Seeing Magic (The Queen of the Night Series Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Warm Spring Run

When I got back to the store Evan waited with Fiona in her office. After I entered, Evan shut the door behind me.

Fiona started without preamble. “Describe what you saw when you looked at Steven McCoy.”  This time I described his aura without expounding on the auburn color and focused instead on the large gash of slate gray running across his shoulder.

“My Goddess,” was Fiona’s stunned response. “What kind of creature are you, child?” 

I squirmed under her gaze.

She continued, “If I understand this correctly, you scan auras like a Seer, but you also see what I feel with my hands when I examine a patient. You see the sickness. I have to feel the illness through my hands. However, if Evan’s account is right, you diagnosed Steven McCoy from twenty feet away.”

“I guess so,” I murmured.

“I haven’t even taught you the healing hands technique. Using healing hands to diagnose illness is a skill which takes years. You picked it up in two weeks. What will we do with you, Maggie?”

I shrugged.

“Well, I know what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna use it. I can’t find a downside here. Imagine the possibilities. We’ll never have to recommend exploratory surgery again.”

Evan warned, “We still have to keep this a secret. Too many people in the clan are superstitious. The legends of the Destroyer go back as far as the clan does. What would they do to her if they believe Maggie
is
the Destroyer?”  I really didn’t like this new nickname.

“Fine,” agreed Fiona, “Maggie, when we treat Zoe in a few minutes, I want you to take a step back and try to look at her with your aura vision. After she and her mother leave, you tell me what you found.” 

I nodded.

***

When the time came for Zoe’s healing treatment I went upstairs. The sliding panel door stood partially open. Fiona was already at the examination table getting ready. As I joined her, Caroline and Zoe entered the secret room. At first glance, Zoe looked as cute as ever, but as she approached, it became obvious things were not all right. She had lines etched around her mouth and her forehead. A sweet, nine-year old girl should never have lines like these. They made her look much older. I sensed Zoe’s desperate attempt to cope with the kind of pain that never goes away. Her skin didn’t have the natural pink glow you’d expect on a child who’d been playing outside all summer. She had no energy, and sadness seeped from her which made my heart break. With effort, Caroline and Fiona pulled her up onto the table. Fiona held her hands a few inches above Zoe’s forehead, and as I’d seen her do several times now, started her magical examination. She paused briefly when she reached Zoe’s chest and stomach areas. Her brow was furrowed. She continued until she’d reached the end of Zoe’s well-worn, little pink sneakers.

I stood off at a distance, quietly, wanting to stay out of the way until I was needed, and wanting to get a good look at Zoe without drawing attention to my efforts. Gradually, I opened my inner senses to Zoe’s aura. What I found almost made me retch. I covered up my horror with a fit of coughing that drew unwanted stares from both Caroline and Fiona. Fiona raised her eyebrows in a silent question. I held up my finger as if to say ‘not now’ and coughed again to cover my shock.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I must have swallowed something down the wrong pipe.”  It was a lame excuse, but one Caroline accepted. She turned back to her daughter and I mouthed to Fiona, “It’s much worse.”

Fiona nodded her head.

“Caroline, Zoe is sicker now than at her last visit. Did you get the results of the blood tests I ordered?”

“Yes, I did just as you asked.”  Caroline reached into her handbag and pulled out a couple of folded pieces of paper.

Fiona took the report and pulled her reading glasses out of her coat pocket. “Well, the blood tests found nothing wrong with Zoe, but clearly, she’s still sick. We must not be testing for the right thing. They do show slightly elevated levels of white cells. She could be fighting an infection. Unfortunately, we don’t know the cause.”

