Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  “I’m exhausted, Jules. I might just have some more of Yao’s tea!” Carol finished.

  “Don’t you dare!” Julia blurted. “I’m not kidding when I say that stuff is potent. You’ll be up all night, and not just from the caffeine. The legends all say that the tulsi in your mix there is the most holy herb because of the immense spiritual power it conveys. It sounds like maybe it worked!”

  “Yes, and thank goodness! I have not had a weekend like that since Stanley was alive.” Carol quieted for a moment, remembering her long-departed love, and the riotous parties they used to attend. Who knew that Chess-Masters could be so rowdy? “No, really, thank you, Julia. I don’t know what I would have done without that tea. The number of spirits I encountered at Freddie’s was staggering! But, Jules… none of them acted like they feared him. It was weird, to say the least.”

  “Well, Carol, maybe they don’t, I don’t know. I can’t sense spirits like you can, I just know medical stuff and have done some research, but if I was a ghost stuck here on Earth, I’d sure want a way to move on. Maybe this man is not so scary after all? Do you think he wants to teach you what he does? What does Ian think of all of this?”

  “Ian is beside himself. Oh, Jules, he is really mad. It might make things… difficult… for a little while.”

  “So, explain it to him like it was explained to you and like you explained it to me. Maybe he’ll understand. You always say that he’s good, right? He should want to fight for the cause of good. I don’t really understand all of this myself, Carol, but I think you should take this opportunity to learn from Freddie. It sounds like he’s willing to teach you, and like you could learn quite a bit from him, even if you don’t end up using it.” Julia’s chuckle came through the receiver loudly. “Remember Carol: you don’t have to like your teachers, but you should learn from them.”

  “So... what, Julia? I should just go back and forth between Grandma Fortuna, you, and Freddie, absorbing all the knowledge that I can?”

  “Absolutely.” Came Julia’s reply. “Lorelei said, and I can’t believe you actually met her, just like that! You’re going to have to tell me all about her... but she said that ‘something is coming’, right? Maybe, Carol, maybe you are a part of something big here. Maybe you are more important than you think.”

  “Oh, Jules… I’m just a little, old lady who likes odd things. I’m not important.”

  “Oh, but Carol… perhaps you could be. Wouldn’t Stanley be proud? What would he say to you right now?”

  Carol could almost hear his voice, although he had never appeared to her, and she had never sensed him around. She imagined his strong, soft hand on her shoulder, and she sighed.

  “He would tell me to make the gambit.”

  Now that Carol has Freddie in her sights, will she help or hinder him? Will she take him the moonstone ring, or will she use it for her own purposes instead? And just how exactly does one “unbind” a stone like that? The very fate of the world may rest in the hands of one, old woman and the Scotish spirit who watches over her! Read more about Carol’s ghostly adventure in Forgotten Magic now!

  About the Author

  Born in Philadelphia, Leah W. Van Dinther never wanted to fit into the mold of “normal.” She spent her childhood around old buildings, art, society, and horses, and usually had her nose buried in a book. She accumulated knowledge like a hoard of treasure and, at some point in her younger years, realized that her greatest wish (outside of horses) was to have a library like the one in Alexandria. Lo-and-behold, the Internet was invented, and her wish came true!

  Leah has been a poet, a writer, a waitress, a cook, a dessert-chef, a Montessori teacher, an artist, a rock-star, and a horse trainer. She still accumulates knowledge like it’s going out of style and in a dizzying array of topics. No really, it would make your head spin.

  She married a wonderful artist/musician/author/chef who challenges her, supports her, helps her, and loves her unconditionally to this day. His smile also makes her weak in the knees.

  After spending twenty-two years in Western Montana, Leah now lives in California with her family, and her horses, Badger and Zeina. She is very glad to be up in the mountains, but thankful that there is not so much snow.

  For more about Leah W. Van Dinther, please visit: www.Ghost-Stalkers.com. Don’t forget to grab your copy of Forgotten Magic for more!

  Aamira

  Healer

  Barbara Letson

  After suffering through way too many fruitless medical tests as a child, Aamira promised herself she would never enter a hospital again. Now a teenager, where does she spend her time? Entertaining seriously ill children as a hospital volunteer, her Wayward Magic greatly improving their chances of ever going home again. What she doesn’t expect is the mysterious entity who comes to take them: and you should never argue with someone possessing that much power.

  Barbara Letson

  Now a hospital volunteer in the children’s ward, teenage Aamira’s magical talent as a budding Healer greatly improves their chances of ever going home again. What she doesn’t expect is the mysterious entity who comes to take them. You should never argue with someone possessing that much power.

  Aamira

  Sixteen-year-old Aamira Rayan rocked the toddler on her lap and remembered how hard it had been for her when she was the one who had been ill, so deathly ill, and without a diagnosis that stuck. Then she had pieced together that she had the ability to connect with others, to get a feel for what was physically wrong with them, and to ‘share’ her health, trading it for their illness.

  There was no formal training for this, no one to ask what it was she was doing or how it worked; it was definitely a ‘learn-as-you-go’ experience, and she was learning all the time. It was just something she could do, and she was going to do it.

