Twisted Miracles

by A. J. Larrieu

  “Ya’ll seen Deborah Hebert?” Janine asked, her face going serious.

  I shook my head. I’d missed Mary Ellen’s funeral, but Shane had told me her mother had been in shock, too grief-stricken even for tears. As I’d predicted, the coroner hadn’t been able to determine what killed Mary Ellen, but word had gotten quietly around the shadowmind community that her death had been no accident. We weren’t the only ones looking for her killer.

  “That’s part of why we’re here. We found this out on the river, right where we found Mina.” Shane took the broken shovel handle out of his pocket and handed it to Janine. She wiped a hand on her apron and took it, still stirring the roux. He described how we’d found the body and what we suspected about the man who’d dumped it, but left out the fact that I had the same abilities as the killer. I was grateful. I’d hardly come to terms with it myself.

  “Even a direction might be enough.” Shane glanced at me. “Give us something to go on.”

  Janine pursed her lips and shook her head. “The connection’ll be weak. And if it wasn’t something he had a lot of contact with... Well, I can try.”

  “That’s all we can ask,” Shane said.

  “Let’s go up to the attic. Less interference up there.” Janine put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Mac, can you stir?”

  “Sure,” he said absently, still reading the paper.

  Janine rolled her eyes at him. “Cass?”

  “No problem,” I said, laughing. “I’m no cook, but I can stir.”

  Mac looked up from his paper and smiled apologetically at his wife. “You know I’d just burn it, hon.”

  “I know, I know.” She gave him an exasperated look but smiled at the same time.

  I leaned against the kitchen counter next to the pot and started stirring, smelling the delicious toasted-flour richness of a browning roux. I never had the patience to do one properly, but I’d watched Lionel spend half an hour or more stirring, never letting up once. I sighed.

  The Tooleys’ mail was sitting on the counter next to me, a celebrity magazine tucked in with the bills. I fished it out and flipped through it, reading about the latest fashion faux pas as Janine’s power pulsed two floors up. I hoped she was getting something. I turned a page in the magazine and a pair of folded papers fell out, falling to the dirty kitchen floor.

  I knew I shouldn’t snoop, but I couldn’t help looking as I bent down to lift them up. Both were credit card statements folded over to the Amount Due sections. I had to suppress a gasp when I saw the balances.

  The Tooleys were over fifty thousand dollars in debt.

  I shoved the bills back into the magazine and tossed the magazine back onto the counter, hoping Mac hadn’t noticed. I chanced a look at him, but he was still going leisurely through the paper.

  I knew Mac had lost his job a few years ago, but he was nearly sixty-five, and I figured he’d been ready to retire anyway. Renovating the house after the storm must have been expensive, but they’d gotten at least a little government money to do it. Were they in trouble? I had to clamp down on the thoughts before I started broadcasting.

  I focused on stirring and waited, wondering what Janine was finding. It seemed to be taking an unusually long time. After about ten minutes, I heard footsteps on the stairs, and the two of them came back down.

  “I’m sorry,” Janine was saying.

  “It’s something,” Shane replied. “Better than we had before.”

  She handed the broken handle back to him, and he put it in his pocket.

  “Y’all want to stay for lunch?” Janine asked, taking the spoon from me. She gave the roux a sniff and kept stirring. “We got plenty of cold cuts.”

  “Thanks, but we’d better get back and help Lionel,” Shane said.

  “All right, then. See y’all later.”

  Once we were in the car, I told Shane about the bills. “Do you think Lionel knows? I mean, they might really be in trouble.”

  “I don’t know, Cass. They can handle their own business.”

  “But Mac lost his job years ago. What if they’ve been piling up debt this whole time...”

  Shane shrugged. “We shouldn’t pry.”

  “Yeah. And I guess Ryan’s got that job on the rig—maybe he’s helping them out.”

  “Maybe.”

