“And any witch,” continued Moira blandly, “who thinks I can’t smell a healing spell at ten paces would be sorely mistaken.”
Busted. “I couldn’t send her back half conscious.” For starters, one elderly healer would have done herself damage trying to fix it.
Nell sniffled in the corner, wiping tears away. “This chili’s insane. It’s making everything run.”
Sophie managed a grin, grateful for the distraction. Aunt Moira hated it when they coddled her. “I thought fire witches liked spicy.”
Nell just rolled her eyes.
“Not to worry, dear.” Moira chuckled and began to spoon in her own chili. “Take a couple more bites and everything will go numb.”
The easy banter was balm for Sophie’s soul. It had been a brutally difficult circle.
Nell looked over, echoes of what they’d been through in her eyes. “How’s Lauren doing?”
They’d all lived through the emotional earthquake when Marcus had first seen his brother. And then Lauren had battened down the hatches, forcing it to flow only through her. An act of enormous sacrifice, and one that still had her intermittently sobbing in Devin’s arms. “It’s going to take her a while to grieve.” No one came through an experience like that unscathed. Living through sixty seconds of it had flattened the rest of them-Lauren had hung on for more than two hours.
And it had been Lauren who held Marcus’s head after while he wept.
Sophie shook herself-she had to let go of it for a while. The babies were all safe, the rest of the circle was recovering nicely, and Marcus had two young girls pumping healing into him as he slept.
His heart had taken a devastating blow-but when they’d settled Morgan into his arms, he’d smiled. And told her that Uncle Evan loved her.
Grief, they could heal. Marcus had come back with the will to live-it had been stamped on every fragment of his soul.
Strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, and Sophie realized her own tears were dripping into the water. “Ah, my sweet girl,” said Moira, her Irish thick. “We’ve forty-three years of tears to cry-but remember. Evan needs us to laugh.”
It had been one of the few things Lauren had been able to get out past her sobs.
“He looks so much like Aervyn.” Nell reached for Sophie’s hand, cheeks wet, and not from the chili this time. “Just a little boy, alone in that awful place.”
“He’s not alone.” Moira stroked their hair, the way she’d always done. “Each of us is connected, one to the other. A great web of souls.”
“Those who have come before, those now, and those yet to come.” Sophie repeated the familiar words of the healer incantation, their meaning never more needed.
And hoped the guardian in the mists could hear them.
Chapter 22
The Hacker was up to something. Jamie leaned a little further out of the alleyway. And so was that blasted little librarian.
It was a partnership that had smart players in Realm quaking.
He snuck a little closer, hoping the soundproofing spell on his back was a good one-Kenna was babbling up a storm. Not much of a skulker, are you, little girl?
The mental giggles he got back were worth the risk of discovery. Her mind powers were growing every day. He squinted down the street at the two plotters-if he was really lucky, Kenna might decide to go mentally investigate what her uncle Daniel was up to. Nobody minded if a baby snooped in their heads.
A noise behind them had him spinning-only to discover Mike looking down at a tin can in disgust.
Jamie tried not to laugh-when you had a baby on your front, alley debris was a real hazard. “Morning.”
“Still?” Mike grimaced. “Somebody woke up at the crack of dawn.”
“Ouch.”
“S’okay.” Mike picked his way through the rest of the alley flotsam without incident. “Gave me time to work on that little forest diversion we talked about.”
The women were working on soothing Marcus’s heart the usual way-with food and time and love. The Fairy Godfathers had come up with a different plan. Well, except for Daniel, who seemed to have a second strategy brewing on the side. Four days ago, they’d launched a full-out attack on the third-ranked player in Realm.
Which had seemed like a nice, mild distraction until it made the second-ranked player in Realm really mad. Warrior Girl had promptly allied herself with a shell-shocked Marcus and made him choose between finding his game feet or getting rescued by a ten-year-old girl.
It had brought a lot of delight to Realm-and a lot of mad scrambling-when the general had awakened.
Jamie checked the time-if the forest diversion was in place, the next move was on his shoulders. “Can you hold out another half hour for food, Kenna girl?”
She leaned forward and tried to eat his hair. He hoped that was an affirmative.
“Be careful.” Mike grinned. “Rumor has it Morgan was up in the night.”
Damn. They had an inside source-one of the nursery guards in Morgan’s castle had a weakness for spaghetti sauce. And as they’d very quickly figured out, Marcus had taken to walking Realm the nights Morgan was awake-leaving spell traps as he went.
Particularly grumpy spell traps-Jamie had lost a third of his stash to one while innocently taking a seat at the pub. “Any other news?” Mike was in charge of their spy network.
“Morgan’s trying to roll over, another alligator has been spotted in the moat, and Marcus was seen smiling before breakfast.”
The first smile, two days after he’d returned from seeing Evan, had been red-alert news. Now it only warranted a quiet bulletin. The rest of Mike’s information was more troublesome. Rolling was the first step to baby mobility, which scared any sane parent. And the alligators were a real problem-the darn things seemed to breed like magical bunnies. Jamie sighed and hitched Kenna a little higher on his back. “I’ll go check on the moat.”
Mike nodded down the street. “I’ll try to keep an eye on those two.”
Jamie snickered. “Watch out for tin cans.”
He walked off whistling. It was a good morning when tin cans and alligators were the biggest issues on his radar.
He had a problem. Marcus tugged on the part of Morgan’s outfit that was supposed to snap together and rolled his eyes. “Who’s been feeding you, girl-child?”
She was growing like a weed. And while he was perfectly happy to let her live in only a diaper until she went to kindergarten, doing so seemed to cause an influx of casually dropped-off gifts of clothing. Pink, frilly, five-hundred-snaps-and-ribbons-to-tie clothing.
Getting his girl dressed every morning was a basic act of self-defense.
He reached over into the basket that held her stash of clean outfits. And growled when he hit bottom. Surely it couldn’t be laundry day again already.
An odd scuffling sound and whispers in the hallway had him turning. A couple more bangs and knocks, and then Lizzie pushed open the door with her bottom, backing in with a wagon handle in one hand, a rope in the other. Aervyn pushed the other end of the wagon, grinning. “See, I told you she was awake.”
Marcus watched in stupefied silence as the saddest excuse he’d ever seen for a wagon limped into the room. Followed by a goat.
A goat.
“Not a chance,” said Marcus gruffly. “This is a castle, not a barn.”
“He’s my pet.” Lizzie stuck out her bottom lip. “We thought Morgan might like to play with him while you helped us fix our wagon.”
The wagon needed to go to the junk heap. Three of its four wheels tilted drunkenly, and the fourth one appeared to be missing entirely. “I’d be happy to find you a new wagon. And the goat has to go.” Even castles with stray alligators in their moats had to have some standards.