Page 30 of A Winding Wave of Magic
Cold has seized
Song bird’s wing
Ice is King.
— FIONN, “NEWS OF WINTER”
“Istill think he followed you there,” Reina said for the tenth time as we passed through the tunnel driving into the north side of Neahkahnie Mountain.
It was cloudy and cold when Reina and I started for the coast, following the highway through Astoria, then winding down the 101 to Manzanita.
She had stumbled in about an hour or so after I had returned, equally disenchanted by her conquest when his thoughts revealed a fetish for Latina women as well as the fact that he was a regular donor to an anti-immigration group (“He thinks we should keep sticking us all in cages!” she had announced the moment she walked in). And so, we had both gone to sleep early in the peace of the spells I’d cast and the smoke from Reina’sgood sage, unsatisfied with the world outside but maybe a bit more comforted by each other.
Today, however, we had both risen sometime past ten, groggy and thoroughly hung over. After popping a couple of aspirin and stopping for coffee on our way out of town (coffee was the only thing I missed about Portland other than Reina), we made our drive in relative silence, letting the patter of raindrops on the hood of Reina’s Beetle take the place of conversation.
It wasn’t until we got lunch in Astoria that Reina started to feel a bit more chatty.
Specifically about my stranger and the fact that he seemed to be turning into a bad penny.
“I don’t know,” I replied for what was also the tenth time. “I couldn’t get a read on him.”
“That’s the other thing,” she said. “Since when can’tyouget a read on someone when they touch you? It’s always chaotic, but have you ever not Seen what someone was thinking or feeling under a direct touch?”
“I was wearing clothes,” I said weakly. We’d already been over this several times.
“Which shouldn’t have been doing anything if you were having an episode through your shoes and the pavement and everything.” Reina shook her head as we exited the tunnel. “You don’t think he has anything to do with Penny’s death, do you?”
“No, why would he?”
Reina shrugged. “It’s just all a little too pat, isn’t it? This weird man shows up, saves you from an attack, Penny dies, and then he saves you from another. Maybehe’sthe one causing them. Maybe he knows something about Penny.”
“Penny was an isolated old woman who barely knew five people in the village,” I said. “There is no way she has something to do with a snooty professor.”
“And the attacks?”
I swallowed. “I’ve had them plenty of times before.”But rarely this bad.And never this close.
I didn’t need to say the words out loud for Reina to hear them.
“Let’s just get to the house,” I said before she could answer my thoughts. “We have enough to deal with today than to add more fuel to the fire.”
The plan was to go straight to the house, where Reina would help me cleanse the death that was waiting to greet me. That would likely take most of the day. At some point, I’d drive Gran’s car to Tillamook to collect the body and sign whatever paperwork was needed for its transfer to the local crematorium. Then I’d figure out the next steps of dealing with her estate, then go up to speak with my mother before I went back to Boston. I could organize a memorial service, sale of the house, or whatever else it was that Penny wanted from there.
We’d never talked about a will or anything like it. Gran was so private—I couldn’t imagine her disclosing any of her private affairs to a lawyer, even. I was hoping something in the house would clue me into what needed to be done. A handwritten letter or even a musing I pulled from a couch cushion would be better than nothing.
Reina’s Beetle shook against the gusts of wind coming off the Pacific as we rounded Neahkahnie Mountain. Over the bluff lay Manzanita, the tiny beach town where I had lived with Gran since I was twelve. Sets of white-capped waves stretched toward the horizon, where the slate blue water met gray clouds with almost no perceptible difference between them. Gran’s house was at the bottom of this mountain, at the juncture of rolling dunes and a jetty of sharp boulders.
Reina turned onto the winding gravel and dirt road that led to the secluded one-story house with its weather-beaten shinglesand old white trim. Nestled between old-growth evergreens and the Manzanita trees after which the town took its name, the house occupied the most private spot on the north end of Manzanita Beach, hidden to all but those who knew exactly where to find it. Gran wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I shivered as the car parked under the carport beside the Prius. I had never quite understood how Gran was able to afford an oceanfront property like this, but she had been here as long as I could remember. This was where I had been conceived, up against a thick cedar by the driveway. I had felt remnants of the energy—my energy—when I had bumped into the tree, a few months after my father died. Once Sibyl had sent me back after the funeral, I had done the rest of my growing up here without her, raised by an aging Irish seer with a strict hand and a talent for making everyone who came into her home feel perfectly and utterly at ease.
Gran was solid and focused, a woman so different from my mother it was hard to imagine they were related, were it not for the obvious energetic bonds the two shared. That I shared as well.
Or had.
Reina followed me up the slippery, moss-covered walkway to the porch.
“You ready?” she asked as I took out my keys.
