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“Yes.”
“All right, then,” I said, turning and nestling my forehead against his collarbone.
* * *
I didn’t remember falling asleep. I remembered Jed telling his eye patch story (I found out later this was one of several incidents involving his brother that ended in Jed wearing an eye patch), and then I was walking along a fern-choked trail in a jungle with a figure in front of me, chopping through vegetation with a machete. The air was sticky and hot, smelling of rotting plants. And in the distance, I could hear church bells over the din of a thousand squawking tropical birds.
“Hi there,” Mr. Wainwright called over his khaki-clad shoulder.
“Aw, hell, again?” I sighed. “Do you know how off-putting it is to fall asleep in the arms of a naked man and wake up on a field trip with your grandfather?”
“Oh, come on, dear,” he admonished, leaning against a tree for a breather. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I’m staying at the Sleep-Tight Inn, aren’t I?” I muttered. “That’s adventure enough for me.” Glancing up the trail, I saw a decrepit whitewashed church in the distance. Its bell clanged loudly, although there was no one to yank the pull.
“Where are we?” I asked as he adjusted his dark-blue neckerchief.
“South America?” he guessed. “I hate to belabor the point, but it’s your dream.”
I hissed as a banana leaf snapped back and thwacked me across the face. “So what nonhelpful advice do you have to offer me this time?”
“Never trust a man with the middle name Wayne,” he said.
“What?”
He grunted, hacking his way through a clump of banana leaves. “You never said the advice had to be related to the Elements.”
“Why am I even bothering?” I sighed, following him. “You know, I managed to find two of the Elements on my own. I don’t need your help.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said as a large yellow butterfly fluttered past his shoulder. “But you’re the one who keeps bringing me back here.”
“Mr. Wainwright,” I growled.
“You’re still not going to call me Grandpa, are you?” he said sadly.
“Not for a while,” I told him. “I don’t know you that well yet.”
“I hoped that spending time at the shop would help you get to know me.”
“I thought you were a figment of my imagination. Do figments hope?”
He snickered. “Touché. You know, this might go a bit faster if you used a little . . .” He waggled his fingers as if casting a Las Vegas magician’s spell.
“Really?” I scoffed. “You want me to use magic because you’re having trouble with some landscaping?”
“No, I want you to use magic because it can be fun,” he said, gesturing to building-scale trees towering over our heads. “Maybe just peel all the greenery back like curtains. Or make the trees dance around like those ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ mops in Fantasia. I just want to see what you can do. It’s not like I ever got to watch you perform in a ballet recital.”
“I never took ballet. And didn’t Nana tell you anything about our magic?” I asked.
“She said your family’s talents were a gift, not that you were only allowed to put them toward practical purposes,” he said. “Just think of how boring life would be if you received gloves and car-detailing kits every Christmas.”
I thought back to my grandmother’s many, many lectures on magic. She had never told me that magic wasn’t supposed to be fun. In fact, I remembered several lessons in which she taught me to create shapes in colored smoke through concentration. Or to make fire dance. But the fire-dancing lesson had ended in tears and damaged drapes. So we’d stuck to the area in which I excelled, which happened to be healing. There aren’t a lot of laughs to be had in curing rashes and boils.
Come to think of it, in addition to the motel sleeping bag, Stephen had also given me gloves and a car-detailing kit for Christmas.
“I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” Mr. Wainwright said. “I think the search for your Elements is a bit like keeping a grip on that altar plaque. If you try too hard to hold on to it, you’ll break it.”
“So I need to relax.” I snorted. “In the face of an impossible task and a looming deadline, I’m supposed to relax and have fun.”
