by Debora Geary
“Be careful what you wish for,” said the grandmother of her heart, chuckling. “Lizzie steamed it up for us. She’s got a heavy hand with the tisanes yet.”
“Never fear.” Nell set down a tray at pool’s edge. “The chili is doctored too, but Aaron is willing to bet the inn that you can’t taste it.”
Aaron’s chili was legend in Fisher’s Cove—guaranteed to kill taste buds dead on contact.
“He’s a good man.” Moira held out her hands for the offered bowl. “His heart didn’t waver for a moment as we sat in my garden holding those babies.”
It was a good thing he hadn’t seen his wife when the circle ended. Sophie kept her eyes on her chili. One of the reasons she was so exhausted was the healing push she’d shoveled into Elorie before Aervyn had ported her to the garden.
“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 silenc
e 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.
“We need this wagon.” Aervyn’s eyes twinkled. “It’s for a disguise.”
It was his brother’s face, right down to the mischief in the making. Grief kicked Marcus in the ribs and stole his breath.
It had been a week. The intolerable sorrow wasn’t a constant companion anymore—he owed Evan that much. But it still cracked his heart too many times a day to count.
Aervyn climbed into his lap. Somehow the child always knew when he needed a small boy to hold. Marcus held tight to the warm, strong little body—and found his breath again. “Well then, we’ll see what we can do.” He looked over at Lizzie. “But the goat needs to go.”
The grin Lizzie shot at Aervyn was pure female satisfaction.
And Marcus realized, far too late, that the goat had simply been a way to get the wagon in the door.
If Lizzie ever earned her way to the top level of Realm, he was going to hang up his spellcubes and retire.
He felt laughter tickling his soul—and hoped Evan could hear.
~ ~ ~
Nell sat down on the sand beside Elorie, her stomach making loud, rumbling noises. “If you ever decide to kick Aaron to the curb, we’d be happy to let him move in with us.”
Elorie laughed. “I think he’d be claimed before he made it out of Fisher’s Cove.” She started unloading the picnic basket. “He said something about fried chicken in here.”
No wonder the basket smelled like seventeen kinds of awesome. Nell reached over to help. “Think we’re done?”
Her partner looked up and down the beach. “I want to take one more walk around all the wards after we eat. Just to be sure.”
They’d already walked the lines three times, but Nell wasn’t arguing. She took the lid off the container of chicken and nearly wept. “If Witch Central finds out about this, you guys are going to have to add a second wing to the Inn.”
“Tell that to my husband.” Elorie rolled her eyes. “He’s been talking about having regular Friday night chicken dinners. Here and in Realm.”
“He’s totally insane.” Nell grinned and contemplated crispy golden goodness. “We’ll be lining up halfway to California.”
“I think that’s the idea.” Elorie touched her pendant gently. “We all have our own ways of trying to build comfort and ritual into this new way of life. My husband believes in the power of food.”
It wasn’t just Marcus whose life had been upturned by the full-time move to Realm. The gravitational center of Fisher’s Cove had also shifted. And a small fishing community steeped in tradition was doing its very best to rebalance. Villagers entirely unused to technology were braving transport spells to come visit Marcus’s online abode, bearing pies and berries and glasses of tangy lemonade.
And several dozen coders had found themselves hijacked to the beach one night, swept up in a heady mix of Celtic fiddling, lobster, and old-fashioned hospitality.
They journeyed to Realm, the people of Fisher’s Cove—and they kept the home fires burning bright.
Nell bit into her chicken and figured they had some awfully good weapons. This was the kind of food people dreamed about. “It’s a good idea. We need to find him some sous chefs.”
“Good luck with that.” Elorie chuckled. “I think the last witch he tried to deputize was Sean. It didn’t end well.”
Maybe Aaron needed a little help selecting his apprentices. “He might try Sierra. She’s responsible, safe with a knife, and she could use some cooking lessons.” The triplets reported a lot of boxed mac and cheese during their frequent visits.
Elorie nodded slowly. “That could work, especially the cooking lessons part. I like it.”
Nell grinned. It was good to get back to the normal, garden-variety witch meddling. She reached for another drumstick. “Anything else to solve while we eat?”
“Teach Sean your air-weave-loop trick?” Quiet pride radiated from the woman responsible for witchling training in Fisher’s Cove. “He has the skills, I think, and some tightly controlled magic would be good for him.”
Nell had plenty of experience with boys of Sean’s variety. “How about I teach Kevin first?”
Elorie blinked. “You think he can do it?”
It would be a stretch—but yeah, she did. And if the last couple of weeks had taught her anything, it was that the quiet twins should never be underestimated. “Only one way to find out.”
