Magic and Macaroons (23 page)

She tipped her head to the side. “I suppose there might be, since everything has its opposite, but I’ve yet to meet one. Lightwitches bring balance to the universe, you see. It’s very simple. Sometimes it’s a small thing—balancing the sadness, the anger or loss in someone’s life with a positive herbal remedy like you do in your bakery, or even a smile or word of encouragement. It can also mean going head-to-head with greater evil, if that is the choice you make. Large or small, it’s all part of the same calling. Anyone can do the small stuff—and should. But we often don’t take those opportunities to bring a bit of beauty or kindness or laughter into the world, do we? It all adds to the positive, though, and acts against the jealousy, violence, greed, and hate.” She paused, her gaze penetrating my mere physical body and seeming to look deep into my mind.

Maybe even my heart.

“You are able to engage with larger evil than most of us,” Eulora went on. “However, it’s not a gift you’re obligated to use. You must understand that.”

I nodded.

“However, if you don’t, it is a great waste.”

We heard a rustling from somewhere down the hall. Closer now.

Putting my hand on Mother Eulora’s arm, I rushed my words. “Thank you. Perhaps I did know this all along, but I feel a new clarity about being a lightwitch. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

She patted my hand again. “Of course—” Her eyes widened and her head whipped toward the hallway.

At the same time, Mungo went crazy, barking and bouncing, high and loud and fast. He ran to the doorway and his barking grew even more frantic.

“What the . . . ?” The mother-of-pearl bracelet seemed to tighten against the pulse point on my wrist as I ran to join him.

What I saw didn’t register at first.

Fog seemed to be creeping along the ground, billowing along the wall-to-wall carpet from the direction of the living room, crawling toward us as if impelled by its own life force. I watched it in a trance, Mungo’s barking a strange background noise.

Eulora shook me. “Katie! We have to get out of here!”

I blinked, inhaled a whooping breath, and smelled the foulness of the air. The rustling sound grew louder, turning to a crackling, and, finally, though it only took a few nanoseconds, my brain put it all together.

Fire.

A quick glance confirmed the window was too small to crawl out of. No way could the older woman have hoisted herself up to that level, anyway.

“Come on.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. Mungo had fallen silent now that he’d sounded the alarm, and followed me like a wraith. I thought about picking him up, but instinctively decided he’d be better off near the floor. The hallway was full of smoke now, as it rose toward the ceiling, acrid and nasty smelling. The crackling grew louder. I veered into Tanna’s bedroom and pulled back the curtains.

Yes!

This window was much larger and lower to the ground. We could all get out! I reached for the latch and unlocked it.

Mungo started barking again as sudden flames whooshed upward from the floor molding.
What? Where did that come from?
But it drove me back from the window.

This isn’t a normal fire. This is something different. This is something very, very wrong.

I grabbed the pillows off the bed, stripped off the cases, and ran into the bathroom across the hall. Quickly, I doused them both and wrapped one around my face and the other one around Eulora’s, muffling everything below her sharp, assessing eyes. At least we could breathe.

But Mungo started coughing at my feet, and new terror winged through me at the thought of smoke getting into his little lungs. I swooped him up in my arms and nestled him against my shoulder so he could breathe through the wet fabric as well.

Eulora and I stumbled down the hallway, hand in hand, toward the living room. I didn’t know how long the fire had been burning, perhaps several minutes before we noticed it, but it was accelerating at a dizzying pace. The smoke was making me woozy, too, and my throat ached from breathing the hot, harsh air even through the wet pillowcase.

“Katie!” Eulora called through the roar of the flames. She pointed.

Flames licked the walls, filling the arched doorway to the kitchen and roaring to a crescendo all around us. Looking back, I saw it had spread to the bedrooms we’d just been in. Then I saw something that made my pounding heart almost stop: Dark streaks reached through the flames, flickering with a life of their own. Antifire in the midst of fire, something I sensed was so cold, it only made the feverish heat hotter. With an eerie intelligence, it reached destructive fingers toward us.

Seeking.
Hunting
.

