Seeing Magic (The Queen of the Night Series Book 1) (4 page)

Fiona continued, “We’ll need to get ice on both the knee and the ankle. Grog, bring me the first aid kit and five plastic bags filled with ice. Daisy, please fetch the liniments for pain. Rock, in my office you’ll find the wood for splints. Please bring me four of them. Ginger, please find several strips of muslin in my bin of leftover fabric. Thanks so much.”

Watching Fiona in action reminded me of those triage nurses on the emergency room dramas on TV. Suddenly, I saw more furniture move around the room. Groggy wasn’t the only color-changing little person. The others had stood so still, until they moved I hadn’t realized they were there. The swirling colors gave me vertigo and hurt my already throbbing head. Everyone, chameleon-people and human alike, scrambled to obey her orders.

As Evan wrapped his arms under me and started to lift me off the floor, I was overwhelmed with alternating waves of nausea and pain. “Whoa, I think this is turning into a bad trip.”

He sucked in his breath as if he were the one hurting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you.” He tried to be as gentle as possible, but every step he took rocked my bruised body.

As he laid me down carefully on my bed I mumbled meekly, “Why are there tiny chameleon people in my movie?”  The blackness edging my vision engulfed me and again, I fainted.

Chapter Four

Answers

I awoke to the diminished light of twilight. My left knee and ankle were immobilized in home-made splints and smelled like menthol. A gooey substance had been rubbed over all of the skin on my left side. Fiona must have used the liniment because I only felt a dull pain.

From the kitchen Evan argued with her. “She’s completely in the dark. It’s dangerous for her, Fi.”  His deep voice sounded frustrated.

“It’s not my fault her parents chose to leave. I can’t change the fact that she hasn’t been raised to understand our ways.”  Fiona’s voice was equally strained.

“Then you must tell her about it. She needs to know who she is and who you are.”

“She’s been raised like a Roman. She won’t believe it.”

“That is an archaic term and you know it. It’s not like we have to worry about invasion by armies of non-gifted anymore.”

Fiona thumped her hand on the counter in frustration. “The only reason we don’t have to worry about violence from the Ro—those people is because we’ve gotten so good at hiding ourselves over the past two thousand years.”  She sighed, “Anyway, she’s one of them. She must come to understand our world in her own way and in her own time. Her mother has always claimed she doesn’t have the gift.”

“Of course her mother said that. Shannon wanted to keep her away from us and from her destiny.”

“She doesn’t see the little people.”

“Don’t be daft. She saw Buach. He chased her into the river. She nearly drowned, and she asked about Grog.”

I wondered to myself,
who’s Buck
?

“You’re right. She did see Buach. Did you say she saw Grog?”

“Yes, I’m right. You can’t let her wander around anymore. They’re aware she’s here. Until she can protect herself, you can’t leave her alone.”

Fiona sighed deeply. “All right, but you tell her. It will be easier if it comes from you.” 

“Why?  She’s the reason I have no life.”

“Evan Keach,” Fiona spoke with steel in her voice, “She bears no responsibility for what happened to you, or to her parents. Don’t take it out on her. Besides, we all need her. She’s the future, you
know
she is. It’ll be easier coming from you because you’re the same age, you speak the same language.” 

He sighed heavily.

A sinking feeling came over me. On the one hand, I wanted the answers. I wanted to understand what had happened to me and what it meant to be ‘the future’. On the other hand, I feared the answers would be hard to accept.

His footsteps grew louder as he approached the bedroom. He entered and took a seat in Rose’s reading chair. It bothered me when he didn’t knock first, but my burning need to understand made it trivial. He’d proven himself to be short-tempered, and I wanted to focus on the important questions. He stretched his long legs out on the ottoman. Just the look on his face told me the worst was true.

“It wasn’t a hallucination, was it?”

“No.”

I gasped. “It was all real?”

He huffed out a breath. “Yes.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do I start?”  He seemed to struggle for words and sighed again. “Maggie, the world is not what you thought. Didn’t your parents tell you anything about us?”

“Who do you mean when you say ‘us’?”

“I mean our clan, that is, the Cacapon clan.”

“We have a clan?”

