”

  “As a bee, I’m sure.” It was a bad joke, but a long-running one.

  But Daniel didn’t laugh. “Just… Be careful, Gracie. And call me—tonight. Tonight your time.”

  “I will,” she replied. “Are you still coming home soon?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Christmas?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, try. Please?”

  “I will.” There was another spurt of Japanese on the other end. “Gotta go.”

  “Daniel?”

  “Yeah?”

  Not now Grace. He’s probably late for a lecture or something. It can wait. “Love you.”

  “Love you too, Gracie,” he said. “Go back to sleep, lazybones.”

  There was a sputter on the line, then silence. The line was dead and the wind was getting worse.

  Time to listen to the weather report.

  “Come on, Pooka. Looks like we might get us some snow, boy.”

  Pooka opened one eye, totally unimpressed.

  A big gust hit the side of the house, rattling a window. “And I bet we’ll have some damage from this wind to deal with today.”

  Along with any other damage she might’ve done last night.

  Nick winced as the wind battered his cabin. But true to Grace’s word, it was a snug and well-built place. No drafts. A couple of branches had bounced off the roof, but he doubted there was any damage.

  It seemed to suit his restless and energized mood. It wasn’t the first time he hadn’t slept over the past months, but it was the first time that he had been too invigorated to sleep. He had made a pot of coffee, more out of habit than anything, then found he didn’t want it. He drank nearly an entire carton of orange juice instead.

  He found himself cooking some of the eggs Grace had carried up to his porch yesterday. Eggs and scallions, with fresh tomatoes. Even then he was still hungry, so now he was slathering some toast with honey from those bees of Jamie’s.

  Amazing. Whatever that stuff was that Grace was handing out, it was quite the miracle drug. For the first time in months, he felt hopeful. Not quite up to planning out a detailed future, but hopeful.

  He walked back over to the desk with his hands full of toast and looked toward the main house. No lights yet. He wondered if she had even slept at all. Some part of him hoped she hadn’t. Another part wondered what she had worn to sleep in. And that took him places he didn’t want to go, having already had one cold shower.

  Still, the thought made him grin. He took a greedy bite of the toast. Damn, everything tasted unbelievable and it just felt good to be alive and need a cold shower. To feel again. To think there might be a future to plan.

  Problem was, he couldn’t seem to picture that future without a certain redhead in it. And, based on last night, that was a whole other case for him to solve.

  A light from the house shone through the thrashing tree limbs, and he glanced at his watch. 4:30 yet again. The woman had amazing amounts of energy and enthusiasm. In his arms last night she had been…breathtaking. So eager and passionate and—

  Damn. Shaking his head, he finished one piece of toast and started on the other. The weather was saying that once this front got through the temperature was going to nosedive and the snow might arrive early.

  Nick looked down at his laptop and the notebook and portable scanner beside it. Copies of the notebook pages were queued up and ready to send to his favorite geek back in D.C.—the one who tended to get wrapped up in the puzzles and wouldn’t think to raise any alerts to anyone else until much later. Hopefully long enough for him to have some kind of handle on the truth.

  But he was still having trouble clicking on Send. He wanted to be sure no hint of this touched Grace. She wasn’t involved, and that wasn’t just his newly revived hormones talking. Nothing about her fit. Nothing at all. Someone had gotten their hands on that notebook and perverted it to their own ends.

  The exact ciphers weren’t in the notebook, but he recognized the patterns. The fact that she was changing the type of cipher with each game in a certain pattern was the same. But the messages she had been encrypting were, beyond the coordinates for their caches and finds, silly things like “rhymes with love you” and “mayonnaise is white, this is yellow” and “dead frog here”. The guys in D.C. would be scratching their heads over some of them.

  The computer pinged at him and he looked down. The network had disconnected. Pulling out his cell phone he looked for a signal. No bars.

  Grace’s cell extender had gone out. He looked out the window at the debris and leaves flying through the air. It probably wasn’t bad enough to take down her tower, and the fiber optic cables would be underground, but something had gone wrong up there.

  He checked the land line, and it was down as well. So, no email today unless he dragged his laptop outside where he could get a good, clear signal and used his sat phone.