It nudged flames toward fabric and books and the
more combustible items in the room. The wooden apples burned brightly within their ceramic bowl, a sinister centerpiece in the middle of the glass coffee table. Wisps of magazine ash swooped through the room, buffeted by hot currents of air. A whiff of burnt sugar reached my nose from the wreckage of the Honeybee pastries cremated right on the plate.

The gauzy curtains went up in a flash, and a wave of heat tumbled over us. I bent down, hunching over Mungo as I moved away, then straightened to find the entire room engulfed in fire. Loud popping came from the direction of Eulora’s collection of ceramic hedgehogs, and a piece of superheated shrapnel struck my left shoulder. I cried out, and Mungo yelped. The caustic smell of burning upholstery filled my nostrils as the blazing sofa slumped in upon its springs, the polyester stuffing melting and giving off a putrid, yellow cloud.

I held Mungo to my chest with one hand and squeezed Eulora’s hand with the other. “Help me fight it!” I cried, focusing all my panicked energy into clearing a path to the doorway. I felt her considerable power rush to meet my own, and there was the lupine energy I knew was Mungo’s essential wolfish nature that merged seamlessly with mine. I felt my skin grow oddly cool and saw white light like static pulse beneath my skin.

Closing my eyes, I gathered all our energies together and
pushed
.

I felt the dark flames retreat, try to surge back as if fighting me, but one more push and the fire died between us and the door. We rushed forward, and I reached for the doorknob.

Eulora slapped my hand away. “Hot,” she rasped.

I could barely hear her, but nodded.
Stupid
. Unwinding the pillowcase from my face, I wrapped it around my hand and used it to grasp the metal handle.

It wouldn’t turn.

A wall of flame like the one in Tanna’s bedroom flared from the bottom of the door, driving us backward.

“Help!” I screamed in desperation.

Eulora grabbed my hand again, and I felt our energies melding once more.

“Baby dog, I have to put you down for a sec,” I murmured to Mungo. Fighting every instinct to keep him as close to me as possible, I set him at my feet. He leaned against my leg, still helping Eulora and me as we directed our attention toward the flames now obscuring the exit in front of us.

The fire fought back. I gritted my teeth, summoning everything I had, ready for one last effort. But then Eulora’s grasp loosened in mine, and her other hand moved toward her chest. She leaned against me. Mungo whined at my feet.

“No!”
I screamed, my rage at whatever force was at work overcoming my fear. The word cut through the incinerating roar, and the flames seemed to pause.

A sudden, cool calm descended through my frantic thoughts.
There is evil in the fire, but fire itself is not evil
.
It is an element, and I am a witch. I work
with
the elements, not against them.

Putting one arm around Eulora’s shoulders to help her stand, I closed my eyes against the blaze and smoke, concentrating. “I call upon Michael, archangel of the south, of fire, of protection and courage,” I whispered. “With gratitude and reverence I call upon Fire.” My voice was louder this time. “To help and not hinder, to warm but not burn.” I thought of all the magical associations of fire the ladies of the spellbook club had taught me, concentrating on the good and beneficial.

Summer, sun, laughter and joy, playfulness, motherhood, the third chakra . . .

I sensed a shift of energy in the room, as if the clean fire was listening, shrugging off the bitter power controlling it. Gathering itself. Offering itself to my will.

“Thank you,” I said, my fear and anger draining away in a wave of gratitude.

Holding the essence of fire in my mind, I wordlessly asked it to move away from the door. When I opened my eyes, the path had cleared. The charred wood of the door no longer burned. A sound behind us made me turn my head, and I saw that wasn’t all. The fire had turned away from the combustibles in the room, had turned upon itself, eating the icy darkness within.

With a crash, the door burst open, and Declan filled the frame.

“Och, yer all right, then,” he bellowed.

Or, rather, Connell did.

Yip!

Chapter 18

Mungo ran out to the front yard and began barking in earnest to anyone who would listen. Connell blinked at me once, smiled ruefully, and was gone. The smile dropped, and Declan’s worried gaze took over. “Katie!” He pushed into the room. Heat flared against my back, the fire returning, real and untainted now but still hungry.

“Are you okay?” Declan shouted and reached for my arm.

“I’m fine.” My voice rose as I shifted to look at Mother Eulora. “But she’s not. I think there’s something wrong with her heart, and I know she inhaled some smoke.”

