A Nomadic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 4) Page 11

  He wondered, only somewhat idly, if there was a spell for permanent deafness. Good for loud babies, and probably somewhat discouraging of visitors as well.

  Whoever it was wasn’t trying very hard to find him—the cottage was tiny.

  He looked down at the small girl tied to his chest, put down the carrot peeler, and sighed. “It appears my nice, peaceful salad is about to be interrupted. Let’s go find the interloper, shall we?”

  It had always perplexed him that people insisted on conversing with infants who clearly didn’t understand a word they said. Now he understood it as a desperate attempt to hold on to the last remnants of a saner world.

  One not limited to sleep and poop.

  Perhaps the new visitor would be willing to change the next diaper. Morgan produced one every day at 4 p.m. like clockwork.

  He gave his almost-ready salad one last wistful glance and headed down the hall. “Who goes there?”

  “Hi, Uncle Marcus. I brought you flowers.”

  Marcus left-turned toward the invader in his living room. Sure enough, there stood Lizzie, an enormous armful of flowers making a precarious journey, stem by stem, into a vase he was very sure hadn’t come with the cottage.

  He was being furnished, like it or not. “Does anyone have any flowers left in their garden?”

  The invader giggled. “Gran said I could have as many as I could hold.”

  “And who provided the container?” asked Marcus dryly. Might as well identify all the plotters.

  “Gran.” Lizzie slid a blindingly orange flower into the vessel in question. “She said it’s an important family treasure and if you break it, she’ll feed you to the fishes.”

  On Aunt Moira’s scale of threats, that one was pretty minor. “In that case, perhaps you should carry it over to the inn. Aaron always appreciates fresh flowers.” Marcus had no idea if that was true or not, but Elorie’s husband had better manners, so he’d probably find a use for Lizzie and her flowers.

  His pint-sized visitor’s eyes flashed triumph. “I already took him some. Two whole armfuls. Gran says the flowers are really happy this spring.”

  Probably had something to do with the hordes of witches raining blessings down on their heads. He was very grateful the flowers had kept Aunt Moira alive—but her garden had become a damned tourist attraction.

  One last flower and the table display apparently met with Lizzie’s approval.

  He tried for dismissal. “The light sabers aren’t here yet. I’ll send you a message when they are.”

  She ignored him, much as he’d expected. “Can I play with Morgan now?”

  He looked down at the bundle on his chest. Any more time there and she was going to be permanently attached. “Maybe I can put her down somewhere.”

  “Sure.” Lizzie looked around. “Do you have a baby blanket? I’ll spread it out on the floor.”

  He had no blessed idea. “I have several of Aunt Moira’s throws. Is one of those acceptable?”

  “Uh, huh.” Lizzie was digging around in the bag of mysterious wares they’d first sent him home with. “But Aunt Elorie put one of her floor blankets in here. See?” She pulled out a big, quilted square of seawater-blue fabric. “You can put that down on the floor and lay Morgan on it. I’ll play with her, and you can go find a clean shirt.”

  Marcus froze, the baby halfway out of her pouch. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

  Lizzie giggled. “It looks like you’ve been wearing it for a week.” She reached into the bag of baby paraphernalia again, coming back out with an enormous handkerchief-thing covered in pink elephants. “This is a burp cloth. You can use it to try to catch Morgan’s puke if you want. Then you wouldn’t need a clean shirt so often.”

  He’d put on a new shirt after Ginia’s departure—he was quite sure. His last clean one, no less. And the burp cloth looked very poorly designed to be a catcher’s mitt. He carefully laid Morgan down on top of the floor blanket. She waved her limbs around like a stuck turtle, but seemed otherwise content.

  Lizzie crouched down by the blanket and started to talk in the sing-song voice of a comic-book chipmunk. “Hey, cutie girl. Lizzie-Fizzie came to play with you today. Oh! I see your toes.”

  “She refuses to keep her socks on.” It was already a thorn in his side. One of many.

  “Babies like to be nakey.” His expert child entertainment chased toes as Morgan drooled happily. “Gran says they come that way to remind us how beautiful we are.”

  Foolishness from an old woman who liked to walk barefoot in her flowers.

