Under the Magnolia

Adelaide Gardner had gotten herself into a lot of trouble in her day. Her penchant for driving into the middle of storms and chasing wildly after tornadoes had certainly made life interesting on more than one occasion; her habit of showing up in the midst of trouble vexed the law enforcement in her tiny town to no end. Wherever there was trouble, Addie was there, up to her knees in it more often than not.

Now was no exception. The hurricane closing in on the coast was a Category Two at the least. She'd heard rumors on the radio that the pressure had dropped again at the last recon flight, with winds now pushing 110 miles per hour. She'd completed her storm preparations the morning before, and she should have been curled up in the basement with her radio and her computer.

Instead, she was wedging rocks and branches underneath her tires in a frantic attempt to free her Jeep from the mud.

"So much for precognitive ability," she muttered angrily as she stomped on the branch she was holding, breaking it in half. One end went under the left tire, joining the rocks she'd already shoved there.

Things like this weren't supposed to happen to psychics. They especially weren't supposed to happen to a psychic whose particular gift was seeing the future. Sure, she was always around when there was trouble, but she was there to help other people, not to put herself in need of rescuing.

And yet, here she was, struggling to free her Jeep from a quagmire in the face of an oncoming hurricane. Not in spite of her gift, but because of it. Because she'd woken up in a cold sweat from a nightmare about two college kids, trapped and terrified as they struggled to keep from drowning.

Apparently she'd woken up from the vision before she got to the part where her Jeep got mired in the mud, leaving her stranded in the middle of the island's rustic state park, miles from anything approaching a reasonable shelter.

The sky opened up again as she worked the second branch under her right tire, hopefully giving her the traction she'd need to drive free. She was drenched to the skin and shaking from nerves as she climbed back into the Jeep and tried again.

The wheels spun, and for a moment--just a moment--she thought the Jeep was going to lurch free. Please, please.

But the Jeep didn't move, and she found herself cursing as she scrambled out again, fighting a rising feeling of panic as she dropped to her knees in the mud. It would be the perfect lesson for her class. When this was all over and she was back in the classroom, she'd tell them this story, make them work out a solution.

She wrote the lesson plan out in her head as she struggled with the rocks, using the exercise to keep herself calm. She would have to duplicate a smaller scale of the conditions, which wouldn't be difficult. Mud would be a bit too messy in the lab, though she could probably use the old cornstarch and water trick. Combining them would create a quicksand-like substance, and this mud certainly had a quicksand sort of feel to it. It was all too easy to imagine her Jeep slowly sinking into the earth as she struggled to free it.

She ignored the chattering of her teeth and the increasing howl of the wind, letting her mind formulate a perfect lesson for her tenth graders even as her body moved on reflex. Shove the rocks under the wheels, hope the wheels grip the branches... Try not to think about what might happen if the bridge is flooded by the time I finish this.

Addie almost didn't hear the rumble of an engine over the sound of the wind whipping through the massive pines surrounding her. She straightened and squinted through the downpour, shoving her hair back from her face as she struggled to focus on the source of the sound.

A utility vehicle with the police department logo emblazoned on the side pulled to a skidding stop on the road up the hill from her, and a man in a navy blue slicker climbed out.

He called out to her as he slipped and slid down the embankment. "Addie Jo Gardner, you are giving me gray hair!"

She could only imagine what she must look like, drenched from the rain and covered in mud. If it had been any other man she might not have minded, but of course it was Wes. Handsome, funny Wes, with the gorgeous blue eyes and the charming smile that had been distracting her more and more over the past year.

It was silly. She'd known him since middle school, and never once during her hormonal teenaged years had she thought about him in more than a friendly fashion. Her heart had belonged to the school's resident math genius, a brilliant young man who'd spent endless hours studying with her without noticing that she was a girl. Or maybe Chuck just hadn't known what to do with girls; he certainly hadn't seemed interested in them.

She doubted there had ever been a time when Wes hadn't known what to do with a willing woman. He'd been popular with the girls in high school, and every last one of Addie's friends had been in love with him at one point or another. If she'd ever been able to pull her attention away from Chuck, she might have joined them. He was impossibly charming after all.

Better late than never, crushing on the quarterback, she grumbled to herself as she resisted the urge to wipe at her face. She'd only add to whatever mud was already there, and now was not the time to be worrying about appearances.

So she smiled at him a little self-consciously and gestured to the rocks under her tires. "Got a little stuck."

He shook his head, clear blue eyes taking in the sky. "Leave it. The bridge is covered over, anyway. We'd better make for the plantation house."

"Shit." She turned back to the Jeep, dragging her bag from the back seat before giving the vehicle one longing look. The chances she'd see it again in one piece weren't very good, but she'd rather live than get sentimental over a vehicle.

She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and followed him back to the steep slope. "Did those kids send you out here after me?"

He paused only long enough to lift the backpack off her shoulder and throw it over his. "Yeah. They went over to the shelter at the Presbyterian church like you said. Bea Westbury called the station when you didn't show."

"I thought I could make it out." And she felt more than a little guilty that she hadn't, since now she'd dragged him into the path of danger with her.

"Doesn't matter," he told her shortly as he dragged open the passenger side door and gave her two quick slaps on the back. "Get in and buckle up."

He moved with enviable ease, even in the driving rain and under the considerable weight of her bag, and it took no time at all for him to shove the knapsack between their seats and climb in behind the steering wheel. "You ready to go?"

She nodded, but all of her attention had shifted to the growing tension inside her, the feeling she got just before she had one of her waking visions. Not now, God, please not now.

Psychic ability might be the newest pseudoscience to go mainstream, but Addie still had occasional nightmares--not visions, thank God, but garden-variety bad dreams--that she would find herself the toasty target of a witch hunt if her placid, boring neighbors ever found out about her abilities. Even if they didn't run her out of town, she imagined no one would want her to keep teaching their children. The ACLU was already having a field day prosecuting employers who suddenly �let go� employees who displayed psychic power.

Addie's waking visions weren't subtle. Even now, her heart raced and her breathing sounded fast and loud in the closed confines of the car. She curled her hand around the handle of the door, closing her eyes as she tried to fend off the rush of power that sent a shiver up her spine and raised the hair on the back of her neck.

"Hey." His voice was concerned but stern, and his fingers touched her bare arm. "Are you okay, Addie?"

Heat flooded her as the world disappeared. She was on fire, burning from the inside out, and Wes was above her, skin sliding against hers in tantalizing ways as he dragged his tongue up the side of her neck. He whispered something she couldn't understand, and she caught the faintest flash of those devastating blue eyes before his teeth closed on her ear. In the next moment he was thrusting into her, and she had been waiting for this so long, so fucking long--

The vision released her as quickly as it had seized her, and she jerked her arm away from his fingers as color rushed to her cheeks. Holy shit.