I don’t know why her lack of spell-casting was so scary, but it was terrifying me.
“So where’s my son?” I asked.
“Damned if I know.”
“You faked your death to get him so where is he?” Maybe I was an idiot but Barney’s gun scared me much less than Darci’s staring did. Maybe it was because I’d faced so many guns—fake, but they looked the same—in my acting, but he didn’t frighten me at all.
Barney shrugged. “I needed to get out. I have a problem with gambling so there were some people who wanted my kneecaps.” He laughed as though this was a very funny and very original joke. “So I got cute little Ingrid to help me out. I used some old wino for the body and stuck my dentures in him.”
“And my son?” I was inches away from the poker now and I began to wonder what I was going to do with it. Throw it?
“It took me a while to figure out what to do with the kid. I couldn’t see myself runnin’ a healin’ parlor.” Again he laughed at his own joke. “It was Delphia that found out the kid could make people sick. She hated kids but she had trouble gettin’ employees to stay on account of the ghosts and all, so she kept the kid’s mother on in spite of him.”
Again, he paused to laugh. “One day the kid was doin’ somethin’ bad and rotten, like all kids, and she threatened him with dismemberment or somethin’ unless he stopped. He said he hated her and that he was gonna make her sick. That night she spent throwin’ up and in the can, and the next day she was sneezin’ and blowin’. Little Lisa went to Delphia and apologized for her son and that afternoon Delphia was fine. Never felt better.
“She and her sister were just startin’ to figure out how to make money off the kid when I showed up for my yearly visit to wherever the kid was. I’m Uncle Barney to him.”
His story made me feel naive and self-centered and oblivious. All this had been going on for years and I’d known nothing about it. I’d received a piece of paper every year from Barney about my son and I’d thrown it into a safe and not even read it carefully.
“Who sent the note saying my son was missing?” I asked.
“You got me on that one,” Barney said.
He started to say more but, suddenly, everything happened at once. Maybe because of what was going on in the room I didn’t hear the sirens of the fire department. The first I knew of them was when the front door opened and men started shouting,“Is anyone in here?”
The fire, contained until the front door opened, rushed up from the basement windows and licked into the windows of Darci’s bedroom.
Somebody screamed, Barney shot, and I felt something hit me. I looked down at my chest. There was a hole right where my heart was. The next thing I knew I was looking down at my body and there was light all around me. I saw men grab Barney, and I saw Darci kneeling over me. I felt her trying to pull me back into my body, but the heart was no longer beating in that body so I couldn’t get back into it. I really wanted to go toward the light but Darci wouldn’t let me. I tried to touch her, to tell her to let me go, but I could see that she wasn’t listening. Let me go! I tried to send to her, but she wouldn’t release me. I gave up trying to reason with her. All I could do was hang around and wait until she saw that she had to let me go.
Darci
Chapter Nineteen
LINC WAS DEAD.
The second that man, that Barney, appeared, Linc’s aura disappeared, so I knew that Linc was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn’t know the details of how it was going to happen, so I couldn’t work to prevent it. If I paralyzed Barney that might cause him to shoot Linc. If I ran, that might cause him to shoot Linc. There was nothing I could do except stand there and watch—and prepare. I could prepare for what I knew was about to happen.
I had connections to some people nearby so I put out a psychic SOS. I wanted to be ready when the time came. Maybe…I thought. Maybe there was something that could be done after Linc was dead.
I hurried the firemen into the room. They took Barney away and I kept them from seeing that Linc had been shot. I made them leave a stretcher leaning against the wall.
Behind the firemen came the pastor, Christopher Frazier, Onthelia, and her big fourteen-year-old daughter. I’d had to put them all into a trance to get them to walk into a burning building.
Without a word, without being aware of what they were doing, they picked up the stretcher, rolled Linc’s body onto it and carried him downstairs. The fire was all around us now but I couldn’t take my eyes off Linc. I clutched the bowling-ball bag to my chest and concentrated with all my might. I had to control the three people carrying the stretcher, had to keep Linc’s spirit from leaving the earth; I had to keep all the people outside away from us, and most of all, I had to get Linc’s child to meet us at the double elm.
Amelia was helping with that. She’d been behind Linc the whole time Barney had been holding a gun to him. I don’t know what Linc had said to her, but she felt she owed him.
They carried the stretcher to the tree, set it on the ground, then Christopher, Onthelia, and her daughter left. Once they were out of sight, I released them. They’d not remember what they’d done.
I turned to the people standing under the tree. There was Lisa Henderson, and the moment I saw her, information came flooding into my mind. I hadn’t been able to find her because she had no real connection to Linc. To be able to find someone I must have something that’s close to them. When I looked at her I saw that she’d been incarcerated in a small, isolated house owned by Delphia and Narcissa. The women had left her alone there, drugged senseless, for days. When Barney had arrived just hours ago, he’d awakened her and hit her to make her tell him where her son was.
Lisa had taken all the blows, but never told him anything about her son, not past or present. I knew that her son was her life.
