Making Magic (36 page)

“Make him move it. Just a little.” Emmy continued.

Greg’s attention was still on Marilyn and Eddie. “Bring that phone over here.
Now.
”

What you did at the festival. What you did at the festival.
But she wasn’t sure it had even worked. It might have been a coincidence. Oh please, let it work.

What would she say to Greg if the tape was gone? She glared at him.

That gun is heavy. So heavy. And your hand is tired, Greg. So tired. You need to move it a little. Move it. It’s cramping. It’s starting to hurt. You need to move it. Move it, Greg! MOVE IT NOW!

The barrel of Greg’s gun drifted down and to the right, aimed now at the floor as he reached to rub his hand.

As if a truck had plowed into him, Greg flew through the air, slamming backward into the brick fireplace.

Nick and Jake sprang into action, but Greg had somehow managed to cling to the pistol. Even as he slid to the floor, he was pointing it at them.

Drop it! Drop it! DROP IT!
Thea screamed at him in her head.

Jake saw Greg’s eyes go wide and the gun slip out of his fingers to bounce on the hearth. Jake slammed into him with another invisible blow and felt something give way in his shoulder just as he grabbed hold of the man in reality. Shards of pain slid down his arm.
Shit
. But Jake managed to hang on and rode him all the way to the floor.

“Dammit. Nick, I wrenched my shoulder. Can you secure this jerk?” On top of it all, he was really feeling the overwhelming sense of fatigue that followed exerting his gift this much. He’d never used it to beat the crap out of anyone before.

Nick caressed his daughter’s head as he went by. Almost everyone in the room behind him was either screaming or crying or panicking,
except
the baby.

“Stay down, or I’ll knock you into those bricks again,” Jake growled, pulling the zip ties out of his pocket and tossing them to Nick.

“It doesn’t matter what you do to me,” Greg sputtered. “They’ll find out about you—all of you.”

Then Greg’s mouth was suddenly closed, apparently frozen that way. For a moment, he looked confused, then he looked over at Thea, color draining from his face.

Nick took over securing Greg and motioned for Jake to go see Grace. Jake knelt beside her and got his first close look at Lily as Grace put her hand on his arm. He felt tingling warmth suffuse his shoulder and erase his headache. He reached up and felt his skull. The goose egg was gone. He turned to check on Thea.

She leaned heavily against Emmy, blood trickling from her nose.

“Sheriff Moser, she’s not doing so good,” Emmy said in a shaking voice.

“Dammit! Somebody get me some scissors and the vegetable oil. Quick!” Jake scrambled over to pull Thea into his arms.

“Thea?” he pulled up his shirt to wipe the blood off of her nose and saw bubbles. Was she getting enough air? “Thea, honey? Open your eyes.”

Nothing.

“Is she breathing?” Grace asked.

“Yeah, but there’s blood coming out of her nose. What if it clots?”

“Bring her over here,” Grace motioned anxiously.

Jake dragged Thea over to lean against the couch and Grace grabbed her sister’s hand. Aaron held the kitchen shears out to him and Jake used them to saw through the scarf and tape right beside her cheek.

“Sorry, Matchstick.” Chunks of hair and tape and scarf hit the floor. No finesse. When he had a good loose edge to work with, Eddie was there with a bottle of olive oil.

“She’s all right. She’s getting air,” Grace said.

“I’m still getting this damn stuff off
now.
”

Jake pulled his T-shirt over his head, poured the oil onto it and dabbed the soaked shirt on the edge of the tape to ease the way.

When her mouth was free, Thea sucked in air, got some oil as well and choked. Jake held the shirt for her to cough into.

Jake let out a long slow exhale and looked up. Grace had released Thea’s hand and was nursing Lily at last, if the strategically placed blanket was any indication. Nick was unloading Greg’s gun.

Greg made helpless noises as he tried to talk, jaw locked in place.

That would teach him not to start monologuing like some damn comic book villain.