Declan took one look at my companion and scooped her up in his arms with a grunt. We ran outside as the roof above the porch caught.

A ladder truck and ambulance roared to the curb. Joe Nix jumped out and began pulling a gurney out of the back of the van as Declan lowered Eulora gently to the ground. I grabbed one of her wrists and chafed it, as I’d seen her apprentice do.

“She’s on medication, but I don’t know what,” I said to Declan, as he felt for her pulse and checked her breathing.

“Tanna,” she muttered. Her eyes flew open, pinning me where I leaned over her prone form. “She came home. She was inside.”

“Shh,” I soothed. “We didn’t see her. She must have gotten out.”

“Tanna,” Eulora said again, her eyes drifting shut. And then the paramedics were there with the gurney and bags of equipment, crowding me away.

Declan, still kneeling beside her, raised his head and raked me with his gaze. I could see him mentally running through a checklist as he assessed my physical well-being. I forced a smile and backed away. I wanted him to concentrate on Mother Eulora, not worry about me. I was fine.

Well, as fine you could be after escaping a magical fire.

I called Mungo over and checked him for injuries. Other than a few singed hairs on top of his ears, he appeared none the worse for wear. Together, we melted to the edge of the activity, watching numbly.

Where was Tanna? I’d assured Eulora she must have escaped the fire, but I also knew she’d be by Eulora’s side if she were able. Had that even been her we’d heard coming in the door? Wouldn’t an arsonist have been a little quieter?

We couldn’t even see into the kitchen. Tanna could have been trapped there
. My stomach tightened at the thought.

The fire crew had hooked up to the hydrant and was directing jets of water at the blazing home. The rear of the house had already fallen into a pile of charcoal defeat, now wetly burping smoke from the crevices. It would be a complete loss, hedgehogs, altar, and all.

Glancing at my watch, I felt a sense of disorientation. I’d been gone from the Honeybee less than an hour.

“Katie?”

I turned, and Declan swept me into his arms.

“Ouch!”

Instantly, he was checking me over. “This is a bad cut on your shoulder,” he said. “You’ll need stitches.”

Craning my head, I tried to see. “It doesn’t hurt that much.” The wound was deep, though, now that I really examined it. At least an inch, and four inches long. The sharp ceramic from the exploding tchotchke had acted like a bullet.

He grimaced. “It will. Come on. We’ll get it numbed before the adrenaline wears off.”

I began to protest, but a wave of weariness almost brought me to my knees. Weakly, I nodded and allowed him to take me toward the ambulance.

“Mother Eulora?” I asked.

“Probably a heart attack, but she’s stable.”

The ambulance started up and pulled away. “How will I get to the hospital?” I asked in bleary voice.

Declan laughed. “In my truck, silly.” Then, more gently: “Don’t worry, Katie. I’ll take care of you.”

I nodded again, relieved to let my lethargy take over. He
would
take care of me.

There was a prick of pain on my upper arm, and Joe Nix was smiling at me over a hypodermic needle. “You’ve had one hell of a week, Lightfoot.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

Declan led me toward his king-cab pickup. He lifted me in, placed Mungo on my lap, and closed the door. The voices on the dashboard scanner nattered away, oddly soothing. But as he pulled away and turned in the direction of Candler Hospital, I finally put my finger on something. “Why are you in your truck when you’re on shift?” I asked. “Were you doing something separately from the rest of the crew?”

His silence went on for long enough that it pulled me out of my stupor. “Declan?”

“I didn’t come in response to the 911 call. That came in after I was already on my way. And the others couldn’t come just because I told them you were in trouble.” He licked his lips. “I’m pretty sure they think I’m crazy.”

“But you were right— Wait. How did you know I was in trouble?”

He shot me a look.

I remembered his expression when he’d broken open Eulora’s door, the shouted words. “Connell?”

“Connell.”

“I saw him there in the doorway when you came in. Did he, uh, make life difficult for you with the other firefighters?”

He gave a small shudder. “No. At least he didn’t do that. But he came to me, told me your life was in danger, that you were being attacked. He guided me to where you were.”