A Nomadic Witch

Chapter 12

Moira sat in her garden, an old lady under a full spring moon.

And wondered why she couldn’t go to sleep.

Then her garden changed to a favorite stretch of beach. Ah. Dreaming, then.

A rock glinted in the moonlight. She smiled and bent over to pick it up. An old witch could always find use for another pretty rock.

Strange. This one seemed so heavy. A tiny rock, holding tight to the planet. She patted it gently-who was she to argue with a pebble that wanted to stay put?

She stood back up, her legs feeling tired and old. Blessed Mother, did she even have to feel old in her dreams?

The strain in her legs eased considerably. Better.

Moira walked another step or two, and then turned back. Still, it glinted in the sand, the little rock with the soul of a tree. Intrigued now, she retraced her steps, the wet sand cool under her feet. And felt a heartbeat.

Quiet and long, but a heartbeat, nonetheless. The slow thrum of life, vibrating through Nova Scotia sand-from a small, moondusted rock.

Reverently, Moira sank down beside the pebble. “It’s hard to cling to sand, wee thing that you are. You’ll need to sink roots deep. The winds are fickle, and the waves not always gentle.”

She listened to the magic of her heart now. With careful hands, she shaped a rooting spell, one for the hardy plants that lived in tough soils. The survivors. Reaching out, she spoke to the waters. Nourish.

The heartbeat strengthened.

She spoke to the life within the rock. Trust.

Marcus’s eyes flew open moments before the monitoring alarms blared.

He’d felt her go.

With quaking hands, he shushed the spells and reached for Morgan’s mind. She was still warm. Maybe he was in time.

He chased deep down her mental channels, calling. Screaming. Morgan!

Nothing.

Gone.

Mad with fear, he hurled himself against the edges of the mind that was his baby girl. MORGAN!

And felt the faintest trace of her.

With every ounce of power, he grabbed on. And held.

He was the most powerful mind witch in Fisher’s Cove.

And this time, he would Not. Let. Go.

A healer learned to wake to alarms. And when she slept with a small baby at her side, she learned to do it very quietly.

Sophie slid out of bed, reaching for bag, shoes, and cloak in one smooth flow of movement. A sprint down the hallway and out the front door, and then a dead run to the end of the village, hitting the buttons on her phone app that would wake a much wider team-and wondering why the hell Marcus hadn’t already done it.

She charged through his front door, dread spiking at the utter silence.

Monitoring alarms could wake the dead-that was their whole point.

Careening into the cottage’s only bedroom, she finally found them. Marcus, sitting in the streaming moonlight, face marble-white-with his hands wrapped around Morgan’s head.

A very cold Morgan. And the man clutching her head was using enough power to drain himself to nothing in minutes.

One hand on each forehead, Sophie tried to read the nightmare that was her conjoined patient. Morgan was very cold-but her vitals were still strong. Moving a hand, Sophie tickled her knees, her belly, her elbows. Reflexes still there. Level two travel-not gone.

Not gone.

But Marcus had wrapped some kind of insane mind bubble around her head, one strong enough to kill him-or drag both of them into the astral plane.

She needed them separate. Now.

Sophie looked around the room, cursing the inadequacies of her healer bag. And spied what she needed. One quick step and she had the laptop in her hand. Two more, and she smashed the flat side into the side of his head, shielding the baby with her own body.

It wasn’t pretty. But she felt the connection between man and baby snap, the loose end hitting Marcus’s brain with the force of a bull whip. Pain ricocheted into her head, the price of a healing link still wide open.

Dropping the laptop, she reached out to help-and then read the fury on his face.

Oh, hell. Sophie yanked for magic, understanding the deadly race she was in. And she won. By a hairsbreadth. Her paralysis spell deflected a mind stun that would have knocked her out for a week.

Imbecile. And mad as he was, her spell had about thirty seconds to live. Sophie got straight to the point. “You listen to me, Marcus Buchanan, and you listen well. She’s not gone. You hear me? She’s not gone.”

His face contorted in a desperate effort to speak. “Had. Her. You. Broke.”

