Healing Hands

Chapter 2-1

2

Jason Ludlow stood in the office of the Ludlow prima’s — his mother’s — impressive house in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights. The house had been built around the turn of the last century, and had survived the earthquake that leveled much of the town, thanks to the spells the prima of that time had used to bind the foundation, making it rock-solid and impervious to fire and quake and any other calamities it might have to weather.

Why Carolyn Ludlow had summoned him to the house, he wasn’t sure. These days, he tried to have as little to do with his mother as possible. Ever since she’d made her power play four years earlier by trying to align their clan with Joaquin Escobar, the rogue warlock who’d taken over the Santiago clan in Southern California, Jason had done his best to distance himself from her and her machinations. At the time, he’d told her she was making a huge mistake, but she hadn’t listened, had once again given in to the unreasonable demands of his little sister Brooklyn, the Ludlow clan’s prima-in-waiting. Brooklyn’s search for a consort hadn’t been going well, and she’d decided that the otherworldly Levi McAllister would make the perfect consort for her.

Unfortunately for Brooklyn, Levi had other plans. As did the rest of the McAllisters, along with their allies, the Wilcoxes and the de la Paz clan in southern Arizona. When the Arizona clans had joined up with the Castillos from New Mexico, their combined might had been too much to withstand. Joaquin Escobar was defeated, and his death freed the Santiagos from his grip.

And the Ludlows had been forced to slink back to Northern California in defeat.

Brooklyn had ended up marrying the least objectionable of her eligible distant cousins, and their mother had done her best to carry on as if nothing had happened…not the easiest feat in the world, when a dozen of the Ludlow clan’s witches and warlocks would have to live the rest of their lives without any magic, thanks to the way Connor Wilcox and Angela McAllister had stripped their powers from them in retaliation for attacking the McAllisters’ home base in Jerome.

Luckily, Jason hadn’t been sent on that particular foray. His talents were of a more subtle sort.

“What do you want, Mother?” he asked, not bothering with any sort of polite greeting.

Carolyn’s brows drew together. She had been strikingly beautiful in her youth, and still managed to turn heads at a very well-preserved fifty-eight, slim and tall and with thick, dark gold hair like her son’s. “Is that any way for a son to address his mother?”

He shrugged, hands jammed in the pockets of his trousers. While he rebelled against the family’s strictures as much as he could, he still knew better than to appear at an audience with the Ludlow prima wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Did you call me here as my mother, or as the prima of the Ludlow clan?”

Carolyn rose from her office chair of carved tiger maple and went to the window. A bright afternoon sun shone down on them, brilliantly illuminating the panoramic view of Russian Hill and the San Francisco Bay beyond, its waters glinting blue as the sapphire on her right hand, and gleaming in her carefully coiffed hair.

“As both,” she said easily. “Unlike you, I can’t separate the two. You are my son…but you also have gifts that can help with the problem at hand.”

Those words made him stiffen. When he was eleven and his talents started to manifest, he’d thought they had to be just about the coolest thing in the world. Later on, when he began to understand exactly how his mother wanted him to utilize those talents, he’d realized they really weren’t that cool at all.

He didn’t see the point in beating around the bush. “What do you want?”

She’d been wearing a faint smile, as if gazing down at her demesne pleased her, but it disappeared at once. “We’ve had word of a healer.”

“Someone in the clan has finally developed that gift?”

Because as strong as the Ludlows were, what they lacked was a healer. Rose Ludlow, the clan’s former healer, had died at the ripe old age of eighty-nine when Jason was only fifteen years old. In the eleven years that had passed since then, they’d had to struggle along with civilian doctors. He’d never viewed the lack as much of a hardship, since the clan’s wealth meant they had access to some of the best medical care in the world, but Carolyn hadn’t seen the situation that way. She disliked knowing that there might come a time when a member of the clan suffered an injury that would be difficult to explain to someone who wasn’t a witch or a warlock, and she viewed the clan as weakened because of the situation. In fact, she’d acted as though Rose’s death had been a direct affront to her, although expecting the woman to cling to life indefinitely because they didn’t have a replacement healer seemed a bit much to him.

