Storm Born

by Christine Pope

  “Just hang on,” he told me. His tone was calm, not rattled at all, so I assumed this wasn’t the first crazy emergency he’d had to deal with in his tenure as primus. “I’ll call Eleanor, the clan’s healer, and send her over there. And Angela and I will be over as well. Good thing we decided to come to Flagstaff early — we’re already in town.”

  That news made me want to sag in relief. I didn’t know why the knowledge that Connor and his wife were nearby made me feel so much better, but I’d take it. Right then, I was willing to grasp at just about anything.

  “Where’s Jake?” Connor asked next.

  “At his house. I — I would have called him, but I don’t have his number since we’ve been together pretty much the whole time and I never thought to ask.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll call him and send him over. Just hang tight. Is the guy breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pulse?”

  “It feels weird, but it’s there.”

  “Okay, then he’ll probably be able to hold on until Eleanor shows up. Cover him with a blanket, because he’s most likely in shock.”

  It hit me then that Connor seemed to know an awful lot about treating a victim of a lightning strike. “How do you know about all this?”

  “We get a lot of lightning up here in the high country. It’s good to know the basics. Anyway, I’ll call Eleanor — she only lives about five minutes from you, so she should get there pretty quickly. Hang tight.”

  He ended the call, and I set the phone on the coffee table and hurried down the hallway, where I thought I’d spied a linen closet. Sure enough, right before the bathroom was a cupboard filled with extra sheets, towels, and blankets. I grabbed one of the blankets and hurried back out to the living room, then spread it over Agent Lenz’s body. He didn’t move, and once again I knelt next to him so I could feel for a pulse. Still there, but even harder to locate. Would Eleanor get to the cottage in time?

  Tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked them back. This was no time to lose it. If I really had been that worried about Randall Lenz’s well-being, then I wouldn’t have attacked him in the first place. I’d had no choice, though — letting him take me back to wherever he intended to hide me really wasn’t an option.

  “Addie!”

  Jake, bursting through the door and looking down at me with wild eyes. At once, he came and knelt next to me and took me in his arms, holding me tight.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m all right,” I said, once again blinking furiously to keep those damn tears from flooding down my face. Somehow, I knew if I lost it with Jake, I’d be a useless sobbing mess, and none of us had time for that at the moment. “I — I didn’t want to hurt him, Jake. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s okay,” he soothed me, one hand stroking my hair. “Connor told me Eleanor is on the way. She’ll take care of it.”

  I had to hope Connor was right. I’d never met Eleanor, of course, but I guessed that anyone who’d been healer to the Wilcoxes for any appreciable amount of time probably knew what they were doing.

  The healer must have beaten a land-speed record getting over to the cottage, because she showed up just a minute later. Like Jake, she didn’t bother to knock, but came right in and headed straight for Agent Lenz without saying anything to either Jake or me. She laid a hand on the agent’s head, then ran her hands lightly over his body, as though using her powers to locate everywhere he’d been injured and to use those same powers to heal the damage the lightning bolt had caused.

  Whatever she was doing, it appeared to be working. While he didn’t regain consciousness…although I thought I saw his eyelids flutter once or twice…his cheeks seemed to regain some color, and his skin didn’t look as clammy and pale. At the end, she placed her hands palm down on his chest and left them resting there for a moment while she sat with her eyes closed, her face tight with concentration. Now I was able to get a better look at her, I could see Eleanor was probably in her fifties somewhere, hair still dark except for an attractive streak of gray right in the front, but with friendly lines around her eyes and the sort of calming presence people probably appreciated in a healer.

  “Is he…okay?” I asked, the words not coming out in much more than a whisper.

  “He’ll live,” she replied. She straightened the blanket, which had become somewhat askew during her ministrations, then got to her feet. “If the circumstances were different, I’d say he still needed to be moved to a hospital. But from what Connor told me, that really isn’t an option, is it?”

  I shook my head, and she let out a little sigh, looking resigned.

