Chasing Power (24 page)

She looked down at herself. Gooey bits clung to her shirt. “Got to clean myself.”

“I’ll help you. You’re not well.”

She looked at him. “We aren’t married. We’re not even dating. That’s definitely not in your job description. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t get up close and personal with the contents of my stomach. That’s just a little too close for me.” Alone, she headed for the house. She felt fine. After changing her shirt, she washed her face and neck with a towel. She then returned to the garden and picked up her pack again. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Are you sure—”

“I’m fine. Let’s go.”

He held her hand, and again the flash— Nausea slammed into her once more and drove her to her knees. Her stomach heaved, and then they jumped back to the garden.

She was fine.

“Kayla … that’s not normal,” Daniel said.

Grimly, Kayla nodded. She stalked to the garden gate and opened it. Taking a deep breath, she stepped outside. Nausea. Dizziness. She stumbled backward. She was fine.

Daniel caught her arms. She sagged against him. “She did it,” Kayla said. “I didn’t think she could. Or would.” Pulling away from Daniel, Kayla prowled in front of the gate. She glared at it as if it were to blame. “She spelled it. Me. So I can’t leave.”

“What are you talking about, Kayla?” Daniel asked. She could hear the worry in his voice, the tinge of fear. “Who did what?”

“My mother,” Kayla said. “She’s trapped me here.”

Kayla paced in a tight circle, feeling like a caged animal. They’d tried jumping elsewhere. They’d tried climbing over the hedges. They’d tried Daniel carrying her through the gate. Fail, fail, and fail. Whatever spell Moonbeam had done, it was intense.

“It’s over,” Daniel said, sinking onto the bench.

“It’s
not
over.” Honestly, if he said that one more time, she was going to have to gag him. “It’s just more complicated.”

“I can’t do this without you.”

Stopping, she glared at him. “Yes, you can, at least up until the last part. You’re going to go right now, do all the jumps except the last one, and then come back for me. By then, I’ll have found a way out.”

He nodded slowly.

“Just promise me that you’ll be careful. Pace yourself. Rest between jumps. Go home and sleep through the night if you have to. Remember, I won’t be there to drag you to safety if you collapse.” Crossing to him, Kayla put her hands on his shoulders so that he had to look at her. “This is serious. You
have the common sense of a dim-witted lemming, and I don’t want you to plunge off a cliff and die.”

A corner of his lips quirked up. “Hey, you do care.”

She released him. “Moonbeam’s shift tomorrow is ten to six. Come back then. And watch out for my father. Especially if you’re near any rocks.”

“He won’t surprise me this time,” Daniel promised.

“If you do see him, then jump him somewhere he can’t leave. Like the tomb in Peru. And then we’ll deal with him together, okay?”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust him.” She paused. “And no, I don’t trust you either. But at least I like you. I hate him.”

He smiled, and it was like the sun appeared between the clouds. “You like me?”

Kayla felt herself begin to blush, so she rolled her eyes and tossed her hair. “What are you, six years old? Yes, I like you. You’re intense. You love your mom. You have that neat teleportation trick going for you. Just because you’re a self-centered liar with a dubious ethical compass doesn’t mean you aren’t my type.”

He blinked. “I’m not sure whether that was a compliment or not.”

“Time is ticking, Daniel.” She tapped her wrist. “You need to make the jumps before my father finds the end of the third trail.” Kayla hesitated. She wanted to say more. No, she didn’t want to say anything; she wanted to
do
and
see
and
run free
! She wanted to take his hand, jump with him, and leave this home that had transformed into a cage. She wanted to see the rain forest again, even with the mosquitoes and the jaguars and the rain. She wanted to see all the places on the maps on the walls of Daniel’s
room. Now that she’d tasted a piece of the world, she wanted all of it. Imagining not having it, Kayla felt her eyes heat up. “Just go, Daniel.”

