A Nomadic Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 4) (26 page)

Sophie tucked in beside her, a soothing arm around her shoulders.  “He’s finally becoming the man you’ve always believed him to be.”

“He is.”  Moira let the tears trickle down her cheeks.  She didn’t speak of what might come.  Of what
was
coming—she felt it in her bones.  “I hope it’s enough.”

Sophie looked out at the garden for a long, long time.  And then touched Moira’s hand in quiet comfort.  “It’s the flowers that bloom last that hold best against the fall frosts.”

Aye.  And this flower was finally planting himself in good, strong soil.  But in the end, the frosts almost always won.

~ ~ ~

Jamie looked over at Daniel.  “At what point do you think we’re supposed to step in and carry him home?”

Daniel grinned.  “If I’d known he’d be this happy a drunk, I’d have gotten him sloshed fifteen years ago.”

“There’s not a drop of alcohol in him.”  Moira squeezed in between them, two glasses of mint lemonade in her hands.

Jamie looked over at Marcus, leading a rousing and entirely off-key rendition of Purple People Eaters.  They’d finally found someone who sang badly with more enthusiasm than Aervyn.  And none of the several dozen people who’d crashed a quiet day in Fisher’s Cove seemed to mind.

Nor did the villagers.  Jamie was pretty sure an impromptu lobster bake was in the works.  Which was good—that way there would be someone awake to play with Kenna at 2 a.m.  Maybe he’d actually get to sleep with his wife for a change.  He spotted her happy head, dancing with the triplets while a growing crowd belted out the Purple People Eater chorus.

No one loved a spontaneous party more than Nat. 

Moira slid a glass into his hand.  “The babies are all still napping.  I checked.”

So had Jamie.  All five of them, lined up in baskets on Moira’s porch, happily sleeping through enough noise to wake the dead.  “I dropped the TV remote yesterday and it woke Kenna up.”

Daniel snorted.  “Nathan slept through all four home games of the world series.  But if a chair creaked while he slept?  Nell threatened to send me to remedial ninja training.”

If there was such a thing, he was signing up.  Jamie squeezed Moira’s shoulders and collected Daniel’s empty glass.  Time to go see if Aaron needed help feeding this crew.

He made it two steps.  And then sun-bright power flashed from Moira’s porch.

The babies.

Jamie got there first—but only because he ported.  Marcus thundered onto the porch an instant later, one blazing ball of purple fury.

One look at Morgan, and they both knew.  She had the still, terrifying translucence of a body that had just parted with its soul.

And then Jamie looked at his own daughter, and his fear went nuclear.  He dropped to his knees at her side, yanking for power and screaming. 
KENNA!

Gone.  She wasn’t there.  His sweet girl was gone.

He looked up into his wife’s eyes, their worst nightmare alive and hunting.  And clawed, one fingernail at a time, back onto the ledge of sanity. 
Marcus.  Nell.  Sophie.  Devin.  We need a circle.  NOW.

He’d named the four points.  He trusted they’d collect the witches they needed.

Aervyn charged through the crowd, Lauren on his heels. 
I can cast, Uncle Jamie.  I can do it.

It would shame Jamie for eternity that for just a split second, he considered it.  And then he bent down and cradled the boy he loved like his own son.  “Not today, superboy.  I’ll cast.  I need you to monitor, okay?  Help Lauren—it’s going to be a really big job.”

He zeroed in on Lauren with the tightest mind channel he could muster. 
If I don’t come back, you break the connection.  Don’t let him come after me.

Lauren turned sheet white.  And nodded.

Spinning around, Jamie looked for his circle.  And found them already pulling power.  Nell on fire point, eyes blazing.  She would give everything she had for his little girl. 

Sophie leading earth’s trio, her husband at her shoulder.  She’d already linked with Nell.  They’d buy him every second of warmth possible.

Devin, water witch and warrior, holding monumental power in his hands.  Jamie blinked at the sheer volume—and then saw Sierra and Lizzie behind him.

