Making Magic (17 page)

But this was home. This place meant safety, warmth, love. If she wasn’t safe here, there wasn’t anywhere she would be safe. Ever.

“Nick,” Grace said. “Get to the point.”

“I am. Look, it’s okay—”

“Maybe I should try something,” said Craig.

“I’ve got this,” said Nick.

Grace looked worried. “Nick, if she gets frightened, she may use it on—”

“
Stop talking,
” Thea said. It was a kneejerk reflex. The ice pack slid off her ankle as she sat up straight. She expected panic. She expected to have to tell them all to sit still or calm down. But they just stared at her. No one panicked.

Whatever they thought they knew, she could erase it. They would forget and she would leave as she had planned. She would get a teaching certificate and teach music, far away. Her throat closed up at the thought.

But she hadn’t planned on running again so soon.

If only she hadn’t used the voice on Marilyn. If only Nick hadn’t been so nosy.

“Whatever it is that you think you know, you’re wrong.
And you are going to—
”

Thea squeaked in surprise when a cookie popped into existence in front of her and dropped into her lap. It bounced off and rolled across the porch floor. Bailey jumped down to chase after it. Pooka laid there and watched it roll by.

Hot coffee sloshed out of her mug as she got to her feet.

“How did you… Did you do that?” But she knew how stupid that question was. They couldn’t answer her.

Craig made a motion and the cookie disappeared just as Bailey was about to bite into it and reappeared in his hand. The dog, disappointed, started circling madly looking for it.

“You’re a magician. I knew that already.” Thea glared at him. “So what?”

Before she could move, her coffee mug disappeared from her hand and reappeared, upside down, above Craig’s hand before sloshing hot liquid over him and falling to the floor.

Craig shook his hand and they all sat there, calmly watching her. Grace’s eyes were pleading.

Thea swallowed. That
was
just a magic trick, wasn’t it? What were they trying to tell her?

She sat back down. No sinister agents were going to swoop out and grab her, although they might come and get everyone else on this porch.

“
I release you
,” she said.

Trish sighed. “That was very odd.”

“Oh, Sissy,” Grace said.

“So what? What did you want to tell me? Why the magic tricks?” Thea asked.

“They aren’t tricks,” Grace said. “They are gifts—”

Thea snorted.

“—from the mountain. At least that’s how we understand it at the moment.”

“From the mountain?” Thea looked at Grace in disbelief. “And I thought
I
was the one the men in white coats would come for.”

“Where do you think your ability came from?” Grace went on.

“My…” she looked around at all of them. “You… I…” She looked for her coffee and realized it was all over the porch floor. “I don’t have any idea what you mean.”

Nick poured her another mug and handed it to her. The cookie reappeared in her lap.

She took a sip of the coffee, staring down at the cookie then up at Craig.

“Do you remember when I got lost in that cave up on the mountain?” Grace asked.

As if she could forget. Grace had only been eight. Pops had told all of them horrible stories after that episode. Stories designed to keep any curious kids from exploring out there on their own.

She nodded.

It had happened right after Gram’s death. Right before their father had threatened to take all of them away from Pops and the mountain—forever. Right before Thea had discovered that she could make her father do exactly what she told him to do.

“There is something in that cave,” Grace went on. “Something very, very old. Something our great-great-great grandmother Lily discovered. It’s a room at the heart of the mountain with a wall covered in ancient carvings. In the center of all those carvings is a handprint.”

Thea looked at Nick and the Nobletts. None of them seemed the least bit surprised by what Grace was saying.

“When I was lost in the cave I put my hand in that handprint, and that changed all of our lives.” Grace laid a hand on her expansive waist.

“And the world,” Craig spoke up.

Trish took his hand. “For the better.”

Nick nodded. “When Grace and I were trapped in that cave last fall, we found the room again. And we found Granny Lily’s journal. In her journal she described her own gift.”

“She was a healer,” Grace continued. “Not only an Appalachian granny witch, but a true healer. I don’t know if you remember Pops’s stories about her, but she cured a young boy of whooping cough and, according to her journal, she created tinctures and remedies that saved many, many others. Her medicines were much more potent than any herbal remedies.” Grace waved her hand. “But most of that is only of interest to me. The important things for all of us were in her predictions.” She stopped and looked at Nick, who reached into his pocket to unfold two pieces of paper.

“You know how long Granny Lily lived,” Nick said.

Thea nodded. Her headstone clearly indicated she had been well over one hundred when she died.

“Towards the end of her life, she wrote out a series of predictions. We think she might have had a bit of precognition along with her healing gift.” Nick handed Thea the papers. “She focuses on the environment as you can see.”

It was a color copy of a page yellowed with age, with faded writing that looked like a poem written in calligraphy. The second page was a printed version of the same thing.

Except for the frogs and crickets singing beyond the porch light, everyone was silent as Thea read.

The first part of the verse was a poetic retelling the firefly story. It had been told and retold ages ago and recorded here by Granny Lily. And her son had told it to Pops. He would have loved to have seen this page come to light. She stroked the words on the paper, as though they could connect her to him.

“It’s the ending to Pops’s firefly tale.”

Grace nodded. “Exactly. All the things we’re worried about—the shrinking of the polar ice, mountaintop removal mining, the honey bee population, the fouling of the oceans—she predicts them all. But the most important thing she foretold was what we call the Kindling. Those last seven lines.”

Thea looked up at the Nobletts. They were a part of this?

