Idiot. Moira looked at Sophie-it was always good to check in with the healer before you hammered her patient.
Sophie nodded. Hammer away.
“You great, clodding imbecile of a man.” Moira let her Irish free. Not that it ever managed to dent Marcus’s hard skull, but it would make her feel better-he had scared her silly crashing to the floor like that. “I’m neither fool nor patsy, and you’ll be telling me what you know about soldiers and church steps or I’ll be putting that frying pan of yours to another purpose.” It was a heavy cast-iron one-she’d added it to his kitchen herself.
It was a good and proper rant-the kind that put snap back in her nephew’s eyes and color in his cheeks. “I’m not a small boy anymore. I’ve a right to the privacy of my own head, and I’ll ask you to leave now and take this noisy gaggle of witches with you.” Marcus stared pointedly out the window.
He’d always been able to punish with silence. Moira felt the scars rip anew-and fought against the tears. They wouldn’t help her now. Or him.
It shocked her to the core when Sophie reached out, healing power turned on full force, and drilled an angry palm into Marcus’s chest. “Is this the crap everyone’s been taking from you all these years?” Electricity snapped in Sophie’s eyes and ran straight out her fingers. “You take love when you want, and send it to hell the rest of the time?”
Marcus fought, sheet white, against the power streaming from her hands. Moira watched in horrified awe as the most talented healer she knew walked perilously close to an unforgivable line.
And finally stopped. Sophie sagged in her chair, energy drained from her hands. “She loves you, you old fart, and so do most of that noisy gaggle out there.” She pulled herself up to standing, shades of the old woman she would one day become. “I don’t really have any idea why. It would be more pleasant to love a field of thistles most of the time.”
Sophie’s voice carried a sadness Moira had never heard-one that could only have come from touching a broken heart deeply. Healing always came at a price.
Marcus only stared, cheeks as white as those of his healer.
On legs shaking like reeds in the wind, Sophie headed for the door. “Tell her about the soldier. Or I will.”
“You read my mind?” Marcus’s rasp sliced at the air in the room.
“No.” Sophie shook her head, clinging to the doorjamb for support. “I read your heart.”
What had the witch done to him? Marcus leaned back against the pillows, feeling his guts still spilling through the hole Sophie had punched in his heart.
And tried to fight the memories swirling in his head.
The toy soldiers had been contraband-a black-market trade with one of the other kids in Fisher’s Cove. Mom had believed in non-violent toys for her boys. Dad had laughed and called her “his hippie witch.” Evan and Marcus had just learned to hide their precious soldiers carefully and well.
Under the back steps of the village church.
He looked over at his aunt, watching him, her eyes full of sympathy and demand. They’d always been such, even when he’d been a fractured little boy carrying the guilt of the universe on his shoulders.
She huffed out a sigh and reached for her tea. “When you were little, the threat of cauldron scrubbing often got you to talk.”
It had. He’d also become the youngest witch ever to master a copper-burnishing spell. “Threats don’t carry much weight with me anymore.”
“Mmm.” Moira wrapped her hands more comfortably around her cup. “So, should I be telling the village elders there’s a soldier buried under the church?”
Amusement slapped oddly against Marcus’s ribs. Evan would have loved a mystery and a dead body, and the chance to ruffle the calm waters of Fisher’s Cove. “We had a set of six toy soldiers. After Evan-“ He stopped, all traces of humor fleeing. “I could only find five.”
And dammit, he’d searched high and low under those church steps.
“Ah, I remember.” Moira’s smile tinged with sadness. “Your mother let you play with them in secret, against her better judgment. They made you happy.”
Nothing had made him happy-but they’d helped him to forget for a while. Given him somewhere else to look while the light in Mom’s eyes had slowly gone out.
He’d barely been out of boyhood when his parents moved to Florida, land of sunshine and golf tees.
“They were wrong, you know.” Moira reached for his hand, her grip strong and sure.
Mind barriers had never kept her out. Marcus shrugged, the ache old and dulled by time. “They wanted to forget.” Easier to do away from the gray mists.
His aunt’s eyes snapped. “They lost one son. They chose to let go of the other.”
And for all the days he’d hated her for it, she’d never been willing to do the same. He met her gaze, for once wanting her to know what she meant to him. “I wasn’t easy on any of you.”
“No, you weren’t.” Moira’s fingers touched his cheek, whisper soft-and then her eyes began to dance. “And for penance, you can drink the concoction young Lizzie carries up the stairs.”
Blasted healers and their witch brews. “I should have made a run for it while I had the chance.” If his legs hadn’t still felt like a close cousin to spaghetti, he’d have been long gone.
“You’ve never been quite fast enough.” His aunt’s grin blossomed as footsteps reached the top of the stairs. “Drink it all up, and I might bring you a nice bit of tea with whiskey.”
“I’m not a small boy who needs bribing.”
“No. You’re a man who needs his strength. You’ve a message to consider.”
His brain was less wobbly now. The dead didn’t speak-and they didn’t talk to escaped infomercial actresses. Someone had simply gotten lucky.
He didn’t have to look to feel Moira’s eyes piercing his head-she’d always been able to do that, too. And her Irish was back to full strength. “Sometimes messages come in strange packages. It doesn’t make their contents any less important.”
She had a special talent for making him feel like a small boy again-and a badly behaved one. “You think Evan reached across forty years to help me find a toy soldier?”
“No.” Her voice was drizzled with the sense of humor that was one of her greatest gifts. “But you could start there.”
Right. He’d get on that-right after he dealt with whatever vile concoction was about to walk through his door. Lizzie’s mind practically overflowed with glee-and the whispers outside the door suggested she had company.
His kingdom for a remote cave.
Chapter 3
“Did Uncle Marcus really break Gran’s favorite teacup?” Sean grinned at Lizzie, eyes hopeful.
Sophie, inventorying her herbs at the kitchen table, chuckled quietly. He was hoping for someone to displace him as Aunt Moira’s current favorite cauldron scrubber-leaving his toy snake collection in her hot tub hadn’t been his smartest move ever.
“Uh, huh.” Lizzie was puffed up with the importance of the bedtime story she had to tell. “And then he fell on the floor and didn’t move for hours and hours. Or at least ten minutes.”
Kevin looked up from his book. “Minutes aren’t as long as hours.”
Lizzie brushed off irrelevant details. “Uncle Aaron had to carry him to his bed, and he says he’s not feeding Uncle Marcus any more blueberry scones.”
Sophie tried to keep her giggles quiet-that bit was news to her. Lizzie had very good ears and a storyteller’s flare for the right details.
“He’s going to be hungry as a bear when he wakes up, though.” Their small teller of tales grinned. “I sleep-spelled him.”