Beacon's Hope (Potomac Shadows Book 2)

by Jim Johnson

  I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

  But first…after we meet with Miss Chin, you and I should take a trip to the Holding. There is something I would like for you to help me find.

  “All right.” Curious, I made a note to myself to plan time with Charity. First we’d introduce Malcolm to Miss Chin, then I’d head home, spend some time with Abbie, and then, maybe, find some time alone with Charity.

  Never a dull moment in this Beacon’s life, that’s for sure.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  MALCOLM STOOD UP STRAIGHT ON MISS Chin’s doorstep, adjusting his Baltimore Ravens parka. “Do I look all right?”

  I glanced at him. The twinkling studs in his ears, his short-cropped dark hair, the jacket, his pegged jeans. “You look fine, Malcolm. This isn’t a beauty contest.” I glanced at the door we had just knocked on. “Besides, Miss Chin has probably already seen us. She’s weird like that.”

  A low ‘mrrr-row’ sounded behind us. I turned to glance back at Miss Chin’s small stone path that led to the sidewalk. Her large tabby cat sat on the path, staring at us with curiosity in his eyes.

  Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “Damn! That’s the biggest freaking cat I’ve ever seen.”

  I nodded. “Malcolm, meet Mister Parkour. He’s Miss Chin’s cat.”

  Malcolm made a little wave. “Hey, cat.” He glanced at me. “This the one you think is magical, somehow?”

  I shrugged. “Miss Chin told me that Mister Parkour likes to help with some of her meditations and workings, so I’m just guessing. As far as I know, he’s a Weaver too.”

  Malcolm shot me a sour look. “Yeah? What does Charity say about that?”

  I patted my satchel. Charity was inside, a binder clip in place to keep the book partially open. “Charity?”

  I have been listening. While other Weavers in the past have had animal familiars and companions, as far as I know, none of those animals were Weavers in the sense we understand.

  I frowned as I knocked again. “That doesn’t exactly sound definitive.”

  My experience in such matters was limited.

  The door opened, and Miss Chin stood in the doorway, dressed in a simple blouse and skirt. She looked up at us from inside the screen door. “About time you two got here.”

  I raised an eyebrow and glanced at Malcolm. “Good to see you too, Miss Chin.”

  She gave each of us a measured look and then opened the door. “Tea for everyone. In the kitchen.”

  I led the way into the house followed by Malcolm. I glanced back to see Mister Parkour follow along. Miss Chin let the screen door whisper shut, and then closed the heavy wooden main door. She leaned down and scratched her cat under the chin. “No tea for you, Mister Parkour. How about a little milk?”

  The four of us assembled in the kitchen, with me and Malcolm sitting at a couple stools along the counter bar and Mister Parkour making a beeline for a small saucer set on the floor filled with milk.

  Miss Chin busied herself with pulling out cups and saucers, and then brought it all over to us with a steeping kettle of tea.

  As she poured, she glanced at me and then Malcolm. “This your friend?”

  I nodded. “Miss Chin, this is Malcolm Forbes. Malcolm, Miss Chin.”

  Malcolm stuck his hand out awkwardly and Miss Chin clasped it briefly. “I know of you, boy. I have friends in Chinatown you helped move.”

  Malcolm raised an eyebrow. “No kidding? I’ve had a lot of customers in Chinatown.” He shrugged and then smiled. “I hope what you hear is good.”

  She finished pouring the tea and then took a seat on another stool. “Hear you are a hard worker, kind to your day staff, and efficient.” She glanced at me. “How is he as a student?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How did you…?”

  Miss Chin shrugged. “Tea leaves, scrying stones, intuition. I knew you had someone you were helping.”

  She raised a finger and tapped the side of her nose. “Smart to keep him hidden from me. I might have been harder on you in training.”

  I blanched at that. Her training had been challenging enough. I don’t know what would have happened if she had made it more difficult.