But he knew why Greg had wasted time bragging. Jake was holding the reason in his arms. And Greg was only a low-level wannabe in this shadowy organization of his or Jake would eat his hat.

“Mom, are you okay?” Jake called into the kitchen.

There was a long pause. He leaned back to see where she was and found her standing next to the breakfast bar, a cell phone in her hand. Nick hurried over and put his arm around her.

“Why don’t you sit back down, Marilyn. Right here.” Nick took the cell from her hand and helped her get back up on the stool.

“Can somebody help me?” Sarah whined from the floor.

Nick nodded for Eddie to do the honors. “I think we might want to take the batteries out of these phones, especially Thea’s.”

Jake nodded in agreement. “I have a pretty good idea how he got all that information about us.”

“Give me my phone,” Thea said in a raspy voice. “I know exactly where to shove it.”

Jake looked down and smiled with relief.

“And she’s back,” he said.

“Eddie, get a box and put all those phones in it,” Nick said. “Emmy, can you get Thea’s phone out of her bag for me?”

There was a flurry of barking at the front door and the sound of raised voices approaching.

“Dammit. I hope that’s not Charlie. We need some time to deal with all this,” Jake said.

“It’s Miz Mel,” Emmy said. “I can hear her. And Mr. Daniel too!”

Greg thrashed around, his face red as he tried to find a way to get free.

“
Greg, stay calm and do what you’re told,
” Thea said. Her voice had that strange echoing resonance again. “Can I have something to drink?”

Jake was staring at Greg, who had settled down, although his mouth was still locked shut. Jake knew how he felt. When Thea had told him not to touch her it had simply been impossible, no amount of force or will could change that.

“Is anyone else out there?” Nick asked Emmy.

“A lady, I think.” Emmy concentrated for a moment. “It’s Miss Ouida.”

Nick grinned at the girl. “That’s some talent you’ve got there.”

Emmy’s face lit up as she handed him Thea’s phone.

“Aaron, can you go let them in?” Nick asked.

“And lock the door behind them,” Jake added again.

“Don’t let Pooka in yet!” Grace said.

“Get me up afore you let that beast in!” Sarah yelled.

Nick walked over to where Eddie was struggling to get Sarah off the floor and helped the handyman lift her back into the chair.

“I’m all bruised up and I didn’t do nothing,” she complained. “I need something for the pain.”

The charlatan looked like hell. She had sweated off her old-lady makeup and she was clearly jaundiced. Jake would bet she was jonesing for oxycodone.

“Please?” Sarah whined.

“
Stay
quiet and do what you’re told, Sarah,
” Thea said without even looking. Dang, she was a lot more comfortable throwing that voice around now. She reached up to feel the wads of scarf and tape still stuck to the back of her head and the ragged hair around her face. Tugging at one end of the dangling tape, she winced when it wouldn’t come loose. “Where are those scissors? Get this garbage out of my hair.”

“But—”

“It grows back, Jake. Chop it off,” she said and went back to wiping oil off her face with a paper towel. She didn’t seem too surprised to see the blood mixed with it.

Damn. Jake sighed and started cutting her hair right above the tape.

“Get up here and say hello to your niece, Thea,” Grace said. “And can you bring Sarah over here, Jake?”

Jake frowned. “Sure.”

Thea looked at him. “Did I fade out for a while? Where did your shirt go?”

“Can you stand?” Jake asked.

Thea looked down at the chunks of tape stuck to scarf and hair on the floor. Then she reached up to explore the job he had done on her hair.

“Sorry. I tried to make it match the sides, but I’m not a—”

“No, it’s fantastic. I’m a trendsetter.”

“You look great,” Jake said.

Thea gave him a skeptical look, tinged with oil and blood.

“Okay, you look fine,” Jake corrected.

“Thea,” Grace said, motioning with her fingers. “Up here.”

Jake helped Thea to her feet.

