“Oh my,” Aria gasped, and put a hand to her mouth for only a moment before she leapt in to take over for the woman’s oldest daughter. “Get her upstairs. Why is she not in a hospital?”
“Hunter bolt,” Seamus said. “Poison. I’m just following directions.”
“Okay,” Aria said defensively. “Uh… quite an entrance. Glad you’re well.”
“I’m not,” Seamus grunted.
They took the woman upstairs. When Bailey went back down for the father, Seamus stopped her on the sidewalk. “He’s… well, anyway he’ll do fine at a hospital, but he wouldn’t let me stop there first. I’ll take him in.”
“Seamus,” Bailey breathed. “Where did you go?”
“Away,” Seamus grunted. “So I wouldn’t… you know.”
“I got rid of Amadan,” Bailey said. “Piper doesn’t—”
“I do,” Seamus said quietly. “I got a man bleeding out in my truck, Bailey.”
She nodded. “Of course. Go. But come back, okay?”
He didn’t say that he would or wouldn’t, but before she went back into the Bakery, Seamus whistled for her attention. She turned, and he jerked his thumb at the truck. “I got something for you, I think.”
“What?” Bailey asked. She went to the truck’s passenger side, and Seamus opened the door and pointed.
Nestled in the floor board amid what looked like a bed sheet were six keystones.
Added to the twelve that Aiden’s “colleague” discovered, that made thirty nine.
There were thirteen Caves, each with a set of three stones.
Bailey took a shakey breath, and then carefully gathered the stones into the bed sheet and heaved them with no small effort out of the truck.
“What are these things for?” Seamus asked.
“Get him to a hospital,” Bailey answered. “Then come back, and I’ll tell you. And listen, Seamus?”
“Yeah?”
Bailey looked up Main Street toward City Hall. “There are hunters here. In Coven Grove.”
“I know,” Seamus breathed. “That’s why I came back. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Bailey said. “Just be fast.”
Chapter 30
Aria knelt by the woman they’d brought upstairs and placed her hands on her temples.
“Is she going to be okay?” The younger daughter asked.
“I’ll do everything I can,” Aria said. She looked for the currents of life in the woman’s body, the fine threads that stitched her spirit to her form, and found them—weak, but present. Something… eroded them, like an acid. The poison, but what kind?
Aria looked up at the two girls. “What’s your names?”
“I’m Mary,” the younger said.
“Simone,” the older said. “Peeler. Rhonda’s our mother. Are you a healer?”
“My gift,” Aria said, running her hands along Rhonda’s form, looking for the rough patches in her system and noting where she found them, “is to increase life. To make things grow. I’ve learned to turn it toward healing, yes. But your mother is suffering from a poison that I’m not familiar with. Are you both gifted?”
“Mama said we were,” Mary said. “But… we never really got good at it.”
“I can hear what people are thinking,” Simone said. “Mary can make things happen. Or not happen.”
“Telepathy and entropy,” Aria said, forcing a smile. “Powerful gifts. You’ll find them getting stronger now that you’re here. Mary, would you get me the box from that shelf there? Third shelf up, all the way to the right, it has the hinges that go all the way over the top.”
Mary did as she was asked, and Aria looked to the other sister. “Simone, in the far corner by the table is a chest with wands inside. One of them is bound willow. Would you bring it to me? It has white ribbon wrapped around one end.”
Simone nodded, and went to it.
When the girls had brought her what she needed—or, at least, what she hoped she needed—she bid them to sit down on the other side of their mother.
“Now, listen to me,” Aria said. “This is going to be unpleasant. But I need you both to be strong. We have to get this bolt out of your mother’s shoulder. It will bleed. I want you to hold her arm like this… yes… and the pain may wake her up so you hold tight, okay?”
They both nodded. They’d gone pale, and Aria worried they would faint or let go, but they didn’t. She worked the bolt around just enough that she felt it loosen from where it had stuck between Rhonda’s ribs from the back, just to one side of the shoulder blade. There was an artery close to that but if she was still alive then chances were the poison hadn’t gotten into it—which meant it was intact.