I couldn’t tell Fiona what I’d seen in front of the others. The little girl’s lungs looked like they were collapsing in on themselves. Semi-solid chunks of the ugliest brown-gray I’d ever seen were lodged in her intestines. I had no idea what these things meant, but understood they were bad. Fiona beckoned me. I held my hands out and offered my life energy. She drew from it as she worked on Zoe, letting the magic flow through her and into Zoe. As the energy drained from me, I opened my aura vision and watched the large masses of brown-gray shrink. They didn’t go away entirely, but it was obvious, even with normal vision, that Zoe was much improved. The pink had returned to her cheeks and the lines around her face smoothed and disappeared. She smiled in relief. Her mother released a deep sign of gratitude.

***

Once back in Fiona’s office, with the door closed, I started, “God…Fi, we have got to do something about this! You didn’t see how sick that little girl was.”

“No, but I felt it. Only my years of training kept me from blanching also.” 

I described what I had seen.

She nodded. “Today, Zoe’s injuries felt just like Easnadh’s did the night before Litha. I’m really worried about what happens if we don’t figure this out soon. We’re going to find a lot more sick people around here.” 

The images from my nightmares entered, unbidden, into my thoughts. I couldn’t help remembering the dead animals and sick people. I tried to block out the memory of Zoe, dead on the bank of the creek.

A thought occurred to me. “If Zoe looked today like Easnadh did two weeks ago, what does Easnadh look like now?”

“That’s a good idea!” Fiona stood up from her desk. She went to the door, stuck her head out and called for Evan. When he’d arrived she’d already returned to her seat. She didn’t waste time with an explanation or even a greeting. “Evan, you need to track down the whereabouts of a nyad named Easnadh. Maggie needs to
scan
her. Do you know how to do that?” 

Evan nodded. I left to gather my things.

***

Once we were in the Jeep and heading back toward Cacapon, I asked him where we were going.

“We need to get one of the Sidhe to talk to us. I’m gonna sit in front of the portal and call for them until someone arrives.” 

I had expected after his explanation, we would pull off onto the gravel road leading to the sacred meadow, but Evan kept driving and pulled into Fiona’s instead.

“What are we doing?”

“We need supplies. Just stay here. I’ll be back in a second.”  A few minutes later he returned with one of Fiona’s old, quilted tote bags.

When we got to the clearing, he headed straight for the altar and placed the tote bag on top. He pulled a white, column candle out of it and placed it in the center of the altar and lit it with a disposable lighter. He pulled out a jar of dried rose petals, took a handful of the rose petals and sprinkled them around the candle. Then he produced a silver bell, which he placed to the right of the candle. Last, he pulled out a small bottle with a dropper in the cap. It contained pure rose oil. He sprinkled a few drops of the oil all around the candle and into the melted wax so the scent of roses filled the air.

He rang the silver bell crisply three times and called out, “Queen of the Sidhe, come to me. I need your guidance, let it be.”

He paused for a moment. Then he rang the bell again three times and repeated the incantation, rang the bell once more and stepped back from the altar.

He looked at me and said, “This might take a while.”  He sat down in the grass and leaned up against one of the huge rocks that formed a table leg. He faced the portal.

I sat down and leaned against the other leg.

While we waited, I entertained myself by trying to open and then close my aura vision on various plants and insects in the grass.

He looked at me quizzically. “What are you doing?”

“I’m practicing using my aura vision.”

“Oh,” he replied, “did you notice the rabbit over there?”  He pointed to the edge of the clearing.

“There’s a bunny!” I gushed like the city girl I am. “Where?” 

He pointed again.

I followed the trajectory of his arm and opened my senses to the tree line. A multi-colored halo of sunny yellow, dusty pink and lime green floated beyond the grass. I jumped up, craning my neck to get a look at the actual bunny hiding in the detritus on the forest floor. The noise I made must have scared it, because the pink, green and yellow halo bounced away. Dejected, I collapsed back into the grass.

Evan laughed at me. “You act like you’ve never seen a rabbit before.”

“I haven’t, I mean, I’ve never seen a wild bunny. I live in LA. The only wild bunnies we’ve got there hang out at Heffner’s house.”

He laughed even harder and moved next to me in the grass.

