Chapter 4

The following new characters appear in this chapter and others:

Uncle Thaddeus (Thad)

Jill’s Uncle, Magic user, 5’-10’’ tall, 185 pounds, 62 years old, a full gray beard and gray hair, hazel eyes

Aunt Grania (Grace)

Uncle Thad’s Wife, Jill’s Mother’s older Sister, 5’-8’’ tall, 140 pounds, 34C-24-34, 59 years old, gray hair, blue eyes

“Well, Jill, what brings you out here?” the man who was apparently her Uncle asked as he approached us.

“Trouble!” she answered.

“Nothing unusual there. Who is the stranger?” he demanded. This close I could see that he was about 5’-10’’ tall, maybe 185 pounds, and about 62 years old. He had a full gray beard and hair with hazel eyes.

“Uncle Thad this is Maximilian Hardtrick,” Jill told him, and I could see expression on his face change even under the full beard.

“You certainly know how to find trouble, girl,” he said still looking at me.

“Max isn’t the cause of the trouble, or not the current trouble anyway,” she told him before explaining, “It’s the Magic Haters and the FBI that are the trouble.”

“Yeah, that would be a lot of trouble, but you can explain it all later. What do you need?” he asked.

“We need to hide out for a while, and there will be two more who will be coming with us,” she told him.

“Maybe you better explain now, but come inside first,” he told us.

“Max, this is my Uncle, Thaddeus O’Donnell. His name is pronounced Thady O’Domhnaill in Gaelic,” she told me, as we followed her Uncle toward the house with its large front porch and single front door.

On entering the front room of the house, we were met by two younger men in their thirties. They bore a similar appearance to Jill’s Uncle.

“These are my Cousins Roderick and Patrick,” Jill told me indicating the two men, each of whom also had a high powered scope sighted rifle, and who had been covering the three of us while we talked.

“Rod, you keep watch. The rest of you sit down, and Jill will tell us why she is here, and why she brought the Ghost of Atlanta with her,” Uncle Thad told us as he sat in a large stuffed chair with his rifle across the upholstered arms, as Jill started her explanation ... a very detailed explanation.

“So, you’re a Magic user,” Uncle Thad asked after hearing her explanation.

“Yes sir.”

“How did you get hooked up with him, Jill?” he asked next.

“The Council sent me to Atlanta to find him,” she told her relatives.

“The Council, huh! Won’t do no good to second guess them,” her Uncle said before turning back to me.

“What’s the real story behind all that went on in Atlanta?” he asked. “We seen all the news on the TV. We get satellite TV out here, but have to run the generator to watch the TV. The solar power is used for other things.”

“I didn’t kill my kids,” I said first thing. “If you watched what was said on the news, those two from the Pentagon turned the story around to make me the bad guy, but I learned from the mobsters who I hung where those responsible came from. I’ll be going to New York soon to track down those who helped,” I told him.

“We know those two from the Army, that doctor and his stooge, the colonel. Go ahead and explain what happened,” Uncle Thad told me. I started at the beginning and went through it, leaving out the unneeded details, but included the the part in Jill’s house. Her relatives all sat up at the mention of the money.

“So, you won’t be here as poor relatives,” Uncle Thad said with a smile.

“No, we can pay our way,” I told him.

“He needs you to teach him more Magic also,” Jill told her Uncle.

“We’ll see about that,” he replied.

“Uncle Thad, I taught him the water heating spell in Atlanta so he could shower. He nearly had the water boiling on the first try,” Jill told him.

“You might be useful around here after all,” Roderick said with a smile on hearing about the water.

“So, can we stay here for a while?” Jill asked following that.

“These other two women, they got husbands or attachments?” her Uncle asked.

“No, they are both divorced, but one has a cat,” Jill told him.

“A couple of more women folks around to help with the housework and the cooking won’t be too bad, and we got plenty of bedrooms. All right, bring them here,” he agreed.

“We’ll be bringing clothes and food with us,” Jill told him.

“Can you move it all by yourselves?” he asked. Jill turned to look at me, and I winked at her.

“Yes, Max has a huge Talent, and we can move it all by ourselves, but we will be moving only one household at a time, starting with mine,” Jill told him.

“Fine, just appear out in the field like you did earlier, and we’ll help you move everything inside,” he assured us before we all rose, and Jill and I returned to the field in front of the house. With all of the explanations, it was now getting late, and we would need to hurry to finish before it got dark. She cast the transfer spell and we disappeared.

We instantly reappeared in Jill’s living room where her things and mine were waiting.

“That went better than I thought it would,” she told me.

“What do you mean?”

“Uncle Thad can be cantankerous at times,” she replied.

“He seemed fairly reasonable after shooting at us,” I said, but added, “Are we ready to transfer all of this?”

