More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  Nick looked at the smoky hills again.

  “Nothing sinister. Just bad luck and bad wiring.” Matt sounded resigned. “So, where are you staying up there?”

  Nick smiled at Matt’s tone. “Some place called Woodruff Herb Farm.”

  “Woodruff.” Matt hunkered over his keyboard once more. “That name sounds familiar for some reason.”

  “And the old investigator raises his pointy head. I better get up the road before it gets dark and I get lost up in one of those ‘hollers’ of yours.” Nick replaced the photograph, picked up his jacket and headed for the door. “And before you find another reason I shouldn’t go up there.”

  And before one of the gangs in Atlanta stumbles onto the source for Smoky Mountain Magic and all hell breaks loose right here in your own backyard.

  Matt stood, coming around the desk. “Can’t you at least have supper and stay the night tonight? Cheryl’ll kill me if—”

  “So don’t tell her. I promise I’ll come back. I have to meet this future quarterback of yours. Maybe Thanksgiving?”

  Shaking his head, Matt sighed. “All right then. Thanksgiving. Absolutely.”

  Nick started to open the door and Matt reached out to hold it shut.

  Nick looked pointedly at the offending hand. “And I promise to bring a good bottle of wine this time?”

  “Whatever’s really going on up there, whatever that sixth sense thing of yours is leading you into, be careful. You may not have a little quarterback waiting for you at home, but— Well, maybe you should. It kind of changes your perspective.”

  I bet it does. But it’s not going to happen.

  “And stay in touch with somebody this time. You know who your sister calls when she gets worried about you.”

  “I’ve got my cell,” Nick said, then added quickly. “And before you tell me cells are useless up there, the place I’m going to has a cellular extender.” Which is one of the reasons I narrowed my target down to that mountain.

  Matt frowned. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.” Nick grinned. “Now can I leave, Dad?”

  Matt opened the door and waved him out. “Wait until you have one of your own,” he said to Nick’s back.

  Nick rolled his eyes at Matt’s assistant, who returned a knowing smile as he left the outer office.

  Despite the lecture, he was glad he’d stopped by. It was a good idea for the one person he had ever trusted with his life to know where he was. Not that he didn’t trust his boss, who was the only person who knew the details, or the local guys who only knew he was in their backyard on some special project. But even though Matt had left the Agency, Nick liked to think Matt still had his back. And with luck Matt would never need to know that Nick had pulled the wool over his eyes. He hoped that would be the worst part of this case, deceiving his closest friend. But his gut told him that wasn’t the worst part. Not even close.

  His gut told him that, one way or another, he was a dead man.

  “Poison.” It was a whisper in the air, but when Grace spun around there was no one there. Nothing except the filthy blackness boiling along the forest floor, devouring everything in its path.

  Grace ran on, slipping on leaves and damp rocks, listening desperately for signs of pursuit, hearing nothing but the mountain’s murmurs and her own ragged breathing.

  “Blight,” came the same soft voice, behind her again, but she knew she would see nothing if she turned.

  She clambered sideways, up a rocky outcropping, her fingers slipping on the damp surface so that she nearly fell back into the shadowy miasma. For a moment she looked down at it coiling beneath her like some smoky serpent. She pulled herself up, barely, and staggered on, exhausted.

  But no matter which way she went it followed her, slithering toward her home, toward everything and everyone she was trying to protect.

  “Bane.” The voice was urgent now and loud at her back and the mountain was singing again—that same raw, penetrating sound she had heard in the hospital.

  Her own shadow loomed up before her, lurching wildly as if some bright light bloomed and faded behind her. Then the crackling of flames and the smell of burning fabric overwhelmed every other sense.

  “Ward!” The voice, from behind her once more, and the song rose to a crescendo.

  Grace spun to see the oily darkness stop and crest, like an ocean wave trembling over her, but moving and bubbling beneath the surface. In front of her stood a woman, her hand upraised, facing the reeking void. Flames leaped up her long skirts to catch her sleeve and then crawled up her long red hair.

