A Nomadic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 4) Page 12

  “I am.”

  Moira put her hands over her heart—and prayed. It was all that was left.

  Denise reached out and touched Morgan’s head gently. “And this is the baby you want me to collect?”

  Marcus just stood, a granite rock with a baby on his chest.

  It was Denise who finally broke the silence. “She’s beautiful. You’ve taken good care of her.” She tickled naked toes. “And I see she loses her socks, just like my smallest grandson.”

  “Won’t keep them on.” Marcus, voice gruff, pulled two wee socks out of his pocket. “I’ve ordered her some of those sleepers with feet.”

  Moira blinked in astonishment.

  Denise leaned in. “She smells wonderful—what do you use to wash her hair?”

  “Some girlie concoction,” Marcus growled, cheeks turning a most interesting shade of pink. “She seemed to like it.”

  “I’m sure you did, didn’t you, sweetheart,” Denise crooned at the drooly girl. “And you look well fed.”

  Moira watched her nephew turn forty shades of crimson, and finally found her voice. “We’ve several nursing mothers in the village with extra supply. She’ll never want for milk.”

  “Not entirely within regulations.” Denise winked. “But we can be flexible for the right situation.”

  Something had righted itself, Moira could feel it. She just had no idea what. “For which situation, exactly?”

  Dark brown eyes met hers. “The one we find ourselves in. I’m not in the business of carting off happy babies.”

  Denise turned to Marcus. “I can file emergency paperwork to designate you as a temporary foster home, authorized to care for one infant. I’ll need to come out for regular visits, and we’ll require your full cooperation in an attempt to locate her biological parents.” She paused, five feet of suddenly daunting grandmother. “If that’s what you want.”

  The silence was absolute—and it took a decade off Moira’s life.

  But when Marcus finally nodded, his answer was yes.

  ~ ~ ~

  The news had spread through both Realm and the village like wildfire. Marcus was keeping his baby.

  Sophie bounced Adam on her shoulder as they walked through Moira’s garden. She’d paged Nell. Time to gather and get the scoop from the single eyewitness.

  The flowers were still nattering. Sophie spared a hand from her cranky baby to send them a quick flow of power. Sleep, lovelies. You’ve done your job. She didn’t know exactly what it was, yet—but Adam willing, she was about to find out.

  Aunt Moira was already settled in the warm waters when they arrived, smiling in welcome.

  Sophie grinned at the tea tray poolside—there were a lot of cups. “Been telling your story a few times, have you?”

  “The broad details, yes.” Moira reached for Adam. “Come here, beautiful boy. Gran wants to hold you.”

  Visitors to Fisher’s Cove could be forgiven for being entirely confused as to which babies were actually related to Moira by blood. Adam wasn’t—but nobody remembered that much of the time. “Give me a minute to peel his clothes off.”

  It didn’t take long. Sophie handed him down and then stepped into the pool herself, grateful as always for the warmth. Her baby boy floated on his Gran’s gentle hands, calm in a way he rarely was on land. “He so loves it in here.”

  “As he should.” Moira leaned over to drop a kiss on his forehead. “Mayhap it’s water power that will flow in his veins.”

  “Possibly.” Sophie smiled softly, long used to the game of guessing future magics. “Or maybe he just likes to float.”

  “Aye, it could be that, too.”

  “Aervyn loved to do that.” Nell spoke from the edge of the pool, newly arrived and bearing sandwiches. “I heard there’s juicy gossip.”

  “Mmm.” Moira leaned back, cradling Adam in her arms. “Sophie tells me I need to spend more time typing. Good physical therapy. Perhaps we can have a chat session later, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Sophie snorted—she knew her patients. This one never left juicy news until later.

  Nell slid into the water. “Only if I get a soak first. I had to duct tape my girls to the floor to come without them. We have thirty minutes before Daniel releases them.”

  “Good gossip takes time.” Moira’s eyes twinkled. “And perhaps a wee bit of food to fuel the talking.”

  “You’re putting your audience to sleep,” said Nell wryly.

