She’d been cold enough lately.
Good mood suddenly gone, he squeezed her feet, reassuring himself of their warmth and general feistiness. He needed to figure out how to keep them that way.
Just for a year. Witchlings with the telltale signs of astral magic grew out of it, or developed mature powers. You just had to keep them alive long enough for it to happen.
One year. Twelve months. A million breaths.
A long, gray eternity.
Morgan’s fussing interrupted his thoughts. Bloody hell. Marcus reached for changing supplies. Maybe he could just mark the time against poopy diapers. His brain refused to do the math. Anything involving poop and several zeros was far too frightening to contemplate.
And Jamie was right. One breath at a time might work in yoga class, but it was the fastest way to annihilation in Realm. Smart players had strategies and fallbacks and several layers of attack moving at the same time.
He snagged one of Morgan’s feet right before it created poop catastrophe. Who was he kidding-he couldn’t even plan a diaper change without incident. “Hold still, creature, or we’ll have to give you two baths in one day.”
With fast hands, he got the new diaper on and the old one sealed away in three Ziploc bags and a containment spell. And then reached down for the little girl babbling happily in their dungeon between the rocks. He held her up to his nose, caught, as always, by the humor in her eyes. “What am I going to do with you?”
She hiccupped, and a giggle spilled out.
He held her steady and waited-maybe she’d do it again. Lavender eyes stared at him solemnly, feet waving quietly in the wind.
“That one was an accident, was it?” He had the sudden, bizarre urge to see if there were more hiding inside her somewhere. Carefully, he nuzzled his nose into her belly and blew.
What came out sounded far more like whale farts than the raspberries Lizzie had blown. Morgan looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. Unwilling to be outdone by a six-year-old, Marcus tried again-and got a grin.
Getting closer.
One more time, Marcus blew against her belly-and this time, the stars aligned. Giggles ignited in Morgan’s toes, a great shaking mess of them.
Marcus held her out at arm’s length and felt something similar rising from his own toes. Life, it seemed, was contagious. He pulled her in close and blew one last time.
They were right. It was time to act.
Even if he had no idea what to do.
Sophie watched as Lizzie dropped the last handful of chamomile in her brew. Her trainee looked up. “That should work. Do you think it needs anything else?”
Sophie leaned over and sniffed the contents of the huge pot on the stove, trying not to wince. It smelled atrocious. “What do you think?” Part of the job of a healer was to know when to quit-and Lizzie’s concoctions still suffered badly from overkill.
“Maybe some mint to make it smell better.”
Even mint wasn’t going to chase off the odor of year-old gym socks, but it was a laudable thought. “If you made this again, how could you prevent the stinkiness?”
Lizzie’s head cocked to the side. Sophie turned off the stove-no point burning smelly gym socks while her student was lost in thought. Mike had high tolerance for most healer shenanigans, but he had a sensitive nose.
One more stir and Lizzie grinned. “I could let them sniff some of Gran’s skunk remedy first, and then nobody would notice how this one smelled.”
Sophie tried not to laugh-Aunt Moira’s skunk remedy was urban legend, but a very effective one. Nothing got patients to drink something foul more quickly than threatening them with the one that was worse. “That’s one approach, cutie, but we modern witches sometimes try to do things more subtly.”
Her student headed for the cookie jar. “Why?”
“Well, in the old days, healer brews were usually the only choice if you wanted to feel better. These days, people have more options.” Doctors and pharmacies and little pills that sometimes worked miracles and sometimes masked the real problems. “The old ways need to adapt.”
Lizzie looked at her sideways. “Gran doesn’t think that.”
Oops. Sticky territory. “She believes in balance, and in respecting the old ways. That’s important, and it’s a good place for every witchling to start.”
“I know, I know. Feet firmly planted in the traditions.” Lizzie rolled her eyes and looked down at her bare toes. “I think they like running better, though.”
Sophie grinned at the broad hint. “Okay, lesson’s over. Go play on the beach, or whatever it is that has you all antsy.”
“I get to go play with Morgan.” Lizzie started stuffing herb jars back onto the shelf in a six-year-old version of clean-up.
Ah. Her student had fallen in particular love with the village’s newest resident. “Is Marcus still trying to make you change all the diapers?”
“Nope.” A lid slammed down on the pot. “He’s getting pretty good at all that stuff.”
That was fascinating-and odd. Rumors of Marcus’s sudden competence had been circulating for two days, but no one had any idea how it had happened.
Lizzie tilted her head again. “Is he Morgan’s daddy now?”
Sophie wondered briefly why the hardest questions always came at the end of lessons. “He’s taking care of her, so he does a lot of the same things daddies do.”
Lizzie frowned. “That just makes him a babysitter.”
“Well, he’s also her guardian. You remember the woman who came to visit us? She put Marcus in charge of making sure Morgan is safe and happy.”
“He doesn’t hate that so much anymore.” Small fingers touched a droopy flower, perking it up. “He likes Morgan a lot now, even if he still growls sometimes.”
Being a parent was a journey, and none of them were entirely clear just yet where Marcus stood. “That’s good. It’s a lot easier to take care of a baby if you love them.” She tugged on a stray pigtail. “If you weren’t all so cute, we’d feed you to the fishes.” It was a threat oft repeated in Fisher’s Cove.
“Morgan’s way too cute to feed to the fishes.” Lizzie giggled. “They can have Sean, though.”
The first person who tried to dump Sean into the briny deep would instantly face the wrath of their smallest water witch, but Sophie kept that knowledge to herself.
“I think Marcus will love Morgan soon.” Lizzie picked up her backpack. “She still makes him sad a lot, though.”
Sophie reached over to hug the bright and far-too-aware girl who had adopted Morgan as her baby sister. And hoped fiercely that there weren’t oceans of sadness yet to come.
Marcus looked up and growled. Quiet invaders were no less welcome than their noisy counterparts, and Lizzie had left only minutes ago. Receding footsteps suggested his point had been made. Morgan was finally sleeping, and he was supposed to be coming up with some grand master plan to keep her safe.
So far, he had exactly nothing.
The scuffling sounds returned outside his doorway. Interloper, or intrepid mouse-either way, he wanted them gone.
Instead, he found Kevin, adding another pile of dusty books to a very precarious pile. Marcus grabbed the newest ones before the entire enterprise came crashing to the ground and woke up his purple-eyed master. “What are all these-you running away from home?”
Kevin’s smile was tentative-an unusual sight these days. Growls had ceased to scare him some time ago. “I heard you were trying to figure out how to help Morgan.”
Yes. A project he intended to keep children well away from. Realm’s gossip chain rivaled the one in Fisher’s Cove. “I don’t need your help, youngling. Or your dusty books.”
“Gran says all the knowledge of the world can be found in books.”