More Than Magic (Books of the Kindling)

by Donna June Cooper

  “I may have winged Boyd, but the paint—the mountain lion finished the job,” she said. “I just stung Annie a bit and I think you winged Mitch.”

  “The big cat got Boyd? Your big cat?” Nick frowned. “I thought you were pulling my leg.”

  “Only with the bear and wild boar part.”

  “Okay, so how the hell did you get in here? Were you hiding back there?” He pointed to the shelves.

  “No, I wasn’t hiding. I—I came in a secret entrance.” An entrance you might not be able to use.

  “So, we can go out that way then, and use my sat phone—” He felt around and under his vest, then realized he wasn’t wearing his jacket.

  “Your phone!” Grace was thrilled. “I forgot about it. Here I was thinking we’d have to get down off the mountain in the snow. It’s in your jacket?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I can make a call from anywhere if I can see the sky, right?”

  “Pretty much. Unless the cloud cover’s too thick.”

  Grace’s heart fell. “Well, we’ll just have to hope it isn’t. There’s a spot just a bit north of the ginseng bed with a clear view.”

  “Let’s go.” He motioned her ahead of him.

  “Nick, wait. First I have to explain something about the way I got in.”

  “Let’s talk on the way,” Nick said impatiently.

  That’s the problem. If we try to do this together, I have no idea how the mountain will react to you. You’re not even a Woodruff. We may end up going in circles. “Here. You may need this.” She handed him back his gun, along with the extra clip she had tucked into her jacket. “It was a bit easier to tote around than the shotgun.”

  He slipped it back in its holster under his vest as they went back through the shelves and on through the office into the cavern.

  Grace knelt down and pulled their jackets out of the pile of blankets, handing Nick his, then studied the backpack’s contents.

  She didn’t want to leave him here alone. If the mountain sent them in circles she would deal with it then. She took off her headlamp and replaced the batteries. Pulling a small daypack out of the backpack, she crammed in the first-aid kit, the instant heat packs, water bottles, a handful of energy bars, glow sticks, and the extra flashlight. She stood, holding out the crank flashlight for him.

  “Good. I thought you were going to walk off and leave me in the dark again. And me still dealing with—”

  “The whole ‘not dead thing’. I know.” She waved the flashlight at him and he grabbed both it and the pack. Grace sighed. “Men.”

  “What else do we need?” He shrugged into his jacket and scooped up the shotgun.

  “I sincerely hope we won’t need that. If things work out, we can make a call to check on Jamie, contact the sheriff, and head for home. But if things don’t work out, we’ll be back here pretty quick.”

  Nick’s smile was grim as he checked the shotgun and slung it over his shoulder. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Grace looked around the cave and spotted a glint of silver in the blankets. She felt a chill and her stomach clenched. “I almost forgot.”

  “What?” Nick glared at the blankets as if he expected a snake to slither out.

  “Pops’s walking stick.” She bent and untangled it from the blankets, hugging it to her. “You found it. How could I forget?”

  “That’s yours?” Nick looked from her face to the walking stick.

  She pointed to the four sets of initials carved down one curving twist of the stick beneath the silver top. The last set was LMW.

  “Logan Marshall Woodruff,” she said, running her finger over it. “Pops. It’s been handed down from generation to generation.” But how did it get in the lab?

  “I thought your Pops—He had an accident didn’t he?” Nick asked.

  Old Annie isn’t what she appears. “He fell,” she said. “Everyone thought he’d lost it somewhere on the mountain. That’s why he…lost his footing.” Grace was suddenly dizzy.

  “Grace?” Nick grasped her arm. “You okay?”

  “Maybe one of the b-boys found it up there,” she said. Or maybe it was worse than that.

  “There’s something wrong with our mountain, Gracie-girl.”

  “Here.” Nick guided her over to the bed. “Sit.”

  She sat without protest, still hearing Pops’s voice, that last phone call.

  “He called me. He told me there was something wrong with the mountain.” She felt a little sick.

  Nick crouched beside her and shoved a bottle of water into her hand. “Drink.”

  It didn’t help much, but she no longer felt as if she was going to throw up. “He knew.”

  “You think he stumbled over this?” Nick said.

  “No. I mean…Well…not then.” She looked toward the back of the cave.

  “Why wouldn’t he have called the sheriff? Someone? If he saw—”

  Shaking her head, Grace looked back at him. “He didn’t see it then, he sensed it. He felt it. Like—like a stutter in his own heartbeat. I felt it too, dreamed about it, but I didn’t understand.” She took a deep breath.

  “Grace… If you’re thinking they killed him—”

  “I don’t know!” she said. “But—I defended them to you! I defended them!”

  “Hey,” Nick said in a soothing voice. “I’ve been around the block a few times. If they’d murdered your Pops or anyone else, I would be dead. Mitch or Boyd would’ve shot me without thinking twice. And Old Annie…” He hesitated, as if remembering. “You can see it in their eyes, the way their hands shake, and— My gut tells me she’s never killed anyone before. Not cold, the way she shot me.”

