Watching the activity from his vantage point, Chase envied Barnaby the focus and purpose of his position as Lord High Mayor. After years of friendship, the older man had confided many things to Chase, including the tragic tale of his wife’s murder at the hands of a Creavit wizard who was never apprehended.
Barnaby told Chase the story over a late night game of chess during a blizzard that plunged the whole Valley into a whirling wall of blowing snow. Unlike Briar Hollow, where snow fell sparsely and stayed briefly, the Shevington time stream experienced winters worthy of northern New England.
Whenever Chase recalled that conversation, Barnaby’s words always came back to him against the backdrop of a howling north wind. The icy punctuation more than suited the Lord High Mayor’s tale of unthinkable loss and inconsolable grief. Adeline Shevington’s death, in part, propelled Barnaby to leave England amidst the turmoil of the Fae Reformation, bound for the New World to found a Fae colony.
As he told Chase of those long ago days, Barnaby gazed into the flames of the fireplace in his private study, the wavering light highlighting his patrician profile. When he fell silent at last, Chase said, “How did you ever survive it all?”
Without looking away from the flames, Barnaby smiled. “Adeline was not the only remarkable woman in my life.”
“Moira?” Chase asked.
Barnaby nodded. “She saved me from myself and has been my confidante and companion lo these many decades since.”
Chase hadn’t asked for clarification of the word “companion.” No one in Shevington knew the true nature of the relationship between Barnaby and the Alchemist, but their reliance on and trust in one another’s abilities made accomplishments like the inland sea possible.
Now, looking down over the work site, Chase felt a twinge of guilt. Did he really have any business feeling sorry for himself about Jinx when his elders had suffered through so much worse and made so much more of their loss? His own mother died rather than reveal her true nature and endanger the hidden worlds and their inhabitants by exposing them to human fear and superstition.
All in all, Chase himself had experienced an easy life in comparison. While he’d always taken his job as a protector of the Daughters of Knasgowa seriously, everything in Chase’s world was remarkably ordinary until Jinx moved next door and gained her powers.
Before that, guarding Aunt Fiona presented no greater challenge to Chase than drinking coffee and eating chocolate chip cookies in her purple kitchen and listening to the lovable, daffy old lady tell endless stories. Over the years, death claimed all the members of the Briar Hollow coven except Fiona and Amity Prescott. The story of Knasgowa; her husband, Alexander Skea; and the sorceress, Brenna Sinclair became more legend than reality.
But then Fiona got it in her head to live in Shevington full time. Her decision to stage her death to create an easy, humanly legal transfer of the store and its contents to Jinx set in motion complex circumstances, including Brenna’s return, that Chase could never have anticipated.
No one realized just how much the events of the past few months had also plunged him full tilt back into the magical world. Chase had allowed himself to become complacent about the state of Fae politics, believing that just because his tiny corner of the Otherworld was peaceful, that halcyon state extended into the other realms.
So when he saw Jinx get out of her car that first day in front of the store, Chase didn’t immediately shut down the surge of emotion that washed over him because he didn’t recognize the danger in his feelings. Certainly, he’d met Jinx before, but he hadn’t seen her in years. He remembered a slightly gawky young girl, not the beautiful woman juggling multiple cat carriers who unlocked the front door of the shop and instantly became not only a part of his world but his personal charge.
Chase told himself that the speed with which he set about getting to know Jinx was just business, but, as Festus had put it so succinctly at the time, “Sell it to somebody who’s buying, Romeo.” Festus had known; he’d seen all the signs because he’d lived his own version of forbidden love with Jinx’s mother. Chase fell for Jinx on first sight and grew to love her more every day as she came into her powers and began to gain control of her new abilities.
But from the beginning, he’d made mistakes with her — serious ones that culminated in their current uneasy estrangement. As soon as Jinx’s powers awakened, Chase should have confessed his real identity and worked to help her understand the world of which she was now a part. Myrtle, Amity, and Festus had all advised him to be truthful, but to Chase’s mind, none of them really understood how hard it was to come right out and say, “Oh, by the way, I can turn into a cat. In two sizes.”
