If you recognize them, then JE made them up.

Jenny (JenRar) thank you for your constant and consistent work as the beta on this story.

Chapter 18 – A Little Magic (Magia)

"Call RangeMan and tell them to send in some teams," Manny told Cal. "There's no reason to worry about giving up our location. We're already compromised."

Cal looked unsure, but he didn't seem willing to bet our lives on it, so he yanked his cell phone up and called the office, telling them that all hell was going to break loose and we needed some serious backup.

As soon as he hung up, Cal asked, "How does anybody know where you are? I wasn't followed, and only RangeMan knows you're here."

"We'll figure that out later," Manny replied, standing up and looking around the room, as though searching for something.

"What do you need?" I wondered, willing to get anything for him.

"I'm trying to figure out if we'd be better off hanging tight and using the security of the house or trying to sneak out the back and hiding before they know where we are," Manny admitted.

"Why can't we just get in the car Cal brought and ride out?" I asked, wondering why they were ignoring the obvious solution.

Manny explained, "There's too great a chance they are close enough to cut us off, and if there's enough of them to surround us, it would be an easy slaughter. At least this way, we might have the chance to fight."

Cal looked around and suggested, "Getting to the trees seems like a much better plan than sitting here in a location they can destroy to flush us out. How fast can you go?" Cal asked Manny, looking at him holding his hand-carved cane.

"Not fast enough," Manny replied bluntly. "If they get here before we're hidden, just assume I'm down and you two head out."

"I'm not leaving you," I jumped in, realizing I was contradicting my previous promise.

"The hell you aren't," Manny pressed. "You said you'd go if you were in danger, and taking a slow stroll at my speed when there are armed men on the hunt is the epitome of danger. You'll go, and you'll not look back."

I didn't bother responding, not wanting to fight with him right before all hell broke loose. Instead, I looked down and said, "You don't have shoes."

He glanced at his feet as though that were a new discovery to him and then shrugged. "Don't know if I have any here, so I'll have to make due without."

"I can get some old slip-ons from Nagypapa's closet," I suggested.

Manny gave me a single nod, which I took as permission to try, so I took off to the back bedroom and hoped Grandma Mazur had kept the old work boots. Something told me the velvet slippers at the end of the bed wouldn't go over well, so I dug deep and found exactly what I'd hoped for. When I reappeared with a pair of well-worn, lace-up black boots, Manny looked shocked. By some miracle, they seemed to fit on his good foot, at least well enough to help protect him from whatever he was about to move through outside. I was able to get the other one on the foot of his casted leg, but lacing it up wasn't possible.

After getting him pulled together, Manny turned on the television and boosted the volume to a level just a fraction higher than I'd usually watch it, scrolling the channels to find a talk news program.

Cal went out the front; I rearmed it behind him and then waited until we heard him ripping the wood away from the rear entrance to fully open that door. I was shocked to see it was just getting dark, not pitch black yet, but there wasn't any sun left in the sky still, either. I'd been locked up without a cycle to my day for long enough that I'd lost touch with the difference of night and day.

"Let's move to the building and then into the woods from there. We can use it as cover if they get here before we're clear," Cal suggested.

I walked beside Manny, knowing he wouldn't let me help him but feeling the need to be there in case he stumbled on the uneven terrain. Once we stepped outside, I took a good look around and saw what used to be the garden. There were still lots of plants out there, many in raised beds and a few around the picnic table that I'd been dreaming about. The gravel path that used to flow gracefully between the many rows of blooms and greenery was nearly overrun with grass and weeds. Manny took one look at the table and stopped walking.

"Are you okay?" I worried that I should run back inside and try to get a few pain relievers to keep him moving.

Manny nodded his head toward the table and said, "Just surprised to see this place is real. I thought it was some made up garden in my dreams."

"Well, in my dreams, it looked the way it did when I was little, so there were a lot less weeds and much healthier looking plants, but yeah, it's real. It's just a far cry from its previous glory," I agreed.

We started moving once more, and just as we passed by the table Manny and I had both seen as we shared conversations while sleeping, that cool touch I was now beginning to identify as Nagymama's guiding hand pulled me to the side, and I found myself touching another plant. I didn't question it. I just snapped off a branch that held some odd looking pods, hoping whatever it was used for would become apparent when the time was right.