“On three,” Aria whispered. “One… two…” she pulled the bold free.
Rhonda gave only a weak groan, and tugged weakly. Blood began to fill the wound and then run freely. It was darker than it should have been.
Both girls made worried sounds.
Aria took Simone’s hand and pressed it to the wound. “Keep pressure on it.”
When Simone nodded, Aria got to her feet and rushed to another box, where there was a thick white cloth normally used for divination work. It had been ages since they’d done anything of the sort, though, and it was the heaviest cloth she knew of off hand. She returned, and had Simone use it to stanch the bleeding.
“You’re both doing very, very well,” Aria told the girls. “Now I’m going to need to concentrate so it may not always be clear what I’m doing or that I’m doing anything but I need you to trust me and not interrupt or ask any questions, alright?”
Simone and Mary nodded, and Aria opened the small latched box, pulling out bundles of healing herbs. She chewed the end of one of the bundles, let her magic seep into it, and then touched it to some of Rhonda’s blood, looking for resonance. Nothing.
Bailey came into the room. “Seamus has taken the father to—”
“Shh,” Simone said. “She’s working.”
Aria glanced up briefly. “It’s okay. Bailey… any, you know… new tricks?”
“Healing is too complex,” Bailey said. “I wouldn’t know where to start and… I might hurt her if I tried.”
“Fair enough,” Aria sighed. “In that case… get Alkina and… Sonya, wasn’t it? The Ukrainian woman with the braids? She’s got the entropy magic, maybe she can tilt the odds and buy some time.”
“I could get Wheeler,” Bailey said. “He’d know what they used.”
Aria frowned, and spit out a bit of herb from another failed test. “You think he’ll tell us?”
“He will if I make him,” Bailey said.
Her tone made Aria pause. “See if he’ll come willingly. But reach out to Alkina and Sonya anyway.”
Bailey didn’t respond right away. After a moment, she nodded. “They’re on their way.”
“Simone here is telepathic as well,” Aria said, smiling encouragement at her helper. “That’s Bailey’s gift, too. Well… one of them, anyway.”
Under other circumstances, perhaps Simone would have been inclined to take some heart from that, but at the moment she had all her attention on her mother.
Aria looked up at Bailey again. “Bring Wheeler if you can. But be… diplomatic, please.”
Bailey frowned briefly, and didn’t answer. She looked at the girls. “Your mom will be okay. I promise.”
Aria held her tongue and schooled her expression. She understood why Bailey would say something like that, she just wished that she hadn’t.
Aria, for one, didn’t like making promises she couldn’t keep.
Chapter 31
Bailey seethed. She’d done a good job of keeping her magic in check and of not showing her anger in front of the poor girls whose mother was bleeding in the witches sanctuary, but she could feel the reins trying to get away from her.
She was done. The stones were nearly gathered. They were this close to winning—to saving this world from Faerie forever, and rendering the whole idea of hunters
moot. She wasn’t going to lose Xavier, and she wasn’t going to lose this new witch that she’d never met, either. She wasn’t going to lose one more person.
When she got outside, she opened her mind wide, and poured her magic into her gift until every mind it was possible to read for miles was buzzing in her skull. The headache was instantaneous, but she ground her teeth and sifted through the errant thoughts until she heard what she was looking for. Not Wheeler’s mind—he would be protected, just as Lydia had been, no doubt, with the bones of a telepathic witch. But wherever he was, he wasn’t alone. Someone saw him.
Bailey focused on that mind, and shut the others out. She reached for more than just thoughts—images, sensory details trickled into her brain, and she caught a flash of a fountain. The park. There were others there. It would be public. Well. So be it.
She withdrew her gift, but not the magic. That she gathered around her like a cloak, summoning wind and fury, and then turned against the very earth itself, flattening the curvature of it’s mass, envisioning the gravity well she’d seen in science textbooks until she felt suddenly light.