Praying, Jamie turned to the last element.  It was air that would power the journey he had to take—and Marcus was the strongest air witch of their generation.

If he could function.

Jamie met the eyes of the man who would hold his life in his hands—and looked deep.  Beyond the horror, beyond the desperate, screaming fear.

And found what he needed.  Solid rock.  Reaching out, he touched Nat’s mind with wordless love—and then stretched his arms to the sky.

“Earth, water, fire, and air,

The need is great and so we dare

to ask for speed of thought and flight

to find the two now lost to sight.

One of me, and four times three

As we will, so mote it be.”

Jamie felt power explode in his hands.  Damn.  They had some seriously hyped-up witches. 
Astral plane, people, not the moon.

The power dimmed.  Some.

Fine.  Soon enough, he’d need it all. 

Carefully, ignoring the queasy feeling in his belly, Jamie leaned into the column of power at his back.  His own magic spasmed in his veins, rejecting the invasion.  Jamie leaned harder, ruthless, and felt his consciousness splitting off, tethered only by the circle’s magic.  One quiver and he’d be the astral plane’s next permanent resident.

Him and two very unhappy, hungry girls.

A wisp of humor floated through the torrent of magic.  Someone with the bravery to laugh.  Jamie grabbed it with both magical hands—laughter was life!—and rode it up into the sky.  Seeking.  Reaching.

Gray clouded all his senses.  Jamie trusted thirty years of training and ignored it.

Kenna!

For now, he had to trust the two would be together.  If they weren’t, he’d cross that terrifying bridge when it came.  His magic would seek a lot more easily for the child of his blood.

Slowly, not wanting to shake the circle, he separated the power streams at his back.  Leaning hard on Nell and her trio, he sent out a web of fire power, like seeking like.  Kenna’s strongest magic was fire—and the deeper they got into the astral world, the less useful it would be.

Next he reached to Devin.  Blood of Kenna’s blood—and there was no water anywhere he couldn’t bond with.  Shedding the innate distrust of a fire witch for anything liquid, Jamie slid into the mists, using his brother’s strength to feed flowing currents of power.

KENNA!

He was getting cold.  Relentlessly, he tugged on the earth trio’s flow and felt the healing gift packaged with it.  His circle was getting creative—and his feet were no longer going numb.

The webs of water and air had stretched as far as magic could take them.  Time to mindseek.  Jamie shaped a channel and discovered that his mind talents were far less clunky than usual.  Marcus.  Hot damn.

The gray was thicker now, a choking fog that seemed to swallow magic whole. 

Silently, Jamie pushed with his mind—and thanks to his wife, with his heart. 
Kenna, lovey—show me where you are.  It’s time to go home, baby girl.
 He pictured her in his mind—whole, safe, and holding tight to a tiny girl with purple eyes that matched her daddy’s shirt.  And then laughed as the obvious hit.  This was a world of cold, wet dark—his little fire witch would be mad as hell.

Surer now, he reached into the eternal gray, wishing a temper tantrum into his arms.

A whisper at first—so faint he wasn’t sure it was real.

And then again.

Hope blasting, he swam through the fog.  Nothing.  Silence.  Frantic now, he yanked at the circle’s power flows.  Not fire—they were in too deep for that.  He could feel Devin’s fierceness, swimming in the mist beside him.

Kenna!

Not Kenna.  Morgan.
  The words were feather-dust light, pushed into the sky through a mountain of power.

Jamie froze, in agony—and then he understood.  It was Morgan who had carried them away.  It was her trail he needed to find.

The father in him screamed in protest, but the witch understood.

MORGAN!

The cold was beginning to suck at him.  He dared not imagine what it did to small girls.  Purple eyes.  He looked for purple eyes.

And this time, the whisper of sound came with more power.  Jamie swam forward, struggling against the enervating gray cold—and then felt a tornado hit his back.  Marcus.

Jamie clung to the funnel with everything he had—and trusted a father’s love.