At the back of the garden was a fire pit, lined in brick that Nagypapa had built for bonfires at night. We'd roast marshmallows, cook food, and just sit and watch the flames long into the evening before he'd bring out his hurdy-gurdy and play some old folk tunes for us. Those were some of my favorite memories from my childhood, and I couldn't believe I hadn't thought about it until now. Before I could move around the circle, I heard Nagymama insist that I light the herbs in the pit I'd been thinking about.

"What?" I asked out loud, making Cal turn around and look at me like I'd lost my mind.

I could distantly hear a car on the road, so I knew I needed to be quiet, but her instructions made no sense.

"The leaves in your pocket, child. Throw them in there and strike a match," she instructed urgently.

I decided I had nothing to lose, so I looked at Manny and said, "Keep walking. This will only take a minute, and I can catch up."

Then I pulled the baggie from my pants pocket and dumped it all in the pit in a rounded pile before taking out the small book of matches and striking one. It took three tries before it finally lit, so I dropped the match into the dried material and hoped for whatever magic this was supposed to produce to work quickly.

Instantly, a thick plume of smoke began to rise, so I took off jogging until I caught up with Manny. When I glanced back, the smoke was spreading out in every direction, creating a heavy fog effect.

"What was that?" Cal asked, not irritated, just curious.

"I have no idea," I confessed, not willing to take credit for something I didn't know to do.

"It's called a cloak of confusion," Nagymama provided. "It will give you time to hide without them being able to see you."

I figured Cal wasn't able to hear her voice, so I told him, "It's an old gypsy trick to create confusion so that we have time to get out of sight."

"I wasn't a gypsy. Stop calling me that," Nagypapa stated rather firmly. "I was a carpenter who dabbled in the unexplainable and refused to conform to the rules everyone else lived under."

When I caught Manny's eye that time, he was smiling, which made me think he'd heard that weak attempt at clarification.

We were barely to the shed when we heard what I thought was three cars pull up to the house.

"RangeMan?" I asked, knowing that would be too good to be true.

Cal shook his head. "No, it hadn't been long enough, and those don't sound like our vehicles." Then he glanced back to the house, which was nearly hidden behind the great wall of smoke I'd made at the fire pit. "You two get in the shed and stay there. I'm going to cut into the woods and circle back to try to cut them off, creating the illusion that they're surrounded until the guys get here for real backup."

Manny nodded, so I didn't bother arguing that his plan sounded too risky for Cal.

"Be careful," I said, hoping he would take my words to heart.

"Ah, Angel, no worries. This will all be over soon, and then you can tell me how the hell you made that smoke without making a fire." With a final smile at me and a nod to Manny, Cal disappeared into the rapidly descending darkness of the night.

"He'll be fine," Manny assured me, pulling my hand so that we could get into the shed to hide.

I didn't argue the point because I was worried that they would see it as doubt in their abilities, but I was still worried about the guy that had been going out of his way to check on me since I'd been caring for Manny and had appointed himself my honorary big brother.

The shed was a lot emptier than I remembered. Nagypapa had lots of tools and the majority of them had been cleared out, but the tall metal shelves still lined all the walls, many filled with empty pots that had once been used to start seedlings for the garden. The garden itself may have technically been Nagymama's, but they both shared a passion for watching things grow.

At the ceiling were large beams that served as support for Nagypapa's wood that he stored to work with at a later date. It was hard to tell, but it looked like hundreds of pounds of timber was resting over our heads.

Manny looked out of the little window once we were inside and then said, "Help me push one of the shelves to block the front door."

We got the shelf moved to secure the door quickly, but I think that was because despite his injuries, Manny was still really strong and doing most of the work. Then he turned and looked at the back door and shook his head.

"We're going to have to leave that one open in case we have to make a run for it." Then he knocked on the walls and shook his head again.

"What's wrong?" I wondered.

"This building is made out of wood," he replied, as though he were suddenly a building inspector and this one didn't meet code.

"Yes," I agreed, "but it seems to be sturdy enough to hide in."

"If they decide to shorten their search time by just firing automatic weapons in this direction, the bullets will come right through," he explained, taking away the small amount of security I'd built up when we barricaded ourselves in.

"Hey, come here," he said, apparently noticing my bleached white skin at that less than assuring announcement.

