Storm Born

by Christine Pope

The front door opened as we approached, and a woman wearing jeans and a sleeveless chambray shirt stepped out onto the porch. I stared at her in surprise, then wondered why I should have been so startled by her appearance. After all, Jake hadn’t said much of anything about Joanna except that she was the clan’s weather-worker, and a very powerful witch. For some reason, that description had made me think she must be an older woman, experienced. But while Joanna was most likely several years older than Jake, I doubted she was even thirty yet. Her long dark hair hung in a thick braid down her back, and, like the other Wilcoxes I’d met so far, she was very attractive, with a smooth oval face, regular features, and gorgeously tanned skin.

  “Joanna, this is Addie,” Jake said, and Joanna stepped forward, hand extended.

  “Nice to meet you, Addie,” she said. Her voice was lower than I’d expected, almost husky. As soon as I’d approached her, I’d felt the odd little tingle that supposedly indicated I was around another witch, and I assumed she’d experienced the same thing when she met me. “Jake tells me you were raised in the civilian world and don’t know much about controlling your gift.”

  Although her tone sounded matter-of-fact enough, I thought I glimpsed concern and even a little sympathy in her tip-tilted dark eyes. “Yes,” I replied as relief swept over me, even though I couldn’t exactly have explained why. “I was hoping you could help with that.”

  “Oh, I know I can,” she told me, looking undaunted by the task that lay ahead of her. She glanced over at Jake. “You can hang out in the house while we work. There’s a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge, and some fresh-baked cookies on the counter in the kitchen.”

  “Thanks,” he responded. I noticed how he hadn’t declined the cookies, even though we’d just eaten a big lunch.

  “We’ll head out back,” she went on. “If you do well, you can have some cookies afterward.”

  I couldn’t help smiling a little at that remark. Offering me treats as a reward? Well, I figured I wouldn’t be averse to a cookie or two if I somehow managed to avoid summoning a tornado or scaring off all the alpacas with a misplaced bolt of lightning.

  Speaking of which….

  “Are the alpacas going to be okay with me messing around with the weather?”

  “Oh, sure,” Joanna replied. “They’re pretty placid. Besides, we’re going to head out to the back forty, and I made sure it was clear. They won’t even notice what we’re doing. Come on.”

  With a wave, she gestured for me to come with her. I sent a questioning glance at Jake, and he gave me an encouraging nod before disappearing inside the house.

  Well, it seemed I didn’t have much choice. I quickened my pace so I caught up with Joanna, then followed her as she led me off the porch and across a narrow strip of lawn, and over a tiny footbridge that crossed a cheerful little stream as it wound its way through the property. From there, we made our way along a path that separated two of the alpaca pastures. Eventually, we came to another pasture separate from the other two, one that was, as she’d promised, empty.

  “Here we go,” she said, lifting the latch on the gate to open it. “All the open space we could need. You can go ahead and set that down,” she added, and pointed to the purse that was slung over my shoulder.

  Feeling a little awkward, I removed the purse and set it down next to a fence post, figuring that might give it a little extra protection in case things got crazy. Straightening up, I turned back toward Joanna.

  “Okay,” I said. I almost tacked on, I’m ready, but I honestly didn’t know for sure how ready I actually was. Well, I supposed I’d find out soon enough.

  She put her hands on her hips and regarded me for a moment. Turquoise gleamed from several fingers, and I found myself wondering if she was part Navajo. Yes, all the Wilcoxes were dark, but there was something slightly exotic about her eyes and her features, very different from Laurel’s girl-next-door looks.

  “Has Jake said much to you about how our powers work?”

  “A little,” I replied. “I mean, he hasn’t gone into a lot of detail. We’ve had other things on our minds.”