It was Morgan’s eyes he saw first, blazing through the mists.  And then his furious daughter, throwing spluttering bolts of fire at the cold. 

Jamie wrapped them both tight in his arms—and waited for the love of twelve to reel them home.

~ ~ ~

Marcus wrapped his hands around the tall green glass and chugged, immune to its taste by now.

It was his third.

His abused power channels still hurt, but it no longer felt like an army of fire ants trying to eat their way out. One last gulp and he set the glass back into the hands of the witch who had delivered it.  “I think that’s enough.”

“I should hope so,” said Moira briskly, patting the pillow behind his head.  “The last time I had to dose you three times was when you got into Uncle Billy’s whiskey stash.”

He was pretty sure her intent back then had been punishment, not cure.  Marcus looked down at the small girl curled up in his lap like a sleeping kitten.  “I had to do it.”

“Uncle Billy surely didn’t think so.”

He watched her shuffle things around on a tray, making room for a glass that would have fit in the first place.  “In the circle.  Jamie was running out of bandwidth.  I had to give him a push.”

“Did I say any different?”  She reached in behind him again, poking and squishing, her forehead inches from his.  And for just a fraction of a moment, his battered mental powers functioned, and he felt her soul shaking.

He should have known.  Her Irish always thickened in sorrow and fear.  He stopped her hands as gently as he could.  “Enough with the infernal pillow plumping.  I’m fine.”  He glanced down at Morgan.  “We both are.”

Her breath caught.

He ignored it.  The rock of his life was terrified—and he needed her brave.  “We’re in a castle guarded by the world’s best coding team and half the witches of Realm.”  He touched her cheek.  “And if Aervyn’s been let loose again, probably a couple of alligators, too.”

He could feel her mighty heart finding its footing as he spoke.

So he kept talking.  Babbling.  “Ginia says Aaron’s got the kitchen under control, the garden’s a mess, and Kenna’s learning to crawl out on the ramparts.”

Moira sniffled, brushing invisible crumbs off his chest.  “She’s a fierce wee thing, that one.  Didn’t even stop for a nap first.” 

He dug for his best gruff bachelor voice.  “She’ll end up alligator bait if she’s not careful.”

“Alligators don’t eat witches.”  The light in her eyes was dim—but it was there.  “Aervyn promised me so.”

He could feel the boost from the green goo fading.  “We can always dangle him over the moat and see what happens.”

“His toes are pretty stinky.”  Moira laid a hand on his forehead, eyes twinkling properly now.  “And Nell would dangle you next.”

She would.  He could feel his eyes getting heavy.  Blasted healers and their sleep spells.  He had things to do.

“Tomorrow,” said Moira softly.  “We’ll watch over you both tonight.”

He smiled as he faded into haze.  His rock was back.

Chapter 19

Marcus stood on the high tower walk of Morgan’s castle, missing his remote mountain keep.  He craved its solitude far less now, but he’d always slept well there.  His kingdom for a decent night’s sleep.

Morgan had woken at 2 a.m. on the dot, entirely recovered from her ordeal and ready to play.

He needed to reprogram the castle guards.  They were rather surly in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, morning had brought a trio of cheery babysitters and a bacon-biscuit breakfast.  He munched on the biscuit and watched the girls, playing with Morgan on the ramparts below.

As prisons went, it was a happy one.

“You’re a hard man to track down.”

Only fancy footwork and a damn fast levitation spell kept him from spilling his very real brains on the virtual rocks below.  “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

His visitor smiled.  “You know who I am, do you?”

There couldn’t be two gold-spangled mediums capable of waltzing into Realm whenever they pleased.  “Adele Underwood, Las Vegas fraud.”

Her eyes sparked with irritation.  “I came to deliver a message.  You keep being rude to me and I’ll walk back the way I came.”

“Right.”  Marcus turned away, looking over the lands that would be his home for the foreseeable future.  Dust bunnies would have to wait until Morgan’s power stabilized.  “Let me guess.  This one can be mine for the low price of $4.99 a minute.”