Once he'd wrapped his free arm around me and pulled me tight against him, I stopped shaking and calmed down. If Manny ever decided to give up the whole security specialist and undercover ops day job, he had a promising future as a security blanket as a second career.

We could hear some voices, but they were in Spanish, so I didn't have a clue what they were saying.

Manny whispered in my ear, "They're splitting up with a couple of them taking the woods on both sides and a pair of them going into the house."

Surely that would buy us enough time for the cavalry to arrive riding in black RangeMan SUVs. But before I could convince myself that all would be well, I heard shouting again, but this time slightly closer.

"One of them is going to break off from the others and search the backyard, but the smoke is throwing them off." I could feel his chest shake when he said the last part. "Remind me to thank your grandmother for that later."

"You're welcome," came Nagymama's amused voice. "But it may not be enough. They're focused on finding you both."

I wondered how much she could see since she wasn't bound to a physical body the way we were. Maybe if we made it out of this alive, I'd ask her about it.

This time, when I heard the shouting, I could tell at least one of them was much closer to us. Then I heard gunfire to our right, but far enough away that it was in the woods.

"Cal," I whispered, wondering if those bullets were coming from his gun or flying at him.

Manny squeezed me slightly. "He'll be okay. We train for this kind of thing all the time, and he had enough of a head start to have scoped out a good position." Then he let me go and added, "You need to stay here, against the back wall, while I thrown them off a little."

"What are you going to do?" I asked as he pulled two round things from a pouch on his utility belt.

"I'm going to create a distraction," he replied with a hint of a smile on his face.

"With a ball?" I questioned, not sure if this was a good idea.

My lack of understanding only seemed to make his grin grow. "These are flash pods – more pyrotechnic than weapon, but when they hit the ground, they'll crack open with a bang and a few small bursts of light. If somebody isn't familiar with them, they will assume it's gunfire, which will pull them off of their current path and hopefully make them rush to find the mystery shooter. It's a temporary solution, but it might give Cal enough time to get away from whoever is on his trail."

I nodded, knowing we shouldn't waste any more time if he was trying to do this to help Cal.

"Can I do it?" I wondered, figuring my ability to run back to the shed would make me able to hide faster than Manny could.

"I doubt it," he replied, disappointing me. "If you don't get enough force behind the throw, they won't crack, and then we will have lost the ability to use them."

Understanding that he had to do it, I opened the door as silently as possible and flattened myself against the wall with the open door covering me and creating an extra layer to hide behind. I decided to try counting the seconds until he got back just to keep my mind occupied. At fifteen, I heard a series of pops far to the left of the shed, followed by some shouts that I didn't understand. By the time I got to thirty-one, there was an identical set of sounds to my right that garnered similar interest from the people searching for us.

The voices shouted back and forth, and then I heard several things all at once. There were definitely new vehicles pulling in at the front of the house, which were making no attempt to be quiet about their approach. If anything, they were intentionally drawing attention to themselves. I decided to claim those sounds were the teams from RangeMan and smiled, knowing that if they were here, this would all be over soon. The sounds I assumed were the bad guys got louder in response, as though they knew their time was limited here and they needed to act quickly to finish their assignment.

But my stomach dropped to my toes when I heard what I knew was Manny's voice screaming, "Run, Stephanie! Get the hell out of there."

I hesitated for a split second, unsure why he was yelling at me and giving away his location but trusting that he had a good reason to shout out a warning. I pushed the door away from me and moved around it to get out of the shed, when all kinds of guns began to sound. They were coming from so many directions, I couldn't figure out which way to run. I was too far away from the window to try to look for a clue, and the smoke that had been near the house was now drifting to envelop the shed, as well. This was like an ideal horror scene, where the evil that lurks in the fog comes to life and kills the girl too stupid to run away from it.

Before I could make a decision, I heard a strange whistling sound. There was a thrust of energy pushing me down, a sensation of something heavy on top of me, and then my world went black.

When I opened my eyes, I was sitting at the picnic table in the middle of Nagymama's garden. It was immaculate once again, and the sun was shining, making everything seem happy and inviting. When I saw her smiling at me, I decided I was perfectly content where I was and I no longer felt the need to argue with whether or not this was real or a dream. There was a small place in the back of my mind that was confused if this was in my unconscious or if that thrust of energy I could vaguely remember was actually me dying, but it didn't seem important enough to worry over right at the moment.

