And number eighteen made her smile. Holding them close is never wrong, even if your arms are ready to fall off. She looked up, swirling with love for the men who had ridden to Morgan’s rescue.
Nell’s grin echoed the same sense of dopey love. “There’s a flow chart for how to get a baby dressed. And recipes safe enough to cook while sleep deprived.”
Sophie started to flip-those might come in handy, especially if they were Aaron’s doing.
“It’s lovely.” Moira’s voice held the lilt of her childhood. “And they accomplished with Marcus what we couldn’t.”
“Got something through that thick head of his?” Nell grinned. “Definitely something of a miracle.”
“Aye, it would be.” Moira’s eyes gleamed in the muted light. “But what they did was far more difficult.”
She looked down, touching the pages with reverence. “They got something into his heart.”
Marcus looked up at the sound of footsteps in his living room. “Go away-busy!” He listened as the footsteps retreated, and looked over at the small girl sitting in her bouncy chair on top of the dryer. “How come they always come when we’re doing laundry, hmm?”
She wiggled in naked happiness-all her clothes were currently in the spin cycle.
Pretty much all of his, too.
He leaned over and blew a raspberry into her wiggly belly, only mildly embarrassed by his weakness. And grinned when she blew one in return. “Show off. Bet you can’t do that again.”
She could. It had become their little routine.
He blew another one into the air along with some light wind magic, trying to keep her amused as he untangled another of her infernal onesies. The washing machine seemed to take special pleasure at tying them in knots.
She batted her hands at the imaginary raspberry-blowing monster fluffing her hair. “Easily amused today, are you?” It was a good thing-neither of them was dressed for a beach walk.
She wiggled her lips at him again. He shook his head, chuckling-the raspberries that missed were oddly endearing.
Aervyn popped into existence at his elbow. “Found you!” He surveyed Marcus’s cape, eyes lighting up. “Yay-are we playing superheroes again?”
Damn-he’d forgotten that some house invaders didn’t require footsteps to move around. And he’d be caught dead in one of Aunt Moira’s flowery pink dresses before he ran through the streets of Fisher’s Cove in his cape and boxer shorts again. “No time to play today, superboy.” He looked down at hope deflated. “Lizzie’s probably running around somewhere looking for trouble.”
“She’s a girl.” Aervyn frowned, his mind one big pout. “I don’t want to play with any more girls today.” He stomped two very annoyed feet. “I want to stay right here with you and be grumpy.”
Uh, oh. Marcus didn’t feel equipped to handle girl trouble. “We’re not having very much fun here, I’m afraid. The Buchanan household is in dire need of clean clothes, and no faeries have shown up to help us out.”
“You don’t need faeries.” Aervyn’s eyes brightened again. “I can help. I’m getting pretty good at laundry. I can fold and everything.”
Marcus sighed. He was an embarrassment to witch recluses everywhere-even the threat of stinky laundry didn’t chase off visitors anymore. “Surely there’s some other way you’d like to spend your afternoon.”
“No.” The answer was simple and accompanied with a heart-melting grin. “I like being with you. Can I stay?”
Even curmudgeon defenses could be breached. Marcus pointed at a pile of towels and rubbed the head of the small boy with the dark-haired version of his brother’s face. “See if you can turn those into something resembling a folded pile.”
Aervyn surveyed towel mountain, momentarily subdued. And then turned, a disturbing glint in his eye. “Can I use magic?”
There was no folding spell worth the energy-Marcus had tried. “Some things are better done the old-fashioned way, my boy.”
“Nuh, uh.” His self-appointed helper activated something that looked suspiciously like fire power. “I helped Elsie make this spell for keeping Nat’s towels warm so that all the yoga people can have a happy moment.” He smiled, the perfect picture of summer innocence. “I can make you happy towels, too. I bet Morgan would like hers all cozy and warm.”
Marcus, lost somewhere back at “yoga people,” tried to catch up. “You built a permanent warming spell?”
“Sort of.” Aervyn wrinkled his nose. “It lasts a bunch of weeks, but the towels get wet, and it makes the spell go wonky after a while.”
Water was anathema to fire spells-if the boy could make one last more than a single wetting, it was an impressive bit of magic. “How do you stop the power leaching?”
“I use Mama’s air-weaving-loop trick.” Aervyn looked up from his studious efforts to transform a navy-blue towel into the Creature from the Black Lagoon. “Fire will do that too, if you talk to it nicely.”
Aervyn had fire-talking skills no one else on the planet could duplicate, but another detail tickled Marcus’s memory. “Wait, you said you helped Elsie do this spell?” Witch Central’s newest trapeze flyer wasn’t a particularly strong fire witch.
“Mmm, hmmm.” Aervyn poked at a piece of his towel sculpture that apparently wasn’t conforming to expectations. “We practiced really hard. She can’t do as many loops, so it wears off faster, but that’s okay. She said she likes going back to visit Nat and make the towels warm again.”
Marcus couldn’t shake the ridiculous feeling that this might be one of Daniel’s strange dots. “Can you show me how it works?”
“‘Kay.” Aervyn patted his monster in satisfaction and reached for another towel. “It’s easier before you fold the towel. The loops don’t get so tangly that way.”
Given superboy’s idea of “folded,” that wasn’t hard to imagine. Marcus closed his eyes, following the quickly dancing power lines of a spell in progress. It did look very much like Nell’s woven-air spell-and he remembered all too well how much it had irked his fourteen-year-old self when tiny Nell Sullivan had created it. Six-year-old spellcasters weren’t supposed to devise tricks that took a month of hard and very secret work to replicate.
Replicating her son’s work wasn’t an option-Marcus wasn’t a fire witch.
But it was a heck of a spell, and Morgan would hopefully appreciate her nice, warm towels. Marcus reached out a hand to touch. Heck, he’d be darned appreciative-the cottage’s one bathroom ran to the fairly rustic. “Very nice-can you do a few more?” Babies used up towels at an astonishing rate.
Aervyn grinned and waved his fingers in the direction of towel mountain.
Marcus didn’t bother to ask. He was quite sure he was now the proud owner of a very large supply of self-heating towels.
That kind of magic deserved a reward. “Come on upstairs, my friend. I’m pretty sure someone has filled my cookie jar.” He was capable of filling it himself, but a man with a small baby didn’t turn down a steady supply of anything with calories.
Aervyn grinned-and vanished. Marcus looked over at Morgan and rolled his eyes. “I guess he’ll be getting the first cookie.” He reached to free her from her bouncy chair-
And felt the strange dots connect.
He took the stairs two at a time. Cookies would have to wait-he needed one more spell first.
Chapter 17
She would boil him in Moira’s cauldron and teleport his bones to China.
Nell landed in the middle of Main Street, Fisher’s Cove, ready to pound Marcus Buchanan into dust. She cursed her brother with furious thumbs. Dropping me a block from the requested coordinates isn’t going to keep him alive, brother mine.