Healing Hands

1 Laurel Wilcox was just about to stifle a yawn when her computer chimed. She blinked, then leaned forward in her seat to get a better look at the screen. Hiker Claims Mysterious Healing Encounter With Stranger After Suffering Fall The headline — from the Carson City Courier — had a time stamp of only thirty-six hours earlier. Frowning now, all thoughts of yawning forgotten, Laurel quickly scanned the article. Not that there was much to it — just a couple of short paragraphs that had probably been buried on one of the back pages of the physical paper, although of course she was reading the online version. MaryJo Gaffney, thirty-eight, had been hiking along the north shore of Lake Tahoe when she slipped and fell on the rocky terrain. The woman stated that she’d been lying there in pain, far from any help, when a man appeared out of nowhere and laid his hands on her leg, which she swore had suffered a compound break of the tibia, or shinbone. “And the pain just disappeared,” she claimed in her interview with the reporter. “The bone was healed, and the gashes on my leg were gone, too. It was like a miracle.” The description she gave was of a man in his late thirties or early forties, with brown hair and brown eyes, tall and slim. He hadn’t told her anything about who he was or where he came from, although MaryJo Gaffney said he gave her a reassuring smile before he turned away from her and disappeared into the trees. With her wounds healed, she was able to hike back to the spot at the trailhead where she’d parked her car. Although the reporter — someone named Cole Michelson — had clearly done his best to report the incident in a properly neutral journalistic way, Laurel could practically feel his skepticism slipping out in each phrase. However, he didn’t offer any speculation as to what might have really happened to Ms. Gaffney. But Laurel, her heart beginning to beat a little faster in excitement, could read between the lines, could see something promising in the woman’s account. “Jake!” she called out. “I think I’ve got something here.” Her cousin had been in the PC room, discussing a software upgrade with his brother Jeremy, Trident Enterprises’ resident computer genius. No response to her call at first, but then a moment later, the two brothers came into the main computer lab. They were both tall and dark, like most of the Wilcoxes, Jeremy’s features just a bit more rounded than Jake’s chiseled magazine-cover looks. Right then, they both appeared almost startled by her announcement, and Laurel really couldn’t blame them. After all, it had been a very long time since they’d gotten even the slightest ping on the sophisticated witch-finding system Jeremy had set up. In fact, the last time had been in late September, more than eight months earlier. That blip had turned out to be Sloane Kennedy, an orphan witch with strong mind-reading abilities…a witch who was now Jeremy’s girlfriend. Ever since then, however, it had been complete radio silence, which was why Laurel had been fighting a yawn and wondering if she could come up with a plausible excuse for bailing early so she could go shopping with Autumn Garnett, her best friend and another Wilcox cousin. “What is it?” Jake asked, stepping closer to Laurel’s computer screen so he could take a look at the images there. “Looks like maybe a healer,” she replied, and obligingly slid her office chair a little out of the way to give him better access. For a few moments, Jake was silent as he scanned the words on the screen. Jeremy also sidled closer, although he seemed content to hang back a little bit. Then again, it was entirely possible that he could read the article just fine from where he stood. “This isn’t much,” Jake said at length, now sounding a bit disappointed. “Don’t you think it’s much more likely that this woman thought she was more badly injured than she really was, and in her panic just imagined the whole incident?” Since Laurel had expected him to play devil’s advocate, she refused to let his response get her down. “I don’t think that’s very likely,” she replied. “If she actually hurt herself enough to start hallucinating from the pain, then she should have had some kind of cuts and scrapes after that kind of fall. The article says that her leg looked completely uninjured.” Jake scratched at the stubble on his chin. Most of the time, he tried to stay fairly clean-shaven, but with his wedding to Addie Grant now only a little more than a week away, he’d been busy enough that he’d allowed those sorts of minor details to fall by the wayside. At length, he said, “I still don’t think it’s much to go on.” “Let me run a search,” Jeremy offered, speaking for the first time. “Sometimes the algorithms miss the really minor stuff, but now that I have a location and a particular talent to hone in on, maybe I can find more evidence of a healer working in the Lake Tahoe area.” “Okay, try that,” Jake said, and Jeremy disappeared back into the PC room, which was where he did most of his intensive data hacking. In the next moment, Jake’s phone pinged, and he pulled it out of his pocket and made a face that was almost but not quite a