“You know, if you can let yourself scan their auras without audibly gasping or jumping around, they’ll approach you. They can sense us as well. They know we’re a part of nature, unlike other humans.”

“Really,” I breathed on a sigh.

He took my hand in his and said, “Try it.” 

We sat there in silence, me expectantly, trying to school my reaction to his touch, and him in a Zen meditative state. Slowly, I opened my mind. First, I sensed the auras, then the actual bodies of three deer, several squirrels and a few birds. Eventually, not one but two bunnies came out of the woods.

Suddenly, they all scattered. Dariene stood under the arch. She seemed short-tempered as she stalked toward us.

Evan stood.

I followed.

She snapped at him, “What business makes you so bold as to think you can summon me, Seer?” 

Evan bristled but didn’t take the bait. “Fiona sends me. She wishes the young Healer to examine the nyad, Easnadh, using the expanded magic you thrust upon her.”

Dariene turned her piercing gaze to me and said dryly, “I did not give her any magic she did not already possess. I only unlocked the barriers she had placed on her own mind.”

Evan said, “Let us use the magic you unlocked to try and save the sick.”

“I agree,” the fairy queen acknowledged with a nod. “Easnadh is the nyad of Warm Spring Run. She can be found there. Use the spell you used to call me while standing in her stream, and she will come to you.”

Evan thanked her. She disappeared through the portal. We gathered up the items we’d used in the spell, and headed back to the Jeep. I didn’t want to be overheard by any of the magical beings living in the open forest. I waited until we were driving away before speaking. “Evan, the little girl Fiona has been treating lives in a house bordering Warm Spring Run.”

“And Easnadh is the nyad of Warm Spring Run…” he followed my train of thought.

“We have to get to that stream.”

***

It turned out Warm Spring Run ran through the eastern edge of Berkeley Springs and fed into the Potomac River. We turned onto Warm Spring Drive and followed it to an elementary school. Leaving the Jeep in the school’s parking lot, we made the rest of the trip on foot. The little stream ran behind the school. We wandered through the brush on the bank of the stream until it widened into an area eight feet across and two feet deep. A large flat rock jutted out of the stream under a twisted willow tree. We settled down on the rock and set up the elements of the spell.

This time, he stood with his feet in the water and the candle circled with rose petals on the rock and chanted, “Come to me, Easnadh of the Sidhe, so you can receive help from me, and the young Healer-to-be.”

Just as the silver bell’s last peal faded on the air, I heard a grunting noise. Following the sound downstream, I found her, bent over double behind a tree along the bank. Her skin was ashen gray. Her beautiful long waves of black hair had lost their luster and there were open patches where her scalp was visible.
The hair must be falling out in clumps
. As I approached her, she convulsed with a fit of coughing and spat out a lump of puce-colored phlegm. It meandered down the stream. I opened my mind to scan her aura, but all I focused on was the slate gray encompassing her entire body. Even the gold in her aura looked tarnished. I turned to find Evan, but he was already on his cell phone with Fiona, who was back at the store.

It took Fiona seven minutes and thirty-four seconds to get from the store to us. She was carrying her medical bag and wading through the water without any care for what might happen to her Espadrilles. Evan and I had already taken the initiative to carry Easnadh back to the flat rock. We laid her down on it so she was in the prone position I knew would be best for Fiona to do her work.

We wasted no time. I told Fiona what I’d found out about the nymph’s condition as Fiona used her hands to conduct her own examination. Fiona used my energy to supplement her own as she tried to shrink the mass of puce-gray evil consuming our patient. I don’t know how long she tried to heal Easnadh.

Finally, when Fiona was too weak to continue standing, Evan pulled her back from Easnadh’s body, and forced her to sit down on the bank of the stream. I felt like I needed to puke, I was so tired, so he did the same for me. There was no improvement in Easnadh’s condition, but what I saw in Fiona scared me to my core. She had turned ashen gray and had started to cough and retch. She bent over and rinsed her hands in the stream. Eventually, the color returned to her face.