“Geez, what were your parents thinking?”  He ran his hand through his thick, black hair in frustration. “Yes, Maggie, you belong to a clan. We are the Cacapon clan of Appalachia. We are part of a larger coven of magic practitioners.” 

“Did you say ‘magic practitioners’?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean we’re Wiccan?  I have a lot of friends back home who are Wiccan. I guess that would explain Fiona’s evening ritual.”  I didn’t believe in the spells or ceremonies, but my friends did. Since I’d grown up around it, I just accepted their culture.

Evan’s face should have relaxed a bit. After all, I wasn’t completely ignorant of their practices, but he still looked at me like I was an idiot. He spoke even slower than before. “No. We. Do. Magic.”

“What does that mean?  Oh wait, the guy in the woods…he hypnotized me, and I’m pretty sure he flew. How did he do that?  Is he part of this clan?”

“No. That was Buach. He’s a Sidhe.”

“He’s a She-ee?”  My mind took a moment to process that sentence. “Get out!” I cried. “That was a cross-dressing woman?  I thought those eyelashes looked too long for a man.”

“Huh?” Evan responded.

“You said He’s a She.”

“No. I said he’s a ‘
She-ee
’. It’s spelled S-I-D-H-E.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said, shaking my head to show that it made no sense whatsoever, “because everyone would pronounce S-I-D-H-E as ‘She-ee’.”

“It’s a Gaelic word. That’s how it’s pronounced. He’s very dangerous. Be careful when you see mushrooms growing near hawthorn trees.”

“Say what?”

His facial expression resembled what you see when someone is trying to explain Analytic Geometry to a five-year old. I didn’t like being the five-year old.

“He’s a fairy,” Evan said finally.

“Oh, now he’s gay. I thought you said it was a cross-dressing woman. Talk about identity confusion, but hey, I’m from Cali, dude. We try to not judge.”

“No, he’s not gay,” Evan said, taking slow, deep breaths, “he’s one of the fairy-folk — the little people.”

“If you say so,” I muttered, “He looked pretty tall to me, so, what are you saying?  Are you saying he’s not human?”

“That’s right.”  He looked relieved that I was finally getting it.

“Really?  He’s not human, and he can fly…for real.”

“Yes,” he smiled now, like I’d successfully learned how to approximate the area of an ellipse. I needed another moment to wrap my head around the concept. Magic was real, but not all of it was good…or safe.

“Why did he want to hurt me?”

Evan shrugged. “Who could guess what motivates a Sidhe to do anything. Thousands of years ago, non-magical humans drove them to open a door to another dimension. They are still compelled by Mother Earth to perform their duty as guardians, so they travel back and forth between worlds. They hate all humans for forcing them to leave, so sometimes they hurt people. It’s said they prefer to hurt innocent children who get lost in the woods.”  Then after a moment he asked, “What were you doing in the woods?”

“I had to get the Shitake mushrooms Fiona asked me to harvest by the river. Then he hypnotized me and made me walk toward him.”  I shuddered at the memory. “He was creepy. He kept calling me Fiona.”

“Well, you do look like her.”

“No!  She’s, she’s
old
!” 

He chuckled at me.

I thought of another question. “Does that mean the camouflaging creatures are real, too?”

He laughed harder. “They’re Brownies. Without their help, I couldn’t have saved you.” 

The images of being chased by Buach and falling in the river flashed through my head. I tried to sit up, to face Evan directly, needing to pay close attention to everything he said. Instantly, he stood by my side as if he’d read my mind. He helped me sit up and tucked pillows behind my back to support me. His hand reached out to brush my hair from my face. When his fingers grazed my skin another electric shock coursed through me. He pulled his hand away as if it had burned. Maybe he wasn’t as indifferent as I’d originally assumed, but he seemed angry with himself for touching me.

I searched around for something to say. It wasn’t hard. I had so many questions. “Did you pull me out of the river?  Did you really hang upside down from a bridge?” 

“Yeah, I guess so,” he shrugged.

“How did you know I was in trouble?”

“I’ll get to that. There is a lot you need to know.”

I agreed, but there was something I needed to say first. “Thank you for saving my life.”