  Granny Lily?

  Overwhelmed, Grace stumbled, falling sideways onto the forest floor as the black wave towered over them and Granny Lily screamed, shrieking defiance at the darkness as half of her face bubbled and burned. “WARD!”

  Grace started awake, the scream still ringing in her ears. Her heart pounded wildly as she jerked upright and caught sight of her own face, pale as smoke, wavering before her on the dark screen of her laptop. Another nightmare. She took a deep breath. And Granny Lily again. This had to stop or—

  Another shriek had her shivering and rubbing her arms. She looked out at the garden.

  Jamie tumbled around in the leaves outside with Pooka, giggling madly. Apparently raking said leaves had been abandoned in favor of some fun with the old hound. Not a nightmare then. A daymare. Grace sighed and took out her hair clip with unsteady fingers, pulling her hair into a sloppy pony tail. She watched her ghostly reflection disappear as the laptop woke up and the results she had been reviewing flickered onto the screen.

  At least the numbers were moving in the right direction. Hard to believe that she would be glad to see the Goldenseal seedlings they worked so hard to propagate actually slow their growth rate. Hopefully, the rhizomes on this group weren’t developed enough to test yet, which would be further proof her efforts were paying off. It had been sheer luck that their last batch of herbs hadn’t been sent to their contract testing lab.

  Grace’s cell phone chimed and she checked the display. Daniel.

  “Hey, you,” she answered. “What time is it there?”

  “Konnichiwa, sis. It’s tomorrow here.” Daniel didn’t sound like his normal self. But then again, nothing had been normal for a while now.

  “And where’s here, other than in Japan somewhere?”

  “Tsukuba. Just north of Tokyo. I’m at the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science, for the moment.”

  “Continuing your never ending quest to learn to say ‘I love you’ in every language on earth,” she teased.

  “Yeah, well. Would you believe I’m homesick for the mountain?” Daniel replied.

  “So, if you’re so homesick, why are you there and not here?” she prodded, only half joking.

  “I hope to get home sometime during the holidays,” he said. “Can you hang in there till then?”

  Grace stood and paced to the sunroom doors. “You’ve been talking to Ouida. I’m fine.”

  “You shut down production. You cancel the holiday rentals. You send Ouida and Eddie off on vacation. I don’t even think Eddie’s been off that mountain since he was born.”

  “I had to overnight Ouida’s recipe card file to her sister’s place, so she seems to be settling in. And Eddie’s grandson texted me a photo that you will not believe of Eddie and a very large fish. So I think they’ll survive for a couple of weeks,” Grace sighed. “I just…I need some peace and quiet.”

  Jamie came running up to the doors into the sunroom with Pooka barreling along behind, barking loudly. “Is that Dr. Daniel? Is he coming home?”

  “And I can see that you are getting that peace and quiet.” Daniel sounded amused.

  “Well, at least Jamie doesn’t hover and try to feed me comfort food at every hour or follow me around constantly asking me if I need anything,” Grace responded. “Besides, your girls won’t respond to just anyone.”

  “How are they?”

  “They’re doing
well. Jamie’s an excellent beekeeper.”

  “The girls’re fine as frog’s hair, Dr. Daniel!” Jamie shouted. “But they miss you somethin’ awful.”

  Grace passed the phone into Jamie’s small and grimy hand so that Daniel could get a quick update on his bees. And since Jamie would chatter non-stop given the chance, Grace went in to put on water for tea.

  Jamie’s mom, Beth Campbell, was a neighbor and a close friend. And, because she was single and working as a trauma nurse with an insane commute across the mountains, Grace got an extra pair of hands to help around the place and Beth got free babysitting.

  Grace smiled as she turned on the teakettle.

  Despite being only nine, Jamie was a wiry little dynamo who was willing to learn anything and do anything, no matter how distasteful. In fact, the most distasteful tasks seemed to be the ones undertaken with the most enthusiasm. Many a time Grace had found it necessary to call Beth to explain the smell and the mess before it arrived on Beth’s doorstep.