Nagymama reached across the table and took my hand in hers. I could feel her touching me, but this time, her hand didn't feel cool as it did when I was aware of her guidance around the house.

"Am I dead?" I asked, okay with the answer either way.

"No, child. You live, but you're sleeping right now," she told me.

"Am I going to wake up?" I figured that was a valid question, since her version of sleep might include a coma.

"Of course. There's no point in wasting your life sleeping all the time," she replied with a grin.

"Why am I here, then?" I wondered, hoping I wasn't being rude.

"Ah, always the curious one, aren't you?" she replied, reminding me of Grandma Mazur all of a sudden. "You are here because you need a place to be for a little bit while your body catches up. That was a big boom."

"I was in an explosion?" I asked, not remembering fire.

"No, just a big boom, and then Papa's shed fell and you went flying out and were buried under those horrible shelves and all that wood he refused to get rid of. I never liked those shelves. I used to beg him to make nice wood ones, but he never got around to it." She was getting distracted, and while I loved hearing her talk, I had a feeling there was something else she needed to tell me.

I thought back over her words, and something struck me as being important. "Wait, I'm buried alive?" That idea should have been more upsetting that it was.

"You have some rather uncomfortable covers at the moment, but you'll be okay," she assured me, silencing my questions.

Looking at the garden around us, I was sad that it didn't still look like this. "Your garden doesn't look this nice anymore," I admitted.

"But it lives still, that is all that matters," she assured me. "Don't let the outward appearance fool you about the treasure hiding underneath. A little work and a lot of love, and it will be beautiful again."

"Who's going to do that?" I foolishly asked.

Nagymama just looked at me, as though the answer were so obvious, it didn't warrant saying aloud. Then I realized she meant me. "Oh no, I don't garden. I'm not what you'd call domestic. I don't cook, I can't grow things, and I barely keep a clean apartment. Where I live now even has a rodent."

That last bit made her laugh, and she corrected me. "Your Rex would be upset to hear you call him a rodent. But he doesn't live there anymore, no?"

"How do you know about Rex?" We seemed to have all the time in the world, and there were definitely things I wanted to know. Strangely, talking about him now didn't fill me with that twinge of pain that it had before this point.

She raised a hand to make a gesture, as though it were simple, and then confessed, "Edna comes by every month and talks to us. She loves to regale us with stories of your adventures."

"Every month?" I hadn't realized she came by that often. I guessed that explained why the house was so clean.

"When she had Helen, I was overjoyed at the idea of having another girl to pass on the knowledge of our family in how to live with the help of the earth. But Helen was much like her father and was very scientific, refusing to show any interest, except in the kitchen. She did love to cook, so I gave up teaching her about the life in the plants and taught her about the kitchen instead. Then Valerie came along, and I tried once more, but she was just like her mother. It was like they were twins just born many years apart."

Nagymama seemed lost in her story, so I patiently waited to see what she wanted me to know.

"Then a few years later, you were born, and from the moment I first held you, I knew you would be the one to finally take an interest, because you were not bound by the rules of your mother and you seemed to thrive more and more with time outside. But I waited too long to begin teaching you, and my age caught up with me. I did not worry, because I knew the circle of life would give me a chance to help you later, and here we are. You have the magia heart, which is what allows you to feel me with you, and I will teach you now."

"Right now?" I blurted out, wondering why a biology lesson was important if I was buried under rubble from the building I'd been hiding in.

"Just a little," she replied. "The plant you picked on the way to the shed has some long pods on it, like beans."

"I remember," I assured her. "I wasn't sure why it was important, so I picked it and shoved it in my back pocket."

"When you wake up, pull off one of the pods, crack it open, and then eat the meat from inside," she instructed. "It will not taste good, but eat it anyway."

"Why?" If I was going to be forced to eat something gross, I was going to need a better motivation than "because I said so."

"It will give you a fast burst of energy, and you will be able to make enough noise to respond to the men searching for you. It was dark when the building collapsed, and they don't know if you got out and ran into the woods or if you were covered in the rubble. They are going to look for you, but it's very dark and the smoke that helped you to hide keeps them from searching well," she explained, providing the motivation.

"So it's like adrenaline," I clarified, trying to put it into a term I could relate to.