And then, she flew.
Her stomach fell, and her eyes watered from the sudden wind and cold. She didn’t have to go far, but she went fast. As fast as she wanted—the elements seemed eager to obey, and almost the moment she became uncomfortable with the wind as it buffeted her like something made of solid stuff it slipped around her instead.
She spotted the small crowd of people around Wheeler at the park, just a little north of the fountain. The same wind that carried her there shook the tops of the trees, and some of those people looked up to see her.
They scattered. She couldn’t hear if they were screaming or not. Hopefully they would get over it, one day, once they understood. For the moment, she found it hard to care very much if she scared them. Maybe that was the exhaustion.
Wheeler’s white jacket flapped around him as she touched down, a whirlwind of grass and dirt and dust rising just before her feet met the ground and she released her hold on the elements.
“Richard Wheeler,” Bailey said, calmer than she felt. “One of my people was hurt by one of yours. I need you to come with me.”
Wheeler whistled appreciation. “You do make quite an entrance,” he said. “I’d heard that witches flying around was all just hearsay and old tales. Seems my grandpappy might have known a thing or two after all.”
“I don’t have time for banter,” Bailey said. She took a step forward. “Come with me, or I will take you there myself.”
“Now, now, Miss Robinson,” Wheeler said, and tsked at her. “I do believe you’re frightening your dear neighbors.” He pointed behind her.
Bailey turned to look, and saw familiar faces all staring either slack jawed or in abject fear. She felt it coming off them, the uncertainty and fascination, all laced with acrid terror.
She turned back to Wheeler. “Soon enough they’ll know they have nothing to fear from us.”
“Cryptic,” Wheeler said. He grinned. “I like it.”
He closed some of the space between them too casually for Bailey’s taste. She held her magic ready, but stood her ground.
“I suppose that means you’ve nearly put together this… puzzle you’re after, then?” He winked at her.
Bailey had a sudden realization that Wheeler knew about the stones. Of all the groups that had been assaulted, what they each had in common was that they had been carrying keystones with them. Was he tracking them, somehow?
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, finally. “We have a witch who’s been shot with a crossbow bolt, and apparently it was poisoned. You know the antidote, and I want it.”
“Come now,” Wheeler sighed. “It could be any number of poisons.”
Bailey’s magic crackled, and the earth under Wheeler’s feet shifted so that he stumbled. Now, his eyes were wide, and that smug look of his had a worried tinge to it.
“Then you will tell me all of them and how to cure them,” Bailey said coldly. “Or this will be war. You’ve already stolen a child—”
“Listen here,” Wheeler snapped. “Our people would never target a civilian. It goes against our code, and everything we stand for. I assure you, the Cleary boy was not taken by one of mine.”
That… gave Bailey pause. “We searched for him with magic. The spells were blocked. Only your people would know how to do that.”
“Is that so?” Wheeler asked. “Come now—you can’t think of a single way to block a locator spell? It’s just entirely beyond the ken of your folk, is that it?”
“Well it wasn’t our people,” Bailey said. “And if it were Faerie, I would know. The seal on the breach is intact.”
“That’s quite a riddle, then, isn’t it?” Wheeler said. “I suppose, when we find the boy, we’ll know the answer.”
Bailey’s hands had balled into fists. “Take off the pouch,” she said.
Wheeler’s hand went to his chest, under his shirt. “I think I’d rather not.”
With a sigh, Bailey unclenched her hands, and then crooked her fingers. She sent her magic down into the earth and found the ends of roots. Making something bloom into a delicate flower was the sort of careful work that Aria was good at. Bailey didn’t need delicate flowers.
The roots grew as she poured her will into them and directed them up. They split the ground at Wheeler’s feet, clutching his ankles, and then slithered up his body and between the buttons of his shirt as he tried to swat them away.
“Stop this, you filthy—”
A root stripped the pouch from his chest, and dropped it on the ground before it snaked around Wheeler’s wrist.