  It could wait. He would have to be incommunicado for a long while before anyone worried about him.

  But the delay would give him a chance to ask Jamie some more questions, weather permitting. Then he could focus on Jamie’s family and friends and neighbors and teachers.

  But not on Grace. Yesterday he was ready to stake his reputation on Grace’s innocence. Today he would stake his life. And today that felt like something worth risking.

  “Well, I can’t risk running low. If it was only me, it would be one thing, but I have a very important guest.” Grace smiled at Nick across the hood of the SUV as she borrowed his sat phone to talk to her propane service.

  “No problem. I had you on schedule for your delivery today anyway, unlike some of these other folks who are calling us now, when it’s too late. But I’ll need to deliver earlier than later. Can’t risk getting stuck on that road of yours. Is that okay?”

  “Absolutely. I’m rushing through my morning schedule so I can be there, just in case. See you then.” Grace hit the End button, then looked a bit closer at the phone that Nick had loaned her.

  “I’ve never seen one of these before. It looks like a regular cell phone, except for the antenna. Must be expensive.”

  “Needed it in Columbia. And some other places I’ve been. Didn’t think I’d need it up here.”

  She shrugged. “That wind probably knocked over just the right tree and the roots snapped the fiber optic line. I’ve meant to get them to put in some kind of automatic switchover to the second line, but right now it means a trip up there to manually switch it over, assuming that’s what happened.”

  Nick nodded. “You need me to go up there with you and check it out, or is that on your morning schedule?”

  Grace looked up at the scudding clouds. Nick had parked his SUV at the top of the ridge on the main mountain road for the best reception. Now he stood outside the driver’s side door, leaning on the hood.

  “It wasn’t. I’ll have to fit it in somewhere though. I don’t want to go without any phone service, and it’ll take the company a while to fix the land line, wherever it might’ve gone down.”

  “So, no more phone calls?”

  “All done. Groceries and propane. We have pretty much everything else we need up here.”

  She ducked back into the SUV and he joined her.

  Nick had offered to drive in light of the oncoming storm, and Grace had agreed just to shorten the trip—though it meant closer contact with Nick in the SUV than walking over the ridge. But he seemed to be abiding by her request to forget what had happened last night. Grace just wished she could.

  “With your ‘rushing’ perhaps we can manage it,” Nick said, smiling over at her as she handed him the sat phone. He tucked it back into his
jacket before putting the car in gear once more.

  “Well, rushing means something different up here. The normal pace is pretty slow.”

  “Yours isn’t. Whatever it is that you get all that energy from, I’d like some.”

  She smiled at him. “Ginseng’s great for energy. But you seem to have plenty today.” And Nick did look wonderful. His color was good and his eyes were bright. Except for his hair, which she suspected was usually longer, and his weight, which wouldn’t change overnight, he looked really healthy. And content. For some reason, the content part pleased her, and she knew it shouldn’t.

  “Ginseng. Yeah. Jamie was telling me about it. The hundred-and-something-year-old plants you have.”

  Grace shook her head. Good thing that Jamie Lynn didn’t know where the bed was located or everyone in town would know. “Yes, our very ancient ginseng bed. The beginning of it all.”

  “It’s a great story, and she tells it pretty well too,” Nick went on.

  Grace shook her head. “Let me guess. The bones?”

  “So, not true?”

  “I’m pretty sure Pops and Jamie cooked up that story to scare visitors away from looking for the bed,” Grace said. “Pops would have told the sheriff about any human bones he found.”

  Nick smiled. “It is a good story though.”

  “There have always been legends about ginseng—Chinese and Native American stories about how the plants are defended by beasts or make themselves invisible or transform into mysterious creatures who lure sang hunters off into the woods.”

  “Yeah, I can believe that too.” Nick looked at her for a long moment, then back at the road. “So, you said last night—”

  She tensed. Oh great, here it comes. “You wanted to be a plant—what, hunter? Go off to the Amazon, or wherever, and find new drugs.”

  That wasn’t what she expected. “Yes.”

  “So, you never answered me. Why didn’t you?”

  It was a fair question. She just couldn’t tell him the real reason. “My grandfather died. I had to come back here and settle the estate, run the business.”