“What have you been telling Mel, Mom?” Jake asked.
“About the flickering,” his mom said. “Like I was trying to tell you this afternoon. The flares of light that I started seeing coming off people, back when you were a boy.”
Jake frowned. Was that this afternoon? “Sorry about this. She—”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Mel said. “Your mother has a rather unique ability.”
Jake noticed that Mel had his mom’s fingers woven into her own. Nick had said that Mel could control emotions. That’s why his mom was so calm now. But an ability? What was she talking about?
“I see them around almost all of you,” his mom said. “Grace and Thea and Daniel. You.”
“Me?” Jake said.
“Yes. Yours was the first one I ever saw. Well…” She swallowed, looking briefly distressed, then her face cleared. “Except for myself, of course. I saw mine first.” She held up her hand and seemed to admire it. “Then yours and then Eric’s.”
Eric? Jake knew his mouth had dropped open. “B-Becca?”
She shook her head.
“Who else, Marilyn?” Mel asked in a soft voice.
“Those children.” She pointed to Aaron and Emmy and their parents. “There’ve been a few other people in town over the years—mostly tourists. The new preacher at my old church. Some of the folks who come to your cabins.” She looked at Jake guiltily. “And this one man at my…at the meetings in Asheville. And—”
“That’s why you switched churches,” Jake said.
She nodded. “But I kept going to those meetings. I just changed to a different night. I want to get better. I really want to get better.”
“I know you do, Mom.” Jake’s throat tightened.
His mom had a gift of her own. Greg’s puppet masters would love to get their hands on someone like her.
“Do you see any of these flickering auras around anyone else in the house?” Grace asked. “Sarah or Greg or Ouida?”
“No. Sorry. But Mel, of course.” She looked at Mel. “Yours is a rosy color. It suits you. Oh, and your parents, too. I saw them at the wedding along with a few others. And that little helper of yours, the grubby one who cleans up so pretty.”
“Jamie?” Daniel’s eyes widened.
“Yes, Jamie. She… Hers comes and goes. It’s very odd.”
“She can help us find them.” Grace sounded like Jake felt, a bit awestruck.
Thea’s fingers curled around Jake’s.
“Mom,” Jake spoke up, his voice sounded loud to him. “When you started seeing these lights—”
“It’s more like little flames, really.”
Jake tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He didn’t want to embarrass her, but he had to know.
“When you started seeing these…flames, is that when you started drinking?”
His mom looked down at her hand intertwined with Mel’s.
“It looked a bit as if people were covered in little flames, like a gas cooker, but they didn’t burn. When I drank, the flames faded.” When she looked back up, her eyes shone with tears. “But then the flames came back in the morning. Always burning. Never consumed. I thought I was seeing people who were possessed, but that meant that I was and you were too.” She looked at Jake. “Sometimes I thought I was insane.”
Jake heard a sob and saw Marty crying in her husband’s arms. Their children got up and wrapped their arms around both of them. Ouida stood next to them, patting Marty’s back. Daniel had spent some time explaining things to Ouida and Eddie, and Ouida’s expression seemed to hint that she wasn’t too surprised.
“I thought the Woodruffs started it all and they were…they were taking people over in some sort of cult. I was worried they would get Becca next. That’s why I…”
That’s why she took her home the night of the accident.
She looked around at all of them. “Everyone knew from a long time back that the Woodsman was into a lot of those pagan and shaman things. Things our old preacher said were wicked. I was afraid.” She finally looked at Jake. “I was just afraid.” She paused, uncertain.
“Go on, Marilyn,” Mel said in a quiet voice.
“Sarah seemed to understand. She knew about the power in the mountain. What Old Annie told her. But when I saw how Sarah treated the children and Grace and the baby.” She pointed at Lily, who had a tiny fist raised out of her sling and was waving it around energetically. “When I understood what she—”
His mom froze in place, eyes wide, gazing at her finger grasped firmly in the baby’s fist. Grace and Mel were frozen as well, with identical blank and distant expressions on their faces. His mom was still holding Mel’s hand while Grace clung to the baby’s arm.
Jake lurched to his feet.
Nick held up his hands. “No, Jake. She’s fine. Wait a minute,” Nick moved his hand carefully under Grace’s arm, without touching her. “This has happened before, but I don’t think Grace thought it would—”
The trance seemed to break. Grace wavered a bit and Nick grabbed her elbow to steady her.
“Oh!” Grace exclaimed. “Lily Alexandra Woodruff.” She covered the baby’s head with her hand protectively, then looked at Nick. “I think the ‘terrible twos’ have taken on a whole new meaning.”
“Amen,” Nick said. “I’m thinking the terrible two months.”
“Maybe two weeks,” Daniel said.
Jake came around the breakfast bar. His mom’s face had changed. She still showed the signs of age, but it was softer somehow. The look of dull parchment was gone. And her eyes. They were full of tears, but so very different. It was the look of someone who was suddenly pain free after living with it for years. She clasped her hands over her chest.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“Oh, Jake. I am so sorry. My Jake.”
