by Debora Geary
“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.
Chapter 2
Marcus tried to find any vestiges of patience that an afternoon on the boat with Sean hadn’t already obliterated.
Without success.
“You have a what kind of message for me?”
Aunt Moira pursed her lips. She didn’t approve of his general grumpiness. “We got an unusual visitor in the Witches’ Lounge today. She brought a message for you, from the spirits.”
It was a particularly bad day when even the dead wouldn’t leave him alone.
And his aunt’s mind was oddly jumpy. Marcus gave up on his vain hope that the universe would disappear in a poof of dust and lasered in on the jumpiness. “What’s going on?”
She reached for his hands, a sure sign of impending disaster. “The message is from Evan.”
Evan. One word, and oxygen vanished from the world.
Marcus fought for the right to breathe, just as he had every day of the last forty-three years. “Evan is dead.”
“I know, dear boy.” Tears threatened to spill over in Moira’s eyes. “But a special few can hear the words of those gone from us.”
You didn’t grow up in Aunt Moira’s world without at least some respect for the more mystical magics. Marcus tried to keep his gruffness in check. “I wasn’t aware that you knew any mediums.”
“I don’t.” She shook her head slowly. “She was a stranger, sent to deliver a message.”
From Evan. Marcus had spent most of his life trying to reach across the veil that kept his twin just beyond his reach. That a stranger had done it drove him to fury and guilt in less than a breath.
And then he breathed one more time, and reason kicked in. “A stranger showed up in Realm with a message from the dead? And you believe her?” He reached for Moira’s mind. Politely—she’d always been hell on poor witch manners.
“Go ahead and look, my boy.” Her voice was pure Irish primness. “And then remember that appearances can be deceiving.”
Marcus looked. And then scrambled to clean up the brain melt caused by all the glitter and glitz. “That’s your visitor?”
“You’re a fine one to judge.” Moira sniffed and reached to put his kettle on the stove. “You dress like some ruffian my aunt Martha would have chased out of her kitchen with a broom.”
It had suited an afternoon on the boat, but Marcus knew better than to defend the simple black he’d worn for years. “And how would the legendary Martha have felt about your gold-spangled stranger?”
Point scored—his aunt’s cheeks glowed pink. “She was never one to ignore magic, whatever its outward countenance.”
All Irish common sense went out the window when magic was involved. Marcus scowled and pulled out some carrot sticks—normally they were pretty effective witch repellant.
Moira only raised an eyebrow. “Out of cookies, are you?”
No, but he needed the rest of his stash to chase away small visitors. Most happily departed with a cookie in hand. “Carrots are good for you. They improve your eyesight.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Marcus Grimald Buchanan.”
Marcus knew that tone. It was generally followed by long hours of cauldron scrubbing. There wasn’t a witch in Fisher’s Cove dumb enough to argue with that voice.
His aunt stared him down, Irish warrior woman in full throttle. “I’ve been reading people for far longer than you’ve been ignoring them. Do you think I’d have carried you a message from some charlatan?”
It had never come up. He stayed silent. Talking only gave people reason to stay.
Her eyes saddened, and she reached out to touch his cheek. “I’ve not have caused you that kind of pain, my dear sweet boy. Not ever.”
Dammit. Moira in high dudgeon he could perhaps repel. The aunt who had rocked him for hours, saying nothing, for days after Evan had died?
Even he wasn’t that crusty.
He pulled her hand down from his cheek, giving it a quick squeeze before locking down his armor. “What was the message?”
“There’s a baby coming. A wee girl by the name of Morgan.” Not by an eyelash did Moira betray her unease, but he could feel it stirring in her mind. “She’s to be yours.”
Marcus stared. And then felt the most unusual sensation. Laughter, bubbling all the way up from his toes. “Someone escaped from Las Vegas to tell you I’m going to be a father?” Clearly an object lesson on trusting his first instincts—nothing that glittery could possibly be real. “I can assure you, there are no babies out there with Marcus Buchanan genes.” He wasn’t entirely a herm
it, but his recent life in Fisher’s Cove hadn’t exactly lent itself to clandestine encounters.
He got up to deal with the whistling kettle, wishing the whole day to hell. “Any other messages from beyond?”
“The dead don’t always speak clearly.” Moira, not taking the hint, reached into the cupboard for his cookie tin. “And there was one more bit about a missing soldier and church steps.”