  Back at the B&B, the back door was open to the kitchen, and Lionel was sitting at the table shelling peas. A pot of red beans was simmering on the stove, and every now and then Lionel used his mind to give it a stir telekinetically, the wooden spoon rising up and circling the pot like a bizarre shark. I got out the map and unfolded it on the kitchen table, looking at the line I’d drawn two days before.

  “Which way?” I asked Shane. Lionel stopped shelling to watch.

  Shane traced a line with his finger from Lakeview, where the Tooleys lived, to the western shore of Lake Salvador, south of the city. The two paths intersected in the middle of the lake. To the east was the Barataria Wilderness Preserve, a twenty-thousand-acre swath of uninhabited swampland.

  “Is he out on a boat?” I wondered.

  “He could be moving around,” Shane said. “And we’ve got to allow for errors in Janine’s internal compass. She didn’t seem sure.” He rubbed a hand over his head. “She said he felt familiar, though.”

  “He?”

  “Yeah. She couldn’t place him, but she got that much.”

  “That narrows it down a little.”

  “Like I said, she wasn’t sure.”

  “I need to get closer. Get another line. It could be coming from one of these towns, too.” I ran my finger over the cluster of communities to the west. “What if I went and hung out on the lake for a few nights—waited for another surge?”

  “We. You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you go down there alone.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  Shane looked at me. “Maybe so. But if you’re out there alone, I’m not going to sleep until you get back.” He was smiling, but his voice was soft and serious. “Have mercy.”

  Remembering how he’d pushed me away last night, I wanted to snap back that he didn’t seem to mind letting me sleep alone, but I couldn’t. Not with Lionel there, focusing back on pea-shelling as if he were disarming a bomb.

  “Can you spare him?” I asked Lionel, not sure how I wanted him to answer.

  “Sure,” Lionel said, still staring at the peas, and my reaction did nothing to clear things up for me. Equal parts nerves and relief. “But you two stay in touch. If anything the least bit strange happens, you come right on back, hear?”

  “We will,” Shane said. “We’ll be fine.”

  “Take a gun,” Lionel said. “For gators.”

  “It’s really too cold out for gators.”

  “Still,” Lionel said, and I knew he was worried about more than reptiles. He went to the cabinet above the pantry and pulled out an old hunting rifle and a box of shot. He handed the gun to Shane, who checked the chamber and set it by the door.

  “That’s on you,” I said, watching him. “I don’t do guns.”

  “Five years in San Francisco and you’ve gone all liberal on us,” he said, teasing me. “You won’t complain if a gator comes after you.”

  “I can handle a gator just fine.” I cracked my knuckles.

  “Yeah,” Shane said. “I guess you can.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Come on, Cass. Do it the easy way.”

  “Someone might see!” We were hiking through the underbrush on the eastern shore of Lake Cataouatche, on the edge of the Barataria Wilderness preserve. I had a duffel bag slung over each shoulder, and I’d just had to stop and readjust my grip. The straps were cutting off my circulation. Shane was levitating his own bags plus a two-person tent five feet above his head. He stopped, held back a sapling so I could pass, and rolled his eyes at me.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere. No one’s gonna see. You’re just chicken.”

  I gave him a look and reached o
ut with my power, lifting the bags in front of me as though they weighed no more than a couple of dishrags. Just to prove my point, I telekinetically snapped a skinny branch off of a tree and whacked Shane across the shoulders with it.

  “Show-off. This is the spot.” He set the tent down on a bare patch under a stand of pine trees, and I lowered my bags onto a log. He’d chosen well. We were within a few yards of the water, but the underbrush was thick, so it was unlikely we’d be spotted from the lake. There were boardwalks and hiking trails throughout the preserve, but I couldn’t see any of them from the site.

  “I’m going to get a fire started.”

  “Great,” Shane said, hammering in tent stakes. “Try to find dry stuff. We don’t want it to smoke too much.”

  “Good point.” I looked around. It hadn’t rained in a while, but the ground was still damp. I ended up reaching into the trees for dead branches that hadn’t yet fallen, easing them down by telekinesis. By the time I’d gathered enough for a sizable A-frame, Shane had the tent staked. I was about to strike a match when he came over.