  “Dr. Grace? He wants to talk to you again.” Jamie ran into the kitchen waving the phone, followed closely by Pooka, who’d stopped obediently at the kitchen door.

  “Thanks sweetie. You go on and do what you can with the leaves. It’ll be dark soon,” Grace said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get ’em to the compost pile afore I head home.”

  “Hopefully tomorrow we’ll manage to find some time for your NISC project,” Grace added.

  “Good! I’ll work on the puzzles tonight and then go out on Thursday or Friday to find ’em.” A flat grimy hand hit an equally dirty fist emphatically. “And I’m gonna nail ’em this time.”

  “I’ll make a botanist of you yet.”

  “No ma’am. I’m gonna be a cryptologist!” Jamie grinned and bounced out the doors and through the sunroom into the garden. Pooka hesitated at the door, then followed.

  “Hey,” she said softly into the phone, taking two teabags out of her stash of breakfast tea.

  “Well, our Jamie hasn’t changed a whit.”

  “If we could just figure out how to bottle that energy and sell it,” Grace sighed.

  “So, Jamie tells me you don’t smile much anymore. Ouida tells me you’re not sleeping well and that you spend every hour you’re awake in the lab. And Eddie tells me you keep going out looking for Pops’s walking stick.”

  “Lovely,” Grace growled and poured the boiling water into her mug. “Good to see I can still have secrets.”

  Pops’s prized walking stick, which he was never without, had disappeared the day he died. It hadn’t been found near his body or anywhere on the farm. Only days before, Pops had called Grace and told her to come home for the weekend, that something was wrong with the mountain. Not on the mountain, but with the mountain. But apparently he hadn’t shared his concerns with Eddie, the farm’s long-time handyman, or Ouida, their live-in cook and Grace’s surrogate grandmother.

  “You know something more about his death, don’t you?” Daniel’s voice was tense. “Look, this project can wait. I can get on a plane—”

  “No, Daniel. There’s nothing more to know. The sheriff says he fell. Probably forgot his walking stick or mislaid it, and without it he lost his footing,” she recited the words like a coroner’s report. “I just want to find it. It’s been in the family a long time.”

  “Yeah. I get it.” Daniel sounded like he wanted nothing so much as to drop everything and come home. “So—I mean—Well, I’d like to hear about you smiling again sometime soon at least. I know you shut down production because some of the testing was off for that last batch of herbs. Have you figured it out yet?”

  “That’s what I’m working on right now,” she said. She hadn’t really told him what was off about those herbs…yet.

  “Okay. I know you are usually pretty happy when you are noodling with something in the lab, so if it’s not Pops, is it that foundation thing? Or that idiot boyfriend of yours?”

  “I told you. Brian is ancient history. I haven’t heard from him in months.”

  “Well, he was sort of fixated on saving the rainforests.”

  “Singlehandedly, as it turns out.” When Grace had decided to delay their plans for the Amazon so she could settle her grandfather’s estate, Brian had just packed up and headed out on his own. That had been a bit of a shock.

  “Sorry, sis,” Daniel said softly. “So what is going on?”

  “It’s complicated and I can’t talk about it on the phone. I’ll tell you all about it when you come home.”

  “You are freaking me out now.”

  “Like back when we were teenagers, and I had that kudzu in my room?” Grace tried to layer as much meaning into that as she could.

  “Kudzu?” There was a long pause. “Oh.”

  “Exactly.” She took a deep breath, choosing her words carefully. “It’s best right now if I keep the visitors up here to a minimum, at least until I can get this…get things under control.” If I can.

  Another long pause. “Gracie?”

  Grace smiled. “Yes, Danny?”

  There was a long moment of static and silence.

  “Whatever’s going on, whatever has you burrowed in up there, I’d hate for you to give up your plans. The rainforests are vanishing pretty damn quick.”

  “I know.” Along with the medicinal plants Grace had hoped to find. “But—”

  “You can’t shut yourself off from the world forever.”

  “Not forever.” Not if I can help it.

  “Good.” He sounded relieved.

