Flames in the Midst (The Jade Hale Series) (18 page)

“You’re right.  But still—”

“Chase, enough,” I cut him off.  “I get it.  You don’t want me helping your family.  I have no intention of helping them.  Zach is my family.  I don’t want you messing with his head.  Okay?”

Chase nodded, “Of course.”

“Besides, I have my own agenda.”  He didn’t ask me what that was.  We walked along Magnolia, beams of moonlight breaking through the trees every now and then.  The sound of fireworks—bottle rockets and amateur shows—reverberated through the night.  The Fountain of Youth Park lay to our right.  The tall, concrete walls looked as insurmountable as the task before me once I had my book and had to face the next steps in my plan.  A variety of houses lay to our left, each as unique as the people living within them.  Aunt Lynn had liked this area for that reason.  She despised cookie-cutter neighborhoods like Zach’s where every third or fourth house looked the same.  We came to a stop in front of a small, simple brick house.

“We’re here,” I announced.  I stood facing the house.  All of the windows were dark, no cars in the driveway.  It looked deserted, but I was sure the occupants were just out for the evening.  With a deep breath, I plunged forward.  I walked right up the side yard and into the back.  Chase stood in the road for a minute longer, staring after me.  He ran up behind me.

“Jade, where are we?  What are we doing here?”

“I agreed to let you come along.  I didn’t agree to give you all the details.”

“Jade, I’m all for breaking and entering if it is absolutely necessary, but I really don’t need much more danger and adventure for the evening.  Who lives here anyway?”  Chase looked concerned, and I was surprised at how happy that made me.  Although I was nervous whoever lived here might come home, if I didn’t get to the family book, I didn’t know how to move forward with my plans.

“Listen,” I spoke to Chase urgently, “I don’t know who lives here, but someone does.  I don’t care who lives here.  You don’t have to worry about breaking and entering.  What I am here for is not inside the house.  It’s in the backyard, and it belongs to me already.”

Chase shut up for a few minutes.  I searched the backyard with a quick sweep of my eyes.  I had not been fully prepared tonight because I thought I was working all night.  I’d have to thank Chase for ultimately creating this opportunity for me.  On second thought, I didn’t need to thank him for something he didn’t realize he had done.  A patio set took up most of the concrete slab behind the house.  There were gardening tools, a bag of dirt, and a garden hose under the eaves

I caught a glint of metal in the moonlight.  Someone had left a shovel leaning against a tree in the backyard.  It was exactly what I needed, and it was unusual I should find it waiting for me
expectantly under a tree towards the west end of the backyard.  For the second time that night, I felt I might be walking into a trap.  Although it seemed too good to be true, I didn’t have the luxury to turn down good fortune.  I approached the shovel with slight trepidation.  Chase sat on the edge of the patio, glancing around for any unexpected interruptions. 

With the shovel in hand, I walked to the northwest corner of the yard.  I wasn’t sure exactly where to start, so I picked a spot I felt was the furthest northwest.  I plunged the shovel into the dirt, using both feet to break through the grass and push the shovel as deep as it would go.  The occupants of the house could come back at any moment.  I had three or four shovels full of dirt before Chase decided to leave his post and join me.

“So, what are we digging for?  Is there buried treasure here?” he asked, trying to make light of the situation.

I plunged the shovel into the small hole I had started, ignoring him to the best of my ability.  I didn’t know how far I would have to dig or how long I had.  The dirt fell in a mound next to Chase.  I couldn’t help myself as I caused a little of it to spill over onto his sandaled feet.  He shook it off and sighed.  Then he reached over and tried to take the shovel from me.  I held it firmly.

“If I’m going to be here with you anyway, you might as well let me help.  Besides, the faster we dig, the sooner I get to find out what we’re digging for.”  He tugged on the shovel again, and this time I let him take it.  I backed up and let him continue. 