  I glanced at Malcolm and then focused on her. “If we’re going to be honest, Miss Chin, I think I’m the wrong teacher for Malcolm. He’s done well with what I’ve taught him, stuff I’ve passed on to him from you.”

  She stared at me. “But?”

  I shrugged. “But, I don’t think Malcolm is suited to be a Beacon.”

  Malcolm glanced at me. “Hey, wait a minute…”

  I rested my hand on his arm. “Hang on, dork.” I grinned at him and then glanced at Miss Chin. “Based on my very limited experience, I suspect Malcolm’s going to make a better Warden than anything else.”

  Miss Chin raised an eyebrow and then focused on Malcolm. “Really? Interesting.” A look crossed her face that I couldn’t figure out, but then she brightened and said, “That’s good. You two work good together?”

  I nodded. “Malcolm’s been very helpful and is good in a fight. He has some talents that I think will benefit him as a Weaver and a Warden.”

  Miss Chin gave me a speculative look then shrugged. “Training will reveal the truth of that.” She leveled a look at Malcolm. I could sense the challenge in her eyes.

  “So how about it, mover-man? Want to train with me and Rachel and learn more about what you’ve Awakened into?”

  To his credit, Malcolm stared into her eyes with some level of confidence I wish I’d possessed the first time I met her. “I would like you to train me, Miss Chin. Rachel here has shown me so much. I’d like to learn more.”

  She nodded. “How you balance training with your job? This is important, boy.”

  He shrugged and then sipped at his tea. “Well, first, I’ll just cut my hours back on the moving. Since I set my own hours anyway, I’ll just take on fewer jobs. Second…” He glanced sidelong at me. “I might have a regular assistant coming on, so I’ll be able to shift some of my workload over to her. On the slow days we can train together.”

  A slow smile spread across my face. Even with some of the issues going on, things were slowly falling into place.

  But. We were here for another reason too. I focused on Miss Chin. “So, it’ll be great to train with you and Malcolm, Miss Chin. I think the three of us can do a lot of work together that just two of us can’t manage.”

  “Some lessons I have not taught you because they require three or more participants.” She focused on me. “How goes your practice with the journal? Have you opened it yet?”

  I gave her a guarded look but then nodded. “I figured out the lock a couple days ago and have started exploring the journal. I think it’s full of interesting information, but I need time to study it.”

  She looked closely at me, and then smiled. “Hah! Sounds like you be busy. Training, studying, moving furniture with him!” She grinned and then poured us more tea.

  I picked up my cup and sipped at it. “Miss Chin, I have a question about the etherics and the ley threads.” Malcolm, Charity, and I had agreed on the way over that the direct approach might work best.

  Miss Chin focused on me. “Yes?”

  I focused on her eyes, reaching out with my senses to try and detect any tremor in her aura. I sensed Charity in the link with me. “Can our talents, our powers…be used to affect other people?”

  “Affect how?”

  “Well,” I said, “We know that Malcolm can produce fire to shoot at people, and I know I can use the threads to create shields and other things, but can we use the ley threads to impact other people’s senses, or memories, or physical actions?”

  I tried to make it sound like a natural question but me and Malcolm and Charity were on virtual tiptoes waiting for the answer.

  However, Miss Chin had the best poker face of the three of us. I sensed no change in her aura or the ley etherics surrounding her. She said, “Yes, we can. With training and practice.”

&n
bsp; I blinked a couple times. I don’t know what answer I was expecting, but just hearing a simple yes sort of took the air out of me.

  Malcolm rallied first. “So, like, if we do something wrong, or use a talent in front of someone by accident, we can make them forget about it?”

  Miss Chin stared at him, her face again an unreadable mask. “Yes. Again, with training and practice. You go into someone’s mind ham-fisted, throwing your power around, you’re liable to make them forget everything and then you have a basket case on your hands.” She sipped her tea. “Memory is a dangerous thing to play with. It takes skill—real skill.”