  The child in question was in rough shape and the nurses were worried, though they tried to hide that worry when Aamira was around. Making skin-to-skin contact, she willed her psychic self around the boy and began to share from her own life force. As she stilled her mind and reached out to him, she knew they were forming some sort of connection, some link that would let her understand the child’s most immediate physical problems, and often something that would clue her in to the child’s emotions.

  It was different each time, but it always included a few of the same elements. Aamira would extend a warm rush, like a sweet wave, toward her small patient, and what starving body would refuse an offer of a breath of fresh air, a warm sip of energy? It was an instinctive acceptance for most, they weren’t even aware of it. They just recognized the love. And when she shifted her focus to draw out part of their illness or injury, part of their pain, they were surprised at the sudden cessation of ‘bad’, as if they could breathe again. Unfortunately for Aamira, removing their trouble meant pain for her.

  The toddler, his aura close to black, reached for her hungrily. Aamira had always been able to see auras, those colorful bits of human energy that surrounded living bodies and changed according to the personality and level of health. She hadn’t known seeing such things was not the norm when she was a child. She could especially see colors relating to sickness and knew that dark, muddy colors were not a good sign; the closer to black, the closer to death.

  The candy striper crooned to her charge, cuddling and rocking, and slowly they connected on a deeper level. Physically, he was sleepy. Emotionally, he was confused. They were keeping his pain at bay with cutting-edge drugs and constant care. The child was fragile, although the nurses had said it wasn’t quite dire. He had undergone surgery for a hole in his heart, a congenital deformity that would eventually kill him without intervention, but the medical community still considered the heart a mystery in the year 1991 and even with their most concerted intervention, the most current techniques, his outcome was uncertain at best.

  The nurses explained that Jeremiah’s infirmity had kept him ill and weak throughout his few years of life, but he had hung in there, and now his doct
ors felt he would be fine if he made it through these next few days. But maybe the nurses didn’t know how poorly he was doing, or maybe they just didn’t want to upset her with the knowledge that he was still in trouble; in their eyes, there was always hope.

  Within her own body, Aamira began to match the boy’s quiet, labored breathing, felt the soft thump of his heart pumping what might soon be its last. She noted the many tubes and wires connected to him, gadgets that monitored his every breath and medicine pumps that supported his progress in these important days following surgery. It was a wonder they would even lift him from his bed and place him in her arms, but the child had very little family. Even before the official studies talked of a connection between emotional health and physical healing, Aamira knew you needed the one to take best advantage of the other, and there was always an element of love in her work with the children. Besides, Aamira was special. The nurses called her their good luck charm; any child she took an interest in stood an excellent chance of going home again.

  Aamira held little Jeremiah carefully so as not to jostle the central line or intravenous drips that kept him going at this point. She lovingly wrapped the child in her own aura of bright, healthy colors and began to accept the child’s injuries into herself. It could seem like inhaling flypaper or chewing on tinfoil; some unpleasantness was happening, always accompanied by a certain level of pain. Aamira had come to understand that while she might pull various illnesses and injuries into herself, she did not absorb medications. The patients always kept those to themselves, while the aches and pains, masked by the drugs that kept them comfortable, were felt full force by Aamira.

  In the beginning, this had been the most confusing activity of all; she hadn’t even known she was doing this when her body first matured enough to infiltrate another’s body and absorb their illness into herself. She ended up in the hospital for countless weeks with first one set of symptoms and then another. As soon as the doctors diagnosed a disease and began treatment, the symptoms would fade and be replaced by something totally different. Aamira’s body, in an attempt to survive, was releasing the illness into the ether, but then she would make physical contact with another sick child and absorb something of that one’s malady, and the cycle would begin again. Go figure.

  Now she and Jeremiah were linked; what one felt, so did the other, and Aamira’s body, being the stronger, began supporting the weaker. Oh yes, it hurt to allow the wounds left by the surgical incisions to touch her, but she was stubborn; Aamira breathed through the pain, calling down healing from wherever it came in the universe, surrounding them both in brilliant white light. The nurses, oblivious to what she was truly accomplishing, kept a close eye on them both, this hospital volunteer who chose to assist the most troubled of patients, and her charge, a small boy who was battling serious odds. If they had eyes that could see, truly see, Aamira knew they would notice a growing light around her and the boy she cradled; the same soothing light she felt whenever she offered healing, a brightness disturbing the dark cast of the child’s troubled aura.

  Unexpectedly, the room darkened infinitesimally as Aamira rocked, a cold breeze flitting through the room. Aamira felt a thrill of fear burn through her and shivered. Looking up, she realized there was someone standing before her that hadn’t been in the pediatric ICU a moment ago. Tall and thin, he seemed to be robed in darkness and swirling, colorless mists, yet she couldn’t even see a face beyond the folds of his black hood. No one else seemed to notice the stranger, although there was a nurse standing right next to her checking the wires and tubes that were attached to the boy and an assistant nearby who was changing his bed linens.

  Pretending to talk to the boy in her lap, the actual words made easier to disguise by the fact that everyone entering the pediatric ICU was required to wear a mask, Aamira gathered her courage and whispered: “I remember you. I saw you that day, when my friend Clara died. Only I didn’t know she was dead.”