  Sophie grinned at her drowsy boy-child. Some people survived without an Irish grandmother next door. She had no idea how. “So the strange lady showed up to take Morgan away…”

  “Hardly.” Nell snorted. “Marcus called her.” She grinned at Moira. “I have my sources.”

  “Indeed you do.” Moira smiled down at the baby in her arms. “You forget how innocent they are at this age. And how easy it is to make them happy.”

  Sophie resolved to remember that the next time she was walking the floors with a cranky baby at 3 a.m.

  “The flowers called him.” Moira looked up. “When Marcus was a small boy, he heard the old magics, just as you do, Sophie. Somehow, in the last forty years, I’d forgotten that.” Her voice quieted. “The old energies were strong this morning. Our Morgan stirs them.”

  Sophie shivered. The old magics made most witches very nervous.

  “Denise Warren.” Nell reached for another sandwich. “She runs the Halifax Division of Child Protection Services. You got one of the best—Jamie checked.”

  “Pfft.” Moira laughed quietly. “She was a grandmother with excellent instincts. Not two minutes in my kitchen and she sized everything up and offered my nephew exactly what he thought he wanted.”

  To take Morgan away. Sophie stayed quiet—you didn’t rush a good Irish storyteller.

  “It gave me quite the fright, it did.”

  Okay, sometimes you prodded the storyteller a bit. “Your channels are still shaky. You called the old magics.”

  Moira’s eyes were suddenly those of the village matriarch. “I pulled everything known to me. And I’d do it again.”

  That much was obvious. Sophie shook her head and chuckled. “Fierce old crone.”

  It landed as the compliment it was meant to be. “We old witches have our uses.” Moira paused, regret settling over her features. “I didn’t trust my nephew enough.”

  “You thought he’d let her go.” And that would have been a problem—Morgan was theirs now.

  “I did,” said Moira softly. “And it shames me that I couldn’t see what a stranger could.”

  “That stranger has a reputation for getting her way.” Nell handed out cookies from some mysterious hiding place. “And it’s possible a few certain someones had their feet on Marcus’s scale.”

  Sophie blinked. “It wasn’t any of the witches here.” She’d checked—Marcus’s choice had been freely given, at least in a magical sense.

  Nell’s eyes twinkled. “Did you chat with the non-witches? Or your absentee husband?”

  Warm water muddled clear thinking. Sophie shook her head, trying to follow the clues. “Mike? What did—”

  It was Moira who started laughing, hard enough to thoroughly jiggle the sleeping boy in her arms. He stretched in drowsy protest and curled back up into grandma magic.

  Nell just grinned and took another bite from her sandwich.

  Sophie felt her sense of humor kicking in. Obviously Mike hadn’t acted alone. “We were out-meddled by our husbands?”

  “Yup.” Nell rolled her eyes. “Yours, mine, Elorie’s, and Nat’s. I don’t know what they did, exactly, but they’re very proud of themselves. And the Witches’ Lounge smells like steak.”

  Moira’s laughter rolled one more time. “Well, tell them that my Marcus stood in the doorway of my kitchen, all brooding and wrapped in his winter cape, and did them all proud.”

  Nell gaped. And then she spluttered. And then she started laughing so hard Sophie was afraid someone had let a tickle spell loose in the
hot pool. “His… his… his cape?”

  Moira and Sophie stared at each other, mystified—they were all well used to Marcus’s odd attire.

  “The big black one?” Nell pealed off in gales of laughter again.

  Sophie giggled—whatever was so funny, it was hopelessly contagious. “Share—please?”

  “Aervyn.” Nell gulped for air, stray giggles leaking every which way. “My son just got back from a quick visit to Marcus’s house. He was making some sort of secret delivery for the men in our lives. That’s how I found out they had their hands in this.” She choked back one last squirt of laughter. “He was doing laundry. Marcus. In his skivvies. And his cape.”

  It took a moment. A long, long moment. And then Sophie’s mind was indelibly inked with the image of Marcus, wearing only his underwear and wrapped in a huge black cape.

  Standing in Moira’s kitchen, claiming Morgan as his.

  Chapter 12

  Moira sat in her garden, an old lady under a full spring moon.

  And wondered why she couldn’t go to sleep.

