Chapter 31
“Have you ever seen a baby beaver before?” Ford was plucking at a leaf he’d picked up along their walk, examined, and then carried with him. After showing Jenna the holes in it, he told her about the caterpillars that were moving in and how they would change as the season wore on.
“They’re fuzzy. It means a hard winter,” he’d said, and she’d almost laughed. It sounded like mountain lore. But she bit the sound back not wanting to offend. He came across closer to surfer than a mountain man, but she wouldn’t put him in either category. And he certainly wasn’t at the beach.
They’d walked further, eating snacks Ford offered along the way. He’d packed food and water for both of them, telling her just to ‘show up’ and he had ‘everything else taken care of.’ It seemed he did.
She answered with, “I’ve seen beavers in a zoo, but never a wild one.”
“Follow me.” He smiled like he had a secret, but it was hardly a secret since he’d already told her. “They were smaller at the beginning of the summer, but you’ll still be able to tell they’re young.”
Jenna did as he suggested and walked right behind him.
She’d only come along today because Ford said she should see more of the mountain.
That she would get to see raccoons in the wild and deer.
For a girl who grew up outside of Houston, it was a bit cool.
She’d also told herself not to be disappointed if she showed up and there was a whole group of hikers at the bottom of the trails.
There hadn’t been. Just her . . . and him.
Ford also suggested she could test out her skills, see if maybe she was a woodland witch.
She was pretty sure that was what Annelise had called a fauna witch, but she could easily be wrong.
Jenna had also laughed at that. “I’m not sure I’m even a witch at all.
It’s definitely still too early to know any of this for certain.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be finding my specialty power in the next day or two. ”
“You won’t know if you don’t try.” There it was again. That grin, the one that pulled her from her belly like a magnet or pushed her like a storm brewed at her heels. The same one that made her brain flare out in alarm lights saying no, don’t fall for this again!
It was all so odd to her. Delanie had showed her a few other spells, different from what Annalise taught her.
Jenna found herself back at her hotel room that morning, waving her fingers in front of the digital lock.
She told Ford now. “I just did the spell like Delanie told me, until it popped! The lock just turned that little green light on and I went in without my key . . . which is both delightful and frightening.”
What if there were other witches around here?
Could someone just get into her room? Could she now get into any room in the hotel?
No one should be trusted with that kind of power.
But if Delanie had it, then so did Annelise, right?
Hell, if she could do it, then likely every witch in the Hollow considered it small potatoes.
She’d immediately begun burning the candles Annalise packed for her and flipping the pages in an old diary-like book with a slanted writing that walked her through calling the four corners.
As she desperately tried to ward her hotel room against anyone who could do what she had just learned, she tried praying too. She could do both, right?
“Did anyone see you?” Ford asked, turning back as he kept walking forward, knowing the path so well that he was able to hike while looking over his shoulder at her.
“One couple came out of the elevator right as I did it, but I don’t think they caught on. Of course, then I realized it’s a chain hotel. There have to be cameras in the hallways, right?”
“Maybe,” Ford said. “They usually don’t look at it though unless there’s a problem. Unless someone gets murdered on your hallway, probably the footage will get written over in another week or two.”
“That’s not comforting!” Jenna felt her mouth fall open at the suggestion, and then she laughed. “No one better be getting murdered in my hallway.”
“I don’t think there are that many witches in Charlottesville either.”
That didn’t help her relax either, not like Ford seemed to think it would. Pushing for more information, she hoped she was subtle. “There sure are a lot in Belle Hollow. The town’s two major products are witchcraft and gossip. That’s what Delanie said.”
“Yeah, you went home with her. Did you stay the whole night?”
“She gave me Avery’s room and taught me how to pop locks and boil water. And how to make flowers grow, though she said that’s Avery’s skill.” Jenna paused. “The last one was honestly a combination of baking soda, salt, sugar, and a very little bit of witchcraft.”
“That sounds about like Delanie. Did she give you a bracelet?”
Holding up her wrist, Jenna grinned at him. The black onyx beads circling it had a look that somehow managed to be both ancient and popular.
“Onyx, huh? Did you pick it or did she?”
“Oh, she pulled it right off the countertop and said she’d set it aside earlier that day.
Not knowing who it was for, but clearly it was for me.
” Jenna didn’t know if that was portentous or if these witches just set things aside then declared they’d found the reason as soon as something popped up.
She’d been warned about charlatans her whole life.
However, if these witches were playing her, they were doing it seamlessly.
They had a damn lot of tricks up their sleeves.
She’d been taught the best scams were led by something true, so Jenna still wasn’t ready to hand over everything yet.
There was more she was holding back from the people of Belle Hollow, genetic relatives or not.
Ford laughed. “That also sounds like Delanie. Here.” He motioned. “Sit.”
Pointing to the rock that jutted from the earth, he sat down.
She shouldn’t like him so much, she thought, as she sat next to him.
Their hips touched because the rock wasn’t very wide, and surely he had picked it for that purpose.
Or maybe not. There was no reason to think she was anything special.
And, if she was, she should probably run screaming the other way.
Jenna had initially told herself she was coming along because the walk would be interesting.
She would learn about the local wildlife, and she could pick the brains of a Velasco for more information on the Lockhearts and maybe even the Goodmans.
She sat on the rock now thinking she was doing only a passable job of any of it. But the wildlife was stunning.
It was very weird stepping into a small, tight-knit community and being welcomed with open arms simply because her face reminded them of someone else. Her genetics test results seemed to be a pass for even more information and backstage passes.
She told herself that she hadn’t come out with Ford Velasco today because she liked him.
Jenna reminded herself it would be great if she did spend a few hours with him this afternoon and he did or said something awful or stupid.