He vanished, and she gulped in air. She rubbed her eyes vigorously. She was
not
going to cry. Circling the property, Kayla searched for clues to the spell. She felt fine in the yard, so that meant the spell had to be tied to the perimeter in some way. She just had to figure out what was defining the border—in other words, she had to find her jail cell walls. And then break them.

Her first guess was the protective stones. Years ago, Moonbeam had carted stones from the beach to their house and set up a circle of them just inside the bushes. She’d said a spell over them and refreshed the spell every solstice, saying melodious words as she walked counterclockwise with a candle and incense. Today was the first time she’d refreshed them with the basket of herbs. Maybe the new spell had given them an extra boost. Kayla took her trowel to the gate and dug several stones out of the earth. She tossed them aside, creating a break in the circle, and then she tried to walk through.

Hands plastered over her mouth from the immediate wave of nausea, she stumbled back.

Guess it isn’t the stones
, she thought. Taking a deep breath of air to calm her stomach again, Kayla turned in a slow circle. What else could it be?

The yard was ringed with an unbroken circle of bushes. Over the gate, the branches were woven into an arch. In the front of the house, they bowed out to avoid the electrical line coming in to the corner of the roof. The hedge was so thick that you couldn’t see the neighbors’ houses. Maybe the spell was linked to the plants.

Fetching the pruners, Kayla attacked one of the bushes. She trimmed branch after branch, carving an ugly hole in its center. With her hands, she ripped at the leaves. They fell at her feet, carnage from the slaughter, until she had made a break in the wall of green. She then pulled over the bench and stood on it in order to destroy the tops of the bushes. She didn’t stop until she’d made a gap as wide as a person.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the gap. Careful not to touch the sides, she inched forward. The neighbor had a fence on his property. If she could reach the fence and climb over it … She took another step, and her foot crossed over the roots.

Sickness slammed into her, fast, and she retreated.

She hadn’t destroyed the roots. The circle wasn’t completely broken. She dropped to her knees. The roots wove a thick mat between the bushes. Grabbing the trowel and pruners, she dug into the earth. She snipped the roots as she found them. She worked feverishly, as if the hedge would close again if she slowed.

She’d never truly believed that Moonbeam’s magic worked. It wasn’t like hers, obvious and visual. All the charms against sickness, theft, bad luck, ill will … Until today, Kayla had rarely felt sick, but she might just have a decent immune system. They’d never been robbed, but they didn’t have much to begin with, especially compared to people like Selena. Bad luck? Ill will? She didn’t know. She wondered what else Moonbeam could do and how powerful she was. If she could craft a spell like this, why did they even have to hide from Dad?

Maybe that’s what Moonbeam had thought before Dad killed Amanda. Maybe now she didn’t want to take any chances. Maybe Kayla was being stupid pursuing a confrontation and thinking she could handle it.

But she could, damn it. She could fix this! Fix her life and Moonbeam’s and give them a future without fear! That was worth a little risk. She’d be careful and clever, like she always was. Dad may have been a match for a young innocent Amanda, but Kayla wasn’t a little girl.

At last, Kayla had torn up all the roots she could find. It looked like a warthog had dug into their hedgerow. She stood up and dusted the dirt off her clothes. Time to try again. She strode forward—and again the nausea crashed into her.

Stumbling back, she dropped to her knees. She stayed on her knees until the vertigo stopped. Okay, so the spell wasn’t tied to the plants. There had to be some way she was triggering it. Maybe it was her? Something was tying her to the house? She thought of the voodoo doll that her mother had dipped in the herbs. Maybe that had been part of the spell, not just part of the cleanup as she’d assumed. Where was the doll? Kayla jumped to her feet.

“Kayla?” Moonbeam called from the gate.

Oh, no, she’s home!
Kayla glanced at the chopped-up dirt, the mess of leaves, and the broken roots that looked like severed bones. She couldn’t hide this carnage. Putting down the pruners, she met her mother at the gate.

Carrying a bag of burritos, Moonbeam smiled sunnily at her. “Arranged to take the rest of the day off! Got extra guacamole, the kind you like. Also, chips and salsa …” Her smile faded. “Kayla, what did you do?”