In fairness, Chase faced hurdles with Jinx his forebearers hadn’t experienced. Jinx was the only one of the Daughters of Knasgowa who was not raised with a full understanding of her powers. She never received the proper training and knew nothing about Shevington and the Otherworld. Blurting out the truth about werecats seemed to Chase to be too much too soon when she was still overwhelmed by the simplest of her abilities.
Looking back, Chase realized he only waited because he liked the illusion of normalcy he enjoyed with Jinx in those first few weeks of their relationship. When Jinx did learn the truth, she jumped to the reasonable conclusion that Chase had only been spending time with her because it was his job. Of course, she might not have done that if he hadn’t actually used the word “job” in his ham-handed attempt to explain Clan McGregor’s connection to the women in her family and his own sins of omission.
Now, looking out over the verdant reaches of the Valley, Chase rested his head in his hands. He’d made so many mistakes with Jinx he’d lost count, but every one of them had been well intentioned. At that thought, he let out a disgusted chuckle. Good intentions only paved one roadway, the one headed straight south to the very hell in which he now found himself.
For all that Chase had tried to follow every other rule, he willfully ignored the taboo about werecats becoming involved outside their own kind because he wanted something he couldn’t have — and in doing that, Chase was convinced he’d invited Malcolm Ferguson’s attacks.
When he confessed that fear to his father, Festus said, “You don’t know that, boy. You can’t say for certain that lunatic was just after you, not until we find out who hired him.”
“Are you telling me it’s okay to ignore the taboo?” Chase demanded.
Festus shook his head. “You know I won’t do that, Chase,” he said. “Not when I’ve played with fire myself. I’m telling you to stop taking on all this guilt until we sort out what’s actually going on.”
Part of him knew his father was right, but Chase couldn’t shake the belief that his recklessness put Jinx in harm’s way. Breaking up with her was the only thing he could do to ensure she was never endangered again because of him. Couldn’t she see that?
He scrubbed at his face with this hand, blinking back tears. No, of course, she couldn’t. Because he’d caught her unawares and broken her heart on the same day she lost Myrtle’s guiding warmth and presence.
A part of Chase suspected that the vehemence of Jinx’s anger toward him was actually displaced grief over the aos si, but he couldn’t say that to Jinx. All he could really do was just put his head down and take whatever she dished out until things started to improve with time. She had every right to grieve the aos si and every right to be furious with him.
Just the night before Festus told Chase “do your job.” That’s what Chase saw on the inland sea work site. Visible proof of a man who went on living by doing his job. If Barnaby could recover from the murder of his wife, a deed so foul the wizard almost lost his soul seeking mindless revenge, then Chase could settle down and find out if Anton Ionescu hired Malcolm Ferguson, and if so, why.
For just an instant, Chase considered talking over the Ionescu problem with Barnaby and then dismissed the idea as quickly as it came into his head. Technically, Chase answered only to Festus as his father and clan chi
ef. The McGregors worked with Barnaby Shevington, not for him. But Chase’s decision wasn’t a matter of protocol. In a way, the choice he made was as self-serving as his decision to throw caution to the wind and let himself fall in love with Jinx in the first place. The only hope Chase McGregor had to save himself from the pain he now felt, was to get to work.
If Ironweed came up with hard evidence to suggest that Ionescu posed a threat to the Valley itself, Chase would talk to Barnaby. Until then, protecting Jinx was his responsibility alone.
10
The Mother Oak was one of twelve Great Trees, the daughters of the primordial World Tree, Yggdrasil. Together, they formed the Coven of the Woods. Planted at vortices of power on a vast Grid encircling the earth, the Trees were the keepers of time, the wardens of magic, and the guardians of order.