God, she wasn’t even going to get thirty seconds. “She’s still moving, still present.” She shook his shoulders, willing comprehension into his head. “She’s not gone.”

His arm jerked free of the spell’s hold, a mad bear about to break loose-and then she saw it in his eyes. Sanity in the midst of madness. He understood.

The remnants of her spell evaporated, and he reached for Morgan’s body, frantic. “I don’t feel her.”

His voice shredded her heart. She laid her hands over his. “Trust that I can.”

Need help? Lauren’s voice beamed in. We have a whole slew of witches out here if you need us.

Sophie debated. And made the hard call. Not yet. But keep a watch.

She placed her hands on the sides of his head, feeding a bolt of healing power into his reeling mind. “She’s level two, Marcus. Tethered, but floating.” Safe, so long as they got her home fairly soon.

But they couldn’t start yet. Five thousand years of history had made the protocols for most emergent magics very clear. You didn’t throw water on a fire witch. Earth witches needed to sleep outside when magic bloomed. And travelers had to be given the freedom to hit the end of the tether anchoring soul to body.

Calling them back any earlier was like trying to turn around a toddler on their way to an ice cream cone. With a whisper.

Sophie scanned Morgan again. She’d never cared for a level-two traveler, but the lore was strong-and healers were trained to trust those who had come before.

Even when they were scared to their bones. Morgan felt so very far away.

“She’s getting close now.” Sophie eyed Marcus, trying to balance the needs of both her patients. He nodded, eyes still swimming in fear, and what she hoped was enough trust. She took both of his hands. “I can do this-or you can.”

His entire body shuddered. Not safe. I’ll do it.

She would weep for the terrified little boy later. “She’s not in the mists, Marcus.” Not tonight. The risks to either of them were minimal.

He shuddered again, and a bigger dose of sanity flowed back into his eyes. I’ll do it.

He was a witch fully grown and he loved the small girl in his arms. She had to trust that it would be enough. “Remember-it’s your job to stand. It’s hers to come back.” She stretched out as much love as she dared. “You can’t do her part for her.”

She reached for earth power, rooted as deep as she could pull, and offered it to him. He needed to feel her strength. We’ll be waiting. Call your girl home.

He could go get her now.

Marcus felt like a soldier under fire, numbed to the death screaming over his head at regular intervals. The inside of his skull begged for mercy, channels ripped to shreds trying to hold Morgan close.

Idiot.

Astral Travel 101. Travelers can’t be held. They can only be called.

And usually that failed too.

Cool waters lapped at his head. Healing waters. She’s not gone, Marcus.

He let himself touch the coolness Sophie offered, for just a moment. He had to be ready.

It’s time.

Marcus turned in the darkness of his mind. East. The direction Morgan had gone, just like every traveler before her.

And instead of purple eyes, he saw brown ones.

Anguished guilt blew through the cracking, scarred dike holding back memories of his twin brother. Evan, counting shiny rock treasures and offering up the biggest pile. Evan, bare feet racing up the sand, always a half step ahead.

Evan, headed east, laughing-and never coming home.

It’s not Evan gone now. Sophie’s mental voice shook him, hard. We were too late with him. Morgan’s still tethered, and she needs you.

He felt her hands, pushing against the memories in his mind, trying to contain them.

He could have told her it was futile.

Brown eyes.

No.

Purple eyes. They needed him. With all that he had left, Marcus sent up a magical beacon-a light to call his girl home. And tried, somewhere, to find a whisper of hope that she was close enough to see.

Lauren felt Marcus slide deeper into sleep and nodded at Sophie. “He’s under. Want me to put up a bubble?”

The healer pondered, and then shook her head. “That will block him off from Morgan, and he needs to feel her.”

Lauren looked over at the happy, drooling baby lying on a blanket on the floor, Ginia and Lizzie filling dual shoes as playmates and monitors. “She seems fine.” The motley crew standing outside the house had held their breath as Marcus’s beacon finally flared-and deflated in a collective whoosh of relief, moments later, when a stream of magic had danced through their midst.

One traveler, back home-and nothing wrong with her that a bottle of warm milk hadn’t fixed.