The words hammered into his lungs. Marcus bent over, clutching the counter, vaguely aware that the dropped kettle had smashed a teacup to smithereens. Pink and green shards floated in front of his eyes, a terrifying gray haze sliding in to enfold his brain. The mists had come for Evan. Now they were coming for him.
And the part of him that would have been glad to go vanished in an onslaught of fear.
~ ~ ~
He was coming round. Sophie eased out of her healing trance slightly—Marcus was a strong mind witch, and he wouldn’t appreciate the invasion once he was conscious enough to feel it.
She looked over at six-year-old Lizzie, competently handling healer’s assistant duties. “Nice job on the monitoring there, sweetheart. What did you notice?” All moments were teaching ones, even when a perfectly healthy adult had collapsed while drinking tea with Aunt Moira.
Lizzie frowned. “It’s like Gran, but different.”
That was interesting. Lizzie had served countless hours as nursemaid when Moira was recovering from her stroke. “What do you mean? Different how?” One of the healer trainee’s more difficult tasks was learning to put words to things vaguely felt in scans.
Lizzie’s face screwed up in thought. “Well, the hurt is in his head, just like Gran’s, but there’s nothing really there. It doesn’t start anywhere—it’s just kind of all over. With Gran, we healed the hurt spot, and she got a lot better.” She looked down at Marcus, who was stirring now. “We can’t heal his whole head—it’s too big and grumpy.”
Sophie hid a grin—truer words were never spoken. “Sometimes when we aren’t sure what happened, it’s best to ask the patient.” She directed a light flow of energy into the healing trance. Time for Marcus to wake up and face the music. The fairly limited music—they’d cleared the room.
Some patients appreciated waking up to a room full of love. Marcus was not one of those patients.
When his eyes finally opened, the pain in them nearly knocked Sophie over. And then it eased—locked behind the impenetrable wall he always wore like armor. She felt the healing trance disconnect, lopped off by the strong mental will at the other end.
Marcus growled, the kind of hungry-bear sound that would have had most six-year-olds running for the door. Fortunately, Lizzie was made of sterner stuff. She patted his cheek and gave him a glare that would have done Moira proud. “Lie still while the blood finds your head or you’ll just end up lying on the floor again, and Uncle Aaron says you were heavy enough to carry the first time.”
Bright spots of red popped up on Marcus’s cheeks. His eyes zinged to Sophie’s. “What happened?”
Some things weren’t meant for little ears, even ones preparing for important responsibilities. Sophie put a hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. “Go send Gran in, lovey—and then if you could make up some of my chamomile tea, that would be helpful.” She leaned in and whispered, knowing it would take a good bribe to separate Lizzie and her newest patient. “You can doctor it up with anything you’d like from the bottom shelf of my herbals.”
She grinned as fast feet flew out the bedroom door. The most potent remedies were well out of Lizzie’s reach—but plenty of lovely and vile stuff inhabited the bottom shelf. Good practice for a budding healer—and an excellent threat if Marcus didn’t prove cooperative.
A good healer needed to be skilled with both carrots and sticks.
She looked back over at Marcus, who glared at her with well-deserved suspicion, and smiled. “I suggest you recover quickly.”
He snorted. “That would be easier done if I knew what the hell happened.”
Moira slid in the door, showing none of the hand-wringing fear she’d been wearing like a cloak when Sophie first arrived. She sat in the chair beside the bed, never taking eyes off her nephew. “It seems the medium brought you two messages—one I understood, and one I didn’t.”
Sophie felt the terror raking Marcus again—and wondered what on earth had just crashed into Fisher’s Cove.
~ ~ ~
Moira watched her nephew, the scar tissue in her heart aching at the haunted fear in his eyes. They’d never truly been able to reach the devastated five-year-old boy who had watched his brother vanish into the eternal mists.
She remembered when they’d found him standing on the cliff’s edge just outside the village, screaming Evan’s name into the wind and holding more power in his hands than most adult witches used in a lifetime.
It had taken months to heal his seared magical channels. His heart, they’d never been able to touch. They’d lost Evan to the awful power of astral travel—and she often thought his twin’s heart had gone with him.
Just as she’d done for more than forty years, she reached out with love. And prayed that one day it wouldn’t be turned away. “Tell us what happened.”
