Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2) (19 page)

“Whoa…cool,” said Corey.

Like Arianrhod, Llew floated above us all, about twenty feet in the air. He looked across the clearing and nodded to his mother.

Together they chanted, “On this day where there is an equal balance of light and dark, put your differences aside, break down the barriers, extinguish all hatred, ignore any suspicions, and let all of the children of the Creator live in harmony. Give thanks to the Earth and Sky! Let the earth come to life again, and welcome the light of spring!”

We bowed our heads to receive their blessing. Then the deities reversed their process and started to return to the heavenly realm. Llew had already gone; the sky welcomed him back with a stunning sunrise, but before Arianrhod could reach the portal, a petite woman blocked her path.

Madison stood defiantly and addressed the goddess directly. In her left hand she held a doll bed. In her right, she held the hideous Brideog poppet made in my image.

“Your Grace, as your devoted servant, I must inform you the most sacred laws of the clan have been broken!”

I heard a low growl at my side. “Oh…not this sherbet again…” a small part of my brain processed with pride that Corey’s voice was starting to change. Most of me had a sinking, bad feeling about this.

“You are impertinent, indeed. I hope for your sake you have proof of such an accusation.”

Madison held up the doll. “You have said once you meet a person, you remember their essence forever. Can you sense the human essences on this Brideog?” 

The Queen of the Night held out delicate silvery hands and took the doll. She closed her violet eyes and pursed her lips. “I sense three human essences on this poppet. I sense yours, Madison McLoed,” she paused.

Madison replied without hesitation, “I manufacture the Brideog dolls for young maids seeking a husband.”

“I see,” mused the Queen. Then she declared, “I sense the essence of the young Healer, Margaret MacDougall.” The queen had used my official name, the one I would take if I became the Great Healer someday. She didn’t want to acknowledge that my mother had taken my father’s last name and had passed it on to me. All eyes stared at me.

“And I sense one other essence, of Evan Keach, the Great Seer of this clan!”  She stared directly at him.

Gasps of horror and cries of shock echoed through the clearing. All eyes switched from me to Evan. It didn’t help that we’d been leaning on each other at the time.

“Arrest them!” she cried.

Madison grinned like the cat that ate the canary.

Deputy Jimmy Wallace and another person who looked a lot like him approached us through the crowd. Jimmy took my hand and helped me stand. The other guy did the same thing with Evan. Jimmy didn’t physically restrain me, but his posture told me everything I needed to know. I was his prisoner. I saw more movement in the crowd. The judge had reached the Queen. He addressed her directly.

“Your Grace, by the laws of our clan, an investigation must be held to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. Once proven guilty, punishment will be decided by the High Council.”  He’d said
once
proven guilty, not
if
proven guilty. I was screwed. The Queen looked like she wanted to object and I had a flashback of the Queen of Hearts screaming, ‘Off with her head!’ 

Arianrhod relented when Paul Sinclair emphasized, “The process of justice is the most sacred law of the clan. How can we enforce any other laws if we don’t obey that one?”

She nodded. “See that it’s done. I want the investigation completed in one week’s time.” She looked directly at Fiona, who tacitly agreed with a sharp nod. Then the Queen of the Night disappeared through the archway and the judge told Jimmy, “Put them under house arrest.”  He sounded sad.

Chapter Twenty-Five

All the Queen’s Spies

I lay on my bed, bored senseless, and counted the number of tiny flowers in the calico print on one square of my quilt. I’d already counted the number of flowers in five other squares. I’d read everything in my bedroom, done all of my homework and checked it twice, listened to the playlist on my MP3 player until I wanted to scream, and ran through my forms until I was sore.

The High Council, sans Evan, had been in a meeting for hours. It felt more like they’d been cloistered for days. Deputy Jimmy sat in a chair outside my bedroom door. He’d apologized several times, but he only let me out to go to the bathroom. After all, he shrugged, orders were orders.

I’m innocent
. If I’d known we’d be punished whether any crime was committed or not, I would have thrown myself at Evan a long time ago. If we’d known we’d be falsely accused, I never would have dated Steve. Evan never would’ve let me. Groaning, I rolled over on my back to look up at the ceiling, remembering the Hogmanay kiss.
Why did I walk away
?  I firmly pushed these thoughts from my mind and glanced guiltily toward my guard, but Jimmy had disappeared.

Instead, Fiona stared at me, tight-lipped and grim-faced.

I sat up dutifully.

“Come downstairs, we need a family meeting.” 

I followed her silently.

***

Rose and Corey already sat on the couch. I joined them. Rose grasped my hand in a gesture of support. Corey slouched across the coffee table from us in an easy chair, scowling.

