More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  “But. You. Just. Swallowed. One.” She enunciated carefully, as if he was having trouble hearing her. He actually did seem to be having trouble focusing as he stood there shivering. And suddenly she felt cold.

  “I mean—” Nick’s jaw twitched again, and he was looking everywhere around them except at her. “Let me think about it. It’s—it’s been a rough few months and I’m just tired of…I’m just tired.” He seemed to slump, standing there.

  I shouldn’t have touched you.

  When he finally looked up in response to her long silence, those lovely gray eyes of his had gone dull. Grace wasn’t sure if the sudden pang in her chest was empathy or something else, but she felt a desperate need to see that smile of his again.

  “Tired,” she repeated. “Tired is understandable, given your idea of resuming normal activities. However, I’d say that a nice normal hot lunch followed by a nice normal nap in the sun would get things back a little closer to normal.”

  The side of his mouth quirked and she smiled broadly at him, encouraged. “Perhaps tomorrow, once you recover from all this ‘normalness’, you could manage a soak in our mineral water. Trish did tell you about the hot tub?”

  “You’re inviting me to take a bath?” he asked, then sniffed his armpits theatrically. “Do I need one?”

  “Absolutely,” she responded, straight-faced.

  He finally smiled, and that dimple returned in all its glory. “So, you have that healing water from the springs what—shipped up here? In barrels or something?”

  She laughed. “No. There’re more than two dozen springs on the mountain, and two of them are warm mineral springs. We pipe it into the hot tub at each cabin and heat it up a bit. I’m afraid the ones in the cabins have been drained and disconnected for the moment, but we have one in our sunroom that you can use.”

  He looked as if she had described heaven to him. “Sunroom?”

  “Sunroom. It’s where the breakfast buffet is normally served, sort of a communal area for everyone staying in the cabins. Great views. It wraps around the back of the house and half of it is private. That’s where our hot tub is. It’s still hooked up.”

  “Hot tub. Can I just stay out there for the rest of my visit?”

  Grace smiled at his enthusiasm. “Well, that would be too much of a good thing. Short dips at first, I think. But our guests who’ve sampled both the water down in town and up here do tell us ours is more beneficial.”

  “Lead on. I think if I envision that hot tub at the end of this trek, I might actually make it back.”

  He did look much better, but Grace had no illusions that it was only the herbs.

  She turned to head for home. “It smells like we’re going to get snow sooner than later.” And perhaps that will make you stay put, Mr. City Man.

  “But I can still use the hot tub if it snows, right?” he asked.

  Grace couldn’t help it. The man had a talent for making her laugh.

  Chapter Five

  “Did’ya hear Dr. Grace? It’s fixin’ ta snow!”

  Well, Nick could certainly hear the news from where he sat, basking in the sunlight that cascaded through the roof and walls of the sunroom, but he didn’t attempt to move in response. He was warm and full and, for the first time in weeks, nothing ached. He could wait for the weather report to come to him.

  Somehow he had been cajoled into coming to the main house for what Grace called a simple hot lunch. He found out, too late, that it was actually the food intended for some kind of celebration tonight in honor of her grandfather’s birthday and Halloween—although she called it something like “Sah-win”.

  But after his first bite he couldn’t manage an objection to eating it early. There was some kind of unbelievable squash casserole and fresh tomatoes along with a chunk of delicious brown bread with soft cheese. Grace hadn’t told him that it was goat cheese until he had licked his fingers clean, but it certainly didn’t taste as if her goats were fed garbage. Then she topped it all off with something called apple stack cake. All in all, it was the best meal he had in a while, although she wouldn’t let him have coffee, insisting on some kind of herbal tea.

  He suspected it wasn’t an ordinary tea, because she’d persuaded him to rest out in the sunroom for ‘just a bit’, at which point she’d asked his permission to check his temperature—this time with a very professional looking temporal thermometer. It was normal, but he knew his blood pressure and his pulse had probably been elevated, because she had very carefully put on a pair of purple examination gloves first. Normally, this would have ruined his mood, but this time he found the experience rather…stimulating.

