“You mean there’s more than one?” I blurted out, before realizing how idiotic the question made me sound.
Grayson stopped and looked at me curiously. "You really don't know, do you?"
If I had been going for the cool option to hide my ignorance, I would have pretended his question insulted me. Unfortunately, curiosity won out. "No," I said. "I don't know."
We were standing on a street corner about a block from the square, right beside one of the staircases that lead to the top of the city’s surrounding wall. The space up top has been planted to create a narrow promenade park that is one of the citizenry’s favorite gathering places in the evening.
Grayson waited until a small knot of people passed us and began to climb the stairs before he spoke.
“Look,” he said, lowering his voice, “I can’t tell you anything I haven’t been authorized to share, but the Mother Oak wouldn’t have sent me to find you if she didn’t have something important to say. The basics are common knowledge in the Fae world, so here’s the lay of the land. There are twelve Mother Trees organized under the World Tree. Together they form the Coven of the Woods."
After weeks of meeting with Barnaby on a regular basis, I was more than a little put out that I was only hearing this information now, and from a total stranger.
"Uh, okay” I said. “And what exactly do the Trees do?”
"Hold it all together," Rube said.
I looked down into the raccoon’s black masked face. "Hold all of what together?" I asked.
"Everything, sister," he said, waving one front paw around him in a circle. “The whole shebang.”
When I looked at Grayson for confirmation, he nodded. "Rube is right," he said. "The Trees are the organizing principle of all that exists. But as you can well imagine, the whole story isn’t that simple. Nothing is around here."
In spite of myself, I laughed. "That’s an understatement," I said.
Grayson smiled at me. Really smiled at me for the first time. Not the bad-boy smirk he’d given me at the stables or the world-weary bemusement that seemed to be his stock in trade. This smile reached all the way to his gray eyes, which in the softening light showed flecks of green.
“Maybe not simple,” he said, “but certainly not ordinary and never boring. Just trust me on this one. It’s all for the good. The whole system. Listen to the Mother Tree, even if you don't like what she has to say to you, and believe that the Grid knows what it’s doing."
I frowned. “So the Mother Trees are the Grid?”
“Do you understand anything about computer systems in your world?” he asked.
“Some,” I said, “but my friend Tori is the tech head in the family.”
“Okay,” he said, “work with me on this one. Think of the Grid as a network. The Mother Trees are its backbone.They’re like core routers dispersing information across the whole system.”
Under normal circumstances, I would have let loose with a flood of questions, but his description drew my mind back to an evening when I laid my hands on the trunk of a massive, aged hickory seeking information about a series of unsolved murders. When my consciousness joined with that of the tree, I knew I heard not just the hickory’s voice, but the voice of all the trees everywhere. Had I been jacked into the Grid without even realizing it?
I had zero reason to trust Lucas Grayson. He’d just come ambling up out of nowhere talking about some “Grid” agency and telling me about tree covens. But somehow I knew intuitively that he wasn’t lying. In an odd way, Grayson seemed more "normal" than anyone I had yet encountered in the Fae world. He would have been just as much at home on the Main Street of Briar Hollow as he was standing there in front of me in Shevington.
That thought led to an abrupt change of subject. “What are you, Grayson?” I asked.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m a DGI agent.”
“Are you a wizard?”
“Nope.”
“Alchemist?”
“No.”
“Werecat?”
“And that would be ‘no’ again,” he grinned. “Are you going to run through the list of all the Fae races?”
“If I had the list, I would,” I said. “How about you just tell me what you are?”
“I’m a guy who knows how to get stuff done,” Grayson shrugged, “and what needs to get done right this minute is for you to walk over there and face the music with the Mother Tree.”
At some point in the conversation, we must have started up the street again. My mind had been working so intently, I hadn’t even realized we were now standing in the town square. I didn’t buy the whole “just a guy” line, but I could tell I wouldn’t be getting any more information from Grayson for the time being.
“So that’s it?” I said. “You give me a bunch of half answers, deliver me to the Mother Tree, and go on about your business?”
Grayson’s teeth flashed impossibly white in the failing light. In a few minutes, the old lamplighter would begin to make his rounds. The street lamps didn’t run on gas and likely could all have been ignited with one simple spell, but the practice of an aged wizard walking under each light and snapping his fingers to make it blaze to life was a quaint and cherished local tradition.
“I don’t know,” Grayson said. “That depends on how things go between you and the Mother Tree. She’ll let me know if I need to follow you around anymore.”
Bad-boy handsome or not, this guy could seriously get on my nerves if I let him — or I could totally fall for him. Six of one, half a dozen of the other — and not what I should have been thinking about when I was still getting over the break-up with Chase.
As I watched, Grayson crossed the street with easy, loping strides, Rube waddling alongside. The pair disappeared into O’Hanson’s Pub on the corner without ever looking back at me.
Their departure left me with no choice. Drawing in a deep breath, I turned my attention toward the Mother Tree. Even though I was a little nervous, hope also danced in my heart. Somewhere in the massive, gnarled trunk and spreading limbs, Myrtle’s spirit resided. Would she be present for this conversation?