grimace. “I need to go,” he went on. “Addie and I need to give the final sign-off on the menu for the reception.” “No worries,” Laurel replied blithely. They’d all be waiting for Jeremy to come up with his own findings before they decided what to do next anyway, so Jake might as well go ahead and handle the wedding business. “I’ll just hang here and wait to see what Jeremy has to say.” “Don’t make any plans until I get back,” Jake warned her, and she shot him a guileless smile. “Why would you think I’d do something like that?” “Because I know you,” he returned, now looking resigned. “I mean it. No going off half-cocked.” She shot him a thumbs-up, and he let out a sigh and headed toward the front door. A moment later, he was gone. As soon as the door shut behind her cousin, Laurel’s smile faded. She might have asked the universe how Jake could have possibly known she was already plotting and planning, but that sort of thing was to be expected when someone had known you for your entire life. But really…how could she not already be scheming about how to go to Lake Tahoe to find this supposed healer? I mean, Lake Tahoe, she thought. Talk about your dream destination. Her life hadn’t been quite as circumscribed as it had been for previous generations of Wilcox witches, thanks to the alliance that had formed between the Wilcoxes and the McAllisters about eight years earlier. She’d been able to visit the former mining town of Jerome — home base for the McAllister witch clan — and even travel as far south as Tucson, whereas before, she would have been confined to northern Arizona, to Wilcox country, which stretched across the northern third of the state, all the way from Kingman to the west to the New Mexico border to the east. Despite that newfound freedom, she’d still never left Arizona. And Lake Tahoe sounded like such a cool place to visit. But would going there even be possible? All of Nevada was Delmonico clan territory. Maybe once upon a time, it would have seemed unlikely that a Wilcox could even think about traveling there, but after Jeremy had managed to put the Walkers — the clan in South Dakota and part of Montana, with a particularly nasty prima at its head — in their place, the Delmonicos had reason to be grateful to the Wilcoxes. Before that, members of the Walker clan with the ability to hide their witch nature had been able to come and go in Nevada with impunity, but ever since their former prima had passed away, the Walkers had been lying low and staying out of trouble. In fact, it sounded as though they hadn’t even made an attempt to leave their home territory. Also, with Sloane and her mind-reading ability — an ability she’d used to consistently win at poker tables throughout the Southwest — now safely ensconced in Flagstaff, the Delmonicos also didn’t have to worry about a freelance witch unfairly beating the odds and fleecing any clan-run casinos out of their earnings. True, the Delmonicos didn’t own all the casinos in Nevada, but they ran a good number of them, and probably hadn’t been too happy to learn that one particular witch had been utilizing her own special witchy talent to pad her wallet. At any rate, the combination of those two happy shifts in fortune probably meant the Delmonicos had every reason to look favorably on the Wilcoxes…which also meant they might be a lot more open to having a Wilcox witch come and do a bit of investigating in their territory. Or not. Laurel could freely admit that she knew very little about the Delmonico clan. Maybe they didn’t have a healer, and therefore wouldn’t want someone to come poking around and possibly steal a warlock who could be valuable to them. She got up from her seat and headed into the PC lab. Jeremy was hunched over the keyboard in front of him, the two computer screens directly ahead filled with a mishmash of code. If she sat down and really studied what he was doing, she’d probably be able to make some sense of it, since she’d majored in computer science at Northern Pines University, but she didn’t see the point. Her trying to hack Jeremy’s magically enhanced algorithms was like a kid who’d studied science in high school trying to unravel the physics behind the discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle. “Find anything?” she asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. Although he was in profile to her, she could still see the way his brows drew together in annoyance. “I just started working on this five minutes ago,” he said. “What do you think?” Because she’d known Jeremy her whole life, Laurel wouldn’t allow his gruff tone to irritate her. The guy was a total grump. Honestly, she didn’t know how Sloane put up with him half the time. Okay, she’d allow herself to admit that he was cute — although since they were first cousins, she’d never let herself think of him at all romantically — and yet she thought there were plenty of other Wilcox warlocks who were almost as good-looking but didn’t see the need to do an Oscar the Grouch impersonation every waking moment. “Well, you’re the whiz kid,” she said, keeping her tone airy, unconcerned. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.” Jeremy’s only reply was a slight hunching of his shoulders as his fingers continued to clatter across the keyboard. Still staring at the screen, he said, “Okay, there was an incident in January where someone crashed into a tree while skiing and woke up half an hour later, completely uninjured. They took the guy to the hospital to get checked out, since some other skiers found him passed out in the snow, but he was fine. No concussion, no bumps or bruises.” “Well, that sounds like something,” Laurel responded. “I mean, I assume if you skied at full speed right into a tree, you’d have some kind of injuries to show for your effort.” Another shrug. “You tell me. You’re the healer.” Her shoulders tightened, but Laurel told herself not to rise to the bait. Technically, Jeremy was right — her gift was healing, but she’d never used it much. To be honest, she still found herself annoyed that she’d been blessed — or cursed — with a magical talent she didn’t much want. It would have been far cooler to have Jake’s power of telekinesis, or the weather control that his fiancée Addie Grant possessed. Or the ability to help things grow, or even to talk to ghosts, the way Angela, wife of the Wilcox clan’s primus Connor, could. But when you were a healer, you were pretty much at the clan’s beck and call. You never knew when you’d get a phone call in the middle of the night to help deliver someone’s baby, or to run to someone’s house when their kid fell out of a tree and broke their arm. And all right, a lot of the Wilcoxes also relied on civilian doctors, so as not to put too much of a burden on Eleanor, the clan’s other healer, but still, you couldn’t exactly call your life your own. That was the main reason why Laurel hadn’t done much with her talent. Eleanor had been very understanding, and had only guided her through the basics so her gift wouldn’t get out of control…and also so it could be of use in an emergency…but she’d assured Laurel that she didn’t have any intention of retiring soon, and so there was no need for her to become the clan’s second full-time healer. Since Jeremy had paused in his typing and was now sending her a sideways, sardonic look, clearly expecting an answer, Laurel knew she had to respond to his comment. Trying to sound casual, she said, “I suppose it depends on how you hit the tree. If you were really slaloming and went full tilt into the thing, then you’d be lucky to get off with just a concussion and maybe a few broken bones. But even a small impact should have caused some cuts and bruises, especially since it sounds like this person hit hard enough to get knocked out.” Jeremy absorbed this information and went back to his typing. “The guy in the article doesn’t recall seeing any strangers nearby.” “Well, how could he?” Laurel said reasonably. “The man got knocked out. If there really is an orphan warlock in the Lake Tahoe area, he probably just went up to the skier and healed his injuries while the guy was still unconscious. Obviously, he wouldn’t be able to remember anything.” It seemed Jeremy found this explanation reasonable enough that he didn’t bother to argue. However, because it really wasn’t in his nature to concede a point, he only said, “Oh…looks like there’s another one.” “When?” Laurel asked, trying not to sound too eager. “Last month,” he said. “Here.” A blog post popped up on one of the screens, from a woman named Alison Crewe who called her blog Tahoe Treasures. As far as Laurel could tell, Ms. Crewe was a local who made a habit of hiking around the area, finding hidden spots or less frequented locales for those who wanted to go off the beaten path when they were visiting the area. She leaned in closer, ignoring the annoyed glance Jeremy gave her as she made him shift his office chair a few inches in the other direction so she’d have better access to the screen. Apparently, Alison Crewe had been hiking in a spot outside Carnelian Bay when she lost her footing and slid down the hill, and crashed into a rocky outcropping. Luckily, she hadn’t broken anything, but she was pretty banged up and in pain, and not sure whether she would be able to make it back to the place where she’d parked her SUV. Out of nowhere, a tall man with brown hair appeared. He told her he’d seen her fall, and said he’d be happy to help her get back to her vehicle. There had been something so friendly and reassuring about the stranger that she found herself trusting him immediately, and she’d accepted his offer of help. With him to steady her, she made it back to her Nissan Pathfinder. But after he helped her in and closed the door, he apparently vanished into thin air. I wanted to think I’d imagined the whole thing, Alison Crewe wrote in her blog, that maybe I’d conjured this “helper” because it was my mind’s way of giving me the strength I needed to get back to my car. But the thing is, I discovered after I got home that all my scrapes and bruises were gone. I’d banged up my hands pretty badly as I tried to stop my fall, to the point where I was fairly sure I’d have to go to urgent care to have them looked at. All those cuts were gone as if they’d never existed in the first place. I don’t know