"Close enough," she replied, not taking away my understanding, but not exactly confirming it, either.

"Once you are ready, come back here to this spot, and we will begin your lessons so that you understand each of the plants in the garden and how to care for them so that they can provide for you," she told me as she let go of my hand.

Once the connection was broken, the image of her began to grow more faint, until she was just a cloudy outline in front of me. "Nagypapa said to have Manny put a rubber bottom on his lovely cane. There's some rubber in the basement in his work bench. Manny is welcome to anything he needs. It's been a joy to see someone working with wood in the house again." And with those parting words, she disappeared completely. The vision I had of the gardens at their peak began to fade, as well.

I felt my body jump, like I had received a bad scare, and then realized I wasn't able to move. I was about to panic, hating the feeling of being in enclosed spaces especially after I'd been stuffed in a casket by a crazy man intent on killing me. Then my mind began to clear, and I could hear the sounds of people close by, calling out for flashlights and saying my name. There was also someone repeating soothing phrases like, "You need to calm down, man," and "Everything's going to be fine, just wait and see."

But it was a single voice that brought me out of my cloudy confusion and back to reality. Manny sounded beyond distraught as he screamed out my name, and then, probably tired of being told to calm down, he said, "Screw you. I'm not calming down. That's my wife that's missing, and I have to find her."

"Your wife? Don't make me have to knock you out," Bobby replied, obviously sensing the panic Manny was under and figuring the stress wasn't good for him in light of all his body had been through the last few weeks and it was making him crazy.

"You'll be picking your teeth up off the ground if you come at me with a needle," Manny replied, his voice hardened with the strain of all that had happened and the stress of not knowing where I was or if I was alive.

I was able to get a hand loose and moved it slowly to my back pocket, where the branch I'd snapped off during our hasty retreat was tucked away. It was slow going, but I finally got it up to my face and pulled off one of the bean-looking pods, using my teeth and my free hand to pull it open. I gave it a sniff, not finding it offensive nor inviting, and then pulled out the pulp on the inside to eat it as Nagymama had instructed. Of course, she had to be right about it not tasting good, but I refused to be deterred and kept going, feeling more alert with every vile bite. Once I'd gotten all I could from the shell, I dropped it and took a breath as deep as I could manage with the weight on top of me.

I did a quick body check to see if anything felt broken or injured. Nothing was screaming in pain, I was just really uncomfortable, so I figured it was safe to try moving. Despite the energy I had, I still couldn't manage to get up from the pile of stuff on top of me, so I decided to call out instead. I let out a few weak attempts of, "Help," but no one could hear me.

Then I had an idea and quietly said. "Nagypapa?"

"I'm here," his tender voice replied. "I cannot lift the things on top of you," he disappointed me by stating.

"Can you help?" I wondered, not sure what other options I had.

"All you had to do was ask," he replied. A cool touch on my head made me think he had placed a kiss there as he used to. "I'll get Manny. He will help you."

"Manny's kind of busy at the moment, fighting with the guys," I warned him.

Laughter was his initial response, before adding, "I have my ways of getting through to him."

It took only a matter of seconds before I heard Manny, in a much calmer voice, telling the guys to be quiet.

Once I heard them settle down, I tried to call out once more. "Manny!"

It took three tries before I felt like they'd picked up on my call. I could hear them call back for me to be still and they'd get me out of there. Then someone, maybe Tank based on how deep the voice was, told Manny to talk to me and keep me awake while they got me free.

I just relaxed and listened to his voice promise me that everything was going to be all right. He told me they'd gotten all of Hernandez's men, and I nothing to worry about. Then he shifted tactics and said, "I'm thinking since we're technically married, we have some big time decisions to make, and I need your help in making them."

Just as he said that, something major was lifted, and I finally felt like I could push myself up, thrilled to feel the small pieces of rubble and debris fall off of me when I moved.

As soon as I could focus, I found Manny's face and smiled to let him know I was all right. "What kind of decisions?" I pushed.

"I'm thinking that I was in the hospital when we should have been on our honeymoon, so maybe we should start with how to fix that oversight," he replied with a grin.

I could feel the adrenaline wearing off – or the tiny pod I ate was short-lived – but the thought of having a honeymoon with Manny was more than enough to keep me awake. If we could just get rid of all the guys in black staring at us, my body was more than ready to get started on that right now.