  Joanna’s expression softened then, and I guessed she was reminding herself of exactly why we’d been so preoccupied. Again, the image of my mother lying on the floor of our living room, blood spreading out from beneath her lifeless body, invaded my mind, and I pushed the horrible memory away with what felt like a physical effort. Dwelling on that scene wouldn’t change anything. What was important now was learning to control my stupid gift so it couldn’t cause any more trouble.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s really not that difficult. These talents are born within us, so it’s just a matter of understanding what they are and making them work for us, rather than vice versa. Weather magic is a little different from some talents in that it involves working with an outside force that sometimes has a mind of its own.”

  “Do you do much to change the weather?” I asked, genuinely curious. It seemed to me that the temptation to make every day a perfect, sunny seventy-five degrees had to be kind of overwhelming.

  Her mouth curved in a smile, even as she gave me a single shake of her head. “I try not to. Weather has patterns of its own, and interfering with them too much can cause a lot of problems. I won’t say I haven’t nudged a monsoon storm out of the way so it wouldn’t ruin someone’s wedding, or maybe coaxed a bit more snow from the clouds when it looked like the Snowbowl was going to have a bad ski season. Overall, though, it’s more about paying attention so I can let key people in the clan know if something bad is coming our way.”

  “Like a meteorologist,” I said.

  “Something like that. But because you didn’t have anyone around to recognize what your power was when it first awakened, it kept feeding on itself, getting stronger at the same time it got more out of control. Jake says that you bring storms when you’re upset about something?”

  I nodded, feeling ashamed that I could screw up something I’d supposedly been born with. However, Joanna, apparently guessing that would be my reaction, only shook her head again.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Like I said, I think you got caught in kind of a feedback loop. You just need to break the chain so your emotions don’t control your gift.” A pause as she looked up at the sky, which was a bright, clear blue, with only a small puff of a cloud here and there to break up its vast sapphire-hued expanse. “I want you to take a breath and then focus on the wind. Breathe it in…feel it. Feel where it’s coming from, where it’s going. Reach out and sense its energy.”

  For a second or two, I only stared back at her, wondering how in the hell she expected me to do that. After all, wind was wind. How was I supposed to feel this so-called “energy”?

  But if I made such a protest, I knew I would be admitting defeat before I even got started. I was here to learn, after all. It was pretty clear that I needed to learn to play by an entirely different set of rules. I wasn’t some kind of a freak — I was a Wilcox witch, and I had to learn how to behave like one.

  So I closed my eyes and thought about what Joanna had just said.

  Feel the wind. Breathe it in.

  Become one with it.

  I stretched out my arms and let the breeze wash over me, cool despite the warmth of the sun overhead. The wind was blowing from the west, had once been born somewhere far out over the Pacific Ocean, had traveled across cities and deserts and stretches of deep, cool forest before it arrived in Flagstaff. But no, I couldn’t say it had really arrived…it was only passing through, constantly moving, constantly alive. My fingers spread, and I could feel its touch all along my skin, picking up speed, catching my hair to blow it around my face. Almost playful, that wind, although I knew it could turn cruel if it wanted to, strong and rough enough to knock down trees or tear off roofs. It was all about the potential energy buried in those currents, all about what that energy wanted to do.

  In that moment, it almost seemed alive to me, a new kind of being, true, not human, but still with
a will of its own. And I somehow knew, without knowing how I knew, that it had reacted to the magic in me all those times by translating my own worry and fear into its energies, making them tangible, an active force in the world. All I had to do was understand that, although I should never deny my emotions, I had to realize that they interacted with my magic in a very powerful way.

  And with that understanding came control.

  I opened my eyes and saw Joanna smiling at me.

  “You see?” she said. “It’s really very simple.”

  “How could you tell I figured it out?”

  “Look.”

  My gaze moved upward, and I saw a single small cloud floating in the air directly above the spot where I stood. Although the breeze was brisk and the cloud should have moved out of position almost as soon as I noticed it, the little puff of water vapor didn’t seem inclined to do much of anything except remain where it was.

  “I did that?” I asked.

  “Yes. Now, let it go.”