  “But this—this thing I have. It told me Annie was wrong somehow.” She told him what had happened when she was checking Annie over, including the feeling of someone muttering and laughing at her. “But I didn’t tell you.” She stared at the walking stick. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I didn’t even know what it was I was sensing. I thought it was Boyd.” She looked up into his clear gray eyes. “And you almost got killed.”

  Nick sat on the blanket in front of her. “But I didn’t. And, to be honest with you, until just a little while ago—” he touched his vest, just over the bullet hole, “I probably would have said you were imagining things.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” she said.

  He grimaced at her. “And I felt it too. I just didn’t know what it was.”

  “You felt— What?”

  “Annie’s…wrongness. At the house. Her frail appearance, the way she acted, was out of sync with a lot of other things. And there’s something more to her matriarchal hold on those boys,” he said. “Just before she shot me, I could have sworn she was—” he pointed to his head, “—in here talking to me.”

  Grace sat up. “But you couldn’t quite hear her. Like the volume was low, or the tuning was off, or something.”

  “Yeah. Weird.” He nodded. “I thought it was just adrenaline or the altitude.”

  Grace stared at the back of the cave. “It’s the old magic.”

  “What?”

  “I never thought—” She frowned and pushed herself up off the blanket as Nick stood. “I need to tell you about this place. If I’m right, we need to be very careful.”

  He put out his hand. “Why?”

  “Because—” she grimaced, “—Annie might be able to get in here.”

  “Seriously? Through your back way?”

  “Maybe. Maybe some other way. I don’t know,” Grace said. “Listen. When I was a bit younger than Jamie, I explored these caves by myself and found a room with ancient carvings on the walls.”

  “By yourself?” That eyebrow of his was up.

  “Yes. Too brave for my own good, like Jamie. But this is the important part, the part you need to hear. When I took Pops in later, he couldn’t see all of the carvings, only some of them. And when he tried to go back into the cave looking for that room by himself, he couldn’t f
ind it. All he found were dead ends and loops.” She watched his glance slide to the wall, searching for any signs of an opening. “The cave didn’t want Pops to find that room again. The old magic kept him out.”

  “You keep using that word—old. Is there ‘new magic’?”

  Grace blinked at him. “I-I don’t think so. It’s just the name Pops used. That his grandfather used. The magic that the Mother used long ago.” She looked at her hands.

  “The magic you used on me?” Nick asked in a quiet voice.

  “I-I think so.”

  Nick frowned, then looked back to the lab. “So, when Annie said this place hides in plain sight, is that what she meant? This old magic of yours hides it?”

  “Pops told me the mountain protected the ginseng bed, which just happens to sit over the other entrance to this cave system.” Grace looked up at the ceiling and wondered where this would be in relation to Jamie’s Woodruff Triangle map. “I never knew this place was here. And I don’t think Pops did either. But if it’s like the other end, it is invisible to almost everyone.”

  “Except you,” he said. “And, apparently, Annie.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “That’s what she meant about Boyd and Mitch having problems finding it.”

  “Yes. It’s like the ginseng bed. Pops always said he had to work pretty hard not to walk right by it himself, but he managed. Until he tried to get to that room.” She smiled. “I had to be with him.”

  “You think Annie is like you. She has this old magic?”

  “Maybe…” She shook her head. “Honestly? I don’t know.”

  He looked thoughtful. “You think she’s been in your cave? Or she might come in that other entrance?”

  Grace looked down at the floor, now covered with her footprints. “This place and the office out there both looked pretty undisturbed. Maybe, for some reason, she can’t get very far, like Pops.”

  “All right. All right,” he waved a hand. “If we end up going in circles in there, I don’t want you going back alone. We’ll figure out something else.”

  “But Jamie—”

  “We’ll figure out something else,” he repeated, lifting his flashlight and starting to crank it.

  “Men,” Grace muttered as she lifted the walking stick, adjusted her headlamp, and strode toward the wall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nick blinked. Grace had disappeared as if she had walked through solid rock. For a moment he thought her old magic had slammed the very first door in his face, then he peered at the floor and realized, like a hall of mirrors, watch your feet and you get through.

  He emerged on the other side of a very narrow and low passage, dragging the pack behind him. Grace was standing there smiling in relief.

  “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. But you got through. That’s a good sign.” She started off, but made a point of not getting too far ahead of him.

  “Maybe we should hold hands?” Nick said, cranking his flashlight to keep the charge up.

  “It gets too narrow in some spots, but I won’t leave you behind again,” she said.

  Nick followed after her. “So, this old magic.” He felt strange using those words, “When did you realize you could use it the way you do?”

  “Tink.”

  “That little cancer patient of yours?”

  “Yes.” Grace negotiated a downward slope, and he slid down after her. “She asked me to fix her. Said that my mountain sang to her and told her I could.”

  “Your mountain?” he repeated. “Sang to her?”

  “I had told her about the mountain and Pops and everything up here. Well, almost everything.”

  “Not about Granny Lily, I assume.”

  Grace laughed. “No. And I shouldn’t have told you that story.”

  “Keeps you from having to tell me today.”

  “Anyway, I simply cooperated with Tink’s imagery. Sometimes patients just need to believe. Only this time, something happened.”

