The Wizard

by Karen Ranney

  “I should have seen that she was in danger.” She looked at him and there was pain in her eyes. “I didn’t see her death. I should have. If I’d warned her, she might have been able to protect herself.”

  He needed to ask another question, one that had been haunting him ever since he’d gone into Breanna’s bathroom.

  “Was she pregnant?”

  Grace put her cup down and stared at him, her face suddenly pale. “Pregnant?”

  He nodded. “Was she?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice tremulous. “She didn’t tell me if she was.”

  They didn’t speak for a minute or two, the silence heavy with unspoken thoughts.

  “I just wondered,” he finally said.

  “Would it make her death worse if she was?”

  “No,” he said, the answer instantaneous. “How can it be worse?”

  “Then why do you need to know?”

  He couldn’t articulate why he wanted — needed — to know. Maybe it was simply another truth that Breanna hadn’t shared with him.

  Thankfully Grace didn’t pursue the matter. Instead, she leaned over and placed her hand on his. It felt as if it had been weeks since anyone touched him, other than those back slaps at the funeral and afterward at the Crow’s Nest.

  “Will you promise to protect yourself?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s no of course about it, Derek. There are two factions plotting against you. You need to understand both of them and you need to arm yourself against each.”

  “There could be someone else, Grace. Someone I’ve annoyed or threatened with my reporting.”

  She only looked at him. He was having a hard time believing that, too. Coincidences rarely happened. Why now? Why after he’d visited his birth mother for the first time?

  “So who do you think the two groups are gunning for me?”

  She took a sip of coffee, delaying answering him.

  “I think the NASACA Elders wish you harm,” she finally said. “Because you don’t know what you’re capable of and could grow into your power. Then there’s either your father or someone attached to the European Meriduar who probably consider you to be too much of a threat to Jeffrey.”

  He sat back in the chair. “So, some people want me dead because I’m not powerful and some want me dead because they think I am. Have you considered how, well, ridiculous that sounds?”

  The wisp of a smile curved her lips. “Nothing has made a great deal of sense to me,” she said, “since Breanna died.”

  That statement mirrored his own thoughts so well that he was startled.

  “Do you believe that her death was an accident?” she asked.

  “You don’t?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Why would you say that?” His voice sounded calm, but his mind was racing. Not once had he been given an indication that the accident was something other than a hit and run. Yet he remembered the notations in Breanna’s journal.

  “The timing of her death is suspicious, Derek. She’d begun to suspect that the Elders wished you harm. She was doing everything in her power to protect you when she was killed. I find that too convenient.”

  “There’s no proof that her death was anything but an accident.”

  “Of course there isn’t. Use that lovely brain that Breanna admired so much. There won’t be a neon sign that says: magic here. Instead, there’ll be discrepancies, things that don’t add up, especially if the spell was done in haste, which I suspect it was.”

  “To silence her or to keep her from protecting me?”

  “What a very good question,” she said. “I’d thought that her death was to prevent her from telling you the truth, but it’s just as possible that it was to keep her from protecting you.”

  He was going to call the officer in charge of the investigation the minute he got home. He’d never considered that the accident might have been deliberate, although something hadn’t felt right about it from the beginning.

  The sudden anger he felt was better than the ever present grief. At least he could do something with this emotion.

  “She was a very powerful witch because of her father, of course, but even so she couldn’t save herself. If Lionel had still been alive he might have been able to shield her, but she was basically alone. I should have suspected that something like that would happen, but it didn’t cross my mind.” She looked over at him. “I was foolish about you, too. No one had paid any attention to you all these years. I thought you were safe.”

  He wanted to tell her that everything she said was ridiculous, that she was delusional, that her words were those of a crazy woman. Yet he couldn’t discount the car bomb or what had happened last night.

  “I think I’m being watched,” he told her and relayed the events of the previous evening.

  Her words, when they came, were anything but soothing. “The Elders have grown to believe that their wishes should be obeyed without question. They have no humility. It’s very possible that they’d assign a member of the NASACA to watch you.”

  “Couldn’t they just do some scrying?” he asked.

  “With anyone else, yes. You have a tendency to mess things up.” She smiled at his frown. “It’s like white noise or static. That’s all I get when I try to see you.”

  “What about Susan? Do you know her?”

  He explained who Susan was, or at least who he’d always thought she was.

  “For three years I thought Susan was Breanna’s sister. According to the family attorney, Breanna didn’t have a sister. I have no idea who Susan was.”

  “It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the Elders to have sent someone to ensure that Breanna was doing as she was told. Her minder, for lack of a better word.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “The last time they met they were arguing. Breanna said it was about money, the trust fund she administered for Susan. The mythical trust fund, as it turned out.”

  She didn’t have an explanation, but he hadn’t expected one.