“Yes, all but the perishable things. We can bring those later,” she answered before turning to look at the two agents still under the freeze spell.

“What about them?” she inquired.

“I have something planned for them, but it will wait until after we move Calisa to initiate it,” I told her. We joined hands after I cast a ward around everything that we were taking, and we both cast the transfer spell. We winked out of existence in her living room, and a second later appeared in the field we had left only minutes before.

As soon as we appeared, a number of young people, mostly teens, appeared from the house to help us move our belongings inside. I did note that the three men with rifles were missing, but a quick search with my Magic senses revealed them in separate locations where they could see the approaches to the farm as well as cover those in the field.

Everything was quickly moved into the house, but I maintained control of the locked box with the money and the gold in it. We were met just inside the house by an older woman who the young people had stopped behind.

“Hello, Aunt Grania.” Jill said as we entered.

“You found you a man?” her Aunt asked looking at me.

“Not yet. Max lost his Wife five or six weeks ago,” she told her Aunt.

“So, two rooms then,” her Aunt said with a smile.

“Yes, two rooms.”

One of the boys who had my things led me up to a small room in what appeared to be the attic. While small, it did appear to be comfortable, and it wasn’t like I had a lot to keep there except my clothes and the locked box.

“You reckon you’ll fit in that bed?” the youngster asked looking from me to the bed. I looked at the bed and shrugged.

“I’ve slept in worse,” I told him.

“Yeah, they said you was in the Army,” he agreed but had another question.

“Are you really the one Granpa Thad calls ‘the Ghost of Atlanta’?” he asked.

“Yes, I am,” I told him before we returned to the first floor. Jill joined us a few minutes later.

“I’ll unpack and get settled later. I already turned our food over to my Aunt. We need to move the others before it gets too dark,” she finished before we returned to the field in front of the house and then to Melany’s house in North Charleston.

“Lord, where have you been? I’ve been on pins and needles waiting for you. I tried calling your house, Jill, but no one answered,” Melany told us as soon as she opened her front door to our knock.

“We’ve been at my Uncle’s. He wanted a complete explanation of why we needed to stay there for a while, and why Max was with me, but he has agreed to allow all of us to stay there,” Jill told her before asking, “Are you ready to leave?”

“Yes, I’ve been ready since early this morning,” Melany assured her.

“Did you pack all of your important papers, and is there anything, papers, pictures, or anything electronic that the government could use to track you, still here?” I asked her.

“I left my computer and my camera here. I thought that I could use the computer where we are going,” she told me.

“Either take them with you, or I will disable them,” I told her.

“Oh dear, I wouldn’t want to lose everything on my computer. I’ll disconnect it and bring it and the camera,” she told me, and quickly went to retrieve the computer and the camera. The computer was a laptop and closed up into a small package. There were a number of flash drives in its carrying bag along with the camera and their charges. I checked my wards around the house to be sure they were still at full strength before we all joined hands, and Jill and I cast the transfer spell again.

We appeared in the field in front of the farm house once again, and the youngsters descended on us to carry Melany’s things into the house. We only stayed long enough to introduce Melany to Jill’s Aunt before returning to her house in North Charleston to deal with Calisa and the two agents.

“Should we empty the refrigerator and the freezer now?” I asked Jill after we appeared in her dining room.

“No, let’s move Calisa first. She probably still has more things to move than enough,” Jill said with a frown, before we transferred to Calisa’s house. We would need to return to her house to move the agents in any event. We appeared in Calisa’s living room to find it still full of her belongings in suitcases and boxes. Jill frowned on seeing this.

“Calisa, I told you before that you can’t take all of this with you. You are only going to have one room, a bedroom, at my Uncle’s house, and there is nowhere to keep all of this,” Jill told her in an upset voice.

“But all of my lovely things,” Calisa moaned in despair.

“Most will have to stay here,” Jill told her. “There just isn’t any place else for them,” she finished, and began separating the important things like clothes and food from the rest.

“Clothing, food, a few other essentials, and your cat and her food,” Jill reminded her as she helped Calisa separate her things. We still ended up with more to move than either Melany or we had taken with us. While the women worked on this, I checked the wards that I had left around Calisa’s house to ensure that they were still at full strength.

I immediately found that someone had tried to tamper with them, but they had been unsuccessful. I added a second spell to the wards that would give anyone tampering with them a good shock, and set it for multiple repeats. Whoever tried that again would get a nasty surprise, but I suspected that it had been Calisa herself who had tampered with the wards.

Eventually, we were ready to leave, and I cast a ward around the things remaining here, and then a ward around the things going with us. Following that, we all joined hands with Calisa holding the cat in its cage. Jill and I cast the transfer spell, and we disappeared from Calisa’s house.

We instantly reappeared in the field in front of Uncle Thad’s house with the mountains visible behind it.