  I nodded, then took a breath and asked the question I needed to ask. “Can you teach this skill to us, Miss Chin?”

  She focused on me over her tea cup, a flash of fire in her eyes I had never seen before and which chilled me to the very soul. She blinked and the fire was gone.

  She said, simply, “Yes.”

  There was a long, pregnant silence, and then she brightened up and said, “So when we gonna start? Hah? This gonna be fun, the three of us.”

  She rested a hand on top of mine and gave it a little squeeze that felt more vise-like than friendly. “Maybe bring that book with you sometime and we’ll make it a foursome.” She cackled and then stood to rummage in the fridge for some snacks.

  I traded a smile with Malcolm and then stared into my tea, feeling super conflicted about everything I had heard. Miss Chin had layers and layers about her that I had yet to dig into, and for the first time since meeting her, I was afraid of what I was going to find if I dug too deep.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  THE SPINNER HUMMED A LITTLE SONG to himself as he floated in his pool of etheric energy. The song was likely off-key and he had forgotten most of the words, but he thought he remembered it well enough and put full energy into it.

  There was no one in the woven world to hear him, no one to applaud or disapprove. He was safe and alone, in a pool of his own creation.

  He vaguely remembered his mother had taught him the tune, but the specifics of the occasion were lost on him. That had been so long ago, so long he could not remember. Time was odd here in the woven world, and he had spent the majority of his waking days here.

  Here, in the woven world, he was a god. Back home, his broken, frail body was sickly and he was little more than a hospital freak, a lifelong patient, a body of water and flesh taking up a bed.

  And yet, that pathetic mortal body kept his soul alive and capable of coming to the woven world as he desired. As much as he loathed his own body, he was grateful to it, because without it, he did not know what he would be.

  He focused on the woven world around him. Here, he was a god without equal, able to weave etheric energy to do so many magical things. He could travel across the woven world quickly, or slowly, and he could affect people back in the mortal world.

  That’s how he had managed to secure medical facilities and care for as long as his mortal body lived. Mortal brains were precious, fragile things, easily subject to suggestion and outright manipulation.

  If only he could get his hands on certain mortals, though. That girl Rachel and her ally Malcolm had proven to be a pain in his side again. They had wiped out his skirmish line of ‘geists more easily than he would have expected. Even though he had sent them as a scouting party, he had hoped they’d have put up more of a fight.

  But their loss wasn’t a complete failure. He had studied their remains and had monitored the fight from the safety of his warding circle here in the woven world. From there, he observed what he needed to do, how he needed to make his ‘geists stronger.

  With that knowledge, and the nearly-full pool of etheric energy in which he now floated, he would create a new army of ‘geists, and send them forth to wreak havoc on Rachel and all that she held dear.

  It would take time yet. His strength was nearly back to full health, and the new avatar he was building for his own use was as yet still under construction. But once it was complete, he would be powerful once again and free to influence the mortal world and take what he wanted.

  And that girl Rachel and her allies would not be able to stop him this time. He had wheels within wheels churning away, and it was just a matter of time before all his pieces were in place.

  He had started to extend tendrils into the mortal world, influencing certain people here and there. And he was putting ‘geists into place in strategic locations. In time, he would have pieces in the right places, and his assault on Rachel’s world would be sudden and overwhelming.

  He just needed patience. He leaned his avatar form back into the etherics, and resumed humming that snippet of song. Time was on his side.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  CHARITY AND I SPENT THE NEXT few days scanning for and guiding lost souls to the Veil and into the Holding. I felt like I had fallen behind given the various things I’d had to deal with lately, and it felt so good to get back to it and feel like I was making a real difference in the lives of so many lost souls.

  Malcolm and Miss Chin and I had a couple of training sessions, and they went well, though I was never as comfortable around Miss Chin, since I had my suspicions and she had done nothing to allay them. Somehow she was involved in whatever had happened to my grandfather’s memory, and possibly the memories of others at Branchwood.

