“Oh, Maggie,” Thaddeus Turner's voice seeped through the door that separated his sanctum from the great room, “you do not understand the gravity of what you have done.”
Maggie again slumped upon the great room's floor, leaning against the closed door to her father's inner sanctum. She had almost laughed when she described to her father the lines and symbols she had traced in the Harlington horse stall. She had expected that her father would have been proud of her craft. For Maggie had accomplished two goals with the magic she had woven. Truly, she had provided Emma Harlington with a sanctuary, a spot upon which Emma would find relief from the seizures that wracked her. But Maggie had also done more. The first thing Maggie had learned from her father's tutelage was that nothing was free. Power directed to one location needed to be harvested from another. Maggie's symbols would make the animals – the horses, the chickens, the dogs and cats – the Harlington ranch depended upon ill and lethargic. Work on the Harlington ranch would crawl to a standstill. And if the Harlingtons should lose a few head of cattle, such losses did not compare to the killing of four Turner brothers.
Thaddeus Turner wheezed from the other side of his sanctum's door. “You'll be lucky if your magic doesn't kill everything on that ranch.”
Maggie held her tongue. Her throat choked with fear.
“For the sake of your soul, I hope it was foolishness, and not wickedness, that led you to trace such lines. Why do you think, Maggie, that your touch no longer chases Emma's seizures away? Why do you think your power can only hold those shakes back now, when before your power was enough to protect Emma from even the slightest tremble?”
“She's not the same sweet girl she was before,” Maggie could not hide the contempt that bled into her voice. “She's no longer so innocent. A secret torments her. She hides here love for Wilson. She reserves the love between them for the shadows. Emma thinks herself wicked for the secret. That sentiment keeps my powers from flowing through her as they once did.”
Maggie imagined her father nodding in the shadows behind the door as he had when he first showed a younger Maggie how to harness her talent for the craft, before her father had isolated himself so completely in his inner sanctum's shadows.
“We know that Emma hides a secret,” Thaddeus continued. “Secrets and vengeance fuel magic like nothing else. You charged your weaving with more power than you have ever before touched. Those lines you traced into the dust are not going to be able to contain very much of that power. That power is going to flood the ranch. I hate to consider how much power is going to manifest on the Harlington acres should revenge have been the main motive for your dust drawings.”
“Revenge wouldn't be such a bad medicine for the Harlingtons to swallow,” Maggie countered.
Thaddeus's voice snarled. “Fool girl. It will be your soul that is poisoned. Your magic makes you another casualty.”
Maggie closed her eyes. Her body was so twisted. Her face turned uglier the more she grew. Maggie knew her physicality bent in a wicked direction. Yet, Maggie had often thought that those blemishes that had made her body so ugly had made her soul more beautiful.
“I had hoped to prevent you from using your talents out of hate,” Thaddeus's voice grew faint behind the door. “And I fear your talent, Maggie, for reasons I hope you never know. I had hoped you would not choose a bone-shaker's path. But this, Maggie, puts you on a sinister course. You have unleashed powers with consequences I cannot know.”
“I would do it again,” Maggie would rather snarl than cry.
The thick door separating the sanctum from the great room could not hide Thaddeus's heavy sigh. “Oh, Maggie. I hope you have not made the loss of your brothers empty deaths. I hope your magic does not destroy what trust I have gained with the Lakota. They will not let me into their circle to learn if their language might hide another symbol if they fear our powers.”
Maggie did not reply.
No one slept that night within the Turner cabin. Something more than a melancholy lingered in the air, something more than the hate Maggie felt towards Randolph Harlington. Something dark fluttered in the great room's high shadows. A buzz vibrated in the air. Fear swirled in the dust. A bone-shaker's vengeance approached Dry Acre.