  Lizzie grabbed the baby’s foot and blew some kind of entirely rude nose into its sole.

  And then Morgan opened her mouth and giggled. Big, rollicking giggles straight from her toes.

  Marcus took a step closer, moth to bright flame. “What did you do?”

  “I gave her a raspberry.” Lizzie grinned and demonstrated again, giggling along with her tiny playmate. “See? She likes it.”

  “No one else does that with their babies.” Marcus ignored the strange tugs inside his chest.

  “That’s cuz they’re still wee tiny. Morgan’s older, so she likes to play.” Lizzie leaned over, pulled up the baby’s shirt, and planted a raspberry on her belly. “I have to go, Morgan-Zorgan, but I’ll come back and play soon.”

  She shimmied up from the floor and straight out the door, still making raspberry sounds.

  Morgan was older than the other babies? Marcus watched the small girl on the floor, waving her hands around in search of an imaginary friend, and wondered just how much he didn’t know.

  Purple eyes stared back at him solemnly.

  Gingerly, expecting her to wail at any moment, he reached a hand toward her toes. They curled up around one of his fingers like a little monkey.

  They sat there in silence, man and little monkey girl. And then, gripped by momentary insanity, Marcus leaned over and blew a raspberry into her toes.

  The giggles that washed over them both were pure magic. The headless demons of hell would have scared him less.

  Chapter 11

  Jamie walked into the Witches’ Lounge bearing beer and pizza. He had no idea why they were having a guy huddle, but he knew what to bring.

  Daniel and Mike, sitting on the couch, brightened at the sight of beer.

  Jamie tossed two over. “Any idea why we’re here?”

  “Nope.” Mike pulled up the top of the pizza box and rubbed his hands together. “Score—you brought the good stuff.”

  He had. Middle-of-nowhere Nova Scotia didn’t run to greasy deep-dish pizza. Neither did Nat’s stomach. Jamie reached over and grabbed a slice. “Brings back memories.”

  Daniel grinned. “Late-night coding sessions.”

  Jamie snorted. “You don’t get out enough, dude.”

  “Right. Says the guy who ate at least half of my late-night pizza.”

  Likely more than half—witches tended to be pizza hogs, and Daniel had put in some serious hours on Realm in the early days.

  “You only brought one?” Mike eyed the pizza box mournfully. “We should probably save Aaron a slice.”

  “Aaron lacks the proper appreciation of grease.” Jamie intercepted the drip of cheese goo sliding down his arm. It was pretty much Aaron’s only failing, but as guy flaws went, it was a big one.

  “Aaron brought steaks,” said a wry voice from the door.

  The smell that wafted off the plate in his hand had three grown men ready to beg. Jamie held out the pizza box. “Here, have an appetizer.”

  “I like my arteries actually functioning.” Steaks landed on the table, along with cutlery, napkins, and a bottle of screaming hot sauce. “Not all of us can just magic pizza glue out of our systems.”

  The cheese goo on his arm wasn’t looking quite so tasty. Jamie reached for the hot sauce, mildly disgusted. “Spoilsport.”

  “He brought steaks,” said Daniel, sticking a fork into one the size of a small house. “You brought really tasty cardboard.”
<
br />   Jamie gave the remnants of his pizza one last, sad look and forked a steak. “So are we here just to prove Aaron’s total food domination, or is there another reason?”

  Everyone looked at the bearer of the steaks—he was the guy who’d called the meeting.

  “Marcus.” That one word changed the mood in the room considerably. “He needs help.”

  “He’s got it.” Daniel stole the hot sauce. “You feed him, I give him sling lessons, Jamie’s digging on Morgan’s past, Elorie’s supplying milk, and every witch in Realm is on standby. What’s left?”

  “He’s clueless.” Aaron grimaced. “He doesn’t know about burp cloths, Morgan’s diapers are mostly on backwards, and the two of them are sleeping in an easy chair every night.”

  Jamie winced—he’d done a couple of nights in an easy chair with Kenna. Not conducive to good sleep. Or walking upright the next day.

  Daniel raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you have spies.”

  “Lizzie’s pretty chatty.” Aaron pushed a fork around his plate. “Most of us were pretty dumb when our kids arrived, right?”

