Chapter 20
Tess
Everybody in the church welcomed Rose and Alejandro with open arms. Jack had been attending regularly with me lately, too, and everybody was glad to see him, except for Sally DeSario, who owned Dead End Daycare. She was a Brownie (the fairy kind, not the Girl Scout kind), and she was horribly allergic to cats.
Jack had told us that cat allergies didn’t apply to him when he was in human form, so it was almost certainly psychosomatic. Real or imaginary, though, she sneezed every time we ran into her, so we took a pew on the other side of the aisle.
Pastor Nash opened the service with a song, and, to his credit, he only flinched a little when he looked at me. Old Mr. Russell, two full rows ahead of us, turned around and fixed his beady gaze on me and then put earplugs in his oversized ears.
I sighed, chiding myself for thinking unkind thoughts about his eyes and ears in church, but then I picked up the hymnal and perked up. I hadn’t tested the singing charm, but Rose had been adamant that it would work.
Starting off softly, I first hummed and then quietly sang along with everyone.
And then I almost fell down.
It worked.
It worked.
I sounded like someone who could carry a tune! My voice was beautiful!
The song was a short one, unfortunately, and ended too soon. I was singing so quietly that nobody really noticed my new talent.
During the thankfully short sermon, I could barely sit still. I was dying for the next song, so I could sing out loud and proud. In fact, I would …
My train of thought was completely derailed when the hats of the women sitting in front of us all levitated up off their heads.
“Shelley,” I hissed, elbowing my little sister, who loved trying out her new magical talents. “Cut it out.”
She elbowed me back. “It’s not me!”
Then who?
Suddenly Rose, seated on my other side, groaned softly. “Stop it,” she whispered fiercely.
I leaned over. “Who are you talking to?”
“It’s the babies,” she said, as the hats softly floated back down and onto their respective owners’ heads. “They love the feeling of peace in your church, and happiness is making them active.”
Alejandro put his arm around his wife when the hats started floating again. “Rose! Can’t you make them stop?”
She put her head in her hands and sighed. “If I could, I would. Give me a minute.”
But it was too late. Pastor Nash looked up from his Bible and dropped his notes. Then everyone turned around to find out what—or who—he was staring at with his mouth hanging open.
The hats, which had been trembling in the air a couple of inches above heads, as if the babies and Rose were playing tug of war, suddenly shot up into the air and exploded into clouds of multicolored butterflies.
I took one look at Alejandro and Rose’s mortified faces and shot to my feet, hands in the air. “It’s a miracle!”
Chaos ensued.
* * *
By the time we’d solved the butterfly problem—Rose finally magicked them back into hats and Alejandro returned them with profuse apologies to their respective owners—it was almost time for church to be over.
Pastor Nash, who’d been grinning like a kid during all this, clapped his hands together. “Well, I think we can skip the closing song today?—”
“No!” I leapt up out of my seat for the second time that morning. I was not wasting my charm. “Let’s sing Amazing Grace to celebrate the magic of new life!”
Everybody stared at me, bewildered, even Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby. Pastor Nash looked surprised, but then shrugged. “All right. Amazing Grace it is.” He took a deep breath and, with a resigned and almost hopeless expression on his long face, like he was marching to war, he courageously said: “Tess, will you lead us in song?”
He was a great pastor.
“You bet I will.”
Everybody around me flinched, which I tried not to take personally. And then I opened my mouth and sang.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound …”
And it was. All of that. Amazing and graceful and the sweetest sound I’d ever heard, and it was coming out of my mouth. I closed my hand around the polished piece of jade in my pocket and sang my heart out.
Not a single person sang along. Instead, they all turned to stare at me with matching expressions of total shock.
When I finished the song, there were even some people with tears running down their faces because my singing had been so beautiful.
I was one of them.
It was one of the best days of my life.
There was complete and utter silence in the church for almost a full minute, and then somebody started clapping. I was shocked to see it was Mr. Russell, and he was grinning at me. Then everyone was clapping, and I couldn’t stop smiling. Jack jumped up and hugged the stuffing out of me.
“It’s a miracle,” Pastor Nash proclaimed.
“It’s magic,” I admitted. “And it will probably never happen again, so thank you for letting me sing what’s in my heart this one time.”
Then everybody hugged everybody—but not me, of course—and they all gave me huge smiles and thumbs ups. We floated on a tide of good feeling all the way out of church. When we walked outside, Aunt Ruby’s phone buzzed. She looked at it and took a few steps to the side to take the call. By the look on her face, I knew the news wasn’t good.
She ended the call and then rejoined our group. “That was Susan. Probie Truckman has now disappeared, too, and the Riverton sheriff is sure it’s linked to Ace. He’s trying to arrest Brenda Pennywhistle.”