For as much as I dreaded what I suspected would be the Mother Tree’s disapproval over my approaching Connor, I thrilled at the prospect of hearing my friend’s voice again.
At the base of the Great Tree, I sat down on a stone bench and opened my mind. Since I didn’t know what else to say, I went with, “Hi. I’m here.”
“So you are,” a voice answered, echoing slightly in my thoughts.
“Is Myrtle with you?” I blurted out.
So much for patience.
Around me, the night sounds of Shevington receded into silence as the Mother Tree surrounded us with a cloud of privacy. “The aos si dwells herein,” the Oak said, “but she will not join us this evening.”
A swell of disappointment surged through me, bringing hurt tears to my eyes. The Mother Tree felt it.
“I am sorry you cannot speak with your friend,” she said in a gentle tone. “The aos si continues to recover well from her contact with the foreign orb. You, child, are an ever present thought for her. Fear not that you will be forgotten.”
Swallowing hard, I accepted that was the best I was going to get. Might as well stand up and face the music. “So,” I said, “I guess you’re angry at me because I tried to see my brother.”
“Not angry,” the Mother Tree said, “but remonstrative. You took a great risk this evening, Jinx, both for yourself, and for he who does not even know you exist.”
“What risk?” I demanded. “That curse was cast more than 30 years ago. Why hasn’t someone tried to do something to clean this whole mess up and get Connor home? Do you have any idea what being separated from him has done to my mother?”
With infinite patience, the Oak said, “I have every idea. The loss of Connor led Kelly to abandon her magic for good. She retreated into a world of nervous caution and lived in constant fear something would happen to you. Her apprehensions made her smoth
ering and overprotective. Your father ameliorated his pain by spending mindless hours alone with the rivers, ostensibly for the purpose of catching fish, but more for the solace the water afforded his aching soul.”
Geez. What had she been doing all these years? Just watching? The Mother Tree might not be angry, but I was getting that way.
“If you knew all of that, then why didn’t you do something?” I asked heatedly. “Aren’t you and the other Mother Trees supposed to control everything?”
“We control the coherence of time,” the Mother Oak said, “and we are the wardens of magic, but there is to the progression of events a natural order we cannot supersede. There was nothing we could do until all that was foretold had come to pass.”
Again with the whole “foretold” thing?
“I didn’t understand a single word you just said,” I replied testily.
That’s when the Mother Tree gave me a little slap. “Do not pretend ignorance with me, witch,” she said. “You understood the words; you simply do not care for their meaning. Petulance will contribute nothing to this conversation.”
So much for being taken to the woodshed with a switch. I had a whole tree coming after my backside.
Blowing out a long, frustrated breath, I said, “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. But if you want me to understand why you, Moira, Barnaby, and Myrtle let my mother and father suffer for 32 years — and made me grow up without a brother — then could you give me an explanation that makes some sense?”
The Tree said something next that I totally did not see coming.
“Barnaby Shevington is your seventh great grandfather.”
I gazed up into the canopy of leaves over my head with a shocked expression. The Mother Oak kept talking, seeming to realize I couldn’t have said a word to save my life.
Some of what she told me I already knew. Chase related the story of Adeline Shevington’s murder to me, but he didn’t tell me the poor woman was pregnant when she died, probably because he didn’t know.
The Oak spoke to me of her personal story as well, describing her migration through the earth following the channels of power that comprise the Grid.
No. I can’t explain to you how a tree could do that. Maybe it was just the essence of the tree that followed the path to rise again in this spot. If you could hear the Oak’s voice, and feel the weight of her presence in your mind as I can, you wouldn’t question anything she says.
All I know is that she rose again in physical form in the spot where I now communed with her, rooted at the heart of Shevington, and tied to the Valley’s purpose in a deeply intimate way.
You see, Adeline’s death changed everything. So much so, that if she had not died, I would never have been born.
“Adeline was a Druid priestess,” the Oak explained, “a rare thing in an order dominated by men. But moreover, she was the Keeper of the Oak — the keeper of me. Just as there are thirteen Trees in the Coven of the Woods, so are there thirteen keepers in their service. The child Adeline carried would have, in time, succeeded her mother as my companion and guardian. On that foul night of murder, it was the innocent child who died first. Sensing that the life in her womb was no more, Adeline used her final breath to transfer her magic into a crystal amulet, which she entrusted to her husband for safekeeping.”
Finally managing to find my voice, I said, “So did that make Barnaby your keeper?”
“No,” the Mother Oak answered. “A wizard cannot fulfill that position. Adeline’s charge to Barnaby was to sire a daughter and transfer her magic into the child, thus reforging the line of the Keepers of the Oak.”
But without Moira’s aid, Barnaby, driven half mad by grief, might never have honored his promise to Adeline. He searched throughout Europe for his wife’s killer, almost giving himself over to black magic in his relentless mission to discover the felon’s identity. Moira called Barnaby back from the brink, reminding him that should he surrender to the darkness, all that was left of his beloved Adeline would be truly lost.