Jake pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin and stroking her hair. “No, Mom. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” All those years, and the problem she had was a damn gift like his. A damn gift that had left a path of destruction behind it. His mom. Becca. His dad. And what almost happened tonight.
He watched Thea scrub a hand across her eyes and take a huge gulp of coffee. Even Thea’s life had been scarred by his mom’s gift.
“Grace. My…gift.” Thea seemed to struggle to find the right word. “I’ve used it on Marilyn. Can you… Did you see any damage? Anything I could have caused? After what happened with Greg…”
Jake rubbed his mom’s back. Shit. That hadn’t even occurred to him.
Grace frowned. “You used it on me as well. And Nick.”
Thea lowered her head. “And Daniel and Jake and Bailey. And Dad. And who knows how many people at the festival,” she admitted.
“You’ve worried about this for a while, haven’t you?” Grace said.
“Yeah, she has,” Jake said, thinking of Thea’s prolonged self-exile in Philadelphia. “For way too fu—” he glanced at the kids, “—freaking long.”
Aaron snorted.
Thea looked uncomfortable. Everyone else seemed to be nodding in understanding, except for the kids, who were grinning at Jake’s aborted f-bomb.
“No. I haven’t seen any signs of damage similar to what I saw in Greg. I’ll check everyone out again, to be certain,” Grace said. “But no matter what, based on Greg, I can’t guarantee what would happen if you use it repeatedly on the same person—particularly if they are resisting.”
Thea closed her eyes and nodded.
No wonder she wanted to run away from the people she might hurt with her gift.
“And there’s something else,” Grace said.
Thea opened her eyes.
“You need to reconsider using it like you did tonight—without using your voice,” Grace said. “Because you damaged your brain when you did that.”
Brain damage. She had done that to herself just to help him sell some instruments.
“And I’m worried about you overextending yourself tonight,” Grace said.
“Yeah, Thea. Nothing is worth—” Jake began.
“It’s okay.” Thea stood up. “I’m going to put a script together for dealing with Greg and Sarah.” Thea took a bite of the biscuit in her hand and downed more coffee. “You and Nick and whoever else can edit it. We have to make sure it’s short and sweet. Airtight.”
Nick nodded. “Everyone is going to stick around until we cover a few things anyway,” he said, looking around the kitchen.
Jake wiped the tears from his mom’s face and kissed her cheek. “Have something to eat, okay?”
She nodded.
“Is there somewhere the children can lie down for a bit?” Marty asked.
Ouida gathered the Croates and ushered them out as Thea crammed the rest of the biscuit in her mouth and refilled her mug. “I’ll be communing with my laptop if anyone needs me.”
Jake followed Thea. “Before you go upstairs, I need to tell you something.”
“About what to tell Greg and Sarah to forget?” Thea asked.
“Yeah,” Jake took her arm, walking her into the hallway.
The thought of Greg listening to their intimate conversation made him grind his teeth, but it was better that she hear it from him than from Nick.
“Greg overheard you and me at my place. The recording is garbled at times because your phone was in your bag, but he got a lot of information from the conversation, if you remember what we—”
“I remember what we talked about.”
“Well, you’re going to need to deal with it in your script. Since you’ll need an explanation for the bruises on Greg’s back and the sad demise of his phone, may I suggest that Greg and I got into a nice brawl? Over you, of course.”
She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan.
“Followed by Nick making it up to him with a bottle of fine whiskey and a matching hangover.”
“That sounds reasonable.” Thea sounded in control. Full lawyer mode. He wished he knew what she was thinking.
“I think Sarah will be relatively easy. Mom had a change of heart, she wanted to apologize to the Woodruffs, she persuaded Sarah to come along, they got lost on the mountain, and Sarah went to sleep in the car,” he said. “You know that Grace healed her, right? Of the addiction, I mean.”
Thea smiled. “Grace couldn’t help it. Sarah had a recurrence of ovarian cancer and clearing the addiction got wrapped up in it.”
“Unfortunately, it does pose a big problem for us.”
“Well Grace wasn’t going to let her die.”
“I know. I’m just saying you’ll need to cover for that as well. Persuade her that she’s been better for a while now and it’s the oxy that’s making her feel ill so she doesn’t go back to it. She’ll keep her old crone show going so nobody’s going to see a difference, I don’t think.”
Thea nodded. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Also, I’m sorry, Thea.”
She looked surprised. “For what?”
He shrugged and waved around the world in general. “For all of this. For everything.”
“Hotcake, even you can’t take responsibility for all of this.”
“All right then,” he said, then smiled. “Then I’m sorry for the interruption.”
She smiled at that. “So am I.” She leaned in to kiss his nose. “But I need to get on with this.” With that she hurried up the stairs.
“Take it easy, Matchstick. You’re burning both ends.”
Chapter Seventeen
If there was a stage beyond burnt out, Thea was in it. She perched on the edge of her seat and took another gulp of coffee, trying to avoid sinking into the comfort of the armchair.
Jake had been right. She should have asked Nick and Grace to put this off. Between her distaste for what she had just been doing and the obscene hour, she was exhausted.