Jamie came over, two suspiciously green glasses in his hand. “I’ve sound barriered this corner of the room so we don’t wake him up. Come drink your just rewards.”

Even Sophie looked askance at the glasses. “Which of my students is responsible for those?”

Jamie’s grin was not reassuring. Lauren decided she didn’t want to know. “I don’t need green goo. All I did was a little mindlinking. Cookies will fix me right up.” It was probably bad that she sounded panicky-healers smelled fear.

Mike walked over, Adam asleep in his arms. “It goes down easier if you hold your nose.”

Right. Lauren scowled at Jamie. “I’m unvolunteering for any late-night duties that involve green goo.” She wasn’t at her best at whatever the hell time this was. Not enough coffee.

“I’m glad you were here.” Sophie sat down on the nearest chair, glass of gunk obediently in her hands. “Marcus is the only mind witch on this coast who talks through walls easily.”

The walls had been nothing compared to the effort needed to broadcast Sophie’s voice through Marcus’s hard head. “It seemed like you had things pretty much under control.”

“She did.” Jamie shook his head and looked at Mike. “Your wife has balls of steel.”

Mike spluttered in quiet laughter, Adam jiggling in his arms. “Yup. She broke his laptop. That took some serious courage.”

Jamie chuckled. “Forgot about that. I’ll put my repair crew on it-see if we can resurrect it from the dead before he wakes up and tries to choke someone with the remnants.”

Sophie just made faces and kept drinking.

Lauren eyed Jamie. Newbie-witch time again-there had been a lot of emotional baggage in the room, but Sophie had appeared to navigate it all with a deft touch. She was lost. “Why was she brave?”

He shrugged. “There were a dozen people standing in the street, any of whom could have put up a beacon for Morgan-and she sent in the guy with the drowned-cat magic instead.”

Marcus had been in pretty rough shape, but a beacon wasn’t complicated magic. Lauren frowned. “I haven’t had coffee. Not following.”

“She took a risk.” Mike’s voice was full of pride. “A big one, and it worked.”

That didn’t compute. Witches, especially healers, didn’t take unnecessary risks. She wasn’t that new.

Jamie grinned. Says the woman who left a juvenile delinquent in charge of her office.

Lauren rolled her eyes-Lizard wasn’t all that delinquent anymore.

Sophie smiled and set down an empty glass, looking several degrees perkier than when she’d started drinking. She glanced over at the man sound asleep on a couch in the corner, a tiny sock still clutched in his hand. “He needed to know he was there for her tonight. It will help him face what might be coming.”

Lauren felt unease hit all three minds closest to her. She’d had enough of a crash course in astral travel to understand why. Level two, the traveler was still tethered and fairly easy to call home. Level three required a full circle and someone willing to put their life into the circle’s hands while they chased the traveler-and even then, it often ended in tragedy.

Level three scared the crap out of every witch she knew.

Mike settled carefully in a chair beside his wife. “How deep did she go?”

Sophie’s eyes held a bleakness Lauren had never seen. “Far enough. She was so faint, Mike-I could barely feel her. All the warning signs are there.”

She was high risk for full-blown travel-and all they could do was watch and wait.

Mike leaned in to comfort his wife, and Lauren reached for one of the cookies that had suddenly appeared in Jamie’s hands. She had a question. A very quiet one. How was Evan missed? Moira was the most conscientious witch she knew.

He was a fire witch. Jamie’s mental sigh carried the same collective guilt that stamped every conversation about Evan. Astral travelers always go through the safer levels first, as their magic develops. At first, they get cold-except fire witches never get cold, so no one ever noticed. Just a really bad combination of magics.

An awful and sad one-and it explained one of the missing pieces. After cold came tethered travel. And that weighs on Marcus too-that he didn’t notice his brother leaving.

Jamie’s forehead pinched together in grief. Five-year-old boys sleep like the dead. He couldn’t have known.

Lauren had learned something about the bonds between brothers who had shared the same womb. He doesn’t believe that.

No. Jamie watched Morgan playing, cookie uneaten in his hand. None of us would.