  I looked up again. Not even a conscious thought, but more an understanding reached that the little cloud had done its work and was free to move on. And just a second later, it began to drift lazily eastward, riding the wind, letting the air currents do their work.

  “It’s really that simple?”

  Her dark eyes danced in the sunlight. However, I didn’t get the impression that she was amused by me, but instead pleased I’d learned the lesson so easily.

  “It can be, if you let it.” She came over to me, and I realized for the first time that she wasn’t wearing sandals or flip-flops, the way the warm weather might have dictated, but a scuffed and very well-worn pair of brown cowboy boots. “You have to remember, Addie, that this isn’t like learning a magic trick. It’s not something you have to really work at. The power is within you. Just let it be what it is — and give it a nudge from time to time if necessary — and you’ll be fine. If you’d had someone to tell you this when you were a child, you would never have had any trouble.”

  Jake had said much the same thing to me, but in that moment, I truly understood what he’d meant. My weather magic wasn’t good or bad…it just was. And now that I knew how to let it flow through me, rather than tense up and try to create barriers which shouldn’t be there in the first place, I wouldn’t have to worry about causing havoc wherever I went.

  Or at least, that was the theory. I supposed I’d find out for sure whether I was right the first time I encountered a situation that triggered any negative emotions.

  “Does that mean I get a cookie?” I asked, and Joanna grinned, the corners of her dark eyes crinkling a bit.

  “I’d say you’ve earned it. You’re probably hungry after all that work.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “It didn’t seem that hard. We were only out here for about ten minutes or so.”

  “Were we?” she returned, still wearing that amused expression. “You might want to check the time.”

  Mystified, I went over to the spot where I’d set my purse down on the ground and pulled out my phone. The display said it was a little after three. But…that was impossible. We’d been running a bit late, and so had arrived at Joanna’s house closer to two-fifteen than the two o’clock we’d agreed on, but still, there was no way I’d been standing out in that pasture with her for almost forty-five minutes.

  “Time can get a little weird when you’re doing that kind of focus,” she said. “But that’s okay. Actually, it’s good, because I knew when you went that deeply into it, you were making some real progress. Anyway, let’s get back to the house.”

  Still feeling flummoxed, I put the phone back in my purse and followed Joanna to the house. Inside, we found Jake sitting on a recliner in the living room, feet up as he did something with his iPhone.

  “Make yourself at home, Jake,” Joanna drawled.

  He didn’t look at all discomfited, but only grinned at her. “Well, you were out there so long, I figured it couldn’t hurt to put my feet up for a bit. How’d it go?”

  “Great,” she said.

  “I’m cool, calm, and in control now,” I added, hoping that I was telling nothing more than the truth. “And now I get a cookie.”

  That comment made him shake his head, although his smile remained in place.

  “Kitchen’s through there,” Joanna said, pointing toward the dining room and the opening I was just barely able to glimpse on the left side.

  Sure enough, there was the kitchen, big enough to rustle up grub for a whole team of hired hands, complete with an enormous professional six-burner stove and a refrigerator that looked as though it could have held a couple of sides of beef. Had this place been a working ranch before Joanna started raising alpacas here? No, that didn’t seem feasible; I guessed she probably had about five or six acres, but that wasn’t enough room for herds of cattle or anything. The house definitely felt ranch-like, though, with its wood-paneled walls and tongue-and-groove ceilings, and the enormous stone fireplace I’d passed on my way to the kitchen.

  As promised, there was a plate of chocolate chip cookies covered in plastic wrap sitting on the granite countertop. I slid off the plastic and extracted one, then sealed it up before heading back out to the living room. By that point, Jake had gotten out of the recliner and was talking quietly to his cousin. I caught Connor’s name but didn’t hear anything else, because they both paused and glanced over at me.

  “Got it,” I said, and took a bite of cookie. It was amazingly good, rich and filled with actual chunks of chocolate instead of just chips. Had Joanna made the cookies because she knew we were coming over, or did she just have them lying around for whenever? If that was the case, she must have had a killer metabolism, because she was slim and fit and didn’t look as though she’d ever eaten a carb in her life.