Fiona perched on the end of her own chair and took a deep breath. “Okay, Maggie, before we start, can you tell us, in your own words, what you think happened?”

“Nothing happened!” I cried out with my arms stretched out wide.

“We know that, Maggie,” said Rose sympathetically, “it’s painfully obvious to all of us how you and Evan are not a couple.”

“Intimacy is not the issue under question,” interrupted Fiona.

I looked at her, surprised.

She continued, “Tell us what you know about the Brideog.”

“Oh…that,” I tried to remember the events preceding Imbolc. “Well…I remember I went to the store the day before Imbolc. I saw these dolls on the jewelry counter, so I took a look at them. Madison said they were for little girls or something like that. I picked one up to marvel at the craftsmanship, and then put it back down on the counter.”

“Can you remember exactly for whom Madison said she made the dolls?”  Fiona coaxed.

I tried harder to remember. “I think she said they were for the young maids in the clan, or something like that.”

Rose and Fiona exchanged a meaningful glance.

“What happened to the doll you touched?”

“Oh, I remember,” I gasped, “As I left the store, she picked it up and put it behind the counter.”

“Did the doll look like you?” Fiona asked.

“No, the doll I touched had blond hair and blue eyes, I remember that much.”

“What happened next?”

“The next day, Evan walked into the kitchen carrying the doll in a toy bed, which I didn’t recognize. He said it had been left on the front porch. He assumed I’d left it and he teased me. I yelled at him because it wasn’t mine, and made him throw it out in the backyard. That’s the last I saw of it.”

Fiona sat back in her chair. “Does anyone know how the doll got from the backyard into Madison’s hands?” Heads all around the room shook back and forth.

“Okay,” Fiona said, “here’s the deal. The High Council wanted an independent party to run the investigation into Madison’s allegations that you broke clan law when you invoked the blessing of Brighid on your relationship with Evan, but we can’t just ask anyone to do it, or the existence of magic might be revealed to Romans, so Paul asked his daughter to return to the clan and act as the independent investigator. She’s a prosecutor in Baltimore now. She’s been gone a while and isn’t friends with you, Evan or Madison, so the council agreed. She’s on her way out here now, will spend one week completing her investigation and reporting back to the council.

At that time, five council members will sit in judgment of the allegations. Evan can’t judge the case for obvious reasons and I’ve excused myself since I’m related to you. Unless you can find a witness who saw her planting the doll on your porch, or make her confess, than it will come down to your word against hers.”

“What can I do?” I asked, hoping something I could offer would help the investigation.

“I’m afraid you can’t help in your own defense. You and Evan are still under house arrest until this ends. You’ll be tutored in the evenings at home so you won’t fall behind in your classes, but that’s it…any questions?”

“No,” I said dejectedly. Then I had a thought. “Wait…can I talk on the phone?”

“To whom would you wish to talk?” she looked surprised at my request.

Corey answered for me. “She wants to make sure he’s okay.” 

I nodded.

“Oh,” mused Fiona. “I’ll make a request to the council on your behalf, but I don’t see why not.”

***

While we had our family meeting in the living room, Deputy Jimmy got a much needed break from guard duty. We found him grabbing coffee and a meal with Ginger and Rock. Fiona started discussing the plans for the coming week with him and I was told to return to my room. Once there, I started running through my forms.

Jimmy nodded in my direction when he noticed me working out. “You’re really good.” 

I smiled and showed him my routine. Soon I had him learning some beginner Tai Chi forms. He’d studied some martial arts in the military and was surprised to find out how similar the forms were to the more aggressive disciplines of Kung Fu. “The moves are the same, but you do them slowly,” he noted.

“It takes more strength to hold the poses than it does to move fast. That way, when you need speed, your muscle memory and strength are ready.”  I showed him several blindingly fast ‘push hands’ strikes.

He shook his head, impressed. “I heard what you did to Steve McCoy, now I see how.”

Luckily, it only took an hour for the council to agree I could talk to Evan on the phone. Fiona ducked back in to give me the good news and the handset. I thanked her. Jimmy waited outside the door to give me the semblance of privacy but I really didn’t have any.

He answered the phone on the first ring.

“Hey,” I said, relieved to hear his voice.

“How’re you holding up?”

“Oh, well…”

“Splat?” he asked, tentatively.

The air rushed out of me. “Oh Evan, I don’t get it. We let go and still went splat!”

“Now I’m convinced we shouldn’t have let go.”  He sounded regretful.

“Me, too.”  It felt good to know he felt the same way.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve been thinking. If we’re found guilty, the council will probably shun and exile us from the clan. That’s really the most they can do. It would be stupid, because they’d lose their last Healer and their Great Seer. The real problem is the Queen’s vengeance.”