“Yard work?”

“You’re terrible at it,” Moonbeam commented.

“I won’t do it again.”

Moonbeam studied her for a second. In an even voice, she said, “Trying to escape isn’t the best way to rebuild trust.”

“Imprisoning me isn’t the best way to be a mother.”

“It’s for your own good,” Moonbeam said. “I can’t send you to the corner for a time-out.” She sighed and then headed for the house. Kayla trailed behind her. It took all her self-restraint not to scream at her mother to
let her go!
Right now, Daniel was jumping across South America with no one there to make sure he didn’t fall off a cliff or drown himself in a piranha-infested river or pass out from exhaustion in the middle of a road.

In the kitchen, Moonbeam unloaded the burritos, paper plates, and plastic forks and knives. Kayla stowed her emergency backpack under her futon—it looked like she wasn’t going anywhere today—and then returned to help Moonbeam set the table. Moonbeam nodded at a bag by the door. “I stopped by the library also and picked up some books and movies for you. See, I’m not an ogre. When you’re older, you’ll thank me for setting boundaries.”

“How did you do it?” Kayla asked.

“Eye of newt, tongue of frog, and a little bit of pixie dust.” Moonbeam mimed catching a pixie and shaking it like a bell.

If she’d wanted to make Kayla laugh, she’d picked the wrong day. “This isn’t funny. I can’t stay here!”

Moonbeam sighed. “This isn’t open to discussion anymore, not unless you’ve decided to be honest with me. And even then, the punishment stands. You have to learn that there are consequences to your actions and decisions
before
they are so dire that they lead to tragedy.”

She was talking about Amanda again. Glancing at the shelves, Kayla spotted the basket with the voodoo doll. She looked away quickly so her mother wouldn’t notice. “I didn’t
even know you had this kind of power. For someone who hates magic, you’re very good at it.”

Moonbeam unwrapped her burrito. “When I was your age, I did more than dabble. It got me into quite a bit of trouble. Magic isn’t the solution; it’s the problem. Always.”

Kayla thought of the stones. “What happened?”

“When?”

“When you dabbled.”

A faint smile crossed her lips. “Once, I tried a love spell. The results were like a bad Shakespeare play.”

“Did everyone die?”

“Comedy, not tragedy! Lots of mistaken identity and flowery poetry.” Her smile faded. “But there were other times when people were hurt. Not killed. We always stopped short of that. All of us swore to never cross that line.”

Kayla slid onto one of the stools. “Who’s ‘all of us’?” She thought she knew—the photo was in her pocket.

Jumping off her stool, Moonbeam bustled to the cabinets. She pulled out additional spices, and she filled up two cups with water. “People from my past. Point is, I don’t use spells to make things happen anymore. I use spells to
keep
things from happening—to keep you safe.” Reaching over, she touched the eye amulet around Kayla’s neck.

Kayla had the sudden urge to tear the necklace off, but she kept her hands clasped calmly in front of her. “My father. Is that who you did spells with?”

“I said it was the past, Kayla. I don’t want to talk about it.” Moonbeam’s lips curved into a cheerful smile, clearly forced. “Come, it’s movie night! We’ll eat in front of the TV. Pick out a movie.”

Wishing she dared ask more, Kayla shuffled over to the library bag and made a show of sorting through. There was an assortment of old favorites plus a few newer titles. Kayla had never been less in the mood for a movie. “Whatever you want.”

Moonbeam chose
The Princess Bride
, a movie they both had memorized. She fetched the quilts she’d made herself and then thumped the TV until it worked. After setting their dinner on the coffee table, she curled up on the couch next to Kayla.

Kayla pretended to laugh in all the right places, all the while thinking about Daniel and wondering what he’d found. And whether her father had found him. She picked at her burrito and, later, when Moonbeam made popcorn on the stove with copious amounts of real butter, the popcorn tasted like cardboard in her mouth.

At night, she listened to Moonbeam breathe and barely slept.