A Nomadic Witch

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.

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.”

He ignored the clenching in his gut. “You still have it?” She’d been in Fisher’s Cove for almost a year.

“It was Mike’s wedding gift to me.” She traced the lines of the key. “I’m a solitary witch, and sometimes I need a place to be truly alone. My husband understood that far better than I did.”

A second eyebrow joined the first. “You go back?”

“Not often now.” Amusement stirred in her eyes. “The gardens are overrun, and dust bunnies seem to evade the cleaning spells.”

He had his own collection hiding under the bed, breeding and occasionally attacking the cat. And he knew her offer had nothing to do with dust bunnies. She offered him a gift-distance and solitude.

The thing he’d been craving every day for a year.

And as he sat on his porch, watching the everyday life of Fisher’s Cove bask in the sun, he knew he didn’t want to take it. “We don’t know that she’d be safer there.”

“No, we don’t.” Sophie’s eyes were steady. “I’m not saying you should go.”

Her mind was hazy, and he wasn’t willing to intrude. “What are you saying?”

“That you have a choice.” Her grin was wry. “Although the housekeeping staff at Morgan’s Castle might not make it a very attractive one.”

He watched Sean race into Moira’s garden after a stray ball. And felt truth slide into his heart, along with the late-afternoon sun. “I’ll take her to Colorado if need be.” For now, he’d fight from Realm-that’s where his troops were, and the magnificent fortress they’d built. But he’d go anywhere he had to go to keep his girl safe.

And then they’d come home.

To a village, and a ramshackle cottage with dust bunnies under the bed.

“Wanna have another baby?”

Nell looked up at her husband-and gaped. “After Aervyn? Are you crazy?”

He shrugged. “Jamie won’t share Kenna, and Leo says he’s too big to ride in a baby carrier anymore.”

Leo had just turned three, so that seemed like a reasonable claim. Nell shut her laptop-something was afoot at Witch Central. Code could wait, and after a very emotional morning, she could use a distraction. Something her husband likely knew. “What’s going on?”

He grinned. “Nothing.”

Yeah. And cute pink pigs were currently invading the North Pole. “Try again. How come you’re trying to steal a baby? Never mind, forget that-how come Jamie won’t share?”

“He got the first prototype to test.” Daniel looked like someone had stolen his favorite teddy bear. “I had to hitchhike all the way to Nova Scotia to get the other one.”

Nell tried not to laugh-Aervyn came by his pouty face honestly. “And exactly what is this prototype?”

Her husband pulled something fuzzy and purple out from behind his back. “We might have kind of raided your fabric stash. Kenna liked fuzzy best.”

Nell stared. It resembled a baby sling-one that had accidentally fallen into a vat of misfit toys. Slowly, she circled the fuzzy purple monstrosity. “What is it?”

“A new baby carrier. Ginia called it the KidPocket.” He winced. “Since we apparently aren’t very creative at naming things, I think it’s gonna stick.”

If Ginia was involved, that explained the purple fabric raid. “And you invented a new baby carrier because…?”

“It needed to be done.” Daniel shrugged. “We had what, fifteen carriers?”

At least.

He threw the pouch contraption over his head. “And not one of them had a beer opener. Bad design.” He held up the feature in question. “So we fixed it. See? And right next to it, a handy-dandy sleeve to hold a beer. Undo the Velcro bottom and it works great for light sabers, too.”

Light sabers. Oh, God. She reached for a chair, plunking down in an unceremonious heap of giggles.

Daniel patted the saber holder with pride. “Highly useful. Lizzie keeps launching sneak attacks, and Marcus never has a sword handy when he needs one.”

Marcus was engaging in spontaneous sword fights?

“Fatherhood changes a man.” Her husband grinned. “Wait until you see Jamie’s special feature.”

Nell had lived through a lifetime of Jamie’s special features. “Does it squirt?”

Daniel’s face fell. “Damn, you’re good.” He patted some sort of black pouch hanging off the side of the carrier contraption. “Milk cooler. Has a little hose thingie to pipe milk to the baby.”

She was pretty sure babies didn’t drink milk from hoses. “They tend to prefer nipples.”

Her husband wiggled his eyebrows. “I know.” He motioned her over and guided her hand inside the main part of the carrier. “Meet my contribution-boob pillows.”

Sure enough. Her husband’s chest currently sported two very breast-like contraptions. He grinned. “Jamie found some research study that said babies fall asleep 53% faster curled up to their mother’s chest. We’re just equalizing things a little.”

Only grown men could find a scientific basis for fake boobs. “And it took the two of you how long to come up with this?”

“Two?” Daniel looked blank for a moment. “Marcus is the main engineer behind all this genius. Aaron and Mike helped too-they added the baby toys.” He reached into the carrier and held them up. “Fake iPhone, car keys, credit cards, and sea-glass teether. The sea glass is real. The rest we magicked from baby-safe materials. All firmly attached so they can’t be pitched overboard or swallowed.”