  “Jeremy just texted me,” Jake said, lifting his phone. “He wants us to come back to HQ.”

  It sounded kind of funny for him to refer to the renovated house they were using as their offices as “headquarters,” but maybe that was just their little joke. And since we were done at Joanna’s place, I supposed there wasn’t much reason to keep hanging around. She didn’t seem like the sort of person who wanted to waste time with idle chitchat when there were chores to be done.

  However, something in Jake’s expression had shifted, and I had a feeling Jeremy hadn’t made the request because he simply wanted someone to hang out with while he jammed traffic cams or whatever else it was he did on all those computers. A little thrill of cold went through me, but I told myself it was nothing.

  “Sure,” I said, and consumed the last few bites of cookie, then brushed the crumbs off on my jeans. I looked over at Joanna and added, “Thank you so much. It’s such a weight off, knowing that I’m not going to summon a thunderstorm the next time someone cuts me off in traffic.”

  “You’ll be fine,” she assured me. “And it’s my pleasure. It’s not every day I get to meet a long-lost cousin.”

  I smiled at her, not sure of the best way to respond. Jake came to my rescue, though, thanking Joanna as well, and then guiding me back outside as we made our final goodbyes. A minute later, we were back in his truck and headed down the long gravel driveway to the road.

  “So, what’s up with Jeremy?” I asked as we bounced along. “Did he find something else?”

  “Yes,” Jake replied. His mouth was set, but I didn’t think his suddenly grim expression had anything to do with the unpaved road beneath our tires. “Your mother’s funeral.”

  And I stared back at him, not sure what to say.

  14

  Jeremy seemed subdued when Jake led Addie into the front room where all the Mac Pros were housed. He was sitting in front of one of them, watching video of a small white church surrounded by cottonwood trees.

  “That’s the United Church in Kanab,” Addie said, moving closer to the screen. One hand went to her mouth as she observed the scene — about twenty or thirty people, mostly women, leaving the church, a few of them weeping.
“And that’s Tammy Miller — she worked with us at the diner.”

  Addie pointed to a woman with brassily blonde hair in a tight black skirt and blue blouse, handkerchief held to her eyes as she blotted away tears. Her own eyes looked suspiciously bright, and she blinked, hard, before looking away from the screen.

  “I found this when I went to check back on Kanab, see if anything else was going on,” Jeremy explained. Judging by the way his gaze had immediately shifted back to the video, he didn’t quite know what to do about the obvious grief on Addie’s face.

  Jake really didn’t know, either. Well, he knew what he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her, offer what comfort he could, but he wasn’t quite sure whether that was the wisest thing to do with his brother sitting a few feet away.

  “Of course, they’d have to do it at a nondenominational church,” Addie said, her tone almost a murmur, and Jake sent her an inquiring look. “Because she wasn’t Mormon…or anything else, really. I guess my grandparents were Baptist, but my mom and I never went to church.”

  Right. He supposed he should have thought of that — probably should have been glad there was a church in Kanab that would be suitable for Lyssa Grant’s funeral — but he was still too focused on how much he wished he could be alone with Addie so he could offer her the comfort she so clearly needed.

  “I guess they took up a collection,” Jeremy said then. He paused the video, which clearly had been shot earlier that afternoon. “The whole town, that is. They collected enough money to take care of the funeral and to have her buried in the city cemetery.”

  The tears that had glistened in her eyes now rolled down Addie’s cheeks. She reached up to wipe them away. “Sorry,” she said, her voice muffled, thick with emotion.

  Oh, the hell with it. Jake went over and took her hand, pulled her close. She put her arms around him and leaned her head against his shoulder. No sobs, only those quiet tears flowing down her face, dampening the T-shirt he wore. For a second, Jeremy’s eyes met his, and then he gave a single nod, as if absorbing the apparent change in his brother’s relationship with the woman he’d found.