“He came to me and wept at my feet,” the Mother Tree said, “and begged to know what he was to do. I counseled him to find a place where the Creavit heresy had not touched the face of pure magic. He quit Europe and came to this New World, waiting 188 years before the magic of another spoke to him, kindling a connection both with his heart and with the essence of Adeline he guarded.”
“Who was she?” I asked.
“A Cherokee witch named Adoette,” the Tree answered. “You already know the name of their daughter, my first keeper in this new land.”
“Knasgowa,” I said.
“Correct,” the Oak replied, “but what you do not know is that Knasgowa had a vision that one day a link would be broken in her line and thus allow the forces of chaos to seek ingress to harm the Coven of the Woods. You are that break.”
“Me?” I said. “What did I do?”
“It began with your mother before you were born,” the Tree said, “and grew as you were denied the knowledge of your true nature. For her absence and yours in the world of the Fae, we have been weaker. The wizard, Chesterfield, would make use of that opening to sever the realms.”
“What do you mean by sever?” I asked.
“He is Creavit, a creature of unnatural magic,” the Mother Oak answered. “Should he break our connection with the World of the humans and use the artifacts he has laboriously gathered, he will be successful in subverting the power of natural magic in that reality forever.”
I won’t lie to you. I didn’t follow as much of that as I probably should have, but one thing came through loud and clear: we were talking about something on par with the zombie apocalypse.
“How do we stop him?” I asked.
See how I sounded all big, brave, and purposeful there? Great big ole act. I was getting more scared by the minute.
“The answer is not within my knowledge,” the Mother Tree said, “but you must not create an even larger breach to be exploited by incurring more wrath from the Strigoi, or worse yet, allowing your brother to fall into their hands. You must repair the damage caused by the Ionescu thirst for revenge.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“By finding out the truth of what happened on that long ago day when two lives were lost, setting in motion your mother’s defection from the world of magic.”
Oh, sure thing. I’ll jump right in my time machine and get on that.
Note to self. Don’t have snarky thoughts when there’s an ancient tree hanging out in your head.
“Time is not so fixed and absolute as you now believe, Jinx Hamilton,” the Mother Tree said. “Until you have solved the puzzle I have put before you, do not seek to contact your brother again.”
12
Of all of the things I might have expected to find when I came tip-toeing back into the lair wheeling my bike, a disapproving rat wasn’t one of them. Rodney waited for me on the corner of the work table where he’d obviously been sitting for some time staring down the corridor through the stacks.
He sat up on his haunches as I neared, revealing his snowy chest and ebony belly fur. The shirt-and-pants effect made him look like a disapproving father. Even though I think it’s impossible in terms of rodent anatomy, I swear to you he had his arms crossed, and he might have even been tapping one foot.
Light snoring from the vicinity of the sofas told me my plan to sneak out and get back in undetected had worked so far. On the television screen, Kathy Bates outfitted Leonardo diCaprio in a tuxedo. I had no idea how many times the Titanic might have gone down in my absence.
When Rodney opened his mouth to say something, I put my finger to my lips and shook my head, which did nothing but make his squeaky interrogation louder. Keeping my voice as low as possible, I said, “Stop that. Nobody likes a snitch.”
Fixing me with a glare, Rodney pointed to the bike and then toward the vicinity of the sleepers. The intended message came through loud and clear. “Nobody likes a sneak either.”
&
nbsp; “Okay. Fine,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything, but let’s go upstairs, so we don't wake them all up.”
“Why don’t you want to wake us up?” Tori’s bleary voice asked from the shadows beyond the table. The TV screen backlighted her form, which included a serious case of bedhead.
“Thanks a lot,” I hissed at Rodney. “You’ve just clarified the meaning of the phrase ‘ratted out’ for me.”
“What’s going on with you two?” Tori asked. I could tell she was waking up.
“Shhhh!” I ordered, pointing up emphatically.
She was conscious enough now to get my meaning. Whatever I had to tell her, I did not want the moms to hear.
As I watched, she carefully disentangled herself from the mountain of afghans on the couch and headed for the stairs. Then she paused, retraced her steps, and grabbed one of the platters of chocolate chip cookies. Tori is never so out of it that she forgets to think about where her next meal is coming from.
I held out my hand and let Rodney run up my arm and settle around my neck. When I felt his whiskers tickle my cheek, I said, “Traitor.”
From his position against my ear, I heard a very rodential “harumph.”
With the basement door safely closed behind us, Tori said, “What gives, Jinksy? Why are you skulking around in the middle of the night?”
“It’s more like the middle of dawn,” I said. “And why is everybody suddenly accusing me of skulking?”
“Who is ‘everybody?’” she asked suspiciously. “Have you been to the Valley?”
“Yes,” I said. “And since Rodney the Rat Fink gave me away, I’ll tell you everything, but I seriously need coffee. Let’s go in the storeroom.”
As she followed me around the corner and behind the counter, Tori said, “So if Rodney hadn’t caught you, you weren’t going to tell me everything?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “When have I ever been able to keep anything from you? Of course, I was going to tell you. I just intended to be a little more selective about the timing of the conversation.”
Witch on Second: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 5 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels) Page 9
