This time, the knock on his door was expected. Marcus didn’t get up-he didn’t want to disturb the small, snoring creature on his chest.
Lizzie padded quietly into the room. “She’s still sleeping?”
“She must have liked your lullaby.” Marcus ignored the small voice in his head that insisted what he was about to do next was wrong. He wasn’t above using sweet talk and bribery to get what he wanted-being reasonable had gotten him exactly nowhere. “I think she likes you.”
“All the babies like me.” Lizzie perched on the arm of the easy chair, eyes sharpening as she caught sight of his computer screen. “What are you doing?”
“Shopping.” The final selling feature of the baby pouch had been Daniel’s promise that it freed up enough arms to actually operate a computer. When the twins and Lizzie had left him earlier, ensconced in his chair, laptop at his elbow, Marcus had felt almost human again.
“Those are sabers.” Lizzie sounded accusatory. “Just like the ones Kevin and Sean have.”
“No.” Marcus was not entirely an idiot. “They’re better. They have sound effects.”
It was a good thing he’d already read through the product description-it would have been hard to finish with Lizzie’s face an inch from the screen. Her head spun around-evidently beginner reading skills weren’t up to the task. “Tell me what it says. All of it.”
He read of the wonders of a toy that spoke in Luke Skywalker’s voice. That would have been Evan’s sword-Sir Evan of the Light, off to slay dragons, or at least to find a really big rock to climb.
Lizzie scowled. “Who wants to be stupid Luke?”
Marcus blinked, hazy blond knights evaporating in a puff of dust. “What?”
Her face and mind were both painted with disgust. “How come it has to talk in Luke Skywalker’s voice?”
The saber. Gods. “There’s a Darth Vader one too.”
Disgust turned to naked longing. “Can I see that one?”
Obediently, Marcus navigated to the Darth Vader version, complete with guy-wheezing-in-plastic-bag sound effects. Lizzie was enthralled.
Marcus yanked down his mind barriers. It was bribery-nothing more. He clicked on the “buy” button as casually as possible. And choked back a chuckle as one beginner reader figured out what he’d done.
She spun around on the arm of the chair, nose an inch from his. “Can I touch it first?”
What?
His confusion must have been obvious. “Your sword. If I get to touch it before anyone else, then it will always be a little bit mine.”
Ah. “I’m thinking I’ll be buying two.” He was pretty sure eyes couldn’t get any bigger. And dammit, he wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this. “One for Morgan. With a name like that, she’ll be needing a sword.”
Pure, heady hope hit Lizzie with the force of a lightning strike. “She’ll need someone to teach her.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” He eyed the tiny girl asleep on his chest as if seeking her input.
“I can do it.” Lizzie still spoke in whispers, a sign of prodigious self-control given the wild tumbling of her brain. “I can start right away. I’ll show her some of my best moves, and she can watch the lights flash, and everything.” Blue eyes implored. “I bet she’d like the Darth one best.”
Strange things happening in his throat, Marcus added a second sword to his shopping cart.
For all his best efforts, it didn’t feel like a bribe.
Jamie strolled around the virtual streets of Realm’s main village, surveying the action. Sometimes, despite the game’s sword-and-sorcery time period, he felt like the town sheriff. Someone had been planting deviously silly spellcubes again, and it was his job to track down the miscreant.
He was pretty sure she wasn’t here yet-Warrior Girl’s hot pink armor was hard to miss.
Someone else had put in an appearance, though. Jamie stared at the gnarled old monk in surprise-Realm was the last place he’d expected to find Marcus anytime soon. New babies were hell on gaming time.
He crossed the street, falling into step beside the monk. “Someone rocking Morgan?”
Dark brown eyes scowled under a hood. “Lizzie’s watching her.”
And something about that tinged Marcus’s mind with guilt-and Star Wars music. Jamie shook his head-sleep deprivation did really weird things to his mindreading skills. “Babysitters are wonderful things. The triplets and Sierra look after Kenna all the time.” He had no idea how parents survived without ten-year-old nieces and cheery teenagers.
“It’s not a babysitter I need.” Marcus was practically growling. “It’s a nice family in Fisher’s Cove willing to take in an infant until we can track down who she belongs to.”
That had been Jamie’s assignment. “No one’s looking for her.”
The monk’s eyes sharpened. “Are you sure?”
Checked and rechecked. “Yup. Nothing on the witch airwaves, and no reports of a missing baby.” He had good cop sources in North America and witches reading the ether elsewhere. “And Adele says she’s yours, free and clear.”
One very unmonk-like snort. “And you believe a Las Vegas fraud?”
Yeah. He did. “She’s different, Marcus-but I don’t think she’s lying. And it took some serious magic to get her into Realm.” The kind that was still keeping him awake at night-young girls he loved called Realm their sandbox. His eyes were bleeding from coding new wards on the site.
And Daniel had still been logged in at 3 a.m.
“How did we not know about a witch under our noses with that kind of power? And does she have to ruin all our reputations with bad infomercials?”
Shit. Oh, crap. Jamie cursed imperfect message delivery and pulled Marcus down a quiet alley. “Adele’s not the one with the power.”
Blazing anger streaked through Realm-for a nano-second. And then it was gone, the monk’s Fort Knox barriers and slightly uneven breathing the only sign at all that he’d heard Jamie’s words. “You think Evan’s the one with the magic.”
Neck deep in quicksand, Jamie just nodded. And tried to imagine Devin dead and gone and sending messages-to someone else. Bloody hell. “Maybe he can’t talk to you.”
Marcus’s mind thermometer dropped twenty degrees, and he turned to leave the alley. “I came here to take a break. This wasn’t how I planned to spend it.”
Okay, witch in denial. Time to backpedal. Hard. “Want some tips on how to play the game in fifteen-minute segments? I’ve had a lot of practice in the last six months.”
The monk snorted, slivers of warmth easing back into his mind. “How do you manage to get fifteen whole minutes?”
Phew. Jamie considered erecting neon-orange “STAY OUT” tape around Marcus’s mind-but given that he was the most feeble mind witch on the continent, everyone else with talent had probably already figured that out. “The triplets can usually buy me that long. At least your kiddo doesn’t start fires every time she sneezes.”
Marcus winced. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“She grew out of it about a month ago.” Jamie sighed. With Kenna, that kind of change wasn’t usually a good thing. “Now she messes with gravitational fields instead. Be glad you got a baby without magic. Poop’s easy.”
He had no idea why Marcus’s mind suddenly got uneasy. Poop really wasn’t all that hard.
He’d gotten twenty minutes. Marcus looked down at the wailing child on the blanket and sighed. Twenty minutes was just long enough to get cocky and position your troops for all the world to see.
Odds were good that Warrior Girl was going to spy his attack formation long before he got back to Realm. And if she outfitted them in bunny slippers again, he was going to bottle Morgan’s wail and broadcast it at Ginia’s keep with the loudest speaker spell he could muster.