“Ha.” Elorie dug in the basket for napkins, highly amused. “Sean will practice until his magic runs dry if his twin has a trick he can’t do.”
Nell grinned. That was the idea. “The power of a dare.” And Kevin wouldn’t have to say a word.
Elorie quieted, her mind suddenly solemn. “It’s what Evan did, isn’t it?” She sat a moment, arranging her words. “This village has spent more than forty years trying to get Marcus back into the land of the living.” Her smile was a mix of wistful and impressed. “And all it really took was a dare from his twin.”
Nell looked around the beach—and hoped she and Elorie were adding one more strand to keep the dare alive. Evan had told Marcus to go home and live.
They were trying to make the first part of that possible.
~ ~ ~
Once, long ago, he’d sat in her gardens, just as he did now. Moira watched her nephew, sitting in the castle’s cornflowers, playing with a pile of shiny rocks.
And a set of small, green toy soldiers.
Her heart caught. Oh, Evan. Her soul ached for the boy who couldn’t come to play—and rejoiced for the one who finally had. “Good afternoon. Can an old lady join you?”
Marcus only scowled a little.
She took that by way of greeting and made her way through the flowers. “I heard wee Morgan has figured out how to roll over.”
He nodded glumly. “Sad, but true. She gets in enough trouble as it is.”
She had a lot of mobile helpers. Moira reached over and rescued the flower the baby had trapped in her pudgy toes. “No eating that one, sweet girl—it’ll give you a tummy ache.”
Marcus continued to move shiny pebbles and toy soldiers aimlessly in the dirt.
She knew the stages of grief. And could find joy in him finally moving through them, even if it hurt her to the core to watch. She reached out and touched his hand. “Tell me about my boy.”
Her nephew’s body jerked. “He lives in a gray hell and he can’t leave.”
“I know.” She’d had a long and tearful cup of tea with Lauren. “And the fierce injustice of it makes me want to kick a hole in the sky.”
Marcus looked up, face full of surprise.
“Aye.” She pulled dead petals off a flower with far more force than necessary. “You’re not the only one who would like to throw a witch-sized temper tantrum. One big enough to blast light into every corner of that awful gray.”
“We can’t.” His voice carried the full weight of that helplessness. “But I really appreciate the offer.”
“It’s not for you that I’d try.” Moira waited until he looked up. “I’d give anything to hold him on my lap, just one time, and tell him that I loved him. How proud I am of the man he’s become.”
“I forgot to tell him.” Tears swam in her nephew’s eyes.
“My dear boy.” She reached for his cheek, her own tears threatening. “You most surely didn’t. The two of you never needed words.”
It comforted his bruised heart—she
could see it.
His fingers traveled again, a winding path over soldiers and shiny rocks. Pieces of home.
She picked up one of the pebbles. Evan had always loved them.
His hand wrapped around one of the soldiers. “This isn’t home,” he said softly. “It’s an amazing thing everyone’s done for us, and it’s keeping Morgan safe…”
But it wasn’t home. And while she sat in the flowers of her real garden every day, and drank tea at her kitchen table every night, he stayed here with the child he loved.
She closed her eyes and hoped Nell and Elorie were almost finished. Marcus had finally put his heart’s roots in the soil of Fisher’s Cove. It was time to nourish them.
Chapter 23
Escape.
Marcus climbed out of the car and breathed in the tang of salt, letting the glorious emptiness wash over his soul.
Alone.
Well, except for his sidekick.
After a week trapped in Realm, they had both earned this. They had every precaution dozens of witches could devise, a car filled with every baby item ever made, and thirty minutes of freedom.
Evan had told him to go home and live. Well, this was home, the happy and the sad of it.
He walked around to the back door and bent in, grinning as Morgan blew bubbles and tried to grab his hair. “Ready to play on the beach, girl-child?”
Marcus touched Elorie’s pendant around his neck. He could get them back to Realm at any whiff of trouble. As could any of the witches standing guard all over the village. And there wasn’t going to be trouble. The day was bright and sunny, Morgan had already slept like a rock, and he’d swaddled her in twenty-five warding spells.
Just half an hour. A moment to say hello—and perhaps goodbye.
Then he’d go back to the fortress that kept his girl safe.
With quick hands, he wrapped up Morgan in Aunt Moira’s latest baby blanket creation—this one swirling shades of purple. “Come on out, munchkin. And when you learn to talk, maybe you can explain to me why the women of the world insist on matching everything to your eyes.”
All she had in answer was a particularly wet raspberry.