  “Well, we should at least move him to the couch until Connor and Angela get here.”

  Thank God that Connor and Angela were coming to the cottage. In my panic, I’d almost forgotten he’d told me they would be over, but it made sense. After all, they were the ones in charge, so I supposed it was their job to clean up any messes their clan members might have created. I just wished I hadn’t made quite such a huge mess so soon after arriving in Flagstaff.

  “You should sit down, Addie,” Eleanor said then, her tone turning brisk. “You’ve suffered a shock as well. Jake, help me move this man to the couch, and then you can make her a cup of tea.”

  Obviously, Wilcoxes were used to doing what their healer said, because he didn’t argue, only took Agent Lenz by the shoulders while Eleanor lifted him by the feet. Together, they managed to haul him over to the couch, where the healer once again made sure he was covered by the blanket. Afterward, Jake went into the kitchen, and Eleanor looked over at me.

  “Go ahead and sit down,” she said. Even though she still spoke in that same no-nonsense tone, I could see the concern in her dark eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Is it?” I asked, my gaze moving toward the unconscious man on the couch. While he did look improved, he also didn’t give any indication that he planned to wake up any time soon, despite the movements of his eyelids I’d noticed a few minutes earlier.

  Maybe that was a good thing.

  “Yes,” Eleanor said. “Connor will know what to do. In the meantime, you need to take care of yourself. Come and sit.”

  She patted the back of the armchair that stood next to the couch, and I got up from where I’d been kneeling on the rug and went over and sat down. My knees felt surprisingly shaky, so it seemed she knew what she was talking about.

  A moment later, Jake came back in with a big mug of yellow-glazed stoneware in his hands, the tag for the teabag still hanging over the side. “Here you go,” he said, carefully folding it into my hands, which I wrapped around the mug, taking a faint bit of comfort from its warmth. “Do you need anything else?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m okay.”

  Hands now free, he reached up to rub the scruff on his chin as he stared down at Agent Lenz, whose lashes looked surprisingly thick and dark against his pale cheeks, revealing a vulnerability I sure had never seen in his face while he was conscious. “I can’t believe he found you.”

  “We weren’t careful enough,” I said. “My name gave me away.”

  “You didn’t use your name.”

  “My first name,” I pointed out, and Jake frowned.

  “Jesus.”

  About what I had thought, too. I didn’t know what else to say, though, so I lifted the mug to my lips and took the tiniest of sips, since the tea was still really too hot to drink. An uncomfortable silence fell, one only broken by a soft knock at the door a few minutes later.

  Jake went to answer it, and let Connor and Angela in. They both looked troubled but also calm in a way, as if they’d already come up with a plan and now only had to execute it.

  After uttering some quick greetings, Connor asked, “He’s stabilized?”

  Eleanor nodded. “I can’t say that he won’t have some lingering problems — headaches, dizziness, that sort of thing — but overall, he’s all right. He didn’t break any bones or suffer any real burns.�
��

  “So, he can be moved?”

  That question made all of us send Connor a startled glance. Angela took over then, saying, “We decided that the best thing to do is get him out of Flagstaff as quickly as possible. The plan right now is to take him back to Kanab and dump him there.”

  “‘Dump him’?” I repeated, knowing how aghast I sounded. “The guy just got struck by lightning!”

  “We’re not planning to leave him on the side of the road or something,” Connor said quickly. “We’ll put him in a motel room. He’ll be okay.”

  “And then he’ll come right back after me,” I said, my tone flat. “I don’t think even a bolt of lightning is enough to deter this guy.”

  The prima and primus exchanged a glance. “He won’t know where to come.”

  That comment didn’t seem to make any sense. “What?”

  “We’re going to erase his memories,” Angela said. The statement was made in such a matter-of-fact tone of voice, it took me a minute to properly process what she’d just said.

  “You’re what?”

  However, even as I stared at him in shock, I realized that Laurel had mentioned basically the same sort of contingency plan just the day before. Clearly, she knew what her primus — and his prima wife — were capable of.