His scowl wouldn’t have scared a newborn mouse. “You delivered a message of nonsense from someone dressed like Lizzie last Hallow’s Eve.”
Lizzie had been a green caterpillar last Halloween. Moira sighed. Every battle had its time and place. “Nonsense wouldn’t have landed you unconscious on the floor or broken one of my favorite teacups.”
“Spew enough garbage and something’s bound to be true.” Marcus waved his hand in weak dismissal. “It reminded me of something, that’s all. If someone will bring me the teacup’s remains, I’ll see that it’s repaired.”
Idiot. Moira looked at Sophie—it was always good to check in with the healer before you hammered her patient.
Sophie nodded. Hammer away.
“You great, clodding imbecile of a man.” Moira let her Irish free. Not that it ever managed to dent Marcus’s hard skull, but it would make her feel better—he had scared her silly crashing to the floor like that. “I’m neither fool nor patsy, and you’ll be telling me what you know about soldiers and church steps or I’ll be putting that frying pan of yours to another purpose.” It was a heavy cast-iron one—she’d added it to his kitchen herself.
It was a good and proper rant—the kind that put snap back in her nephew’s eyes and color in his cheeks. “I’m not a small boy anymore. I’ve a right to the privacy of my own head, and I’ll ask you to leave now and take this noisy gaggle of witches with you.” Marcus stared pointedly out the window.
He’d always been able to punish with silence. Moira felt the scars rip anew—and fought against the tears. They wouldn’t help her now. Or him.
It shocked her to the core when Sophie reached out, healing power turned on full force, and drilled an angry palm into Marcus’s chest. “Is this the crap everyone’s been taking from you all these years?” Electricity snapped in Sophie’s eyes and ran straight out her fingers. “You take love when you want, and send it to hell the rest of the time?”
Marcus fought, sheet white, against the power streaming from her hands. Moira watched in horrified awe as the most talented healer she knew walked perilously close to an unforgivable line.
And finally stopped. Sophie sagged in her chair, energy drained from her hands. “She loves you, you old fart, and so do most of that noisy gaggle out there.” She pulled herself up to standing, shades of the old woman she would one day become. “I don’t really have any idea why. It would be more pleasant to love a field of thistles most of the time.”
Sophie’s voice carried a sadness Moira had never heard—one that could only have come from touching a broken heart deeply. Healing always came at a price.
Marcus only stared, cheeks as white as those of his healer.
On legs shaking like reeds in the wind, Sophie headed for the door. “Tell her about the soldier. Or I
will.”
“You read my mind?” Marcus’s rasp sliced at the air in the room.
“No.” Sophie shook her head, clinging to the doorjamb for support. “I read your heart.”
~ ~ ~
What had the witch done to him? Marcus leaned back against the pillows, feeling his guts still spilling through the hole Sophie had punched in his heart.
And tried to fight the memories swirling in his head.
The toy soldiers had been contraband—a black-market trade with one of the other kids in Fisher’s Cove. Mom had believed in non-violent toys for her boys. Dad had laughed and called her “his hippie witch.” Evan and Marcus had just learned to hide their precious soldiers carefully and well.
Under the back steps of the village church.
He looked over at his aunt, watching him, her eyes full of sympathy and demand. They’d always been such, even when he’d been a fractured little boy carrying the guilt of the universe on his shoulders.
She huffed out a sigh and reached for her tea. “When you were little, the threat of cauldron scrubbing often got you to talk.”
It had. He’d also become the youngest witch ever to master a copper-burnishing spell. “Threats don’t carry much weight with me anymore.”
“Mmm.” Moira wrapped her hands more comfortably around her cup. “So, should I be telling the village elders there’s a soldier buried under the church?”
Amusement slapped oddly against Marcus’s ribs. Evan would have loved a mystery and a dead body, and the chance to ruffle the calm waters of Fisher’s Cove. “We had a set of six toy soldiers. After Evan—“ He stopped, all traces of humor fleeing. “I could only find five.”
And dammit, he’d searched high and low under those church steps.
“Ah, I remember.” Moira’s smile tinged with sadness. “Your mother let you play with them in secret, against her better judgment. They made you happy.”
Nothing had made him happy—but they’d helped him to forget for a while. Given him somewhere else to look while the light in Mom’s eyes had slowly gone out.