“She’s going to try to kill us like she killed so many others. What can we do?”

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I turn eighteen in two weeks. If we’re found guilty then I want you to run away with me. We’ll hide like your parents did.”

“Oh, Evan, it won’t matter. No one can hide from her once she’s decided she wants them dead. My dad was in Afghanistan for crying out loud. We can’t hide.”

“Then we’ll have to fight.”

“How can we fight her?”

“I don’t know. In the meantime, don’t go outside at night. Stay away from the windows and watch out for her spies.”

“How do I know who her spies are?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“Okay.”

“Take care, Mags.”

“You too, Evan,” I started to press the END button on the phone when I heard a click.
Did the council get a wiretap on my phone?
  Deciding it couldn’t be possible; I hung up and wrote it off as one of those weird things.

***

The week dragged. At one point, Paula Sinclair Schwartz came by to interview me. I told her the same story I had told my family. She listened impassively, took a lot of notes and left without any inclination of what she believed.
I bet she’s a really good prosecutor
.

***

Without school, choir, work or training, I found myself incredibly bored, until I noticed Corey spent a lot of time alone, also. At least one positive outcome resulted from my incarceration. I started hanging around with him in the den, playing video games. After a while, he relaxed a bit and confided his fear.

“I’m worried about Arianna.”

“The moon goddess?  Why are you worried about her?”

“She’s going to kill you… and Evan. She’s already murdered or ordered the murder of a lot of people.”

I stared at him open-mouthed. Evan and I hadn’t told anyone about his dream diary, my family tree, or the connections we’d made.

“How do you know that?”

“I have nightmares,” he whispered.

I gasped.
How powerful is Corey?
I’d already deduced he had Healer vision, like me. He’d just confirmed my suspicion he had dreams of other people’s memories, like Evan. A chill ran down my spine.

“Have you had a vision of me or Evan getting hurt?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word ‘
killed
’.

“Not yet,” he still spoke softly. We couldn’t let Deputy Jimmy find out about Corey’s magic. His voice, still raspy from the change to baritone, shook with fear and worry.

I squeezed his hand. “Tell me about the nightmares.”

He looked down at our linked hands curiously, shrugged and told me about two. The first story he relayed was new to me.

“Rhonda MacDougall, aged 27, the unmarried younger daughter of Robert Wallace and Tamryn MacDougall, died tragically one day while hiking through the forest, looking for medicinal herbs to harvest. Everyone thought she tripped accidentally when her feet tangled in some vines and she fell over the edge of a mountainside cliff. Except it wasn’t an accident. Those vines shot out of the forest undergrowth of their own accord and wrapped themselves around her feet.”

“A gnome did it.”

“Yup. I keep having bad dreams about Madison McLoed, too.”

“I had one of those. I think it’s better to try and ignore her. They’ll find a witness. Evan and I will be proven innocent.”

He didn’t look convinced.

“Tell me another dream,” I prompted, to change the subject.

The second story was the same memory Evan had recalled about my maternal grandparents being killed in a head-on collision with a truck. He added one detail. “The gnome hid in the cab until the truck driver was driving down the highway. Suddenly, an approaching pick-up was bathed in moonlight. It must have been a signal, because the gnome started to transform into a massive tangle of vines with large leaves and big, white flowers. The plant blocked the window so the trucker couldn’t see and covered his feet so he couldn’t take his foot off the gas pedal. Then there was the impact. The gnome shifted his shape back into a short, wrinkly person, snuck out of the cab, and ran off.”

“Moon flowers,” I muttered.

“What?”

“In the moon garden in the backyard lives a gnome who spies on us for Arianrhod. He shape shifts into a vine of moon flowers.”

“Well, he also killed our grandparents. Did you know Grandpa Kyle was the last living McGuire, the only other Healer family in the clan?”

“Yeah, I knew.”

“If I ever get my hands on that gnome, he’ll never hurt anyone again. We have to stop her.”

“How? She’s a goddess. She has incredible power.”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. You know, if she can get a few of these magical creatures to do her dirty work, she can get hundreds, maybe even thousands of them to kill for her.”

“What are you talking about?  Do you think she’ll attack the whole clan…with an army…like a war?”

“We’re already at war with her sis, we’ve been at war our entire lives. She declared war on our family when Mom and Dad got married. Only we didn’t know it. Now we do, and I’m gonna fight back. I’m gonna protect us from her.”

“Oh kiddo, don’t talk like that. It’s not your responsibility. I’ll talk to Evan and see what he thinks.” 

Corey grunted.