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.