Halfway Dead by Terry Maggert Read Free Book Online Page A

holdouts, like a lone soldier on the ramparts, that kind of thing.”
    “What kind of trees? I asked, taking the phone and looking closely at the screen. There were only massive trunks visible; the leaves were clearly high above the canopy.
    “Chestnuts. American chestnuts, or Castanea dentate if you want to be really specific.” He grinned at how underwhelmed I was by this revelation.
    As a witch, I know plant life, but my interests are primarily focused on smaller herbs, roots, and berries. I use the occasional common tree, but nothing truly exotic. Gran hadn’t mentioned a chestnut in any spells, and it seemed like the species was just unused in our own familial magic. “I hate to seem unimpressed, but excuse me if I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is there something special about your company that it should care about these trees?”
    “It isn’t the company that cares so much as the CEO, and you’re right, there’s nothing special about Pickford Holdings. Not really, anyway,” he allowed, then looked slightly abashed at revealing the company name.
    I twitched a little, saying, “I don’t really do the whole coy-mystery-guy thing. Is it your company? And if so, why are you sitting here in Halfway, trying to talk a stranger into tromping through the woods to find some magic trees?” I was a little curious, though.
    He cleared his throat. “Well, ah. It isn’t my project. The CEO is sort of a, I guess you would say tree hugger, and she wants to find the American Chestnut to do some good in the world. Kind of a plant-based karma thing.”
    “So she sent her . . . son?” I asked.
    “Grandson,” he corrected, “and yes. Because of this idiot Tyler Venture, we have a picture of the last living stand of American Chestnuts. A blight killed off about four billion of them last century, and with it went a huge part of rural living.”
    “You grandmother grew up poor?”It seemed logical to ask.
    He smiled at my insight. “She can tell me, in detail, how rats taste, and how long it takes to boil grass and a handful of flour. Three of her siblings died in a rough house next to a quarry in rural Pennsylvania. She knows poor like I’ll never see, and she’s getting on in years. When she saw this picture—don’t ask me how, but she did—she recognized the trees immediately. Over dinner she told me of having nothing but chestnut flour and milk from a goat, mind you. The whole family of eleven lived off that for an entire fall. It’s part crusade, part her chasing some dream of her youth, maybe.” He smiled ruefully, adding, “I think she knows that her years are short, and she wants to restore something beautiful. These trees, which she assures me are magnificent, are her way of reaching back into the past and keeping something good from a starved time.”
    I felt myself liking this unseen lady. “So, are we to believe that four, uh, billion trees died, except for a handful that this dope Tyler Venture stumbled upon out on the backyard of Halfway?”
    He laughed at the improbability. “In a word, yeah. They’re some kind of anomaly, a genetic twist of fate. If they can be seeded across their former range, it will change the composition of the forest to what it once was. They were the king of the woods, and now they’re gone. I think they might be worth finding.”
    He spoke with more conviction than a simple employee, and I could feel the passion underneath his enthusiasm. He wasn’t a zealot, but he was more than a drone. I found my curiosity growing.
    “So, you propose that I take a stranger, who might have a closet full of human heads, into the deep Adirondacks in order to find a lost variety of tree? In order to fulfill a sense of altruism, based on his Grandmother’s really crappy childhood? Does that about sum it up?” I asked.
    “You left out the part where I have a fetish for women’s hair or something like that. Maybe I drive a van with Free Candy painted on the side.” His grin