Within minutes, the sound of the shovel striking against something other than dirt reverberated through the backyard, joining the sounds of distant fireworks.   I bent down quickly and reached into the hole, which was deeper than my forearm at this point.  My fingers scrapped against a small box about the size of half a shoebox.  This couldn’t be right.  The book would
never fit in a box this small.  There had to be more.  I lifted the box out of the hole and brushed the dirt off.

“What is it?” Chase leaned on the shovel and stared at me and the box, but he kept his distance.  He didn’t try to get a closer look or rush me to open the box.

“There’s nothing else in there?” I asked, looking at the gaping opening in the yard, an abyss of mystery ready to yield forth other treasure.  Chase resumed his shoveling.  After four or five more scoops of dirt, he gave up.

“That’s it.  There’s nothing more, Jade.  Should I fill it back in?”

“Sure,” I heard myself answer, but I wasn’t really there anymore.  I sat in the grass a few feet from where Chase worked and stared at the small box in my hands.  This was not what I had expected.  I needed the family book.  Everything I had rejected throughout my childhood and my teenage years, I needed now, and it was not here.  How could I train myself?  How could I go after my mother’s killer without the proper tools?  Nothing, not even training with Chase and the other guardians, could replace the family book, the book my mother had written in.  I didn’t realize how significant the book was to my own identity.  I felt lost and unable to find my way without it.  I had no idea where else to search.

Chase finished filling in the hole in the yard and patted the dirt with the shovel.  He walked over to the tree and set the shovel back in place.  He knelt in the grass next to me and put his hand on my shoulder.  I could feel the tears streaming down my face.  Everything I had planned was falling apart on the night I thought it would all come together.

“Jade?” Chase spoke with a tenderness in his voice I did not think he was capable of. “Are you okay?  What’s in the box?”

“I don’t know,” I sobbed.  My hands shook and the tears continued to flow as I lifted the wooden lid.  I laid the lid in the grass and stared at a white envelope with my name on it.  She left me a letter.

“I really thought it would be here,” I said to the night.  I felt Chase near me, but more than his physical presence could combat, I felt alone.  A tide of emotion swept over me.  I pushed it down and brought myself to focus on the moment.  I could not let my determination end here.

“What were you looking for?” Chase asked.  I might as well tell him.

“The book.  My family book.”

“You don’t have it?” Chase asked incredulously, but then he caught himself.  This was not a moment for lecturing me about yet another way in which I was not a good witch.  “So, we keep looking.  Maybe she tells you where it is in that letter.”

I stared at the envelope that was now in my hands.  Tears had streaked through the neat lettering of my name on the front of the envelope.  I turned it over in my hands, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it.  Something about reading the last letter my aunt ever wrote me seemed too personal to do sitting in a stranger’s yard with Chase next to me.  Some things were simply a private matter.  Before I could explain all of this to Chase, someone else entered the yard, walking right up to us.

We heard her walking across the yard, and before I could put the letter back in the box, we were standing facing the house, Chase in front of me, ready to protect the firestarter from whatever attack we were about to enter into.  But I recognized the girl who walked up to us.  I had seen her strange two-toned aura all summer.  Tonight, her outer aura matched the glow of the moon exactly.  I touched Chase’s arm to let him know we weren’t in any danger—at least I
didn’t think we were.  He must have thought I grabbed his arm in fear because he didn’t back down.  Instead, he pushed me further behind him.

I pushed back and tried to get in front of Chase.  He grabbed my arm and practically hissed in my ear.

“I don’t know what she is.”  It occurred to me that not knowing actually frightened Chase.  He seemed to be able to sense what I could see in her aura.  I wondered for a moment if Chase could see auras like me, but I dismissed the thought quickly and focused on what was in front of me.  From what I could see around Chase, the girl walked into the yard alone.  She carried something with her, but it didn’t look like anything dangerous.  I couldn’t quite make it out where she stood in the shadows.