  “And that something ended up with you on the floor, out cold, and your little patient cured.”

  “How did you—” She stopped and turned around. “So, the government knows about that?”

  Damn. He had managed to frighten her again.

  “Only that you fainted in a patient’s room and immediately left med school. The fact that the patient went into remission was a separate and unrelated piece of information.” Nick leaned forward. “The government doesn’t make those kinds of leaps of logic. Magic isn’t exactly on our radar.”

  Nick was rewarded with a grimace.

  “Good. So I only have to worry about Nick McKenzie, DEA Agent, and what he reports back.”

  “We were talking about your magic. My magic comes later.” Based on her expression, that didn’t satisfy her. “I promise that I will explain everything, but first I need to know this—” he pointed to himself, “—isn’t just some pharmaceutically-induced hallucination,” Nick said, though by now he was sure it wasn’t.

  Grace sighed and went on. “I came home to take Pops’s place in the business for a while. I thought the whole thing was my imagination—stress, grief, your basic mental breakdown. But then it started affecting our products.”

  “Products?”

  “The herbs. Whatever this thing— This…” Grace grasped for the right word.

  “Gift?” Nick offered.

  “Perhaps… I’ve always been good with plants. Pops used to joke about my room being the ICU for some of his worse cases. Even when I was really young, my room was always full of sick plants and they always seemed to get better. But after I went into this cave, after I touched one of the carvings, it changed pretty dramatically.”

  Nick looked around. “So you think—?”

  “After that— Well, there were things that happened. An entire room full of kudzu, for one thing. Then there was Pooka.”

  “Your Pooka?” Nick thought about the energetic hound. “Wait. How old is he?”

  “Pooka’s almost as old as me.”

  Nick stopped in his tracks. “That is really old.”

  Grace smirked. “I’ll try not to be insulted, but you’re right. And there were other things that everyone wrote off as good luck or good genes or coincidence.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, you get used to it. You don’t think about it.”

  “So that’s your Pooka in that photo in your lab with you and Pops when you were little. I thought that dog had to be his father.”

  Grace looked back, smiling. “That’s him. We’ve been buds for a long time.”

  “So, dogs and plants and people? Anything else?”

  She started forward again. “Frogs and salamanders—snakes.”

  “Jamie’s?”

  “Jamie’s. But it was all just like my green thumb. I had a way with hurt things. It was never dramatic. Cuts didn’t stop bleeding instantly. Breaks didn’t mend—”

  “Hmm?” he prompted when she stopped talking.

  “Well, there was this one time with Daniel’s arm when we both thought it was a really bad break, but by the time Pops got him to the ER, it was only a sprain. I guess it could have been a break after all,” she said. “But mostly, things just healed faster.”

  “You didn’t notice anything?”

  “No. Not really. Even in med school, it was the same. Just little things. When I was on clinical rotation, patients said I had a soothing touch and I made them feel better. Things like that. I never even thought it could be anything but…” She shrugged. “I mean, it didn’t even cross my mind. I was a scientist.”

  “But your Granny Lily and the whooping cough?”

  “I always assumed it was a family legend exaggerated over time, until Tink, until…”

  When she didn’t go on, Nick prompted. “Until what?” Nick asked. “What changed with Tink?”

  “Well, I—I think, for just a moment, I wanted to fix things. It was right after Pops’s funeral. And she was talking about him and the mountain and—” she took a deep br
eath. “I just couldn’t take any more needless death, especially not hers. She’s a special little spirit, with her own brand of fairy dust.”

  “And me? I’m not exactly the fairy type.” He frowned. “And I can’t believe I said that.” This was getting crazier by the minute.

  “No, you aren’t.” She smiled over her shoulder. “In all honesty, there was something else at work. Something—much, much bigger than you or me. It was—it was as if once the spigot was on, I couldn’t turn it off. If I touched anyone with a bare hand and they were ill or injured, I was tempted to heal them. I started wearing gloves and avoiding people.”

  “You hid out up here.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about Jamie?”

  “Well, with Jamie there was nothing major to ‘fix’. But you? You were—you were a temptation I couldn’t resist, apparently.”

  “Temptation.” He repeated the word in a tone that told Grace he was thinking about something else entirely.

  Grace increased her stride. “That first time, out on the trail—”

  “When you took off your glove and touched me.”

  The way he said it made her shiver. “That was an accident.”

  “So, not a temptation then.” His voice reverberated all the way to her toes.

  “Oh yes.” She managed not to stumble. “That’s when it started.” No, that wasn’t what she meant.

  “Mine started in the parking lot when I met you.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Well, I-I knew there was something, but I didn’t know what until I—” she couldn’t remember what she was going to say.

  “I knew.”

  “I—” Grace stopped and turned. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.”

  “Temptation, right?”

  “No. I mean yes. When—when I touched you, I knew what was really wrong with you.”

  “Just from touching me?”

  “Another part of this—gift, I suppose.”

  “So, after that you couldn’t resist me,” he quipped.

  I do so love that dimple. Dammit. “It was all downhill from there,” she said. “I can’t resist a big challenge.”

  “Really?” He moved closer.