“I’m covered in…What is this?” She sniffed the paper towel. “Olive oil? I’m going to ruin the couch.”

“Trust me, this couch is beyond ruined,” Grace said, patting the space next to her. “Sit down right here.”

Thea sat down, then leaned over to coo at her niece.

Grace touched Jake’s arm. “Thank you for coming to our rescue, Sheriff Moser.”

He grinned. “You’re welcome.” Everyone kept calling him that. And he didn’t deny the title. After tonight, he knew he’d have to keep his hand in at the department, if only in reserve.

There was the sound of voices from the foyer, then running footsteps and clattering paws as the screen door slammed.

“Sorry, I couldn’t stop him,” Aaron called out from the other room.

Pooka barreled in looking around for any threat. He went over to sniff at Sarah, who tried to make herself as small as possible. The hound seemed satisfied that his quarry was treed and went off to find his mistress.

“Nick?” Daniel stopped at the archway and looked around the room. “What happened?”

“Oh, the baby’s here!” Mel cried out, prepared to run to her new niece before Daniel held her back.

Ouida and Aaron joined them, both laden down with Ouida’s shopping bags. “Oh, my goodness!” Ouida said. “What a mess.”

“Everything’s under control,” Nick said. “For the moment.”

“But we’ve got some major cleanup to do,” Jake added. Pooka loped over to sniff at Greg next. Thea’s gift really worked. Even now, the man was calm and collected. Pooka moved on past to poke his nose over the couch arm at Grace’s head, sniff the top of baby Lily’s head, then sit patiently beside the couch.

“Someone
is
going to explain all of this to me—tonight,” Ouida said, heading for her kitchen with Aaron following behind. “But right now what we need around here is food,” she declared, wielding the chief weapon of every good Southern woman since settlers crossed these mountains.

“Is anyone hurt?” Daniel asked, looking at the blood splattered ruins in Jake’s hand.

Jake stared down at what was left of his shirt.

“Thea got a nosebleed,” he replied.

Nick headed for the master bedroom with the box. “I’m going to neutralize these phones and get you one of my shirts, Jake. Then we’ll figure out what to do next. The situation’s gotten complicated.”

“I had a completely different word in mind,” Jake yelled after him. “And it starts with ‘cluster’.”

Jake turned back to Greg and wondered who the man really worked for. It was a scenario that had worried him for a while—a black hole where faceless people used his ability for their own agenda. And if Greg was to be believed, they already had at least two gifted people in their grasp and perhaps others on their payroll.

For what? He shuddered thinking of what those two could be going through. Two people with abilities who could easily have been Aaron or Emmy or Grace or Thea.

That vast black hole threatened everyone in this house, maybe everyone on this mountain, including the woman he loved.

Chapter Sixteen

Thea yelled, “Bailey! Bailey, girl! Bailey! Come on, girl.” She whistled. The poor dog must be so confused after being abandoned, then rescued, then kicked out the door. Damn that drug-crazed witch.

She walked back around the front of the house, glancing up at the window of the office. She could see shadows moving.

Jake and Nick had disappeared in there with the cell phones after Thea had persuaded Greg to give them his passcode and his car keys. Nick, the former government agent, knew all the tricks of the trade and helped Thea limit the questions she’d had to ask Greg—for the moment anyway.

The slimeball had given Thea’s phone a little software upgrade, but thankfully hadn’t planted anything else.

She stood by the edge of the driveway looking out into the darkness of the mountain. “Bailey!”

Running her hand through her chopped hair, she knew she smelled like a salad and looked like a refugee from a trendy hair salon. All she needed now was a neon dye job. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe Bailey didn’t recognize her.

She gasped when Aaron Croate appeared on the porch above her out of nowhere. He grinned down at her and waved, then turned around and went right back through the wall again. Thea shook her head. Nick had invited the kids’ parents up the mountain. They were in the dining alcove with Daniel, who seemed to be helping them explain and demonstrate their gifts to their incredulous mother and father.