Then she could forget this ridiculous and probably harmful crush she was developing.
But he hadn’t. Not yet anyway.
As she sat on the rock with her hip and thigh pressed against him, his shoulder bumped softly against hers as he shredded the last of the leaf and tossed it to the side.
He leaned in and she forgot to breathe. “Okay. We can talk, but we have to keep our voices low. If we’re too loud, we’ll scare the beavers off. ”
That just sounded like a ploy to her, but she did it anyway because she had not ever seen a beaver in the wild. And she’d seen more animals today than she had at one time in her whole life besides a zoo.
He’d suggested she wear hiking boots, so she’d gone out and bought some because she’d been through the woods of Belle Hollow before in wet sneakers and it was not her favorite thing.
Today, he’d held her hand when she attempted a creek crossing.
Her misstep and splash down into the water had him tugging her out before the water-resistant boots soaked anything in.
Once he had her on dry land on the other side, Ford waded back in on purpose. He pointed out the frogs, and then he lifted one of the stones and showed her salamanders on the underside.
“No eggs,” he said, as if it were a normal proclamation.
She looked at him like he was nuts, and he’d replied, “Salamander and frog eggs. They get laid on the underside of the rocks, but usually more in the spring.”
She’d nodded then, as if that was the normal kind of information someone might just tell the person they were hiking with.
But she’d seen a bald eagle in the wild for the first time today, and she’d seen raccoons that came out to meet up with Ford, who fed them treats from his pocket.
Clearly, he’d trained them well. The deer seemed to follow his command, and when he suggested she try to command the frogs in the stream, she’d merely shrugged.
“I only just learned how to pop a lock. I do not know how to call frogs. Neither Annelise nor Delanie has taught me that one. If you want me to command frogs, you’re going to have to tell me what spell to use.”
He laughed. “No can do. The Velascos don’t have any magic.”
“Are you sure?” she’d asked, because it seemed to her so many of the families here in the Hollow did have magic—the Goodmans, the Hales, and of course the Lockhearts.
But she’d heard the mechanic and general town handyman, Mindy Bormann, had a knack for always having the perfect part on hand.
That Mindy would put a hand on a machine and simply declare the issue as if she were the local coroner and not an engineer.
Then Jenna had heard about the Elborns: Tesh, who ran some of the local orchards and gardens, whose crops never failed even when the weather did.
There were witches everywhere in the Hollow.
She wasn’t quite sure what Ford was saying, and being the newbie and the rube that she was, she was stupid enough to ask it outright. “Why don’t the Velascos have any magic? Couldn’t you have married into some magical families or something?”
The look on his face made her realize she’d stepped in it. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t—”
He shrugged then, as if it were no big deal, but his initial reaction said otherwise. “My mother is an Elborn, so yeah, there’s probably some magic in the family, but she doesn’t practice—”
He cut the last word off, as if there was something more he was going to say then thought better of it.
This time Jenna didn’t push, and they sat silently for a few moments while she wondered if he was just not going to speak for the rest of the trip, or if he was purposefully trying to be quiet so they could see the beavers.
Then, as if he’d thought about what he could and couldn’t tell her, he added, “The Velascos brought magic with them to the Hollow years ago. Some great-great-great-whatever grandmother of mine apparently was very powerful, and everyone turned to her when the other witches failed. Then something happened and everyone turned against her.”
It was interesting family lore, Jenna thought. It seemed like the kind of background a witchy family would claim they had, the way so many families told stories of some Cherokee great-great grandmother or such.
Having gotten onto the DNA chat rooms, she was being told that the genetic results so often revealed that those stories were just that: something someone invented.
Without genetic evidence, there was no way to disprove it either.
There were also people who didn’t have the family tales who turned up large sections of world heritage that was so surprising it rocked their world.
Jenna had just found a grandmother and a few relatives.
So she took Ford’s comment about the great-great-grandmother with a grain of salt.
Briefly, she thought about the book that Annalise gave her, but she didn’t get to say anything because Ford continued, “The women in my family all did magic, and then my great-whatever-grandmother made a pact with the people of the Hollow. The way I’ve heard the story, the whole family was about to get run out of the place—pitchforks and torches kind of stuff.
The rumors say the Velascos had dark magic.
The Velasco women agreed never to practice again, and apparently they didn’t.
Now what I don’t know is if the other families did a binding on them. ”
“A binding?” Jenna asked.
She was so far behind that even Ford of the decidedly non-magical family knew more than she did. “A spell to stop someone.”
She nodded, as if that explained everything, when really it explained nothing. Maybe she would ask Annalise. Or maybe it would be better if she asked Delanie.
“Either way, as far as we know, none of the Velasco women were magical again. In fact, the family immediately started having only male children.”
“You’re kidding!” She knew as soon as the words came out of her mouth that they were too loud, and he turned, pressing a finger to his lips. She remembered then that she was supposed to be on the lookout for beavers—wild beavers. It wasn’t a joke, was it?
But she didn’t ask because he said, “It’s true. My father is one of four—all boys. His father is one of nine—all boys. And look at my family. It’s been a hundred years. Until Indie.”
She wasn’t sure whether or not to believe that either, but Ford seemed to. Since she was stuck out on the side of a mountain with him, she decided not to argue. Even if she had wanted to push back, he softly whispered, “There!”
Following his pointed finger, her eyes frantically scanned for whatever he saw. Sure enough, a beaver showed up with three smaller beavers in tow. Not quite small enough to be babies, but clearly her kids.
Jenna felt her mouth fall open again, the smile splitting her face as Ford leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Pretty cool, huh?”
She only nodded, realizing as she did that his lips brushed the shell of her ear, and she felt her breath catch even as she reminded herself not to be stupid, because she’d been here before, and it had nearly broken her.