  And then there was the issue of my own memory. Charity and I had meditated on it for a time, though Charity was not all that familiar with the technique and could not say if I had been tampered with.

  And of course, I couldn’t know if something had happened. I couldn’t know what I had forgotten, after all. I had told Bonita about it and she had somewhat flippantly told me to go see a hypnotist, who might be able to use therapy to help me remember.

  I thought that was preposterous, but who knows. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.

  Charity and I entered the Holding on a day in the DC metro area that was warmer than other recent days. The suggestion on the weather channels was that the winter grip on the area had eased, and that spring was finally starting to make its presence known.

  The Holding was still its usual dingy gray, though I had dragged Malcolm in with me a couple times and had taught him how to cleanse it much as Charity had taught me. Together we started tiding up the place around where we lived, though the Holding was massive, near infinite, according to Charity, and so I seriously doubted the three of us would be able to make much headway.

  At least it felt good to be trying.

  Charity led me into the Holding, and then guided me through the shadowed streets of Old Town Alexandria, or at least the Holding’s echoed version of the same.

  She told me a little about her life during the Revolutionary War, though not much, and then had encouraged me to help her find one of the old buildings where she had stored things within the Holding.

  It had taken a few days of researching old maps and then carefully studying the streets of the Holding. We had gone into the Holding under reinforced warding domes, using Miss Chin’s guidance on how to make them stronger and undetectable by most ley scrying efforts. Even Miss Chin had struggled to detect our latest version, though she had been quick to emphasize that the Spinner and others might be able to detect us.

  But we took faith that we were not seen, and with a couple extra bags stored in my satchel, we made our way into the echo of Old Town and soon found the target building.

  Its doors had long since been boarded up, and it took a few energetic kicks to knock the boards loose. In the real world, this building had been knocked down and replaced by a hotel, but Miss Chin had reminded me that sometimes changes in the real world don’t get reflected in the Holding. It was an imperfect shadow of the real world.

  I guessed there had to be some bigger plan at work, but I didn’t even want to think about the more cosmic aspects of that.

  I stepped into the abandoned building, the crystal hanging around my neck the only illumination I needed. I was using my Sight, less r
eliant on my mortal eyes than usual. “You said it was downstairs, right?”

  Yes. Assuming the owners of this building did not change the property too much, the basement floor should be the original dirt, uncovered.

  “All right.” I worked my way through the silent and dusty interior, sidestepping antique furniture. I found a small closet containing a narrow set of stairs leading down. “This it?”

  Most likely, yes.

  I sensed the excitement in her voice, felt my heart rate jump up a step in reaction. There was always a certain thrill in getting closer to the end of a quest.

  I stepped carefully down the narrow spiral staircase, resting my hands on the walls to help stabilize my descent. My nose filled with the smell of musty earth.

  Fifteen steps later, my feet hit earth. I gazed around the basement, which was much cooler than the room above. The floor was unadorned dirt, as Charity had suspected, and the walls were wood frame with dirt packed into them. No covering, no drywall. Just packed dirt throughout.

  “Now what?” The basement was filled with bits of wood, scraps of furniture, and piles of rusted metal that might have been tools at one point.

  There, in the far corner. There should be a post set into the ground. Look for the one with the crossed ‘C’ carved into it.

  “Crossed C, as in Charity?”

  Yes. I guess it isn’t as creative as it could be.

  I smiled and moved over to the far wall, and then crouched down and started hunting for the symbol. I found it on the third post in the ground. “Now we dig?”

  It should be just a foot or two under the surface. When I buried it, there had been more furniture and junk in the basement that I was able to pile on top of the burial. None but the most dedicated search would have ever found it.

  I nodded, and then got on my knees and then my butt. I pulled a small gardening spade out of my satchel and then started to dig. The ground was hard-packed with age, and it was almost like trying to dig through concrete.