A Nomadic Witch

Chapter 1

Spring had come to Nova Scotia, and with it, the consequences of last summer’s bout of contagious fertility. There were babies everywhere.

Which was why escape had been essential. A few hours of uninterrupted peace, under one of the first brilliantly blue skies of the year. A man, his fishing boat, and the open ocean. Perfection.

Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that he was alone.

Marcus looked over at the cargo closet of his fishing trawler. It was fairly embarrassing to have a stowaway, especially when you were a mind witch with a reputation for being inhospitable. “You’ll freeze if you stay in there all day.” Cargo closets weren’t very dry places this time of year.

Total silence.

The boy had been watching too many pirate movies. “The worst I’ll do is make you swab the decks.” Probably. Marcus shoved the friendliest mind-vibe he could manage in Sean’s direction.

Another minute of silence, and then some scuffling. A couple of surprisingly eloquent curses later, a somewhat bedraggled eleven-year-old emerged from the closet, wet to his waist.

Marcus grinned. Sometimes karma had an excellent sense of humor. “Fell into a bucket, did you?”

Sean scowled. “It’s dark in there.”

There were several other boats still in sight. Marcus aimed away from the good fishing-it wasn’t sea creatures he was after. “You might as well bring that bucket out with you.” The decks could certainly use a good scrubbing, and Sean usually had energy to burn.

His stowaway grinned. “Can I sing pirate songs while I work?”

Marcus growled and stared out to sea, amused in spite of himself. Apparently he was doomed to child-sized company of some sort today, but at least this one wasn’t still in diapers. “Where’s Kevin?” Generally the twins traveled together.

“Babysitting for Elorie. Gran says he has the touch.”

Marcus grinned at the boy’s tone-apparently Sean shared his general distaste for wailing babies. Or maybe it was a little more complicated than that. A trickle of unhappiness swirled at the back of Sean’s mind even as he got out the mop and bucket.

Sigh. A whole village full of meddling amateur psychologists, and the boy had come to him. They all seemed to come to him-hardly a day passed that small footsteps of one sort or another didn’t invade his new cottage. Renting one on the outskirts of Fisher’s Cove hadn’t dissuaded them in the slightest.

If it wasn’t Lizzie, Sean, or Kevin, or someone looking to pawn off a fretful baby, it was Aervyn, porting in for a visit.

Almost as if there were a conspiracy afoot.

Marcus tucked that idea away for further contemplation. Sophie and Moira were more than capable of harnessing an army of pint-sized minions in their quest to upend his life.

And so far they’d been very successful at keeping him sucked into the village, far away from his remote and very child-free cliffside home.

“Can I steer?” Small hands reached for the wheel, and a still-wet boy threatened to crawl into his lap. Marcus vacated his stool and activated a small wind funnel. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant as a quick-dry spell, but neither of them were fire witches, and Sean could hardly hang around in wet pants all day.

Spring in Fisher’s Cove wasn’t that warm.

“Don’t hit a rock.” There weren’t a lot of things to crash into in open waters, but Sean had a knack for finding trouble.

The boy sprang up onto the stool, at home anywhere on a boat. “You’re going the wrong way for herring. Uncle Jonathan said they’re running better over by-”

“I’m not fishing today.” Or most any other day, but Marcus wasn’t about to try to explain why he owned a fishing boat that rarely on-boarded an actual fish.

“Okay.” Sean leaned over the wheel, eyes sparkling. “Can we race, then?”

The air caught in Marcus’s throat. There had been another, much smaller boy who had loved racing the wind.

He and Evan had been the mighty storm-witch duo, pushing their father’s fishing boat over the waters and scattering fish every which way. No one had ever minded-Evan’s sunny laughter had been impossible to resist.

Even then, Marcus had been the dark, quiet one.

And Evan had raced into astral danger with the same glee in his eyes. Marcus had watched, screaming, as his twin danced his way into the lethal magic mists of astral travel alone and unafraid. And never come back.

“We’re not racing today.” Marcus heard the harshness in his voice and watched Sean’s face crumple. Damn. He just wasn’t good with kids-of any size.

He patted the boy’s knee in mute, awkward apology. It was a sunny day-no mists to be seen. “You dry enough yet?”

“Yeah.” Sean hopped off the stool, subdued. “I’ll go finish mopping the decks now.”

Marcus waited until he was out of sight, and then slammed his hands down on the wheel. He’d just needed an afternoon alone-a few short hours away from cute babies and bright eyes and happy laughter and feeling like the killjoy of Fisher’s Cove.

A few hours to sit alone with the hole in his heart that never seemed to heal.

But life seemed to have a way of making sure he didn’t get what he wanted.