  Then her garden changed to a favorite stretch of beach. Ah. Dreaming, then.

  A rock glinted in the moonlight. She smiled and bent over to pick it up. An old witch could always find use for another pretty rock.

  Strange. This one seemed so heavy. A tiny rock, holding tight to the planet. She patted it gently—who was she to argue with a pebble that wanted to stay put?

  She stood back up, her legs feeling tired and old. Blessed Mother, did she even have to feel old in her dreams?

  The strain in her legs eased considerably. Better.

  Moira walked another step or two, and then turned back. Still, it glinted in the sand, the little rock with the soul of a tree. Intrigued now, she retraced her steps, the wet sand cool under her feet. And felt a heartbeat.

  Quiet and long, but a heartbeat, nonetheless. The slow thrum of life, vibrating through Nova Scotia sand—from a small, moondusted rock.

  Reverently, Moira sank down beside the pebble. “It’s hard to cling to sand, wee thing that you are. You’ll need to sink roots deep. The winds are fickle, and the waves not always gentle.”

  She listened to the magic of her heart now. With careful hands, she shaped a rooting spell, one for the hardy plants that lived in tough soils. The survivors. Reaching out, she spoke to the waters. Nourish.

  The heartbeat strengthened.

  She spoke to the life within the rock. Trust.

  ~ ~ ~

  Marcus’s eyes flew open moments before the monitoring alarms blared.

  He’d felt her go.

  With quaking hands, he shushed the spells and reached for Morgan’s mind. She was still warm. Maybe he was in time.

  He chased deep down her mental channels, calling. Screaming. Morgan!

  Nothing.

  Gone.

  Mad with fear, he hurled himself against the edges of the mind that was his baby girl. MORGAN!

  And felt the faintest trace of her.

  With every ounce of power, he grabbed on. And held.

  He was the most powerful mind witch in Fisher’s Cove.

  And this time, he would Not. Let. Go.

  ~ ~ ~

  A healer learned to wake to alarms. And when she slept with a small baby at her side, she learned to do it very quietly.

  Sophie slid out of bed, reaching for bag, shoes, and cloak in one smooth flow of movement. A sprint down the hallway and out the front door, and then a dead run to the end of the village, hitting the buttons on her phone app that would wake a much wider team—and wondering why the hell Marcus hadn’t already done it.

  She charged through his front door, dread spiking at the utter silence.

  Monitoring alarms could wake the dead—that was their whole point.

  Careening into the cottage’s only bedroom, she finally found them. Marcus, sitting in the streaming moonlight, face marble-white—with his hands wrapped around Morgan’s head.

  A very cold Morgan. And the man clutching her head was using enough power to drain himself to nothing in minutes.

  One hand on each forehead, Sophie tried to read the nightmare that was her conjoined patient. Morgan was very cold—but her vitals were still strong. Moving a hand, Sophie tickled her knees, her belly, her elbows. Reflexes still there. Level two travel—not gone.

  Not gone.

  But Marcus had wrapped some kind of insane mind bubble around her head, one strong enough to kill him—or drag both of them into the astral plane.

  She needed them separate. Now.

  Sophie looked around the room, cursing the inadequacies of her healer bag. And spied what she needed. One quick step and she had the laptop in her hand. Two more, and she smashed the flat side into the side of his head, shielding the baby with her own body.

  It wasn’t pretty. But she felt the connection between man and baby snap, the loose end hitting Marcus’s brain with the force of a bull whip. Pain ricocheted into her head, the price of a healing link still wide open.

  Dropping the laptop, she reached out to help—and then read the fury on his face.

  Oh, hell. Sophie yanked for magic, understanding the deadly race she was in. And she won. By a hairsbreadth. Her paralysis spell deflected a mind stun that would have knocked her out for a week.

  Imbecile. And mad as he was, her spell had about thirty seconds to live. Sophie got straight to the point. “You listen to me, Marcus Buchanan, and you listen well. She’s not gone. You hear me? She’s not gone.”

  His face contorted in a desperate effort to speak. “Had. Her. You. Broke.”