  There might have been an errant diaper or two. Jamie grinned at his brother-in-law. “At least I didn’t let my two-month-old into the Doritos.” The Nell of twelve years ago had not been impressed.

  “It was one chip.” Daniel rolled his eyes. “And it kept him happy for an entire hour. How was I supposed to know it would turn his poop into toxic waste for a whole week?”

  Jamie remembered. The whole Walker house had been on quarantine—even Gramma Retha hadn’t been willing to change Dorito diapers for her firstborn grandchild. He looked over at Aaron. “We’ll stipulate to dumb. Where are you headed with this?”

  “Marcus probably isn’t any dumber than your average new father.” Aaron stopped at all the raised eyebrows. “Okay, maybe so, but he’s figured some things out.” He put down his fork and sighed. “Here’s the deal. This is going to be hard enough on him without having to learn about diapers and bath time and burp cloths whenever some woman occasionally decides to take random pity on him.”

  Mike sighed. “I think they’re mostly taking pity on Morgan.”

  “The man’s been an ass.” Daniel tossed a baseball at the ceiling. “He’s been telling people this stuff is women’s work ever since he was old enough to avoid Moira’s cauldron. Most of the women I know figure he deserves to struggle a little.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure they’re wrong.”

  “They’re wrong,” said Aaron quietly. “Or rather, they’re right. It’s not theirs to do.”

  It was always the quiet guy with the steaks who got you in the end. Jamie leaned forward and stole back the hot sauce. “You think it’s ours.”

  “Yeah.” Aaron intercepted Daniel’s ball. “And I think I know how.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Marcus contemplated the heap of black shirts on his floor. And the happily naked baby on his bed. “I think, girl-child, that it’s time to do laundry.” Neither of them had anything remotely respectable to wear, thanks to Morgan’s latest poop disaster.

  It seemed impossible that so much goop could come out of such a small child. And diapers seemed very poorly designed for the job, given how much escaped them.

  He was also a little concerned that the diapers weren’t the only thing smelling like poop. And very sure he’d never actually seen anyone bathing an infant. He believed it occurred—but the “how” was entirely a mystery.

  He lived in a village full of hot-and-cold helpful women, but damned if he was asking any of them. Marcus juggled Morgan in one arm and scooped up his laptop in the other.

  Google—a desperate man’s best friend.

  Unfortunately, “how to give a baby a bath” produced all kinds of information—but it all required special bath devices or an infant capable of sitting up. He eyed Morgan. She’d never shown any indications of such a skill.

  He slid her carefully into the center of his bed and propped her up in something resembling a seated position. It felt like trying to mold Jell-O. “I think you have to put in some effort for this to work, girl-child.” He got her into a basic tripod shape and let go. Morgan promptly folded in half, happily chewing on the toe now conveniently under her mouth.

  Marcus was pretty sure his mouth and his toe didn’t meet under any circumstances. It also seemed clear that Gumby baby hadn’t mastered sitting up—and the toe-eating position seemed undesirable in a bathtub full of water.

  Curious, he reached for his computer again. Babies sat up unassisted somewhere between three and six months old. “You’re not all that much older than the rest of the babies around here, then.”

  Computer in his lap, he rolled Morgan onto her back. Even for a baby, it couldn’t be all that comfortable to be bent in two. She waved her toes happily in the air.

  Her slightly stinky toes.

  Dammit—babies weren’t supposed to stink. Even the cat had run in protest, and that was probably a bad sign.

  His email pinged. Marcus ignored it. No way the womenfolk of the village would let him live down a stinky baby. His pride was on the line.

  His Google chat pinged. He ignored that too. Someone on the worldwide web had to know how to bathe a three-ish-month-old baby. Maybe if he put just a tiny amount of water in the bathtub, she could lay on her back… And freeze—the heat in his bathroom was intermittent at best.

  A big, flashing, neon-orange rectangle popped up on his screen. “DUDE. Check your email. The Fairy Godfathers.”

  Marcus blinked—and it was gone. Gods. He was hallucinating.