Nell crash-landed on a couch in the Witches’ Lounge and took a deep breath. Sanity. Maybe.

Moira chuckled from her armchair and held out a plate. “Cookie, my dear? Looks like you’ve had a bit of a rough day.”

Nell took three-she’d earned them. “Aervyn’s doing his best imitation of a spoiled brat. I dumped him with Jamie and ran for the hills.“

“It’s hard for him.” Moira slid over a cup of tea to go along with the cookies. “Kenna’s stolen a bit of his thunder with all her magic tricks. It’s not easy being upstaged by a wee babe.”

The wee babe in question had tried to pull the moon down so she could take a closer look-and had caused enough tidal tremors to keep every weather witch in Berkeley very busy for two days. Including Aervyn, which was at least part of why he’d unleashed a class-four temper tantrum right before breakfast.

Nell sighed and picked up her tea. “I guess all kids go through this with a new sibling.” Technically Kenna was Aervyn’s cousin, but in Witch Central, that was a very loose distinction. “He threatened to send her to the moon yesterday if she wanted to see it so badly.”

It scared her silly that he might be able to do it.

“He’s had five years to be the baby.” Moira smiled. “I believe you were only a little older when you threatened to mail Jamie, Devin, and Matt to an orphanage in China.”

Nell grinned-according to family legend, she’d punched air holes in a refrigerator box and addressed it in impeccable seven-year-old spelling. It had taken her mother a week to stop laughing and at least a decade to get rid of the cardboard box.

Nell had regretted not mailing her brothers off more than once in the past thirty years, but she took Moira’s point. “Take away the magic, and he’s just having a normal reaction to a new baby.”

“Exactly.” Moira’s eyes twinkled. “And I’m glad Jamie’s stepping in to help. It seems only right, and your son needs to know he hasn’t been entirely displaced.”

It wasn’t an easy juggling act. Even with Aervyn’s first years as practice, Kenna had Jamie hopping. “She almost scorched his eyebrows yesterday.” Which seemed like justice, given that it was Jamie who had once taught two-year-old Aervyn how to make lightning. Inside. Under his covers.

Fortunately, Witch Central’s fire brigade hadn’t taken long to jump back into gear. Jamie had lots of help.

A small blur on the other end of the couch heralded Sophie’s arrival. A wail said she wasn’t alone.

Nell grinned-the babies weren’t all loving Realm transport. She reached out her arms, happy to cuddle a boy who couldn’t talk back. “Aervyn tried to smooth out the transport spell, but it doesn’t sound like it made a lot of difference.”

Sophie grinned and passed Adam over, his cries already tapering. “I don’t know what’s riling them all.”

Net-powered taxi rides weren’t proving popular with all the new little ones. Elorie’s daughter, Aislin, had nearly deafened Realm the one time they’d tried, and her brother, Lucas, had been happy to wail in sympathy.

Which wasn’t a problem for now-there were witches lined up for blocks waiting to beam to Nova Scotia to rock a baby or two. But it did have them all a little perplexed.

“When you’re my age,” Moira leaned over to peek at Adam, eyes twinkling, “you’ll learn to stop worrying about the unknowable and just enjoy the sweet boy in your arms.”

“Or the delight of empty arms.” Sophie leaned her head back against the couch. “I swear, he was up every ten minutes last night.”

Some babies slept like logs-others, not so much. Adam preferred his naps during the day and in motion. Fisher’s Cove seemed to have sprouted new rocking chairs every time Nell dropped in to visit. But all the help in the world didn’t make the sleep-deprived hours before dawn any easier.

“When you’re my age,” Moira looked sterner now, “you’ll know it’s a silly new mama who turns down all the people happy to come rock him in the night for an hour or two.”

Sophie looked discomfited-and a little mutinous. “We’re trying a couple of sleep spell variations-Mike’s been working on a new one all morning.”

“Mmm.” Moira winked at Nell. “It might be more effective to use it on yourselves.”

Sophie chuckled, eyes still closed. “Sleep deprivation is normal for new parents. I keep telling myself that.”

Nell looked down at the peaceful boy in her arms. It was hard to imagine that the cute cheeks and sweet downy hair belonged to a tyrant of the night.

However, people had said exactly the same thing about her triplets. She stroked his cheek, suddenly grateful for nights of sleep and kiddos that mostly restricted their trouble to the daylight hours.

The light in the room shimmered again, Jamie’s gently programmed warning of a new arrival. Nell looked up, expecting one of her baby-crazed daughters-

And gaped.

Sophie opened her eyes-and wondered briefly if she was tired enough to hallucinate. She finally decided, given the shocked silence in the room, that she probably hadn’t.

