by Debora Geary
“She’s a girl.” Aervyn frowned, his mind one big pout. “I don’t want to play with any more girls today.” He stomped two very annoyed feet. “I want to stay right here with you and be grumpy.”
Uh, oh. Marcus didn’t feel equipped to handle girl trouble. “We’re not having very much fun here, I’m afraid. The Buchanan household is in dire need of clean clothes, and no faeries have shown up to help us out.”
“You don’t need faeries.” Aervyn’s eyes brightened again. “I can help. I’m getting pretty good at laundry. I can fold and everything.”
Marcus sighed. He was an embarrassment to witch recluses everywhere—even the threat of stinky laundry didn’t chase off visitors anymore. “Surely there’s some other way you’d like to spend your afternoon.”
“No.” The answer was simple and accompanied with a heart-melting grin. “I like being with you. Can I stay?”
Even curmudgeon defenses could be breached. Marcus pointed at a pile of towels and rubbed the head of the small boy with the dark-haired version of his brother’s face. “See if you can turn those into something resembling a folded pile.”
Aervyn surveyed towel mountain, momentarily subdued. And then turned, a disturbing glint in his eye. “Can I use magic?”
There was no folding spell worth the energy—Marcus had tried. “Some things are better done the old-fashioned way, my boy.”
“Nuh, uh.” His self-appointed helper activated something that looked suspiciously like fire power. “I helped Elsie make this spell for keeping Nat’s towels warm so that all the yoga people can have a happy moment.” He smiled, the perfect picture of summer innocence. “I can make you happy towels, too. I bet Morgan would like hers all cozy and warm.”
Marcus, lost somewhere back at “yoga people,” tried to catch up. “You built a permanent warming spell?”
“Sort of.” Aervyn wrinkled his nose. “It lasts a bunch of weeks, but the towels get wet, and it makes the spell go wonky after a while.”
Water was anathema to fire spells—if the boy could make one last more than a single wetting, it was an impressive bit of magic. “How do you stop the power leaching?”
“I use Mama’s air-weaving-loop trick.” Aervyn looked up from his studious efforts to transform a navy-blue towel into the Creature from the Black Lagoon. “Fire will do that too, if you talk to it nicely.”
Aervyn had fire-talking skills no one else on the planet could duplicate, but another detail tickled Marcus’s memory. “Wait, you said you helped Elsie do this spell?” Witch Central’s newest trapeze flyer wasn’t a particularly strong fire witch.
“Mmm, hmmm.” Aervyn poked at a piece of his towel sculpture that apparently wasn’t conforming to expectations. “We practiced really hard. She can’t do as many loops, so it wears off faster, but that’s okay. She said she likes going back to visit Nat and make the towels warm again.”
Marcus couldn’t shake the ridiculous feeling that this might be one of Daniel’s strange dots. “Can you show me how it works?”
“‘Kay.” Aervyn patted his monster in satisfaction and reached for another towel. “It’s easier before you fold the towel. The loops don’t get so tangly that way.”
Given superboy’s idea of “folded,” that wasn’t hard to imagine. Marcus closed his eyes, following the quickly dancing power lines of a spell in progress. It did look very much like Nell’s woven-air spell—and he remembered all too well how much it had irked his fourteen-year-old self when tiny Nell Sullivan had created it. Six-year-old spellcasters weren’t supposed to devise tricks that took a month of hard and very secret work to replicate.
Replicating her son’s work wasn’t an option—Marcus wasn’t a fire witch.
But it was a heck of a spell, and Morgan would hopefully appreciate her nice, warm towels. Marcus reached out a hand to touch. Heck, he’d be darned appreciative—the cottage’s one bathroom ran to the fairly rustic. “Very nice—can you do a few more?” Babies used up towels at an astonishing rate.
Aervyn grinned and waved his fingers in the direction of towel mountain.
Marcus didn’t bother to ask. He was quite sure he was now the proud owner of a very large supply of self-heating towels.
That kind of magic deserved a reward. “Come on upstairs, my friend. I’m pretty sure someone has filled my cookie jar.” He was capable of filling it himself, but a man with a small baby didn’t turn down a steady supply of anything with calories.
Aervyn grinned—and vanished. Marcus looked over at Morgan and rolled his eyes. “I guess he’ll be getting the first cookie.” He reached to free her from her bouncy chair—
And felt the strange dots connect.
He took the stairs two at a time. Cookies would have to wait—he needed one more spell first.
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 u
p—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 slin
g—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?”