  His email pinged again. Annoyed, Marcus clicked into his inbox. And gaped. One new email. With one link. The Complete Manual of Babies. Brought to you by the Fairy Godfathers.

  He stared. Computer virus? Practical joke?

  And then he remembered that he was currently lying on his bed with a mostly naked, stinky baby capable of spreading poop in all four cardinal directions even while fully clothed.

  He clicked.

  ~ ~ ~

  Danger stalked her village.

  Moira walked out the door of her cottage, uneasy and unable to shake the sense of portent hanging over her shoulder. It wasn’t Morgan—the sun shone brightly in the noonday sky. Astral travel was a magic of the night.

  A strange car drove up the main street of the village.

  Ah. A visitor then. And perhaps, not a welcome one.

  Moira moved slowly through her garden, collecting magic as she walked, and then stood by the gate and waited. There was only one way into Fisher’s Cove—and it ran through her kitchen.

  The stranger got out of her car. A middle-aged woman, slightly frazzled. “Hello—I’m Denise Warren, from Child Protection Services. I’ve come to see a Marcus Buchanan about a baby?”

  Now Moira knew what stalked her village. A woman with a kind face. Wind stirred suddenly in the garden. “Come in for a cup of tea, won’t you?”

  “Normally that would be lovely.” Denise smiled, hand still on her car door. “But it took me a while to find you way out here, and I really do need to locate Mr. Buchanan.”

  No need to send the woman on a wild goose chase. “I’m his aunt. Come in and sit with me, and I’ll send one of the children to find him.” Eventually. A good Irish cup of tea could take a while.

  “Thank you. I will, then.” Denise reached into her car and pulled out a bag the size of a small elephant. “If you’ve got something herbal, that would be much appreciated. I’ve had too much coffee today, and it’s got me a bit jittery all of a sudden.”

  That was interesting. Obviously Moira wasn’t the only one feeling the portents. And judging from the whispers moving through her flowers, magic stirred. Old magic. Not everyone knew how to listen, but Sophie did—and she would tell anyone else who needed to know.

  Relieved, Moira led the way into her kitchen. “I’ve some nice chamomile, and perhaps a cookie or two left in my canister, if you’d like.”

  Denise chuckled. “You have grandchildren,
do you? Mine always have their hands in the cookie jar.”

  Moira revised her estimation of the stranger’s age. “We’ve wee ones aplenty in Fisher’s Cove.” She reached up for tea cups. “Some related by blood and some not, but they all belong with us.”

  Denise fingered the soft leaves of her kitchen sage. “I’m not here to take what belongs to you.”

  That remained to be seen. “Why are you here, then?”

  “I got a message from Mr. Buchanan. He reported that a baby had been left on his doorstep. We’re not open on the weekend, and he didn’t call our crisis line, so I only got the message early this morning. I did call to tell him I was coming, but kept getting his voicemail.”

  Betrayal warred with guilt in Moira’s heart. “When did he call you, exactly?”

  Denise pulled a well-used day timer out of her voluminous bag and consulted its pages. “10:37 a.m. Saturday.”

  Morgan had arrived on Friday night. On Saturday morning, Marcus had been trying to give the baby to anyone who would take her. Moira sighed. And she’d been one step ahead of him, making sure every woman in Fisher’s Cove said no.

  Time to clean up the mess she’d helped create.

  “Saturday was a bit of a difficult morning. Quite a bit of confusion. It’s entirely possible my nephew didn’t mean to leave you a message.”

  “Oh, I most certainly did.”

  Moira’s head snapped up at the quiet menace in her nephew’s voice. He stood in her small doorway, his black cloak swirling around his shoulders. He looked like he’d walked out of a fifteenth-century grimoire—except for the small fuzzy head sticking out of the bundle strapped to his chest.

  Marcus scowled, which did nothing to soften his dark and brooding image. Your flowers talk rather loudly, Aunt Moira. And I’ll thank you to stop speaking for me.

  She’d only been trying to help. Moira shuddered—this wasn’t a man ready to make the choice he needed to make.

  That doesn’t give you the right to make it for me. He hammered every word into her heart.

  Denise Warren stood up from the table, wide-eyed—and blind to the blood flying in the room. “You’re Marcus Buchanan?”