  Sadly, she hadn’t offered to join him on the lounge chair where he was cocooned in blankets and positioned perfectly to catch the afternoon sun. Instead, she had disappeared somewhere, no doubt to produce massive quantities of drugs and control her criminal empire. But he didn’t, at the moment, give a damn. Whatever it was she had given him in that powder of hers had made him feel like a human being again. He’d drifted off to sleep for a while. He hadn’t felt this good since the doctors had pronounced him in remission.

  For a moment, standing there in the woods, he’d thought it was her touch that had suddenly made him feel so much better. When she’d laid her fingers against his forehead, it had felt like a cool stream had run through him, leaving his hair standing on end.

  But it must’ve been whatever was in that herbal remedy he’d swallowed in the woods that did the trick. Nick smiled at the irony of him ingesting a white powder offered to him by his chief suspect. Maybe he was high.

  Actually, it wasn’t funny at all. He was pretty sure at this point that his analysis on this case had been way off the mark. Just another thing this damn disease had taken away from him. First his physical strength, then his mental skills—now his gut instincts were running on empty as well.

  How was he going to explain this to the Deputy Administrator? Perhaps as a postscript on his resignation letter?

  “Are you dead?”

  Nick was pretty sure he wasn’t yet. He was also pretty sure he didn’t want to open his eyes either, but he propped one open to find a youngster standing next to him, leaning in for a good look. His first impression was of a mop of strawberry blonde hair and intense blue eyes.

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “You don’t look too good.”

  “You should’ve seen me a few hours ago.”

  “Uh huh. Dr. Grace’s been doctoring on you, I bet.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You’ll get better. She fixed up my frog quick as quick. And she’s good with turtles too. And salamanders. And snakes.”

  “I think I fit in there somewhere.” Nick opened both eyes to get a better look at Grace’s pint-sized PR department. He held out his hand through the blankets. “I’m Nick Crowe.”

  A small, rather dirty hand took his and shook enthusiastically. “I’m Jamie Lynn Campbell.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jamie.”

  “So, who are you, then?” Jamie asked. “You ain’t Dr. Grace’s boyfriend ’cause his name was Brian, and he went off to the Amazon without so much as a howdy-do, and I hope those fish with all the teeth get him.”

  “Piranhas,” Nick stated.

  “That’s them!” Jamie agreed, but the grin was replaced with a thoughtful squint. “Are you a new boyfriend then?”

  “No.” Sadly. “I’m a guest. Up at the cabins.”

  Jamie’s face was a study in concentration. “But there weren’t no more guests coming. Unless she forgot you. Oh gosh, she didn’t put you in the Mayapple did she? ’Cause there was really stinky things in that refrigerator—”

  “No, I’m in the Jewelweed and the refrigerator’s stink free thankfully.”

  “Well, I check all the cabins out after the guests leave and see what needs to be fixed and stuff.”

  “I am eternally grateful for your hard work,” Nick said, wondering if the child ever wound down.

&
nbsp; “Mr. Crowe?”

  “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you worried about what mighta been in your refrigerator?”

  “Uh— Well, actually, now that you mention it, yes.”

  “Dead broccoli. And let me tell you, dead broccoli smells worse than a road-killed skunk.”

  “Well, between you and me, I think that broccoli always smells worse than a road-killed skunk. Live or cooked or dead or whatever.”

  “Me too!”

  Apparently this put Jamie entirely at ease because he or she—Nick was having trouble determining which—sat down quickly on the edge of his lounge chair.

  “Do you like snow?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Me too! And we’re gonna get some. It looks like we’re gonna get a lot maybe. Day after next.”

  “I bet there are some great hills around here for sledding.”

  “The best! You have to be careful though. Sometimes you can’t tell a rock from a snow drift.” One fist came up and the hand slapped it hard. “Splat! Dr. Grace’d have some trouble fixin’ that!”