Grace ran her finger around the designs on Emmy’s platter—the gorgeous piece with a teal handprint in the center of swirling figures.
“Amazing.”
“So does the pattern look like the one in the cave?” Thea asked.
“As much as anything could.” Grace touched the handprint. “The carvings are rather…” She seemed to search for the right word.
“Elusive,” Nick supplied. Grace nodded.
“But it does capture the basic essence,” Daniel said.
“You drew something like that on our playroom wall when we were kids,” Grace said. “In crayon.”
“Did I?” Mel was cradled in Daniel’s arms, half-asleep on the love seat.
Grace nodded. She had finally put Lily down in her crib, though she had a baby monitor next to her on the couch where she sat with Nick. Emmy and Aaron were curled up on the other couch next to their parents. Jake leaned on the side of the armchair where his mom sat dozing. They were all ranged around the great room, except for Ouida, who was making breakfast, and Eddie, who had been assigned to guard Greg’s bedroom door.
Thea had dealt with Sarah and Greg, giving them both thorough cover stories for last night and commands that should eliminate any future problems. Sarah had been far more cooperative than Greg, and Grace had stood by during the process to make sure Greg stayed healthy. Despite fighting her every step of the way, he had ultimately confirmed that he hadn’t sent the recording to anyone or contacted his organization yet, which he referred to as J228.
Apparently J228 was a black-ops division of the Department of Homeland Security. At least Greg thought it was. Nick was a bit skeptical about that. But all that Greg knew about the project he had bragged about was its code name—LA9—and that its purpose was to find people with unusual abilities. He had no idea where the two people he mentioned were being held. He wasn’t even aware of any locations beyond the organization’s headquarters.
For the moment, they were safe from this J228. Greg was going to conclude that, like the herbs that her father had been testing, there was nothing special about her family either. The Woodruffs were only a bunch of weird hippies in the woods. To top it off, Thea had rejected him for some redneck sheriff with a temper. Someone who liked to push people around and destroy expensive phones.
Greg would wake up in a few hours with a hangover from the very expensive bottle of whiskey Nick had provided as a peace offering after his brawl with Jake. He would pack up and leave for the airport, but only after slashing Thea’s rear left tire. It was a test to ensure her compulsions stuck, but Jake had complained that she did not properly appreciate her BMW.
Sarah was sound asleep in Marilyn’s car, which matched the story they had manufactured for her. She might go back to her usual cons, but Grace had eliminated her addiction to oxycodone, as well as the reason for it. The rest was up to her.
Grace had just told everyone about the handprint in the cave, which was why Grace was holding the platter that Emmy had created. Nick had once again suggested that it was a bit like signing a contract, which brought up all kinds of questions about the responsibility that went along with that.
“But what is it they would be signing up for?” Al said.
“And for who, or what?” Marty asked.
Jake, the control freak, frowned at the whole idea. She could imagine what he was thinking—who is piloting this plane, really?
“We believe Granny Lily referred to this awakening of gifts as ‘The Kindling’,” Grace said. “And its purpose seems to be, at the heart of it, about saving the planet. Granny Lily believed these gifts of ours are intended to help the entity that she refers to as ‘The Mother’—either Mother Nature or a personification of the earth itself. At least that is what we’ve worked out so far.” She looked around at her listeners.
Some of them had nappe
d at some point in the past few hours, but Thea hadn’t had time. And in spite of Grace’s ministrations, she had nearly lost her voice.
“That makes sense, considering the mess we’re making of the planet,” Marty agreed. “But how can Emmy or Aaron possibly help?”
“I think Daniel can answer that better than I can,” Grace said. “He’s seen bits and pieces of different possible futures.”
It was obvious that Daniel didn’t enjoy talking about his gift. “We all know that a great deal of what goes on in terms of environmental damage is tied in with corporate greed—” he began.
“Got about a hundred bribe attempts from developers that would agree with you there,” Jake said.
“—but there’s a balance, as Pops often pointed out. He always said the point of sustainable growth is not to go backward, but to go thoughtfully forward. The problem is that a lot of what people call progress today actually isn’t. It’s mindless blundering around, with the only consideration being profit, not the consequences.” Daniel said.
“Can you tell we’re writing a book about Pops?” Mel said with a laugh.
“Trying to write a book.” Daniel corrected. “Pops said that what we need is thoughtful organizations to encourage thoughtful change and to redirect some of that blundering around. Not one person working alone, but a group, like us,” he gestured to everyone around the great room. “And that’s what we can do. One thoughtful change at a time. You saw it happen here tonight, when Grace and Mel and baby Lily created a circle to heal.”
He didn’t mention Marilyn’s name, but Jake’s mom looked uncomfortable under their collective gazes. Jake squeezed his mom’s shoulder.
“And in the future I think it is going to be a circle that can’t be contained in one room. There are many other gifted people that we need to find—that we are going to find,” he continued. “By using their gifts, all of our gifts, we can change things—we can make a positive difference in the future, one thoughtful change at a time.”
Thea watched as Al’s arm tightened around Emmy and Marty caressed Aaron’s hair.
Making Magic: Books of the Kindling, Book 3 Page 28