Even in an inch square on her screen, Jamie’s face was grim. You know why he asked.
Nell jammed her phone into her pocket. She did-and that might earn her quarry a merciful death before she threw him in the cauldron.
MARCUS BUCHANAN! Sparks flew out of her fingers, fire power barely leashed. Where the hell was he?
Right behind you. The last words of a dead man walking.
She spun around, hands ready to throttle him where he stood-and ran into baby instead. Morgan looked up in drooly contentment from his chest.
Nell yanked for control, shaking with the effort. “You utter bastard.” She fought with words now, her wrath a hissing, living thing.
“Very possibly.” He spoke quietly, his eyes on her still-sparking fingers. She felt his shields snap into place around Morgan. “What is it you think I’ve done?”
“You asked Aervyn to wrap her in a heat spell. To keep her warm.”
He nodded, very slowly. “I did.” His voice was calm, but his mind shook. “I hoped it might help if she ends up in the mists.”
It was exactly that possibility that terrified her. And she didn’t have enough control to play nice. “She could die, Marcus. Morgan could die-and you asked him for the last spell she’d be wearing as she did.”
The words hit him like bullets, body jerking in anguish as it drained of blood.
She fired again, perilously close to shattering. “He’s five.”
“I know.” He spoke from some place an eternity away. “So was I.”
His whisper tore at her soul. Oh, God. She was stripping skin off the one person in the world who knew exactly how her son would feel. She reached out a hand, abject apology and mama grizzly both. “It would break him. I can’t let you do that.”
“I’m sorry.” He nodded, his words still barely a whisper. “I love her. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
The last of Nell’s anger fled, flattened by the ferocious love storming in his eyes.
It was the answer she’d needed-and perhaps the only one she could forgive.
She reached for fire power, controlled now, and held out her hands in mute offering. “It won’t break me.”
His eyes shadowed in confusion.
Nell touched a gentle finger to Morgan’s cheek. “My son isn’t the only one who can warm a towel.”
“Thank you.” The twin waves of gratitude and guilt nearly knocked her over. “I’m so very sorry.”
He was-and it was undoing her. She shook her head, stumbling for solid ground. Tears totally messed up fire magic. “There was no one to stand for you back then. They were all hurting too much.”
“I know.” His voice was a raspy pit of sadness. “Your son is a very fortunate witchling.”
“He is.” Nell reached out again for a round baby cheek. “But he’s not the only one.”
She looked up-and hoped Marcus could read the respect in her eyes.
Jamie laid his head on the desk in relief.
Ginia paused her mad typing. “What’s up?”
“Your mom didn’t kill Uncle Marcus.” It had been a disturbingly close call.
“That’s good.” His child labor seemed unconcerned. “I wanna know what she did to my warding here. Do you know what these lines are doing?” She spun her monitor around so he could see it.
Many more lines of code, and his eyeballs would be begging for mercy. “Which lines?” His eyes scanned the ones she highlighted. They read like stone tablet hieroglyphics. “No clue.” And that wasn’t exactly comforting.
Ginia scowled at the screen and popped a cold French fry in her mouth. “It’s layering something, but it’s calling a variable I’ve never seen.” She looked up. “Somebody’s not commenting their code properly.”
That was a fairly grievous offense when they had seven people with admin-level access. “Did you sandbox it?”
Her eye roll was more than enough answer.
He swiped one of her fries. “We’ve been working on this a long time, kiddo. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the basics.”
She shook her head, still clicking on keys. “It doesn’t activate. It just kind of… slinks.”
That was a frightening description. “Let’s take a look, then.” No slinky code on his watch. He highlighted the variable name and ran a quick search.
Ginia smirked when nothing came up. “Told you.”
Jamie had learned a thing or two from their resident hacker. “Maybe we have some hidden system files.”
“A worm?” Her eyes gleamed. “Or a magical Trojan horse?”
It was probably a bad sign when your team got excited by possible security breaches. “Let’s check the logs, see who added the code.”
Ginia groaned-checking the logs was about as much fun as painting a room beige. “Can’t we set a trap instead? Dad showed us how to do that.” She grinned. “I can turn the miscreant’s game points all pink.”
“Miscreant” was the Realm word of the week. Jamie had no idea how it had started, but gamers were suddenly dropping it in casual conversations all over the kingdom. “I don’t think this is a section of code a gamer is likely to have messed with, sweetheart.” Morgan’s Castle had joined Moira’s Meadow as off limits, game-wise.
“Fine. I’ll check the code.” Ginia peered into her fry box, and then pitched it in disgust.
He watched, impressed, as the box sailed into the far garbage can. “Nice toss.”
She grinned. “We’ve been practicing.”
“Excellent.” He tugged on a stray curl. “If the whole witching thing doesn’t work out, you can take up pro basketball.”
She snorted. “I’m a girl, silly. I can do both.”
Of that, he had very little doubt. “Come on upstairs-I think Nat’s reheating spaghetti for lunch.”
“Nope.” Ginia shot one last look at her lines of mystery code. “She’s doing yoga in the back yard. Sierra’s sleeping with Kenna, and I think Mia’s cooking.”
It was sometimes hard to remember he had only one child. “Mia’s cooking, or Mia’s warming spaghetti?” The latter was probably safe.
“Dunno.” Mischief landed in Ginia’s mind with both feet. “She might be making smoothies.”
Oh, hell. The last time Mia had used a blender, they’d scraped pink stuff off the ceiling for a week. Jamie headed for the stairs.
Ginia was hot on his heels. Apparently she didn’t want to miss anything good.
Marcus sat on his front porch, watching the random game of something resembling soccer that had broken out in the street. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the residents of Fisher’s Cove had poured out of their cottages in response. Some gardened. A talkative group repaired nets on Uncle Billy’s driveway. And several of the grownups, including Mike and Aaron, had joined the kids in the street.
“Nice day.” Sophie walked up the side steps of his porch. “Morgan sleeping?”
He couldn’t even work up a good growl-somehow, he’d gotten far too used to drop-in company. “For now.”
It occurred to him that she had no baby in tow, and Mike was currently chasing a black-and-white ball down the street. “Where’s Adam?”
“Asleep in Aunt Moira’s flowers. He and Mike went out on the boat with Uncle Billy this morning.”
One day soon, he needed to take Morgan out-but he dared not go too early in the morning. They stayed in Realm until the sun crept high into the sky.
Sophie sat down on the glider beside him, ignoring the other perfectly good chairs on his porch. “I have something for you.” She held out her hand, mind carefully casual.
He raised an eyebrow at the key on her palm. No one in Fisher’s Cove locked anything. “What’s it open?”
“My old house.” She watched her husband toss the ball back down the road. “The one in Colorado, well away from all large bodies of water.”