  “I imagine she would.”

  Jamie frowned. “Do you know where she got off to? I need to find her ’cause my project needs to be finished up afore it snows and she’s got the puzzles for my waypoints.”

  Nick felt something throb behind his eyes. “Waypoints? GPS waypoints?”

  Jamie nodded. “You geocache?”

  “Geo-what?”

  Jamie’s face fell. “Darn. I thought you might be a cacher. All our guests’ve been geomuggles so far.”

  “Muggles? Isn’t that—”

  “Yep. But geomuggle means someone who knows nothing about geocaching.”

  “So, enlighten me. I don’t want to remain a geomuggle.”

  Jamie blew out a long breath. “Okay. Geocaching is a kinda game. People all over everywhere do it. You use a GPS to find caches that have been put on the web—you know what the web is, right?”

  Nick lifted one eyebrow in response.

  “Well, you never know with grownups! Anyway, so caches are these containers with logs in them—I mean notebooks, not pieces of wood—and sometimes they have little toys and things. And someone hides them in different places. And you can hide them too!”

  “Like buried treasure?”

  “Nope. Never buried. That’s a rule. Hidden’s all right, but not buried. And you have to ask permission and you can’t do it some places, like national forests and stuff. The Woodsman—” Jamie grew solemn for a moment. “I mean Dr. Grace only has one listed geocache on the mountain, in a place folks can get to without disturbing the guests.” Jamie leaned forward to confide. “Right near to the sign out front, although not a lot of folks find it. Anyway, so you record your visit on the log in the cache and online too.”

  “And you leave the cache there?”

  “For the next cacher to find. You explore all kinda interesting stuff, right in your own town! I betcha you’d enjoy doing it in the big city.”

  “So how do you and Dr. Grace do it up here, if she only has the one?”

  “Well, he started it—The Woodsman I mean—but Dr. Grace is really the best. We do waymarks mostly, but we do real caches sometimes. Waymarks are just places all over the mountain. There’s no cache, just plants for my science project.”

  “Your project?”

  “I am tracking the spread of invasive species on the mountain, then removing the invader and preventing further spread. “I send my results in to the NISC!” Jamie pronounced the letters carefully.

  There was a long pause and Nick made the appropriate questioning noise.

  “The National Invasive Species Council! That’s the US Government!”

  “Very impressive.”

  “Mostly kudzu,” Jamie said with a dismissive hand gesture. “But sometimes we get garlic mustard.”

  “And you said something about puzzles?” Nick asked carefully, not wanting to appear too eager. “Is that a part of your project?”

  “Well, puzzles are the way we give each other the coordinates to find the caches or the waymarks, whichever. Anyway, she put my birthday present in one! That was fun.”

  “So you don’t enter them online then?”

  “Nope. It’s even more fun the way we do it. She gives me a puzzle to solve which gets me the first cache. Then in it is a puzzle to get me to the next one. And we use text messages on our cell phones for the waymarks. She even got me my own cell phone.” The obviously precious phone was carefully pulled out for display.

  Nick nodded. He couldn’t find it in himself to say anything out loud. He was pretty sure of what was coming next and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “Her puzzles are always questions about the mountain, about plants and stuff, animals, things like that. Mine are better. Mine are cipher puzzles!”

  Nick felt his stomach clench and his headache settle into a steady ache.

  “I’m real good at math. I’m gonna be a cryptologist when I grow up. That’s what Dr. Grace tells me anyways. And I’m gonna solve the Beale and the Sweet Sixteen ciphers and—” There was a shake of the blonde head. “You’re not some government spy or something are ya?”

  Nick cleared his throat. “Why?”

  “’Cause Dr. Grace told me if they knew how good I was with ciphers, they’d probably whisk me off to decode all kinds of secret stuff.” Jamie leaned in conspiratorially. “And I don’t like the sound of Washington much. Well, except for the NISC folks.”