I pushed around Chase one more time.  He didn’t let me get far in front of him, but I was able to move a few steps closer with Chase attached to my wrist and shoulder, trying to pull me back behind him.

“I’ve seen you outside Kilwin’s,” I told the girl, although I’m sure she knew where she had been.   She nodded.

“Are you following me?”  I noticed her dark features, but I couldn’t quite place them.  She might be Native American or maybe Indian.  Her facial structure and long dark hair were strikingly beautiful, and somehow she didn’t seem to fit in with our time.  I thought briefly of the trend in vampire novels filling the bookracks at Barnes and Noble, but she didn’t fit the profile.  Her skin was dark, not pale.  She sat in the sunlight outside Kilwin’s everyday.  I’d always known witches were real, being one and all, but I was pretty sure vampires were not.  I didn’t have my mother’s skill at seeking out other witches, but I could usually tell by the quality or color of a person’s aura if he or she was a witch.  This girl was not a witch.

“I haven’t been following you.  Just waiting for you,” the girl replied.  Chase tightened his grip and pulled me back behind him.  The girl smiled.

“I’m not going to hurt her.  Jade and I are friends.”  She stepped closer, but Chase obviously wasn’t convinced as he began to back up with me tucked behind him.

“I brought you this,” she offered while she held out the object she had been clutching to her since she entered the yard.  “I think you were looking for it.”  She indicated the poorly filled hole and the shovel against the tree.

I could feel Chase begin to let his guard down, but he still wasn’t entirely convinced.

“How did you know her name?” he asked the question before I could.

“I told you.  We’re friends.  This must be Chase?” she turned to me with her question, but this only put Chase more on edge.  He went right back into defense mode.  If he didn’t like that she knew my name, he hated that she knew his.

“What are you?” he asked the question quickly while he continued to back us up, but I was interested in something other than what this girl might be.  She held my family book in her hands, and she held it out for me to take.

“I’m something different,” she told Chase very calmly, obviously undeterred by his uneasiness.  He stopped and looked at her intently.  That was all I needed to lunge away from him and grab the book from her.  I heard Chase call my name in alarm, but nothing could stop me from getting to this girl and my book.  She let go of it the minute my hands wrapped around it.  I tucked the envelope from Aunt Lynn behind the cover and hugged the book to my chest.

“Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you,” I was sobbing again.  Everything suddenly fell back into place.  My plans to avenge my mother’s death became tangible again.  My connection to my mother and to my aunt became solid with the feel of the pages in my grasp.  In only a moment, Chase was back at my side, but he did not try to shield me this time.  He looked at the girl quizzically.

“You’re welcome,” she said, but I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or to Chase.  I could only focus on the book I now held after so many years and so few months.  I held the book just last May, but it was a different time and place.  It had been years since I had studied from it.

The girl walked over to the tree and picked up the shovel.  She carried it to the side of the house and used the garden hose to wash the fresh dirt from it.  She set it with the rest of the gardening tools.

“I’m glad this was useful for you, but you could have cleaned it off,” she seemed to direct this towards Chase.

“You left that for us?” I looked up from the book and realized I had been sitting in the grass under the tree for at least a few minutes now.  Chase stood near me, but when the girl came back from cleaning off the shovel, she sat down next to me.  Chase sat down cautiously.

“Yes, I knew you would need it.”

“Do you live here?” Chase asked her, gesturing towards the house.

“No, but my family owns it.  Our tenants are actually in a hotel tonight.  We told them we had to fumigate for termites, and we put them up at the Casa Monica for the Fourth of July weekend.  You really picked an expensive time to do this,” she looked at me with what amounted to a friendly reprimand.

“How did you know we would be here tonight?” I asked her.

“I told you.  We’re friends.  We’ve been friends for a long time.  Well, I’ve been friends with you for a long time, anyway.”

“Are you a time traveler like Jade?” Chase asked her, genuinely interested, and apparently unaware that he may be giving away one of my secrets.