A ghost of a smile graced his face. I was making progress in tearing down the wall he’d built between us. Fiona’s comments had resonated. “Anytime.”

“And thank you for sticking around to talk to me.” 

He sighed.

“Tell me about the clan. What do you mean,
we’re
magical?”

He paused as if trying to decide how much to tell me. “The women in your family possess the power to heal. We call it the gift of Healing Hands. The men in my family can see future events before they occur. We call it the gift of Sight. The members of our clan are also gifted with the ability to sense the magical creatures of the world.”

Whoa.
“I don’t have these gifts. I’m normal.”  Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren’t true.

Evan snorted. “You’re the next Great Healer from Cacapon, you can’t deny it. You see the little people and the Sidhe.”

“How do you know what I’m going to be?” I started to get resentful.
What was a great healer anyway?

“I am the Great Seer of the clan. How do you think I knew you were in trouble?  I
saw
it.”

“Oh.”  Things started to make sense. “Are you the only member of the clan who can
see
?”

“No, there are many of us with the gift of Sight.”

“Then why are you called the Great Seer?”

“They say that my gift of premonition is the strongest in the clan, so the clan council made me the Great Seer. Of course your dad would be the Great Seer if he’d lived.”

My head snapped up. “What?  What about my dad?  Is that why you hate me?”

He groaned. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything, and I don’t hate
you
.”

I’d always been bothered at the way my parents never talked about their past or their families. Now I had a chance to get answers. All of the frustration I’d felt over the past couple of days bubbled to the surface. “No,” I demanded. “No more secrets. I
hate
secrets. Tell me what you know about my family.”  I almost shouted at him but realized immediately my anger should be directed at Mom, not Evan, so I softened my tone, “Please…tell me what you know.”

He leaned back in the chair and regarded me thoughtfully. Then he took a deep breath, “Your parents messed up so much around here.”  Resentment and anger dripped from every word he uttered.  

“What did they do?” 
And why are you so pissed off about it
?

“It’s complicated.”

“I’m smarter than I look, and I’m tougher, too. I only passed out three times today. Try me.”

He ran his fingers through his hair again and smiled his ghostly smile. “Our clan has sworn to protect the balance of nature and to serve both Llew and Arianrhod.”

“Who are Lou and Ariana?”

“They are the nature deities we serve. Llew is the King of the Sun and Arianrhod is the Queen of the Night.”

“Why do we serve them?”

“We do it because without the balance between night and day chaos would destroy the world.”

That was pretty heavy stuff. “Why are we their groupies?  Why don’t they pick on the Detroit clan or the Santa Barbara coalition?”

“There are very few people born with our gifts.”

“I don’t get it. What does any of this have to do with my parents?”

“Llew and Arianrhod demand that we follow specific rules. First, Healers are not allowed to marry Seers. Second, The Great Healer and Great Seer must dedicate their lives to protecting our world. They will not marry nor have children. Their siblings will give birth to the next generation of Healers and Seers. Your father was the first-born great-nephew of Logan, the last Great Seer before me and the chosen heir to become the next Great Seer. Your mother is the first-born niece of Fiona, the current Great Healer. Her first-born daughter should become the next Great Healer. Your father shouldn’t have married at all, let alone marry your mother, but they fell in love.”

Stunned at this revelation, I asked, “What happened then?”

“The Queen of the Night was outraged at their disobedience, so your folks ran away and never looked back. Your dad joined the army and they moved to California. You know the rest.”

I tried to process all of this information. So many questions came bubbling up to the surface. “Wait a minute,” I said, “I’m the next Great Healer?”

Evan shrugged. “Fiona’s sixty-eight. She won’t last forever.”

“She looks good for sixty-eight.”  I was quiet for a few moments. My mind buzzed.

“And you’re the Great Seer…”

“When your parents ran away, the previous Great Seer, Logan, started looking for a replacement. I was one of his protégés. Two years ago he died of lung cancer and the clan council chose me to be the new Great Seer.” 

“I have so many questions.” My head started to hurt again.

“You need to rest. Sleep. Heal. We can talk more tomorrow. Fiona wants you to see the store.”