It wasn’t every day a two-hundred-pound stranger draped in gold lamé dropped in to Witches’ Lounge.

A piercing series of beeps blasted into the silence, jolting the sleeping babe into unhappy alertness. Nell, with the grace of long juggling experience, slid Adam into Sophie’s arms and reached for her shrilling phone.

She scanned the alert-and then, with menace in her entire stance, got to her feet between Sophie and the intruder. “Who are you, and how did you get past our firewalls?”

“Relax, honey. I bring no harm to you or that sweet boy-child.” Their visitor lowered herself into the nearest chair. “I’m Adele, seer of truths, and I come to bring you a message.”

She looked over at Adam, and then up at Sophie, empathy in her eyes. “You will worry about him, but he will find his own way. Trust what you know, and fear not what you don’t.”

It was the kind of portent that might have sent chills up Sophie’s spine-if it hadn’t been delivered by a woman dressed in enough sparkles to outfit a houseful of preteen girls. “That’s the message you came to deliver?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice-Nell needed some time to figure out how someone had hacked into Realm. And swiped a transport spell, no less.

“No, that one’s a freebie.” Adele’s eyes danced with honey-gold flecks that matched her outfit. “Suspicious witches, are you? Evan thought you might be.”

Sophie felt the bottom fall out of the room. Literally.

Forty-three years, and the loss of one five-year-old boy still trampled hearts in Fisher’s Cove. The pain of a child ripped away by the most dangerous of magics-and the least understood.

It was Moira who found her voice first. “What do you know of our Evan?” Her words shook with pain.

“I know that he sends love,” said Adele softly. “And he hurts for those of you who still mourn him.”

Sophie tried to breathe. “Evan’s dead.”

“I know that, child.” Adele reached over for a cookie, small rainbows glinting from her costume-jewelry-bedecked fingers. “I’m not one of those mediums who gets messages from the living.”

“You’ve spoken with Evan?” The quaver in Moira’s voice made her sound terrifyingly old.

Sophie looked at Nell, glad to see suspicion shooting out her pores. Witch history was full of charlatans claiming to commune with the spirits. Those who could truly do so were exceedingly rare, and generally very quiet about their talents.

Gold lamé wasn’t quiet.

“I see you have a 1-800 number. You’ll have a chat with anyone dead we’d like, for the low, low price of just $4.99 a minute.” Nell looked up from her phone, eyes full of not-so-latent threat.

Most witches would have been gibbering in terror. Adele seemed not to notice. She stood and walked over to the table, reaching for the teapot. “A woman’s got to make a living. And I’m a lot more useful to people than most of the quacks out there.”

Adam squirmed in Sophie’s arms, his eyes on the rainbows playing off Adele’s fingers. Sophie had the sudden, irrational urge to hide him away.

“You have a message for us, then? From Evan?” Moira’s eyes were flooded with pain-and hope.

Impossible hope.

And for that, Sophie was ready to dismember the gold-plated fraud in their midst. With a teacup. She handed Adam back to Nell and faced down their invader. “Don’t you dare walk in here dangling cheap hope and stirring up pain just to make a buck or two.” Power streamed down her fingers, aching to hurt. To avenge.

It shocked her to the core to feel Adele’s power heating up in response. The medium calmly held out a fire globe on her palm and floated it over to entertain Adam. “I have no need to prove myself to any of you. You want to be pissy, judgmental witches, you be my guest.” Her eyes surveyed the room. “But I promised to deliver a message to you, and a fair amount of work went into getting me here, so perhaps you’d be kind enough to hold your fire long enough to hear me out.”

“No.” Sophie stepped forward again, fury pushing against her chest. Fire magic might make Adele a witch, but it didn’t make her a medium. There hadn’t been a decently strong channeler of the spirits in three generations. “We don’t speak lies in this room. You have no right to be here.”

“She does.” Moira’s voice was soft-the kind of soft anyone in Fisher’s Cove knew as high command. She held up a hand, stopping Sophie’s protest dead in its tracks. “I know you seek only to protect me, dearest girl-but this isn’t yours to do.”

Moira turned her head to Adele, every inch the proud matriarch. “I will take your message.”

For the first time, their bedazzled guest seemed uncertain. “I was told to deliver the message to Marcus.”

Moira’s serenity didn’t slide a hairsbreadth. “You’ll not get to him. You talk to me, or you go.”

The medium stared. And finally nodded. “There is a small traveler coming. A babe. Marcus is to watch for her. Her name is Morgan, and she is to be his.”

Sophie felt parts of her brain beginning to melt. “Someone’s trying to give Marcus a baby?”