  Connor sent me a humorless smile. “I know it sounds crazy, but Angela and I working together can do a lot of things that are beyond the scope of a normal witch or warlock. We’re going to erase all his memories of you, of being in Flagstaff. He won’t remember anything.”

  On the surface, that sounded like a good plan. However, while Randall Lenz wasn’t a warlock, he also wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill civilian, either. “Even if you do all that, this guy was still working for the government. There have to be other people in his agency who know what he was up to, who have records of his mission here.”

  “Which is where Jake’s brother Jeremy will come in,” Connor said, apparently unfazed by all those complications. “I’m going to give him Agent Lenz’s phone and his laptop — if he has one with him — and Jeremy is going to make sure every single trace of this trip is erased. It’ll be like none of this ever happened.”

  That sounded better. I wouldn’t question Jeremy’s ability to go into those devices and remove all the pertinent data; what I’d seen so far had already convinced me there wasn’t much he couldn’t do when it came to hacking data.

  And really, what other choice did we have? Killing Agent Lenz wasn’t an option, so about all we could do was make sure there was no way in the world he could ever trace me back to Flagstaff, Arizona. He’d wake up with a couple of missing days in his memory, there would probably be an inquiry, and once it was determined there was nothing to be found, he could go back to his life…and I’d try to rebuild mine here in the town where my father was born.

  “Where is his laptop, though?” I asked. Randall Lenz hadn’t been carrying a briefcase or anything when he showed up.

  “He probably has a car parked somewhere nearby,” Connor replied. He went over to the unconscious agent and went through his pockets as gently as he could, in the process extracting a cell phone and a key fob. A quick glance at the fob in question, and he added, “Yep, Ford Taurus. I’ll go look for it.”

  He let himself out, while Angela met my gaze and offered a reassuring smile. “It’s going to be okay. We’ve already called Jeremy to let him know what’s going on, and he’s on his way over now. By tomorrow, this will all seem like a bad dream.”

  It already seemed like a bad dream, but maybe there really was a way to wake up from it.

  “Do we need to stay here?” Jake asked. “Addie’s had kind of a shock, and I think it might be better if I took her back to my place.”

  “Of course,” Angela replied. Her gaze strayed to the broken window and its frame of scorched curtains. “No one can stay here until that window gets repaired anyway.”

  I wanted to protest that I was fine and didn’t need any coddling, but I knew that would have been a lie. Instead, I told everyone that I needed to get my things, and so for the second time that day, I went and gathered my various purchases and loaded them back in their bags. By the time I was done, Connor had returned, laptop in hand. He put it down on the coffee table, since the small table over by the window was covered in broken glass.

  Just seeing the laptop made me feel a little better. Once Jeremy had worked his magic on it, there wouldn’t be any trace left of Agent Lenz’s dubious mission.

  Right then, I only wanted to get away and try to forget how I’d summoned lightning to strike a defenseless man.

  I couldn’t say that we exactly relaxed that night, even though Jake coaxed me into binge-watching The Good Place on Netflix, a show I’d never seen before. We ordered pizza, and partway through the evening, Jeremy called to say that Randall Lenz’s cell phone and laptop had both been scrubbed, and so that loose end had been tied up.

  “And Eleanor’s son Travis and our cousin Leland are driving Lenz out to Kanab tonight,” Jeremy had added. “So, we’re pretty much done here.”

  Jake relayed this information to me, and I absorbed it without knowing how relieved I should be. On the surface, everything seemed fine. But I couldn’t help worrying that there might have been something we overlooked.

  I didn’t say anything to Jake about my misgivings. No, I watched TV with him until I was too tired to keep my eyes open any longer, and then we both went upstairs. He kissed me before I disappeared into my room to change for bed, but it was a gentle kiss, tender but not too passionate, as if he understood that the evening’s events had wiped out any opportunity for romance.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” I lied.