  “So, what are you doing to celebrate Pops’s birthday tomorrow? I mean today?” Grace asked.

  “Going to Mount Tsukuba. It’s called the purple mountain and from what I hear, it’s a lot like home.”

  And by home, he meant their mountain. “Sounds lovely. We’re doing the soul cakes for him. Ouida made the dough before she left. And, of course, I’ll set a place for him at supper.”

  “Just like he used to do for Gram.” Daniel sounded like he missed their annual ritual.

  “Yes. And the wreaths and cider out at the cemetery.”

  “Drink a toast for me.”

  Grace smiled. “I will. And you— You dream good dreams for me, baby brother.”

  There was a long pause. “I will.”

  “Love you.”

  “Daisuki desu, big sis.”

  Grace slid the phone back into her pocket and walked out through the sunroom to check on Jamie’s progress in the garden. The youngster waved from the other side of a huge pile of leaves and Grace gave a quick thumbs up, barely managing to hold back the tears that suddenly threatened.

  Normally she would be out there laughing right along with Jamie as they tried to keep the pile of leaves intact against Pooka’s determined onslaughts. But Daniel was right. She had forgotten how to laugh. And she realized she couldn’t even remember when the leaves had put on their brilliant show of color, much less when they had fallen.

  Chapter Two

  About a quarter of a way into the mountains, Nick had to admit that Matt was right—he hadn’t really looked at trees in a long while. And he’d never seen anything quite like the colorful show these mountains put on. But as Matt had also said, a bit further up and this season’s show was over: the trees were bare.

  And Nick could see how easy it could be to get lost up here, especially after dark. It wasn’t exactly foggy, but the signs pointing the way seemed to blur and fade as his lights hit them, and shadows nearly obscured the entrance to the place where he was staying. Everything seemed a bit hazy. Even the rock and wood sign proclaiming Woodruff Herb Farm & Cabins, brightly lit and well-kept, seemed to blend into the surrounding vegetation as if it had grown there. He had to concentrate to see the stone posts that graced either side of the entryway.

  Maybe the flight and the drive up from Asheville had taken more out of him than he realized. This last bit, up a blacktop road barely qualified to be called one, with hairpins and drop offs that would likely t
ake your breath in the light of day, had squeezed out his last bit of adrenaline, and he had been running on reserves for a long while.

  He drove up next to the post on the left where the rental agent down in Asheville said the keypad was mounted and rolled down the window of his SUV. There was a tremendous crack somewhere in the trees, followed by a crash and a cascade of noisy echoes. At least his reflexes were solid. His hand had moved smoothly under his jacket before he realized it must have been something falling out there in the woods—something large falling out there in the woods. Now it was completely silent once more.

  Shaking his head, he entered the code the realtor had given him into the keypad. The gate, sitting back from the road in the shadows, swung open quietly. No doubt somewhere up there some kind of alarm had just gone off. Taking a deep breath of the moist air, he drove through.

  In addition to warning him that he would find it hard to see the signs for Woodruff Farm and likely get lost up on the mountain because “everyone else did”, the locals at the Trailhead Tavern back in town had filled him in a bit. They were more than happy to tell him about how sinful it was that he had missed the great whitewater rafting and the peak fall color up here, in addition to the fabulous cooking of someone named Ouida up at the farm.

  They also told him things he already knew from his research. Logan Woodruff, locally known as “The Woodsman”, was a brilliant botanist and the owner of the farm. He’d passed away only a few months ago. His granddaughter, Grace Woodruff, had inherited the place—actually the entire mountain.

  Then there were those that spoke of Ouida’s cooking and said it was famous because of the herbs she used, the ones “Miss Grace” had been cultivating up there for retail and wholesale trade until she shut down production last month.

  The owner of the tavern, who apparently was also the cook, had proceeded to prove it to Nick by serving him mountain trout “pulled right out of the river today” that tasted better than anything he’d had in quite a long time. Perhaps it was the air up here. But the waitress insisted that it was the herbs—Woodruff Herbs.