A grin the size of Texas flashed across Adele’s face. “Yup. Evan seemed fairly amused.” She sobered again, a touch of uncertainty sliding back into her voice. “He said the girl-child was for Marcus, and no other. A matter of life and death.”

“That makes no sense.” On all kinds of levels-Sophie knew firsthand exactly how much Marcus disliked babies.

Humor chased across the medium’s face. “Messages from the dead rarely do, girlfriend. He also said Marcus would find the missing soldier under the back steps of the church.”

And then she was gone, the alarms of Realm wailing in belated alert.

Jamie parachuted into Realm, wondering just how his life had descended into total chaos before lunch. And hoped his sister wasn’t in a mood to shoot the messenger.

Pulling open the door of the Witches Lounge didn’t deliver any reassurance on that front. Nell pounced the second he set foot inside. “What happened-how’d she get in?”

He winced. “We don’t know.”

Yeah. That answer landed like a load of bricks. Nell just glared.

Dammit. Kenna had been pulling her middle-of-the-night fireworks tricks again, and three hours was just not enough sleep. Jamie tried to kick his brain into gear before Nell melted him with another Supergirl stare. “There are no traces of hacking. Not even a whisper. The first time our system detected her is when she popped into the room.”

Nell’s scowl would have scared a lesser man. “Hijacked transport spell?”

“Nothing activated, no raid on the spell library.” That part he’d personally checked.

“Fine. We’ll check deeper.” His sister pulled out her computer, a wondrous machine covered in pink stickers and fire-engine art. “Do a trace-back on the logs. No one leaves zero fingerprints.”

Jamie risked his life and stepped in the way of the Mack truck named Nell. “We checked. Top to bottom.”

“My girls are good.” Nell’s fingers were a drumbeat of war on her keys. “But there are a few tricks they don’t know yet.”

Jamie sighed and tapped a button on his phone. Time to call in reinforcements. “It wasn’t the girls running the traces-or at least, not most of them.”

Nell’s eyes flew up in surprise as her husband materialized in the room. “Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?”

Daniel grinned. “Boring meeting. They won’t miss me much.”

Jamie was pretty sure showing a Fortune 500 company how you’d hacked their servers and made Donald Duck acting CEO wasn’t all that boring. “Thanks for the help.”

Daniel chuckled. “I remember what new-baby brain goo feels like.” He looked over at his wife. “I ran the traces. There’s nothing to find. I don’t know how your quack got in, but it wasn’t via code.”

Nell’s scowl was laced with confusion now, but it was still pretty fierce. “Someone invaded our turf, and the best hacker in the world can’t figure out how she did it?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I can tell you how.” Daniel stepped over and started rubbing his wife’s shoulders. “There are only two ways into Realm. If she didn’t code, then it must have been some hocus-pocus.”

Jamie snorted. Someone had been spending too much time with Lauren, their resident witch skeptic.

“Adele isn’t a Net witch.” Nell’s grin wasn’t meant to be comforting. “I scanned her when she started pushing fire globes around. She’s a weak fire witch-no Net power.”

“Does your scan read spirit channeling?” Moira, silent until now, spoke quietly from the couch.

It was an unusual sight for Jamie to see his sister squirm. “No. But she charges people by the minute. Probably uses the fire globes for cheap parlor tricks to keep them paying.”

“She wouldn’t be the first witch to use smoke and mirrors to hide her true magic.” Moira stroked Adam’s head. “And she got in here. That tells us something, even if you don’t want to see it.”

Jamie stared, trying to follow the breadcrumbs.

“She comes in power. And I’m going to assume she deserves respect for it.” Moira motioned Sophie over. “Take your sweet babe, my dear. I have a message to deliver.”

There was dead silence as she poofed out of the lounge, witch matriarch on a mission.

Jamie tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened. Realm had the best firewalls code and magic could procure. And they’d been breached by a woman who worked for $4.99 a minute.

A woman who hadn’t taken much longer than that to breach the defenses of the toughest old witch he knew-Moira was nobody’s biddable messenger.

An odd sound escaped from the couch. Jamie looked over at Sophie, who was quietly giggling into her son’s hair. She looked up, waving her hand in apology. “Sorry. I know we have some serious issues here, but oh, to be a fly on the wall of the conversation she’s about to have.”

Jamie blinked and tried to backtrack. In all the mad code checking, he’d mostly tuned out the audio feed from the room. Something about a baby. Or a soldier. But mostly stuff about Marcus’s dead brother.

Daniel, who never missed anything, started to chuckle. “A baby in a basket, headed Marcus’s direction.”

A grin slowly bloomed on Nell’s face. “A girl baby.”

Jamie tried to imagine. And really, really wished he wasn’t too old for a good eavesdropping spell.