  “Don’t bother with that.” He took a twig from the pile of kindling under the larger branches. He held it upright in his hand, and as I watched, the tip glowed orange and caught fire.

  “Now who’s the show-off?” I rolled my eyes at him, but I couldn’t help smiling as well.

  We ate a late lunch of potato chips and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, then wandered around our campsite exploring, making sure we were out of sight of the major trails. When it grew dark, we threw dirt on the fire and headed into the tent. It had gotten much colder since the sun went down, and we both concentrated on warming it up for a couple of minutes.

  “It’s not going to stay warm in here all night,” I said, and immediately regretted it when I was hit with the memory of Jackson warming my body with his after I’d fallen in the lake. I shut the thought down, worried, but if Shane had seen it, he didn’t let on. I cleared my throat. “I hope this guy’s still in the same place. Otherwise we came all the way out here for nothing.”

  Shane shrugged. “It’s not so bad. And you’ll find him eventually.” He smiled at me. “I have faith.”

  I relaxed and settled back on my hands as Shane adjusted the brightness on the LED lantern we were using for light. When he was done, he reached into the side pocket of his duffel bag and took out a deck of cards. “Poker?” he asked.

  “Sure.” It would be easier than figuring out what to say to him. What, exactly, we were.

  Shane tossed me the cards, and I shuffled and dealt a hand for Texas Hold’em while he tore open a bag of M&Ms to bet with. It had been a long time, but I could still remember late-night games with Shane, Mina and Ryan, the four of us in the kitchen at the B&B, playing for nickels. This was how I’d first learned to put up shields and how to sneak past someone else’s. Back then, Ryan had been the champion of keeping everyone out, but Shane had been the best at working his way in. He could always catch me lying, no matter how strong I thought my defenses were. I couldn’t help wondering if things had changed.

  We played, trying to sneak into each other’s heads, flooding our minds with misdirections and throwing up shields. I should have known Shane would win. It wasn’t just that he wormed his way past my bluffs; he could always see me coming. When he successfully led me into thinking he had nothing when in fact he had a straight, I gathered up my sadly diminished pile of M&Ms and put them in a plastic bag.

  “That’s enough for me—you cheat!”

  He grinned, looking satisfied. “That’s part of the game.”

  “Hmph.”

  “You’re just annoyed that I’m so much better at it than you are.”

  “Damn right I am!” I tugged my sleeping bag out of its nylon case.

  “I can’t help it if you’re afraid to get in too deep.”

  I stopped short and looked at him. He was leaning back on his elbows, relaxed, meeting my gaze with steady eyes. I looked away and went back to unrolling my sleeping bag, and Shane crawled over to get his own. When we were both settled, he shut off the lantern and the tent went pitch-black.

  “Good night, Cass.” His voice was deep and familiar in my head.

  “Good night,” I sent back, and lay awake for a long time knowing he was right.

  * * *

  When I woke up the next morning, Shane was already outside. He had a fire going—I could feel the heat through the tent canvas—and as I got dressed and slipped though the tent flap, I could smell freshly brewed coffee.

  “Ahh,” I said, inhaling gratefully. “This is why I love you.”

  Shane looked at me sharply for an instant, then he smiled. “The way to a woman’s heart,” he said, and handed me a cup. We’d brought granola, and I munched on a handful while I sipped my coffee. Shane was bringing over more dry wood with his mind.

  “You know,” he said, mentally settling a branch over the fire, “since we’re out here, I thought you could practice. It seems like a good place. No warm bodies to distract you.”

  “What do you think you are?” I said around a mouthful of granola.

  “I’ll go out in the boat. Get out of your range.”

  “I don’t know.” He was right; it was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure I was ready.

  “It’s worth a shot. And I was planning on fishing anyway.”

  I sighed. “You’re right. I’ll try.”

  “Good,” he said simply, and went back to feeding the fire.

  An hour later, Shane was so far away I couldn’t feel him. He’d gone out in the boat and agreed not to come back before noon.