  God, she wasn’t even going to get thirty seconds. “She’s still moving, still present.” She shook his shoulders, willing comprehension into his head. “She’s not gone.”

  His arm jerked free of the spell’s hold, a mad bear about to break loose—and then she saw it in his eyes. Sanity in the midst of madness. He understood.

  The remnants of her spell evaporated, and he reached for Morgan’s body, frantic. “I don’t feel her.”

  His voice shredded her heart. She laid her hands over his. “Trust that I can.”

  Need help? Lauren’s voice beamed in. We have a whole slew of witches out here if you need us.

  Sophie debated. And made the hard call. Not yet. But keep a watch.

  She placed her hands on the sides of his head, feeding a bolt of healing power into his reeling mind. “She’s level two, Marcus. Tethered, but floating.” Safe, so long as they got her home fairly soon.

  But they couldn’t start yet. Five thousand years of history had made the protocols for most emergent magics very clear. You didn’t throw water on a fire witch. Earth witches needed to sleep outside when magic bloomed. And travelers had to be given the freedom to hit the end of the tether anchoring soul to body.

  Calling them back any earlier was like trying to turn around a toddler on their way to an ice cream cone. With a whisper.

  Sophie scanned Morgan again. She’d never cared for a level-two traveler, but the lore was strong—and healers were trained to trust those who had come before.

  Even when they were scared to their bones. Morgan felt so very far away.

  “She’s getting close now.” Sophie eyed Marcus, trying to balance the needs of both her patients. He nodded, eyes still swimming in fear, and what she hoped was enough trust. She took both of his hands. “I can do this—or you can.”

  His entire body shuddered. Not safe. I’ll do it.

  She would weep for the terrified little boy later. “She’s not in the mists, Marcus.” Not tonight. The risks to either of them were minimal.

  He shuddered again, and a bigger dose of sanity flowed back into his eyes. I’ll do it.

  He was a witch fully grown and he loved the small girl in his arms. She had to trust that it would be enough. “Remember—it’s your job to stand. It’s hers to come back.” She stretched out as much love as she dared. “You can’t do her part for her.”

  She reached for eart
h power, rooted as deep as she could pull, and offered it to him. He needed to feel her strength. We’ll be waiting. Call your girl home.

  ~ ~ ~

  He could go get her now.

  Marcus felt like a soldier under fire, numbed to the death screaming over his head at regular intervals. The inside of his skull begged for mercy, channels ripped to shreds trying to hold Morgan close.

  Idiot.

  Astral Travel 101. Travelers can’t be held. They can only be called.

  And usually that failed too.

  Cool waters lapped at his head. Healing waters. She’s not gone, Marcus.

  He let himself touch the coolness Sophie offered, for just a moment. He had to be ready.

  It’s time.

  Marcus turned in the darkness of his mind. East. The direction Morgan had gone, just like every traveler before her.

  And instead of purple eyes, he saw brown ones.

  Anguished guilt blew through the cracking, scarred dike holding back memories of his twin brother. Evan, counting shiny rock treasures and offering up the biggest pile. Evan, bare feet racing up the sand, always a half step ahead.

  Evan, headed east, laughing—and never coming home.

  It’s not Evan gone now. Sophie’s mental voice shook him, hard. We were too late with him. Morgan’s still tethered, and she needs you.

  He felt her hands, pushing against the memories in his mind, trying to contain them.

  He could have told her it was futile.

  Brown eyes.

  No.

  Purple eyes. They needed him. With all that he had left, Marcus sent up a magical beacon—a light to call his girl home. And tried, somewhere, to find a whisper of hope that she was close enough to see.

  ~ ~ ~

  Lauren felt Marcus slide deeper into sleep and nodded at Sophie. “He’s under. Want me to put up a bubble?”

  The healer pondered, and then shook her head. “That will block him off from Morgan, and he needs to feel her.”

  Lauren looked over at the happy, drooling baby lying on a blanket on the floor, Ginia and Lizzie filling dual shoes as playmates and monitors. “She seems fine.” The motley crew standing outside the house had held their breath as Marcus’s beacon finally flared—and deflated in a collective whoosh of relief, moments later, when a stream of magic had danced through their midst.