Barney, in his rage at having his plans thwarted, hadn’t bothered to secure Lisa very well when he’d left. He’d wanted to kill her but he thought he might need her with the child in the future. All he’d wanted was to get to 13 Elms and set fire to the house. He wanted no one, meaning all the women guests, around to talk about his failed scheme. When he’d found a half-drunk Sylvia snooping upstairs, he’d set fire to the room and locked her in.
After Barney left, Lisa had escaped her bonds, crawled out a window, and started running. Whoever had directed her son to go to the double-trunked tree had told her where to go.
Turning, I saw a little boy. He looked like Linc, just with lighter coloring. He was the child of my dreams. The child who would help me find my husband.
What I knew about him was that he’d been protected. While I had been at the church, he’d been there, taken care of by the pastor and his wife, who’d had no idea the child was being sought. When I was with Pappa Al, I’d felt someone in the church, but the feeling had gone away, had been taken from me.
For a moment, I marveled at the power it had taken to hide the child from me. Had Devlin done it? Had he told the child to leave his hiding place and come to us?
No, I thought, and suddenly knew that Devlin was a tool, like the Mirror of Nostradamus was a tool. Devlin was a tool being used by a very, very powerful human.
Who? I wondered. I was certain I’d never met anyone with such power, but then I’d been fooled in Connecticut so maybe someone else had fooled me.
I looked at Lisa Henderson. She was holding her son’s hand in both her own, protectively, and when she saw me, she put herself between the child and me. But the boy, tall for his age, stepped forward. I saw that he was an old man in a child’s body. He’d been through so much in his short life and already he knew a lot. Instinctively, he felt the psychic kinship between the two of us.
The child and I said nothing to each other. We had understanding beyond words. He knelt on his father’s left side, by his heart. When Amelia appeared at Linc’s head I heard Lisa gasp at seeing a ghost, but the boy didn’t so much as look. He can do things besides heal, I thought.
<
br /> I knelt on the other side of Linc, my white robe pouring out around me. Narcissa had put the robe on me. She knew that Delphia had meant to kill me—as ordered by Barney—and putting me in a shroud so I’d be wearing white when I met my Maker was her idea of kindness. But Devlin had awakened me and led me to Amelia’s room. Devlin had taken away a lot of the drug from my body, but I was still sleepy so I’d stretched out on the floor and slept lightly.
I looked across Linc’s lifeless body at the boy, then set the bag I was clutching to the ground and unzipped it. I knew something had happened inside the bag in the last hour, but I didn’t know what. Whereas it had once been heavy with the big glass ball, now the bag weighed little.
When I opened the bag, a white light came out. It was a beautiful, warm light that soon grew larger and larger, until it made a circle of light around the old tree. There, hanging on the tree was a man, a thick noose around his neck, his neck broken. It was Martin, and he looked like a darker-skinned Linc. To my left I heard a little moan of anguish from Amelia, but she didn’t leave her place at Linc’s head.
As I watched, the man opened his eyes, straightened his neck, the rope disappeared, and he stepped to the ground. His eyes were only on Amelia as he walked to Linc’s feet.
Martin nodded as he put his hands on Linc’s ankles, signaling that he was ready. Amelia put her hands on the sides of Linc’s head, and his son placed both his hands on his father’s still heart. The child nodded at me.
I reached into the bag, and withdrew a little white glass ball. It was about the size of a golf ball and it was the most wonderful object I’d ever held. A Touch of God, it had been called and when I touched it, I finally had some of the answers I’d been looking for.
I suddenly knew that the object I held was old beyond understanding. God had given the angels a touch from His fingertip. Each angel blew on the touch, then enclosed the touch and their breath in what looked to be glass. I knew that the ball was indestructible.
I also knew that I was allowed to have this object because I’d passed a test. I had known what Sylvia Murchinson had done to me and my family, but I’d saved her life anyway.
I held the beautiful, warm ball in my left hand, the one closest to my heart, then held out my right hand to the child. He put his left hand under mine, and we clasped right hands across Linc’s body.
The boy and I looked into each other’s eyes. He didn’t have to tell me that he’d never done this before. He’d cured a few ailments, and he’d made many injuries heal faster, but he’d never come close to raising someone from the dead.
What I knew was what Linc had said, that healing and giving illness were two sides of the same coin. In Connecticut I had killed four people. If I could use my power to kill, I felt sure I could use it to give life.
I looked at Linc’s son and nodded to him. We were to begin.
Closing my eyes, I concentrated. Only once before, when I’d been led into a sacrificial chamber, children in cages, ready to be used, had I concentrated as I did over Linc’s body.
I could feel energy coming from Amelia, from Martin, from the child, and most of all from the ball. I prayed. I concentrated. I prayed.
As though I too had died, I felt my spirit leave my body. I looked down on the four of us kneeling over Linc’s body, the child’s mother in the background, afraid but praying with us.
My spirit floated into the light, the Death Light, and there I found Linc. He’d gone farther in than I thought he had.
Oh, but it was pleasant there! There was no heavy body, no pain, no tears, no worries, just sweet sensations. I looked down at my body and I could see my earthly misery. I could feel every tear I’d shed and every tear I would shed.