  “No matter how bad the fishing is!” I’d said.

  “I promise,” he’d said, and crossed himself.

  I focused on the heat coming from the campfire. When I was out on the lake with Jackson, I’d been able to pull even though it was freezing cold. And this time, I was sure there was no one around for me to hurt. If I couldn’t pull now, I might as well give up. I closed my eyes and reached for the flames.

  It took me a little while to get used to it, but once I got a feel for the way the fire released energy, pulling from it was simpler than I could have imagined. The flames consumed the logs and gave off light and heat and radiation I never could have picked up without my powers. I couldn’t name the types, but I could sense the energy flowing around me, hitting my skin. The fire dimmed and subsided as I pulled, and my chest filled up with directionless force. I looked at the log I’d rested my bag on the day before, and I lifted it as if it were a toothpick.

  I almost laughed, I was so relieved. I could do this. This was easy. I stripped the nearby trees of deadwood and moved on to fallen timber farther from the campsite, feeding the fire and fueling myself as I worked. Every detail of the campsite was present in my mind, from the way the wood cracked and fell to embers as it burned to the gentle flapping of the tent canvas in the breeze. I found a lightning-struck cypress along the lakeshore and brought the whole thing soaring over, roots to branches. It dripped mud and brackish water and I split it into leg-sized logs, forgetting all about Shane’s suggestion that we stick to the dry stuff. The fire roared and smoked, and I closed my eyes and reveled in the heat.

  “See? I knew you could do it.”

  I let the rest of the cypress fall with a crash. I knew, with a sick dread in my stomach, that he was close. I turned around and saw him standing ten feet away from me, holding an ice chest.

  I ran at him, and he dropped the ice chest and threw up his arms in defense.

  “You bastard!” I beat at his chest with my fists. “I could have killed you!”

  “Hey, hey, I was watching your mind.” He grabbed my wrists and held me back. “You weren’t going to hurt me.”

  I yanked myself out of his grasp, and he didn’t try to stop me. “I can’t believe you did that. You promised.”

  “I know I did.” He smiled and looked at his watch. “It’s one o’clock, you know. I gave you an extra hour.” I glared at him
, but he didn’t blink. “You did it. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

  “Like hell!”

  “Try it again,” he said softly. “You know it’s safe, now. Try it again.”

  “No.”

  “Cass...”

  “What?”

  “You’re never going to really be over this until you convince yourself you aren’t going to hurt anyone. I’m going to the lake to clean the fish. Try it again.” He picked up the ice chest and walked off, stopping a couple of yards away at the water’s edge. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. He crouched down and pulled a fillet knife out of his boot.

  “Come on, Cass.” He grabbed a fish out of the ice chest and gutted it.

  I took a deep breath. Slowly, I reached my hand out toward the flames. I didn’t need the gesture, not really, but it helped somehow, to think of my pull having a direction. I closed my eyes and let the heat wash over me.

  It was the same thing I’d done moments before, but this time, I knew Shane was standing a few yards away. The fire, think about the fire, and somehow, I did. The broken cypress went soaring into the air, and the flames died down to coals, and I watched Shane flip a fish head into the water and turn back to look at me. I let the log down gently.

  “I knew I could trust you.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “But now you do.” He mentally squeezed my shoulder as he walked past me to the fire, holding a frying pan with four thin filets. He settled the pan in the bed of coals, and soon the whole camp smelled of sizzling fish. When the edges of the filets were brown, we sat down on a log together and leaned over the smoking pan, spearing creamy-white flakes of fish and blowing on them, laughing as the tender flesh fell off of our forks.

  “I could get used to this,” I said, polishing off the last bite.

  “You didn’t do any camping in California? Isn’t that the official state pastime out there?” He was smiling, but I stiffened, flushing. Did he know what had happened between me and Jackson after all? The memory of the kiss flew through my mind in a heady, gut-wrenching rush, and I knew I couldn’t keep it from him indefinitely. I pressed my lips together.