Bailey stooped to pick up the pouch. She gave it a shake, and heard the dry rattling inside and wanted to be sick. Instead, she called her magic into the bones and the leather and whispered her apology to the witch they’d belonged to, once upon a time. The pouch burst into flame in her hand and burned to ash in a few seconds.
Wheeler stared at her. “You… what kind of creature are you? You’re no witch.”
“No,” Bailey said. “I’m not. Not anymore. And that’s about to be an outmoded term. If I wanted to, I could get into your head and scramble things so you can’t remember your own name. Please don’t make me do that; it’s a line I don’t want to cross. Xavier Cleary. Think.”
Bailey slipped her mind inside Wheeler’s. He was far more afraid than he showed, for one thing. And he harbored a sickeningly putrid hate of all things magical.
But he wasn’t lying about Xavier. He believed with all his being that the boy had been taken by witches for…
“Human sacrifice?” Bailey asked, bewildered. “Why? Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“Get out of my head,” Wheeler spat. He barked at the people behind her. “Do you see? You see what happens when they don’t get their way? These are the monsters in your midst!”
“The poisons,” Bailey said, ignoring the muttering behind her. “Tell me.”
“Pry it out of my brain,” Wheeler growled. “Leave me a blubbering mess for all I care—it’ll just prove to them we’re right and then I don’t need an army of hunters; you’ll make one yourself out of your own neighbors. How many witches are out there? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Regular folks outnumber you all, what, a hundred million to one?”
He chuckled, and she saw the real viciousness in his face now, twisted and hideous. “I like them odds, little girl.”
Rain pattered down from the gray sky. Cold drops struck Bailey’s hands, and then her arms. She looked up, and wondered if Anita had passed.
Slowly, she looked back at Wheeler. She waved a hand, and the vines unfurled, releasing him. They fell to the earth, stiffening as her magic left them.
Wheeler rubbed his wrist. “Damage is done,” he said.
“No,” Bailey told him. “It isn’t. Not really. Not yet.”
She turned to the people cowering behind her. She didn’t like the idea of turning her back on Wheel
er, but she kept a mental ear on his thoughts, and he was more curious and wary than plotting to stab her.
“There’s something I need all of you to see,” Bailey said. “At the Bakery. What Wheeler’s people are really about. There’s a woman there—a witch—with her two children. Fighting for her life, because she and her family were attacked on their way here. She’s been poisoned. No one brought her to trial. She barely has any magic. Most of the magic in the world is weak—it’s strong here because of the Caves. She can’t do what I can do. She could probably barely do anything.”
Bailey glanced back at Wheeler, and then stepped aside so that the crowd could see him. “His people shot her down, and would have murdered her girls, too, if they hadn’t been saved by one of our deputies. And their father? He’s in the hospital, because he got shot in the leg. He’s not a witch, or magical at all.”
Wheeler’s face paled. “It… must have been an accident.”
“Accidents can happen like that when you’re firing crossbow bolts at people,” Bailey said. “Somehow, I don’t think those hunters cared.”
Bailey addressed the crowd again. “Come with me. Come and see. Find out where Wheeler’s path is going to lead you. But come quickly—because if he doesn’t tell me how to cure the poison this poor woman is infected with, then she’s going to die before you can.”
Now there were murmurs in the crowd—worried, confused, and even some angry ones.
She turned back to Wheeler. “If your people didn’t take Xavier Cleary, then I don’t know who did. But we will find out. And whoever it was, they will see justice. We’ve got someone right now using the Clearys’ domovoi to find him.”
Wheeler stared at her, and then shook his head. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“Domovoi,” Bailey sighed. “It’s a household spirit. I don’t have time to—”
“I know what domovye are, darlin,” Wheeler said. “Ancestral slavic household guardian spirits—there ain’t a house in this town old enough to have attracted one of them. You’ve got to have a solid stone foundation, for one thing. Don’t you people have books on this sort of thing?”
Witching for a Miracle (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 7) Page 14
