Chapter Seventeen #3
“I can relax people enough to put them to sleep if they’re in the right state of mind, yes,” Mel replied, but her tone wasn’t defensive.
“But I can’t go around switching people off like a light.
What I can do is limited by distance and numbers, and sometimes by the awareness of an individual of my abilities. ”
Daniel remembered the way her father had said, Mel, stop that.
“Your parents can resist?” he asked.
“Not so much resist as tell when I’m using it, which is almost as good. They don’t know when I’m reading, but they know when I’m sending,” she replied, smiling. “You probably will too, now that you know about it.”
Daniel swallowed. “So, at Mama Rosetta’s, when you had everyone eating out of your hand, what was that?”
“That was survival. We had been mugged. You were ill. So yes, I turned it on full force.” Her expression was intense. “Hey, you have aikido. I have this.”
“And in the piazza outside Il Duomo with all those tourists,” he said softly. “Was that—”
The flash of desire caught him by surprise. Mel’s eyes darkened and she bit her lip. And he remembered the taste of those lips—caffè con zucchero and chocolate. He leaned toward her.
Mel made a show of looking around and sniffing the air. “I smell something delicious. Do they actually serve you lunch?” she asked.
Daniel returned to reality. “You serve yourself, but I got them to cater some barbecue. I figured it would either be lunch or dinner, depending on how long it took to convince you to come back with me.”
“You should’ve known that wouldn’t take long,” she said with a mischievous grin.
“Okay, another question. Is your middle name Kohinoor because you are so multifaceted and sparkly?”
Mel gave a megawatt smile. “Absolutely.”
“Seriously?”
She blushed. “Just before she went into labor with me, my mom had a dream about a mountain covered with lights. Thus Kohinoor—mountain of light.”
“A mountain covered with lights,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Were they flashing?”
Her mouth opened. “The fireflies in your story?”
“Maybe. Seems an odd coincidence.”
“Coincidences are the universe’s way of pointing out something important,” Mel said.
“Yeah. I’m starting to believe that.” How much could he tell her? How much should he tell her without consulting Grace and Nick?
As if she sensed his reluctance, Mel said, “You have a gift. I’ve been calling mine my talent for so long I have trouble thinking of it as anything else. I’ve had mine since I was about seven. How long have you dreamed?”
He had never talked to anyone but Grace about his gift before. Not even Nick, although he and Grace probably shared everything. But it was getting easier to talk about it, especially with Mel.
“Since I was about the same age, I guess. Seven or eight.”
“And Grace’s gift?”
“What gift?”
“You’re kidding, right?” She held out her hand. “Steam burn.” She held up her feet comically. “Blisters. I could go on.”
“Sorry. Reflex. Couldn’t help myself.”
“I even got the feeling that she sensed me using my shield.”
Daniel smiled. “She has some special stuff going on.”
“She must be a pretty powerful healer, considering she is a medical doctor as well.”
“Listen, Mel—”
Mel lifted her hand. “No. I understand. It’s her ability.
You’re reluctant to talk about yours, much less hers.
” She looked thoughtful. “I just keep wondering… She was obviously healing my blisters when she worked on my feet that night, and then I touched you and I end up in a vision with you and your niece, who hasn’t even been born yet. How did she come along? Or did she?”
He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. It’s all new to me too.”
She looked skeptical. “And why did she sometimes sound like some old wise matriarch instead of a toddler?”
“Do you remember everything from that night?” he asked with a hint of exasperation.
Mel’s eyes narrowed. “Despite all your efforts to convince me otherwise, and your sister’s brew.” She smirked. “And don’t think I have forgiven all that gaslighting.”
Daniel didn’t need a tele-empath to make him feel guilty at that moment. But he’d been trying to keep her out of the growing chaos of his life, not realizing she had a chaos all her own to worry about.
“So, who is she? This wise old crone who used your unborn niece to tell you how to handle your ability?”
Daniel realized letting her try to fill in the blanks on her own could be just as bad as telling her the truth.
“You’re reading me, aren’t you?”
“You can tell?” She didn’t seem put out that he noticed.
“That’s good. And yes, your emotions are bouncing all over the place.
You don’t know whether to trust me, but you want to.
You’re exasperated and frustrated by that, but also relieved.
” She gave him an expectant look. “So, do you want me to recite everything I heard that night? I made notes.”