Though she had long stood in the center of Shevington, the Mother Oak traced her origin to the ancient land of the Celts. The Tuatha Dé Danann once sheltered in her roots. It was there the aos si was born and whimsically christened “Myrtle” by the Tree herself after the flowering, evergreen sacred to the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
In the days of the Fae Reformation, when the rising power of illegitimate magic threatened the laws of nature held in place by the Trees, the Mother Oak requested a most remarkable thing of Yggdrasil. She asked to be allowed to relocate with the Fae settlers who followed Barnaby Shevington, to sink into the depths of the earth and move through the channels of power running among the vortices, to rise again to her full height from the fresh earth in the place that would come to be known simply as “the Valley.”
In the chronological reckoning, the Movement of the Mother Oak took place in 1584, but the Trees lived a life beyond the boundaries of time and space. Their present awareness encompassed both the history and fate of all the realms, holding intact the framework of the Otherworld, the In Between, and the World of the humans.
The 431 years that had passed since the day of her migration, and this day were nothing to the Great Oak, a mere period of waiting for what she had known all along. The agents of chaos would find and exploit a weakness in the Grid. To mend that break and restore the balance meant to underlie all creation, the magic of the New World must flow into the veins of the Old.
Even Barnaby Shevington did not realize this aspect of his journey, for he came to the Americas a man tortured by grief. The news of the murder of his wife, Adeline, sent ripples of shock through the Fae world, but none beyond the Alchemist, Moira, and through her, the Mother Oak, knew Adeline Shevington carried a baby in her womb.
The journey to Shevington and the creation of a sanctuary for all who sought it gave Barnaby a reason to live again. One hundred and eighty-eight years later, just as the Mother Oak had foreseen, Shevington fathered a second child with a Cherokee witch named Adoette.
They named their daughter Knasgowa, and from her line would descend the one destined to both cause and heal the breach in the Grid.
Like the great serpent Ouroboros, who appears to swallow his own tail, the chosen Daughter of Knasgowa, would close the circle and bring wholeness to that which had been broken. In so doing, the long journey to reclaim natural magic would begin. Like every hero, this Daughter of Knasgowa, would falter in her steps and even suffer comic misfortunes, but in the moment of testing, the authenticity of her heart would lead her to heal the realm.
“The Druids wove stories of myth and legend portending this great struggle,” said the voice of the aos si, arising through the consciousness of the Tree.
The Mother Oak, who could drink in the warm sunlight and guard the robins in her branches, all while attending to the information coursing through the Grid, drew the aos si closer in her thoughts.
“I had great love for our brothers the Druids,” the Oak said, “but I regret to say I still find myself slightly annoyed they insisted on referring to me as the ‘king’ of the trees.”
A ripple of laughter passed along the Tree’s veins. “They attempted to educate tribal humans in the mysteries of the metaphysical,” Myrtle said. “The emphasis on the masculine in such societies forced the Druids to use language that would be heard.”
“Language meant to veil the truth for that which might be more easily tolerated does not educate,” the Oak replied. “What knows the child of the true meaning of the Grail?”
“Moira has spoken to her of the journey between the light and the dark,” Myrtle said, “but I fear Jinx was too preoccupied with my state to have fully appreciated the significance of the spiritual quest that faces every living being.”
The Great Tree sighed. “That is the fault of the life she has led outside the circles of magic,” she said. “But even that has occurred as it was meant to be. Now she must hear the great stories to understand what is required of her.”
“You will tell her of the Fisher King?” Myrtle asked.
“In time she will know of the Guardian of the Grail languishing in the Wasteland that was his kingdom,” the Oak replied. “For now, she must understand that she has begun her own quest, and she cannot give in to foolish temptations.”
“You must be fair to the child,” Myrtle said. “All who begin great tasks make mistakes. Remember you not The Fool in the cards of the Tarot? A callow youth about to plunge over a cliff saved only by the action of his faithful dog?”