She read the last lines aloud. “Then will a girl-child wake the old magic once more, when the need is dire, and those who are burdened will be kindled. Then her people will learn again to hear her voice, and She will sing. For a single firefly cannot subdue the darkness, but thousands can kindle magic.”

“And we do know what happened when I touched that wall,” Grace said.

“Those who are burdened.” Thea dug her nails into her palm. Bailey was frantic to get back into her lap.

“Look at your ankle, Sissy,” Grace said. “You can take the wrap off. You don’t need it.”

Uncertain, Thea unwrapped the elastic bandage Grace had wound around her ankle.

It wasn’t swollen. It looked fine, even though it had already achieved purple melon status at the reception by the time Nick had carried her back to the table.

And the dreadful cold she’d had the morning she arrived had vanished, without a sniffle.

“You’re a healer.”

Grace nodded again. “We all have gifts.”

“Daniel?”

“Daniel has visions of the future.”

Daniel had always suffered with his dreams and nightmares, but he wouldn’t talk about them with her. Of course, Thea hadn’t said anything about her strange ability either.

Grace as a healer made so much sense, now that Thea thought about how good she felt when she was around her. She’d always thought it was being on the mountain— being home.

“And you’re a magician?” Thea looked at Craig. “For real? Not just illusions.”

“I can only teleport things. Not very well, but I’m working on it,” Craig said.

Thea shook her head in disbelief. “
Only
teleport.”

“Sometimes things don’t reappear. We don’t know where they go, exactly. And sometimes they turn up again in odd places.” Trish smiled. “So he hasn’t tried it on any living things—”

“Yet,” Craig chimed in.

Thea pulled Bailey, who was still jumping on her leg, up into her arms.

“I read the future using my cards. A different way than Daniel,” Trish said.

“And Mel?” Thea asked.

“Mel can read and send emotions,” Craig said. “What you might call a tele-empath.”

That explained why they’d wanted Mel here in the midst of all this emotional turmoil. Thea looked expectantly at Nick. “And you?”

“Intuition.”

Grace agreed. “Amazing intuition.”

Thea looked around the porch. It was unbelievable. They seemed so content with these overwhelming abilities and the terrifying responsibilities that must go with them. Of course, their “gifts” didn’t steal away people’s free will.

But she wasn’t the only one. She wasn’t alone.

“What about Ouida? Or Eddie? Did Pops—”

“We’re the only ones at this point.” Nick motioned around the porch. “Ouida and Eddie know nothing about this.”

“The gifts manifested after I touched the wall in the cave.” Grace added. “I don’t know if Pops was aware of them. He always explained away anything unusual that happened.”

“I think he might’ve noticed mine,” Thea said without thinking.

Grace stared at her. Damn. That was a mistake.

Grace’s eyes widened. She sat back, her hand over her mouth.

“Grace?” Nick said, standing to go to her. “Is it the baby?”

Grace shook her head. She gazed at Thea. “But you were… You were only six.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Thea said. “None of this matters. I—”

“You stopped him, didn’t you?” Grace said. “You’ve kept him away from here all these years. That was when he started you on the medication, wasn’t it?”

“What does that have to do with any of this?” Thea said.

“Grace?” Nick asked.

“Dad put Thea on meds after Gram died. He said it was for ADHD, but it wasn’t. It was for her
temper
.” Grace was furious. “At the funeral, he threatened to keep all of us away from Pops, away from here. And Thea was the one who stood up to him. Of all of us, she—”

“I lost my temper,” Thea snapped. “I did that a lot. I still do. But Dad didn’t like it, so he…sedated me.”

Trish had her hand over her mouth. Craig looked equally horrified.

“For years,” Grace added. “What did he have you on? Clonidine?”

Nick stood beside her, probably to keep his wife from launching herself to her feet.

Thea felt cold again and cupped her hands around the mug of steaming coffee. “Pops…Pops eased me off it every summer and eased me back on it in the fall.”

“Damn.” Nick put his hand on Grace’s shoulder.

“I wonder if somehow, deep down, Dad knew,” Grace said. “And he was afraid—”

“He didn’t know.” If he had Thea would never have been able to pull off her pointless coup. “He only knew I had a temper and he didn’t like it,” Thea said. “I wasn’t like you. I wasn’t calm and polite and obedient. That’s all it was. So he fixed me.”

“I didn’t know they could even
give
drugs like that to children,” Trish said.

“It was off-label back then,” Thea said. “The FDA didn’t approve it for children until recently. When I was old enough, Pops taught me how to pretend to take it and act like I was still on it.”

“That sounds like something Pops would do,” Grace said.

Nick just shook his head.

“You were only six and you used your gift to stop him,” Grace said. “You kept him away from here. You…You’re still keeping him away, aren’t you?”

“It isn’t a
gift
if it gets someone killed,” Thea said, using her attorney voice. Silence followed. She took a sip of her coffee and looked around the porch.

“That night at the festival,” Grace said finally. “I thought your voice sounded different—more powerful,” Grace said. “But you didn’t get Becca killed.”

“No, Marilyn did.
After
I made her drive away from the festival so fast that she went right off that curve,” Thea said.

“She was drunk,” Grace said. “If she hadn’t been drunk—”

“She wouldn’t have been driving at all if I hadn’t made her go away.”

“She would have driven at some point that night—”

“Grace,” Thea said firmly. “It is nearly impossible to win an argument with me. The best government lawyers have tried and failed.”