  Thankfully, their conversation veered away from magic and into the prosaic. Grace wanted to know about his education and he told her about his undergraduate degree at the University of Texas along with his masters in journalism. He’d considered going on to law school, but decided that he wanted to report on lawmakers and not be one himself.

  For nearly an hour they didn’t discuss spells, witches, wizards, or Breanna.

  “Thank you for the coffee,” he said, standing. “Do you think you can keep Bubbles here? Or can I expect her to be a guest again?”

  She smiled and shrugged. “I am afraid it’s entirely up to Bubbles. She has a mind of her own and she did seem to be very taken with you.”

  Maybe he should grab some cat food and kitty litter just in case.

  He made his way down the hall to the front door, surprised that he didn’t particularly want to leave. Angie had died years ago and Breanna’s mother as well. There had been no one in his life to assume a maternal role. No one but Grace.

  Before he had a chance to think about it, he turned and hugged her. She patted his back, just like a mother would and when they separated, she looked up at him with a smile, placing her hand against his cheek.

  As he opened the door he hesitated, then asked, “What was her father’s sin? What did Lionel do?”

  “He raised the dead.”

  They stood there looking at each other, neither speaking. Questions tumbled over and over in his mind like a bingo cage, but he couldn’t reach in and pluck just one.

  “Even the practitioners of black magic do not attempt to conquer death,” she said. “His arrogance was such that he believed himself capable of doing just that. And so he did.”

  “He brought someone back to life?”

  She nodded. “His wife. At least until he was found out by the Elders.”

  He couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

  “Lionel was devoted to his wife. After
all, they’d been married forty years.”

  He remembered the articles about Lionel Adams and the reports that labeled him a hedonist. When he said as much to Grace, she only smiled.

  “I think he cultivated that reputation on purpose, to deflect any further suspicion. I don’t think the Elders trusted him not to try to resurrect Emily yet again.”

  “You expect me to believe that Breanna’s mother died, and was brought back from the dead?”

  “It isn’t important whether you believe, Derek. Breanna believed. She saw her mother. She lived with her until Lionel was commanded to reverse the spell. If word got out that he could command death he’d be a witch with the powers of a wizard. That had never happened before.”

  Once again she’d stripped the words from him. When she didn’t continue, he asked, “So what happened to him? Did the Elders knock him off, too?”

  She didn’t answer, only opened the door for him. She’d given him a lot to think about and even more to research.

  20

  Derek got into the Porsche, taking a few minutes to find a comfortable position. He needed to buy another SUV as soon as possible. He wasn’t into sports cars. He wanted the room to stretch, to feel that he was riding more than a few inches above the surface of the road.

  He’d call the dealership once he got home and see if someone could deliver the exact model he’d lost yesterday. Money talked. A great deal of money shouted.

  Strange, he and Grace hadn’t discussed the explosion. Nor was there a sign of it. No extraneous pieces of metal. No shards of glass. The driveway was pristine and without a smear of soot. He looked up and down the street at all the small houses, each of them with neatly trimmed yards. He wondered how big they really were. Was he looking at a neighborhood of mansions?

  Okay, so there was something to magic. He’d seen it with his own eyes. He just wished Breanna had been the one to show him. Why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t she told him about meeting Grace? Why had someone tried to kill him? Who was watching him? And perhaps the most tantalizing mystery of them all: what kind of power did he possess? According to Grace he was a wizard. Someone who could command magic. Did that mean he had the power of life and death, too?

  That was one question he wasn’t going to ask Grace.

  After Derek pulled away Grace looked down to find Bubbles winding herself around her ankles.

  "Did you have a nice visit with Derek? I was a little worried that you would enjoy it so much that you wouldn't want to come home."

  Bubbles meowed.

  "Silly thing, I was only teasing."

  Bending, she retrieved the cat’s collar. The camera, an inch square, was encased in yellow metal and inscribed with the cat’s name and Grace’s phone number. This wouldn’t be the first time Bubbles had been tasked with reconnoitering, but this was an unusual situation.

  After she uploaded the images to her computer she’d know more about Derek’s environment. She hadn’t lied to her son. Whenever she tried to see him in her scrying bowl all she’d gotten was white static.

  It might be the house itself. She didn’t like Derek living at the Crow’s Nest. Although she wouldn’t call it evil, Lionel Adams had done terrible things there. Terrible things left an indelible mark on a structure.

  She and Breanna had woven a spell to protect him. Without Breanna to do her part to refresh the spell she was blind. With the camera images she at least would have the layout of the house. She’d know where the exits were and where she needed to replace wards.

  Things were happening; dangerous events were boiling on the horizon. She could feel them coming, just like her knees predicted a thunderstorm.

  Derek was unaware of the forces arrayed around them. Nor was she certain that he would accept what she told him. To modern Americans good and evil were only words, not real concepts.

  One thing she hadn’t told Derek was how she felt about Lionel. She considered the man evil and that wasn’t a label she applied easily. He’d known right from wrong yet he’d chosen to do what he had. In doing so he’d changed NASACA forever.