Nell blinked, and touched her finger to the fake iPhone screen. It beeped happily. Okay. That was cool. She looked up at her husband. “I’m still not having another baby.” But she mightily appreciated his attempts to cheer her up.

He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “Well, it was worth a try.”

She chuckled. “I’m sure you can borrow Kenna when Jamie’s done playing with her.”

“I think Devin’s next. Maybe Aaron will share-he’s got two.” Daniel patted his carrier, thoughtful. ”I wonder if we can rig this thing to carry two babies? There’s got to be a market for that.”

Nell just shook her head. “You guys are really going to make this thing, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question-she knew her man.

“Yup.” Her husband looked like Aervyn let loose in the Lego store. “I’m building the website, and Jamie knows some engineer who does product certification testing.”

She was afraid to ask.

He grinned. “That’s where you wear the carrier while bungee jumping or narrowly escaping car crashes. And Devin wants to try broomstick flying.”

Nell snorted. “You’d never get Kenna back down from the sky.” Her eyes sharpened. “Wait. Devin doesn’t have babies. How come he’s involved in this?”

“It’s bungee jumping,” said Daniel, his dimple flashing. “I think he overlooked the babies part.”

Drat. No new Sullivans on the way. Yet.

She kissed her husband’s cheek. “Go have a daddy play date. And send Elorie back this way. Ginia’s got more spa stuff brewing on the stove.” Her daughter was apparently having a very busy day.

He grinned. “I know. Why do you think Nathan and Aervyn beat it out of here right after breakfast?”

Silly boys.

Then again, the last batch had smelled a fair amount like skunk.

And with that, she was squarely on her feet again. Life, back to crazy normal. She reached up to kiss her husband’s cheek. “Thanks.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

Marcus stood on the cliff’s edge and looked out over sand and water. It always pulled him back.

The beach had been their plaything, the place where he and Evan came to worship boyhood. A stretch of sand just outside the village, divided from humanity by the rock promontory under his feet. They’d felt like explorers. Or pirates of old, discovering the shores of America.

Historical truth had never interfered overmuch with their quests.

It had taken a long list of rules and an Act of Dad, the day after their fifth birthday, to gain permission to visit the beach alone.

For the next three months, he and Evan had practically lived there, two small boys dizzy with freedom and a world that stretched further than their eyes could see.

And then Marcus had woken one night and found himself standing on the beach, screaming Evan’s name and hurling magic at a force he couldn’t see.

His brother’s body had still been back in his bed, tucked in with a life-sized bear and an illicit baseball. His soul-gone. Vanished into the mists.

At first, coming back to the beach had been an act of fractured, anguished hope. Marcus had stared over the waters, willing Evan back out of the evil green fog.

He’d never come. Time and tears had eventually eroded the hope, but Marcus still made regular pilgrimages to the beach. Some days, he got no further than the rock promontory before pain chased him back to safer ground.

Not today.

Marcus stepped off the rock point, making his way down the narrow, winding path to the sand. He cursed as pebbles slid under his feet. Damn old-man shoes.

He’d come with intentions, and they didn’t involve landing in an ignominious pile. A few more steps and he reached the relatively easier footing of sand and seaweed. Small birds feasting on beach detritus skittered out of the way as he advanced, then closed ranks behind him again. Survival stopped for no man.

He headed straight for the midpoint of the beach. There was a nexus there-a point of balance between land and sea, east and west. The place his magic would be strongest.

Power surged as he arrived, water and air responding to his call. He was a witch at the peak of his powers-and it was time to use them.

He turned to the sea, arms stretched to the sky.

“I call on water, toss and turn,

I call on air, meld and burn,

Build a storm, loud and free,

As I will, so mote it be.”

He kept it short-the storm was already well underway. With deft hands, he twisted currents of air, bending them double and tossing them into frothing water. Lightning flashed, long crackling columns running flat out to sea. East.

The lightning was a new trick. Marcus smiled grimly. He’d learned a thing or two from Sierra Brighton.

For the first time in forty-three years, he wanted the mists to hear him. Faster now, he slammed energies together, fueling a fog of magic and rage. Evan! Crackling magic amplified his call. EVAN!

He didn’t listen for an answer. There wouldn’t be one, and Marcus Buchanan had long since stopped begging his brother to talk.

Today, he only wanted him to hear. Hands fisted, Marcus faced the mists-with a message. It was short, sweet, and he flung it with every ounce of power he possessed.

You can’t have her.

His magic died, the spluttering halt of a witch out of gas.

The witch was done. The man had barely begun. He had wards. A warming spell. A castle, a team. And a reason to fight.

He wasn’t living scared anymore.