  Afterward, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, thoughts racing. I imagined those two Wilcox cousins making the three-hour trip to Kanab so they could leave Randall Lenz at one of the motels in town. What kind of possible explanation could they give for dumping a comatose man at a motel? Maybe they wouldn’t have to offer one at all; for all I knew, one of them had a talent for making other people believe anything he said. Or invisibility — they could conceal Agent Lenz altogether and pretend the room was for them. When warlocks were involved, all sorts of possibilities opened up.

  Would all those contingencies be enough, though? I knew how tenacious Randall Lenz was. Even with his memories erased and all evidence of his travels in Utah and Arizona gone, would he still somehow come up with a way to piece together the puzzle and figure out that his quarry was right there in Flagstaff?

  I wanted to tell myself that no, of course he couldn’t. He might be a very resourceful man, but he didn’t possess superpowers. Those memories, once gone, couldn’t return.

  Or…could they?

  I rolled over on my side and reached for my iPhone to check the time. Twelve-fifteen. So much for falling right asleep. I might have been tired earlier, but right then I felt as wired as if I’d just drunk a couple of cups of coffee.

  The problem was, Connor and Angela had offered me reassurances, but they didn’t know — couldn’t know — for certain that all the measures they’d taken would be enough. I doubted they’d ever faced this sort of situation before. They’d never had to deal with someone who had the resources of the United States government behind him.

  Which meant…what?

  That there was always a chance Randall Lenz could remember enough to come after me again. Only this time, he’d probably be pretty pissed off. Did I want to take the chance of having him gunning for Connor…Angela…Jake?

  Well, I knew the answer to that question, didn’t I?

  The real question was, what did I intend to do about it?

  As long as I was in Flagstaff, Jake — and my new extended family — was in danger. The only real solution was to leave so I couldn’t draw that danger to them. After all, Agent Lenz was hunting me, not the Wilcoxes. He still thought I was only a girl with strange powers, not a witch whose g
ifts were hereditary. God only knew what he’d do if he ever found out that thousands of people with extraordinary powers were scattered across the country.

  Even though the room was warm enough, the bed cozy, I felt cold all over. I knew what I needed to do…and didn’t know whether I had the will to do it. How could I leave when I’d only just started to learn what it was like to be a Wilcox?

  How could I leave Jake when I’d only just begun to realize how much I cared for him?

  But it was precisely because I cared so much that I needed to go. It would break my heart to leave, but better a broken heart than knowing I’d brought ruin on the man I loved, on the people who were my only family in the world.

  That argument seemed to settle it.

  I got out of bed, moving as quietly as I could. Because I’d been so tired, I really hadn’t unpacked anything except my little baggie of toiletries, which was still sitting on the bathroom counter.

  A peek into the hallway told me Jake’s door was closed. Perfect. Even if he caught me as I was going down to retrieve my things, there was nothing so strange about having to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

  But his door remained shut, and I was able to pick up the baggie and my toothbrush without being disturbed. Once I was back inside the guest bedroom, I hurriedly got dressed and then used that old trick of shoving the pillows under the bedcovers to make it look as though someone was still sleeping there. A silly subterfuge, maybe, and yet I thought it might gain me a few precious minutes. Then I got my purse and the shopping bags that contained all my worldly possessions, and slowly crept down the stairs.

  One thing I hadn’t counted on was the dog, but she didn’t make any sound as I entered the living room, only came over and pressed her muzzle against my leg. I couldn’t really pet her without setting down my bags, so I settled for whispering, “Good dog. Go back to sleep, Taffy,” before I went out the front door.

  The night air felt biting for early June. The altitude, I supposed. I couldn’t stop to worry about it, though, but only hurried over to my car, which was still parked in the driveway where I’d left it. I put the bags in the trunk and got in the driver’s seat, praying all the while that Jake wouldn’t hear the sound of the engine starting up. Luckily, his room was on the opposite side of the house, and so I thought the likelihood of that happening was pretty low.