Linc’s spirit was before me. He reached out to touch me and, like always, I could feel his thoughts. When he was with Amelia he’d felt love, real, true, deep love, and he knew he didn’t have that kind of love on earth. His message to me was that he was willing to leave. Whether he went alone or with me was my choice.
I looked back at my miserable earthly self and I was tempted. Oh, so very, very tempted.
But then I looked at the child still kneeling by Linc’s body and I knew that he could come to love Linc greatly. The child needed Linc. I looked at the mother. She was sitting on the bench, scared nearly witless. She was a simple woman who’d just wanted to have a movie star’s child. The son she’d received was out of her capacity to deal with. She too needed Linc, I thought with surprise.
I looked back at Martin and Amelia, both bodiless. Someday, I thought, my husband and I will be like them. And there were two little girls who needed me desperately. They shouldn’t have to live with someone who was “creeped out” by them no matter how well they meant. And they didn’t need a mother who was frightened enough of the Sylvia Murchinsons of the world to hide from them.
I looked at Linc and he smiled. He knew my decision. Like Amelia had loved her Martin, enough to wait for him for a hundred years, I was going to wait for the man I loved. Forever.
I smiled back at Linc, we clasped hands, and we returned to earth.
Epilogue
HENRY LAUGHED WHEN HE SAW LINC’S BODY GASP AND come back to life. In the human world he was a blind old man, but in the spirit world he was young and could see everything. It was a choice he’d made long ago. Human sight took away too much from his inner visions, so he’d given it up.
“She passed,” he said to Devlin.
“So far,” Devlin said, “but she understands little.” He’d changed himself into a fat old man and was eating a bag of kettle corn. “I’m not sure she’ll succeed.”
“She will!” Henry said so forcibly that the corn spilled.
Devlin changed himself into a Viking, as though ready to do battle.
“Would you stop that!” Henry said.
“You conjured me so I am what you wanted.”
“I must have used a wrong ingredient somewhere.”
Devlin smiled, his weapons disappeared, he took off his horned helmet, and he sat down on a fur-covered chair. “If you’re such an inept wizard why leave your power to anyone?”
Henry didn’t bother to answer the rhetorical question. “I think she’s the one but she needs—”
“More temptation?”
Henry smiled in memory. “She did well with that woman, didn’t she? She could have killed her but she blew her own breath into her. Oh! Look at this.” He looked down through the mists to the scene below.
Thirteen Elms was no more. The house had burned down, and the slave quarters as well. The land was covered with fire trucks, police cars, and people.
Smiling, Henry watched as Barney, Delphia and Narcissa were taken away in handcuffs. Henry pointed a finger and a headlight caught Sylvia sneaking away into the forest, a large tote bag clutched to her. Startled by the light, she dropped the bag and out fell jewelry. While Darci and Linc had been waking the women up, Sylvia had been emptying jewelry boxes.
Smiling even more broadly, Henry watched the police take Sylvia away. The women claimed their jewelry, but when they finished, lying on the ground was a little gold watch. It was the watch Adam had given Darci before they were married. “She’ll want that,” Henry said. “Make sure she finds it.”
“Yes, sir!” Devlin said and changed himself into a handsome soldier, with six stars on his collar.
Henry kept smiling. “Even you can’t annoy me tonight. I feel in my heart she’s going to prove worthy.”
“If you give her your power plus what she has…”
“I know,” Henry said. “That’s why I’m being careful. If she has her own small power and—”
“Your very large power—”
“Plus three magic objects—”
“There are twelve of them.”
“She has two of them already,” Henry said. “And a key.”
“She has only one object,” Devlin said. “She has the Touch of God. It can—”
“I know very well what it
can do, but she needs to find out. She has a second object, but she doesn’t know she has it.” He looked into the mists and there was an object that looked like a little birdcage, only the bars were made of string. Inside the cage was a rock.
At the sight, Devlin disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke.
Henry laughed again. “Come back, old friend. He’s asleep. He can’t harm you.”
Just the head of a man appeared—a head wearing a spiked steel helmet. “Does she know…?
“Nothing. She found him when she was just a child—or, as you know, he found her. She was lonely so they used to talk. Her mother thought the child was strange enough without talking to a rock, so she told her daughter she’d thrown away her ‘pet.’”
“But the mother kept…him?”
“Yes. He’s in Putnam, Kentucky, at the back of a closet. Darci needs to find him again, don’t you think?”
“I think you’re giving too much power to one lowly human. With all this she’ll be able to—”
“Change the world,” Henry said, smiling.
Devlin transformed into an old man with a long gray beard and a coarse white robe. “She’ll be able to change history!”
“Yes, she will,” Henry said, then looked down through the mists. Darci and the child were on either side of Linc and helping him to walk. As they made their way through the forest, she halted for a moment to pick up her beloved watch that Sylvia had dropped. In the pocket of her robe was the little glasslike ball.
“Thanks,” Linc said to Darci, and since he was touching her, she knew he meant thanks for finding his son.
“Couldn’t have done it without you,” she said, smiling up at him.
The mist closed and Henry looked back at Devlin.
“How much does she know?” Devlin asked.
“Not much now but she’ll figure it out. She already knows someone hid the child but she doesn’t yet know who. We have to plan her next test.”