  Magic was the highest calling there was. It was as beautiful and as profound as life itself. Witches were humans with a high degree of intuition. They were of the world and in it. They sensed what others could not, the humming presence of something more, elemental forces from the earth itself, and had learned through years of training how to harness it.

  Until Lionel’s act, death had been an immutable fact. It was final. It was a barrier beyond which none of them would venture. Lionel had made it a gate, tempting others who’d known grief and despair into performing a similar sin. In the past four years they’d had six cases of witches attempting to raise the dead. Each case had to be not only adjudicated but remedied. The guilty party was punished severely. Either he’d been stripped of any magical power or his life had been forfeited. That was Lionel’s true legacy.

  The Elders had watched Breanna carefully. Sending her on a mission to become close to Derek had been a test. If she failed, then she could be eliminated with no regrets. If she succeeded, then she would validate their seeming trust in her.

  Poor Breanna had both succeeded and failed, but not in a way the Elders had anticipated. She’d fallen in love with Derek and had been willing to go against the Elders if it meant saving him.

  Now Grace had to take up that task.

  She didn’t know which faction was more dangerous to her son: the Elders of NASACA or Derek’s father. Perhaps she was wrong and Jeffrey didn’t wish for his son’s demise. If not, then the danger had to come from someone in his organization, someone who didn’t want Derek to learn what he could do.

  If Jeffrey had contacted her, they could have joined forces to protect their only child. Yet she’d told Jeffrey, in that last and final meeting, that she never wanted to see him again. As far as she was concerned he was dead to her. He’d taken her at her word, never once bridging the gulf between them. He’d not even contacted her after Millicent’s death.

  Nor had she stretched out her hand to him.

  Part of her would always be that innocent girl madly in love with a powerful man, but something else had happened after that final farewell. She’d become a mother. She’d been given a child to protect and guard.

  She had to think of Derek first, as she always had. Plus, she wasn’t entirely certain that she could trust the only man she’d ever loved.

  Because of the events the night before, Derek kept checking the rearview mirror. That’s the only reason he saw the dark blue Ford following him. At first he told himself that he was being paranoid, but the car was still there as he headed north toward the Crow’s Nest.

  Instead of taking the ramp to 281, he kept to the access road, pulling into the parking lot of a convenience store. He watched as the blue Ford slowed, then passed.

  Why the hell was Ellie Hunt following him?

  He didn’t see her the rest of the way home, which made him wonder if he’d been wrong. Maybe she was just doing an errand. Maybe it was her day off and she was going to the nearby medical complex. Maybe it wasn’t her car at all.

  There were too many other things to worry about. By the time he got back to the Crow’s Nest he’d formulated a plan of action. He was going to call the SAPD, do some more research and then he was going to go back to the secret room and open every damn locked door and cabinet.

  He was damn tired of secrets.

  “He’s spotted you. Fall back now.”

  The words Ellie heard in her earpiece were startling, but she quickly turned a corner and got out of sight. Whoever had given her the heads up had been able to see both her car and Derek’s. How? That called for a mobile spell, one that required a lot of talent and power.

  Now what did she do? The voice hung up as quickly as he’d called so she didn’t have any help there. Was she supposed to continue following Derek? She pulled onto a side street and sat there for a few minutes.

  What had alerted him? What had she done? She hadn’t us
ed a cloaking spell today and hadn’t for the past week. Perhaps that was a bit of laziness on her part, but it took at least ten minutes to work and used a lot of energy. She often found herself drained just when she needed to be at her most alert. She couldn’t confess that to the Elders, however.

  Maybe he’d gone on to work.

  Nobody had been told about her new assignment at the paper, only that she’d been tapped by the owners for a project. Not even Billy knew what she was doing from day to day and that rankled him. Whenever she came into the office he didn’t lose an opportunity to make a snide remark. He’d even given her a nickname: Little Miss Suck Up.

  She pulled into the parking lot at the Herald. Derek’s parking spot was in the adjoining tower, but she didn’t know exactly where. She could go up and down the five story structure or she could just head into the office.

  She made it to her desk finally, after winding through the maze of cubicles like a rabbit looking for a carrot. The senior reporters had their own office on the outside walls, complete with windows. The rest of them had five foot high cubbies and no privacy at all. You could hear every conversation from three rows down and two rows back. If someone had a problem with their intestines, you got to experience that, too. She used to pray her next door cubby mate hadn’t had chili the night before.

  She opened her email while popping her head above her wall. The light wasn’t on in Derek’s office. Maybe he’d gotten some coffee. Or maybe he hadn’t come into the office at all.

  Billy had sent out another blast email to all employees. The subject line, however, startled her. McPherson sabbatical.

  Derek McPherson has decided to take a short sabbatical. I know we can all understand why he has made this decision and we wish him the best as well as a speedy return.