Shadow Heir

A small fluttering in my stomach made me jerk upright. I sat there in disbelief, staring around foolishly. What was that? Had that been ... ? Tentatively, I rested a hand on my abdomen, waiting for a repeat. There was none. I tried to remember what the doctor had said about the babies moving. I remembered the fish analogy and—most importantly—her comment that it wouldn’t feel like something trying to kick its way out of me.

When nothing else happened, I lay back on the bed. That could have been anything, I decided. Too much pot roast. A muscle spasm. I’d almost convinced myself I’d imagined it when another fluttering in a different part of my stomach left me wide-eyed. I nearly stopped breathing, then told myself that wouldn’t be healthy for any of us.

I used no magic but instead expanded my senses so that I could feel the air and water around me. I could hear the hum of insects outside and smell the leaves of the trees outside my window. The world fell into a comfortable harmony as I clasped my hands and rested them carefully on my stomach again. Another flutter answered me, and I realized that maybe, no matter how radically things had changed, I wasn’t alone after all.

Chapter 8

I’d thought my biggest obstacle in exile would simply be adjusting to a new area and new people. I was wrong. As it turned out, boredom soon became my greatest enemy in the following weeks.

The Reeds continued to be open and loving in their acceptance of me. For all intents and purposes, I was a member of the family. Evan made good on his promise to take me to the space center and went out of his way to show me all sorts of other interesting sights in the area. Still, he couldn’t entertain me nonstop. Even though he was on summer break, he still had lots of home projects of his own to work on during the day, as well as a number of volunteer jobs. Likewise, Charles and Candace had their own commitments to preoccupy them. When evening came, they were quick to gather us all together, but the long daylight hours were left to my own devices.

Surprisingly, jealousy soon became an issue for me as well. Candace might maintain her breezy down-home style and tendency to over-mother while at home, but it was obvious that when it came to her shamanic work, she was all business. Her work sometimes took her quite a few hours outside of Huntsville, and I learned that this region was particularly active for ghosts. Old spirits had a hard time leaving familiar haunts. For whatever reason, gentry and other Otherworldly creatures weren’t such an issue, so she rarely used her magic to touch the Otherworld. Her work was mostly restricted to banishing, which made her more of a Ghost Buster than a shaman.

She frequently came home with cuts and bruises from particularly troublesome spirits, and that was what drove me crazy the most. She never complained and took it in stride as part of the job, and Charles would patiently patch her up each time. She was always able to take down anything that came her way, but each time she returned home injured, I just kept thinking that if I’d been with her, we probably could’ve dispatched those ghosts without a scratch. It took every ounce of my willpower to stay silent and let her do her job the way she always had.

I’d wondered initially if Evan knew what his aunt did for a living. Sometimes the shamanic trade was kept undercover. I quickly learned that not only did Evan know about her job, he also occasionally helped. His skills were pretty minor, but she believed it was good to have a backup. Her profession was well known to a lot of the community as well, who took ghosts and the supernatural as an accepted part of life. The area was rich in history, and a lot of the residents—particularly those in remote regions—had at least one ghost story to share.

Candace found me one afternoon, on a day she’d finished up early. I was reading on the porch, trying with mixed luck to get into a book I’d recently checked out. I hadn’t actually used a library in years, but with all my free time, now had seemed like a good time to try to get back into the habit. They helped break up the time when I wasn’t working on jigsaw puzzles, which were another old and neglected hobby.

“I was wondering if you could help me out with something,” she said, wiping sweat off her brow. The drought hadn’t lifted, which also drove me crazy. Charles worked diligently to keep his garden watered and alive, and I had to rein myself in from using magic to help him out. I would’ve gladly assisted with the manual labor instead, but he wouldn’t allow that in my “state.”

At her words, a brief surge of hope flared within me. Maybe she wanted me to come help her with a case! Then, as quickly as the thought had come, I promptly dismissed it. I was fairly certain Roland had made it emphatically clear that I was not to assist under any circumstances, and Candace was protective enough to uncompromisingly adhere to that.