  “Understandable. So, we’ll say you’re not good with ciphers then.”

  “Exactly.” A crease appeared between Jamie’s eyebrows. “But I fool Dr. Grace every time. She always has to ask for the key.”

  “And she’s pretty smart herself.”

  “Boy do I know! Would you like to try to solve some of ’em?” Jamie stood up. “I bet she’s in her lab. I’ll go ask her if it’s okay.”

  Before Nick could move, the high-energy bundle that was apparently the key to his whole case disappeared.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit. Of all the luck. It seemed his instincts were just fine, thank you very much. And he had landed dead center on target. And dammit, he wished he hadn’t.

  A kid. Not even ten, if he was guessing right. Someone had involved a child in this—had used a child in this. It wasn’t the first time, but it always struck him as low.

  Only a few people knew that the makers of Smoky Mountain Magic were using geocaching puzzle caches to make their drops with the dealers in Atlanta. They buried the drug in watertight containers and then used stolen cell phones to notify their buyers of the waypoint using ciphers. The buyers would then pay for that “shipment” by burying money and the required cold pills—the key ingredient—for the next batch at a different waypoint, notify the sellers, using ciphers, then exchange keys, and on it went. They used different locations every time.

  At first the drug trafficking organizations had been willing to play along and let the cooks stay incognito using their little games because they weren’t producing massive quantities. But the buyers realized the stuff was so potent that they could cut it down until it was really cheap and still good quality. The boys in the chem. lab said it was 99.99% pure, which was impossible. Thus the name: Smoky Mountain Magic.

  So now everyone was after the cooks, either to eliminate the competition or get the recipe or both. He just wanted to shut them down before anyone else, for a lot of reasons.

  So here he sat feeling sick, but now it wasn’t the damn disease. He couldn’t blame coincidence for this one. The agency had gotten their hands on some of the cache locations, as well as some of the encrypted clues left to lead the buyers to them—complicated ciphers that couldn’t be broken without a key. And they had intercepted text messages with what seemed to be keys, but not keys to the ciphers they had. Nothing matched up. The locations they had apparently weren’t related to the clues they had, and the keys were for other ciphers they didn’t have. Their best people couldn�
�t make the puzzle pieces fit together.

  But of course, Nick couldn’t resist the challenge. He had reached into all the evidence and come up with this mountain. And, despite the fact that Nick’s boss was hoping he was wrong, he would bet his life—what was left of it—that Jamie Lynn Campbell was going to hand him the key to the whole puzzle.

  A ten-year-old kid and the daughter of one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington.

  Damn it all to hell.

  Grace was tempted to use a few choice expletives as she reviewed the results again, but the story was the same. Despite slowing the rate of growth, she was still impacting the active compounds. Not as significantly as before, but still far above the standards, even for Woodruff’s products. And enough to be noticed and remarked on. It was a risk she couldn’t take. The biogenetic testing was going to be risky enough.

  So, if they were going to start production again she would have to consider hiring someone else to deal with the herbs—keeping herself away from that side of the business, at least until they were harvested. At first she had thought wearing gloves religiously—never touching the living plants or roots with her bare hands—would work. But now it seemed to happen if she was anywhere near them.

  They could rearrange the process so that she could stay away from the growing plants. Turn everything upside down to accommodate this so-called gift.

  Then again, she could always leave the mountain. Go hide somewhere else.

  But what if the same thing happens with people?

  Panicky voices started chattering in her head. They were the same voices that had sent her on that mad careening drive from Chapel Hill to the mountain and kept her up here for the past few months wearing gloves and shying away from their guests. She was acting like some demented hermit, dreaming wild dreams and even thinking about hiding out in a cave. She leaned on the lab bench.

  Calm down, Grace. You are going to learn how to control it. You are learning how to control it.

  There was a way. There had to be a way. She had to be able to live some kind of normal life, but it was like trying to find a black cat in a coal bin in the dark. Trying to control something she couldn’t measure or test.