“No,” Carolyn said. “You misunderstand me. I’ve received word there’s a good chance a healer unaffiliated with any clan has appeared in the Lake Tahoe area.”

For a second, Jason could only stare at his mother. How was it possible that there could be a witch who was unconnected to a clan? He managed to find his voice and asked, “How do you know this person is a healer?”

“There are stories circulating,” she said. “I need you to go to Lake Tahoe and find out if those stories are just civilian exaggerations, or whether this man they’ve described really is a healer.”

Man. That was unusual; healers tended to be women. Already knowing what she planned to ask of him, Jason still made himself say carefully, “Lake Tahoe is in Delmonico territory.”

“Only part of it,” his mother replied at once. “Part of it is ours.”

Which was true; the clan boundaries followed the same boundaries that separated Nevada from California. And even though the Ludlows controlled a much larger portion of Lake Tahoe than the Delmonicos did, that didn’t mean this healer — whoever he was — might not be roaming around in the other clan’s territory.

Since his mother knew that as well as Jason did, he didn’t bother to answer, only crossed his arms and stared at her.

She made an impatient gesture with one hand. “You know it doesn’t matter. You’ll be able to go there and poke around, with the Delmonicos being none the wiser.”

Again, only the truth. Because Jason’s talent was illusions, the kind that could change his appearance so no one would ever be able to recognize him as himself. Even that handy magical gift wouldn’t be enough, however, not when any witch or warlock he encountered would know right away that he wasn’t a civilian.

No, his talent went far deeper than that. At the same time he could change his appearance, he could also shield his magical nature from others, making them believe he was no different from the vast majority of the population, those civilians who didn’t even know magic was real, or that people with extraordinary powers lived among them.

Unlike any other witch or warlock he’d ever met, he’d be able to slip into Delmonico territory completely undetected.

And that was why his mother had summoned him. Not because she wanted to see her son, but because she needed a spy.

Voice level, he said, “And what if I say no?”

Her expression didn’t even flicker. They’d butted heads before, and so she knew what to expect…just as she also knew he would eventually capitulate to her demands. Same old dance, just a different day.

He was getting damn tired of it, though.

“You don’t have any reason to not go,” Carolyn said calmly. “If it turns out that there really is an unaffiliated healer in the area, why wouldn’t he want to come back to San Francisco with you? We Ludlows could offer him a comfortable lifestyle, his every need met. It’s not as though you’d be dragging him off to a gulag in Siberia.”

No, but maybe this mysterious healer liked Lake Tahoe just fine and didn’t feel like going anywhere else.

If he even existed.

“People don’t always do what you want them to, Mother,” Jason said, also keeping his tone even. Long ago, he’d learned that the only way he could ever manage to hold his ground with her was to not lose his temper. Getting angry only made her think she’d won.

Not even a blink. “I understand that, Jason,” she replied. “But really, who would turn this down?” And she gestured toward the multimillion-dollar vista beyond the window.

Someone who doesn’t want to sell their soul for a view, he thought, although he kept those words to himself. “You might be surprised,” was all he said, but she merely smiled.

“Well, you bring this healer here, and then I can explain to him all the benefits of being a member of the Ludlow clan,” she told him. “It’s really not as though I’m asking anything terrible of you.”

No, only to put on a false face, to hide his very nature…to walk into another clan’s territory without permission. Jason didn’t bother to point out any of that, however. His mother — and his little sister Brooklyn — had very flexible notions of right and wrong when it came to something they wanted.

He could protest further, but what would be the point? It wasn’t as though he had a lot of options. When you were part of a witch clan, you did as the prima asked…even if she also happened to be your mother.

Or maybe especially if she was your mother.

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” was all he said, and her smile broadened.

“Thank you, Jason.”

A nod, and he left her office. As he walked along the hallway to the staircase — a staircase whose bannister he’d once slid down, many years earlier — he wondered who he hated more…his mother for asking these things of him, or himself for giving in.