what happened, she concluded. Maybe Lake Tahoe has its own guardian angel now, a man who’s watching out for all of us. I’d like to think so, anyway. Laurel finished reading and shot Jeremy a triumphant look. “That sure sounds like a healer to me,” she said. “One who can just vanish into thin air?” he replied, looking skeptical. “Maybe he has multiple gifts,” she said. That sort of thing wasn’t unheard of, after all. It was fairly rare, but there were several people in the Wilcox clan whose talents included several different magical skills, usually ones that didn’t have any connection to each other. “Those are two pretty strong gifts to have,” Jeremy said. He still appeared dubious. Laurel couldn’t really blame him for being skeptical. The only people she knew of who could teleport were Connor and Angela, and they were a primus and a prima. Even so, they had to work together to bend time and space in such a crazy way. They couldn’t do it on their own. So if this brown-haired stranger really could heal and teleport at the same time, that meant he had to be an extremely strong warlock…and that also meant the Trident team needed to find him ASAP and discover what clan he was from. True, there was no need to worry about the government scooping him up, because Homeland Security’s Project Daedalus had been disbanded a year earlier, but still, any warlock who was going around and flexing his magical muscles in such an obvious way ran the risk of discovery — a discovery that could be disastrous for the entire witching world, and not just the individual involved. Of course, the most obvious question needed to be answered first. “Is he a Delmonico?” Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve been working on cataloguing the members of the various witch clans, starting with the ones whose territories border ours. The Delmonico healer is a woman named Emilia. She lives in Reno and is in her sixties.” So, that was what Jeremy had been working on recently. Laurel knew he’d been feeling stymied by their lack of progress, but she hadn’t realized he’d embarked on such an ambitious project. It made sense, though; the more they knew about the neighboring clans, the less chance they’d have of getting blindsided by someone with unusual gifts popping out of nowhere. “Then our guy has to be an orphan,” she said, hoping her firm tone would convince Jeremy that the anomaly he’d discovered was someone Trident Enterprises needed to seek out. “Maybe,” he allowed. “If he exists at all. We’re only getting anecdotal evidence here — and these stories all involve people who were injured in some way, which means their judgment might have been somewhat impaired.” “You had less evidence to go on when you went after Sloane,” Laurel argued, which was only the truth. Jeremy had been acting on the barest of hunches when he headed out to the Twin Arrows Casino to the east of Flagstaff in search of someone who might be gaming the system there, and yet that hunch had paid off in spades. So to speak. From the way his mouth curled at her comment, she could tell she’d scored a point. Still, since it was Jeremy, he wasn’t going to admit to such a thing. “That was different,” he said. “How was it different?” “Because I could tell she was a witch.” “You only found out she was a witch because you went to the casino. You definitely didn’t know that when you drove out from Flagstaff to find her.” Faced with this obvious logic, Jeremy didn’t reply right away. He settled against the back of his office chair and gave Laurel a direct look. “You know what Jake’s going to say.” Unfortunately, she did. While she loved her cousin, sometimes he acted a little too much like an overprotective older brother. Maybe that was because she was an only child, and so he thought someone should step into that role. All the same, Laurel thought he needed to give it a rest. She was a grown woman of twenty-four, after all, and not some kid. “Jake’s busy,” she said calmly. “It’s not like he can go tearing off to Lake Tahoe, not with the wedding only a week away. And you know Trident is better off with you overseeing the surveillance stuff. I’ve been sitting here and twiddling my thumbs for months. Besides, my gift is healing. Doesn’t it make the most sense to send someone with the same talent to track down this maybe-warlock?” His mouth twisted, which meant he probably could see the logic in what she was saying, even if he didn’t want to admit it. “Jake’s not going to like this,” Jeremy said. “He’ll get over it. I think we have enough to present our case to Connor, don’t you?” Because as much as Laurel would have liked to run home to her loft apartment, pack a bag, and get on the road immediately, she knew any inter-clan interactions like this had to be handled by Connor, at least at the beginning. He’d need to get in contact with the Delmonico prima and make sure they weren’t stepping on any toes. If they were given the go-ahead, then Laurel could head off to Lake Tahoe with their blessing. If not…well, she really didn’t want to think about that. After all, it was about time for her to have her own adventure. Voice steady, she said, “Let’s call Connor.”