He snorted. “Fine. I guess if anyone understands the need for secrecy about these things, you would.”
She nodded. “My notes are very well secured.”
“All right. Yes, I think perhaps someone else was speaking through Lily.”
Mel nodded. “So I was right. Who was it?”
“It sounded like… I mean, the way she talked at some points…it sounded like the way Granny Lily, my great-great-great-grandmother would talk…although I don’t know how.”
“Your…” Mel looked stunned. “Well, she did sound…not exactly ancient, in the sense of old—”
“Like you said. Wise. Mystical.”
She shook her head. “Seems like a convoluted way to communicate with you, if it is your… Did you say great-great-great?”
He nodded.
“And your niece is named…will be named after her. Maybe that’s why, but… I mean, why not in a dream? Why drag me along? So many questions…”
“Welcome to my world. Anyway, a few months ago, Grace found some of Granny Lily’s journals in a cave on the mountain.”
“The one Lily wanted you to go into,” Mel said.
Damn, she did remember his vision in detail. He nodded.
“You went there, didn’t you? That’s the difference I’ve been sensing today.”
“Grace thinks so. I have better control today.”
“I wonder if…?”
She paused so long he had to prompt her. “What?”
“I wonder if it would help someone like me. Or my mom.”
Daniel smiled. “I don’t know if you two need it. You seem to have things pretty well in hand. Certainly better than me.”
“Why, thank you.” She smirked. “But you’re also not in my shoes. My talento can be pretty taxing. It would be nice if I didn’t have to worry about going into crowds all the time.”
Daniel smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I didn’t realize.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Assumption. I mean, you do that a lot, you know? Just assume what’s best for other people.”
The combination of her gift and journalistic instincts came close to making her a mind reader.
“Honestly, I don’t know. We don’t know. At first, Grace thought it was something to do with Appalachian granny magic—that our abilities were inherited in some way because Granny Lily was a—”
“Granny witch. I know something about all that. Those granny witches would teach women outside their family line as well. It’s not just inherited. And they weren’t ‘witches’ as such.”
“No. And speaking of witches, does strega mean what I think it means?” Daniel said.
Mel grimaced. “Yes, it means witch. Why? Where did you hear it? In Italy?”
“In a vision.” He waved his hand. “It’s not important.”
“Just trying to change the subject.” She glared at him. “But the whole granny magic thing is limited to women. So how do you explain yourself, Dr. Woodruff?”
It figured that she would have written some kind of article about it. He nodded. “Yeah. It doesn’t seem to be limited to our family.” Nick certainly has a gift of his own. “All we know is it revolves around the mountain, and that cave.”
“Okay. So where do the fireflies fit into this? Are there fireflies in the cave?”
He laughed. “Not as far as I know, but there are a lot of ’em on the mountain. But Granny Lily mentions fireflies in her journals. That story you heard on the porch? That’s one of hers, only told in much more poetic language.”
“And? What else did she write?” Mel was on the edge of her seat, hands tightly clasped. She probably wanted her recorder badly, or at least a pen and paper.
“Well, her specialty was herbal medicine—plants, remedies, healing. But she seemed to be aware of future environmental issues. A bit of an activist before her time, like you.”
“I’m right on time, thank you very much,” Mel said with an imperious look. “But what did she say about the environment?”
“Well, the journal is hand-written and some of the words have faded or disappeared altogether. One line that is legible is about her flashing crown being extinguished,” he replied. “And the last word that’s readable on that page is firefly. Grace can probably tell you more.”
“Have you had the journal restored?”
“We took a risk and gave some pages to an expert I trust.”
Mel’s expression went through so many emotions, Daniel couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “A risk because you don’t know what she might have written?”
He nodded. “She dated the pages and…some of the things she wrote were prophetic. Of course, the language is so archaic that it’s subject to all kinds of interpretations.”
“Like the oracles.” She smiled. “Do you think she was a seer? That she saw the future, like you?”
“Possibly.”
She was practically vibrating. “How exciting!”
“You know, you really are amazing,” Daniel said. “Other people hearing this would question their own sanity right about now. Or mine, more likely.”
“Well, my mom is a seer and my dad is a magician.”
“I know about your mom, but is your dad—?”
She held up a hand. “The Magician’s code of ethics,” she said.
“Seriously?”
She nodded. “I reveal nothing,” she announced dramatically.
He laughed.
“Back to my original question. The Firefly Foundation is about…?”