“And remember you not the faithful dog represents the wisdom of nature exercising a restraining hand on a feckless human?” the Tree asked.
“Do not use such a word when you speak of Jinx,” Myrtle said. “She lacks neither character nor initiative. Her only weakness is that she has not been schooled in our world, and that was a matter of her destiny, not a fault of her character.”
The Oak sighed, the wind rippling the leaves on her mighty branches. “Do you recall in the tale of the Fisher King how the knight healed the land?” the Oak said.
“He asked an authentic question from the purity of his heart,” Myrtle replied. “On seeing the wounded king, the knight innocently asked, ‘What ails thee?’ thus revealing the Grail that was the object of his long search. Jinx has that innocence.”
“Yes,” the Tree answered, “but forget you not that on their first encounter, the knight failed to ask the question that rose in his heart. All around him disappeared, and he wandered 20 years to find the kingdom again and rectify his mistake.”
“Chesterfield can do great harm in 20 human years,” the aos si said. “But if Jinx’s dealings with him are to be from the authenticity of her heart, we cannot instruct her in the source of his black illness. She must traverse the vale on her own and ask the question in a time of her making.”
Inside the consciousness of the Great Tree, an image of a child wandering into a dark wood rose before them. “He was but a boy,” the Mother Oak said sadly. “He sold his soul to become Creavit, thinking unassailable power would ease his great pain. Now, that hunger has grown into the all-consuming passion of severing the realms and bringing chaos to the World of the humans. Chesterfield would make of himself a king. His wounded soul has rotted into avaricious cancer.”
“If Jinx learns the truth,” Myrtle said, “she will see that. She is the one for whom we have been waiting. Her mother severed the integrity of the Grid as you foretold by denying the child her heritage. All the Daughters of Knasgowa, save her, have been your guardians.”
“Kelly walked the path she was meant to walk,” the Mother Oak answered, “and in her absence, Fiona Ryan has served us well. She may not be the strongest of her line, but with your help, she has fulfilled the obligation.”
The space within the consciousness of the Tree that held the aos si darkened. “You are kind in the face of my failure,” she said. “I did not detect the Orb of Thoth in time. My poisoning has altered the course of our plans.”
“Branches break when they cannot bend with the wind,” the Mother Oak answered. “Until you are strong enough to return, Jinx must face Chesterfield and his agents on her own. Now that she has appr
oached her brother, we must tell her as much as we can. It is not yet time for Connor to return to Briar Hollow.”
“Knowing of him and being denied his company grates on them,” Myrtle cautioned. “Both mother and daughter are at risk for foolish behavior.”
“They need only be patient a little longer,” the Mother Oak answered. “All must occur in the appointed time. That is what we must explain to her.”
“That is what you must explain to her,” the aos si answered. “She cannot hear my voice or she will fear to act without my counsel. Jinx must confront the coming events on her own so that when I do return, it will be as her companion and ally, not her teacher.”
“You say the correct words, aos si,” the Mother Oak answered, “but you are troubled.”
“Yes,” Myrtle confessed, “I am. I love the child dearly. I fear for her safety.”
“Jinx is surrounded by love,” the Great Tree said, “and for those who struggle and doubt, there is no stronger shield against harm.”
11
It’s not like I had never spoken with the Mother Tree before, but this was the first time she actually summoned me into her presence — by sending a truant officer and his raccoon sidekick after me.
As we walked back toward the center of Shevington, I kept cutting glances at Lucas Grayson out of the corner of my eye. I thought I was being stealthy until he said, “Something you want to ask me?”
Crap. Busted.
To hide the fact that I had been totally checking him out, I said, “Yeah. What exactly is the Division for Grid Integrity?”
“We work for the Mother Trees,” he said, as if that explained everything.
My next smart-aleck crack stuck in my throat as my brain kicked in. Mother Trees? Plural?
Witch on Second: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 5 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels) Page 8