  She waited, wondering if he had heard her or if this was some illusion she was visiting upon herself by thinking of death and loss when she, herself, had been a young patient in far off London a long time ago. No response. Teenage stubbornness winning out over sanity and sensibility, she tried again. “Clara disappeared when you walked between us. I remember. Did you take my friend away?”

  The hood tilted and she sensed he was looking at her. The intensity of his mere glance made her shiver again, that simple act causing her to feel the pain in her chest even more fiercely.

  “This one is mine,” declared the being, his voice raspy, as if dry from centuries of disuse. The child in her arms burrowed into her desperately. Behind her, one of the other children in the ICU suddenly startled, crying out as if awoken by a terrifying dream. The nurse checked to see that Aamira would be good on her own for a few moments and moved to check on the crying child.

  “Not anymore,” was her whispered reply. “He’s getting stronger, I can feel it. What are you, anyway? Why can’t anyone see you but me?”

  “You are one,” he said. “It is his time, and he can see.”

  “You mean, because he’s… dying… he sees you?”

  “It has always been so.”

  “And I see you through him?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Who are you? Death? Are you meaning to take this boy too?”

  “I am… an escort.”

  “Well, he’s not dying today.” She was looking not at this creature, but at the child’s trusting face, staring into those innocent eyes and making a solemn promise.

  “It is his time.”

  “Yeah, you said that. And who determines that?”

  The being paused, perhaps searching for an answer she would understand, or perhaps he had never been asked the question. “It is the natural order of the universe.”

  “Apparently, I’m part of the natural order too, ‘cause here I am. He’s mine now. I’m saving him. So go away.” She lovingly hugged the child closer to her.

  His tone changed to something approaching annoyance. “You have been… instrumental… in improving the odds of several. You cannot save them all.”

  “I can save this one,” she boasted, as sure of herself as any other teenager.

  “Are you certain?” In answer to her challenge, this messenger of death gathered himself to his full, fearsome height, larger than life, and the room around them turned eerily dark. Perhaps it was his aura she had been seeing, this misty blackness that swirled around him. It now solidified and expanded to fill the room with unnatural coldness, no matter that he declared himself part of the natural order of Creation. It carried with it the odor of stale graveyard dirt; it held the timeless finality of death that all humans could recognize and most would fear.

  Aamira could see this being, this entity, in all his bone-chilling power even though she wasn’t the one who was supposed to die. He reached toward the child with a skeletal hand, intending to extract the soul from his tiny tortured body. It was his role; it was his due. Perhaps he thought it a kindness. Perhaps he was too numb to care. Perhaps there was no caring, no empathy within himself, and it was simply his job. The result was the same; he reached for the boy.

  The child whimpered.

  In response, Aamira seemed not to waiver at all, did not move outside the continued rocking of the chair they occupied, but if anyone there had eyes that could see they would sense, the way she did, that her aura became brighter, stronger, laced with a bit of a golden glow at the edges, as she joined more fiercely with the child. It became a contest of wills.

  “Pretty much,” she whispered, using her own life force and the glow pulled down from somewhere above to sustain the child.

  “I bring peace. You offer only continued suffering.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Let him go.”

  “He can go if he wants, but I don’t think he wants.” She brushed her chin against the little fist wrapped around her shirt collar. “I think he wants to stay. To grow up and se
e the world. To just go home to his family. To know love.”

  The messenger snarled. His hands became claws, threatening to rip the child from her, to rip the soul from the child by force. “Insolence! You are but a random mortal fragment; I am an avatar of Creation, I will not be opposed.”

  Again, the boy whimpered. So did Aamira, brave as she was; the being was truly terrifying, obscuring all light around himself, his dark being snapping with electricity. She wasn’t even certain what he was, just that he was sentient. And powerful. Still, she could not allow herself to fail the boy.

  “No.”

  “I will take what is mine,” he snarled. Aamira couldn’t know that none had ever defied him before, that he had never been opposed. Perhaps he had never even been seen before, other than by the one he had come to collect, and opposition was nonexistent.

  Until now.

  Unbeknownst to her, for this creature of death, reaching toward Life was like swimming through molasses, like running through clay; that lacy golden light, that life force, was impossible for him to penetrate. Still, he tried.

  Silently, she responded to his challenge. You say you are an avatar of Creation, but you stink of death. This is no longer your place! In Aamira’s eyes, their aura together was still muddy and unpalatable, but anything was better than the black that heralded death. Their combined heartbeat was growing stronger and she could see the lacework of golden light surrounding them like a filigreed shell, marveling at its beauty. I will not let you touch the boy; he belongs to Life!

  The Escort subsided and withdrew his power.

  Aamira’s chest was spasming from the absorption of a mere minor portion of Jeremiah’s surgical traumas, which were now hers. Her beautiful black face was wet with the exertion of holding that pain, with repelling such power. And the chair was wet with urine. Afraid, but still unwilling to surrender the child, she took a deep breath and crooned to him, comforting herself as much as the boy, then again addressed the creature. “Forgive me if I try to postpone that for a few people. Dead is forever!”