Night's Child

by Cate Tiernan

  Her senses prickled and Morgan stood still, focusing. Moira was coming up the front walk. Quickly Morgan dried her hands on a dish towel and went to the front door. She opened it just as Moira reached the house and ushered her in fast, shutting and locking the door after her. Suddenly everything outside seemed unknown and scary, unpredictable.

  "Where were you?" she said, holding Moira's shoulders, making sure she was fine. "I've been so worried. Why didn't you call?"

  Moira's long, strawberry-blond hair was tangled by the night wind, there were roses in her cheeks, and she was rubbing her hands together and blowing on them.

  "I'm sorry, Mum," Moira said. "I completely forgot. But I was just down in Cobh. Caught the bus back." Her hazel eyes were lit with excitement, and Morgan could feel a mixture of emotions coming from her. Moira eased out of Morgan's grip and dumped her book bag onto the rocking chair. "I went out to tea after school, and I guess I lost track of time."

  "It took you three hours to have tea?" Morgan asked.

  "No," Moira said, her face losing some of its happy glow. "I was just at Margath's Faire." She casually flipped through the day's mail, pushing aside a few seed catalogs and not finding anything of interest.

  Morgan began to do a slow burn, her fear turning to irritation. "Moira, look at me." Moira did, her face stiff and impatient. "I don't want to be your jail keeper," Morgan said, trying to keep her voice soft. "But I get very worried if you're not here when I expect you to be. I know we don't live in a dangerous town, but I can't help imagining all sorts of awful things happening." She tried to smile. "It's what a mother does. I need you to call me if you're going to be late. Unless you want me to start scrying to find you. Or send a witch message."

  Moira's eyes narrowed. Clearly she didn't like the idea. Taking a different tack, Morgan thought back to her own parents being upset with her and then tried to do something different. "I need to know where you are and who you're with," she said calmly. "I need you to contact me if you're going to be late so I don't worry. I need to know when to expect you home."

  What would Colm have done? How would he have handled this? "Were you with Tess or Vita?" Morgan asked, trying to sound less accusing and more interested. "Their folks don't mind if they're late?"

  "No, I wasn't with them," Moira admitted, starting to pick at the upholstery of the rocking-chair cushion. "At least, I was at first, but then they went."

  After a moment of silence Morgan was forced to ask, "So who were you with?"

  Moira tilted her head and looked up at the small window over the sink. Her face was angular where Colm's had been rounder, but Morgan expected Moira to fill out as she got older. As it was, she'd been surprised when Moira had reached her own height last year, when she was only four-teen. Now her daughter was actually taller than she was. At least she had Colm's straight, small nose instead of hers.

  "A guy from my class."

  Light began to dawn. Despite her natural prettiness, boys seemed to find Moira intimidating. Morgan knew that Moira's friends had been dating for at least a year already. So now a boy had finally asked Moira out, and she'd gone, not wanting to blow her first chance. Morgan remembered only too well how it had felt to be a girl without a boyfriend after everyone else in class had paired up. It made one feel almost desperate, willing to listen to the first person who paid attention to her . . . like Cal. "Oh. A boy," Morgan said, careful not to make too big a show of it. "So a boy asks you to tea, and you forget the call- your-mom rule?" As an American, Morgan still said Mom, though Moira had always copied Colm and called her Mum, or Mummy, when she was little.

  "Yeah. We were just talking and hanging out, and I got so caught up. . . ." Moira sounded less combative. "Is it really almost seven?"

  "Yes. Do you have a lot of homework?"

  Moira rolled her eyes and nodded.

  "Well, sit down and get to it," said Morgan. "I'll make you some tea." She stood up and put the kettle on, lighting the burner with a match. Crossing her arms over her chest, she said,"So who's the lucky guy? Do I know him?" She tried to picture some of the boys from Moira's class.

  "Yeah, I think you do," Moira said offhandedly, pulling notebooks out of her book bag. "It was Ian Delaney, from Hewick, one town over."

  Delaney. Morgan was speechless, her mind kicking into gear. Every alarm inside her began clanging. "Ian Delaney?" she finally got out. "From Ealltuinn?"

  Moira shrugged.

  Behind her, the teakettle whistled piercingly. Morgan jumped, then turned off the fire and moved the kettle.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked Moira slowly, facing her daughter. In her mind she could picture Ian, a good- looking boy Moira's age, with clear, dark blue eyes and brown hair shot through with russet. Lilith Delaney, who was maybe ten years older than Morgan, had the same brown hair, streaked with gray, and the same dark blue eyes.

  "You know the problems Belwicket's had with Ealltuinn," Morgan said. "They abuse their powers-they don't respect magick. And Ian is their leader's son." Their leader, who very possibly left that pouch in my garden, she added inwardly. She didn't want to tell Moira that part, though, without being sure.

  Moira shrugged again, not looking at her. "I thought no one's sure about Ealltuinn," she said. "I mean, I've never seen anything about Ian that makes me think he's into dark magick or anything."

  Morgan's breath came more shallowly. When she'd been barely older than Moira, she had fallen for Cal Blaire, the good-looking son of Selene Belltower, a witch who worked dark magick. Morgan would do anything to protect Moira from making the same mistake. Lilith was no Selene, but still, if that pouch had come from her ...

  "Moira, when a coven celebrates power rather than life, when they strive to hold others down instead of uplifting themselves, when they don't live within the rhythm of the seasons but instead bend the seasons to their will, we call that'dark,'" said Morgan. "Ealltuinn does all that and more since Lilith became their high priestess."

  Moira looked uneasy, but then Colm's expression of stubbornness settled over her face, and Morgan braced herself for a long haul.

  "But Ian seems different," Moira said, sounding reasonable. "He never mentions any of that stuff. He's been in my school for two years. People like him-he's never done anything mean to anyone. I've seen him be nice to the shop cat at Margath's Faire when no one's even looking." She stopped, a faint blush coming to her cheeks. "He doesn't talk badly about anyone, and especially not about Belwicket. I've talked to him a few times, and it seems like if he was working dark magick, it would come out somehow. I would sense it. Don't you think?"

  Morgan had to bite her lips. Moira was so naive. She'd grown up in a content coven with members who all worked hard to live in harmony with each other and the world. She had never seen the things Morgan had seen, had never had to face true dark magick, had never had to fight for her life or the lives of people she loved. Morgan had-and it had all started when Cal had promised he loved her. He had really loved her power, her potential. Moira showed the same power and potential, and Ian could very well be pursuing her at his mother's command.

  But Morgan would never allow Moira to be used the way Cal and Selene had wanted to use her. Moira was her only child, Colm's daughter, all she had left of the husband she had loved.

  "Moira, I know you don't want to hear this, and you might not totally understand it right now, but I forbid you to see Ian Delaney again," Morgan said. She almost never came down hard on her daughter, but in this case she would do anything to prevent disaster. "I don't care if he has a halo glowing around his head. He's Lilith's son, and it's just too risky right now."

  Moira looked dismayed, then angry. "What?" she cried. "You can't just tell me who I can or can't see!"

  "Au contraire," Morgan said firmly. "That's exactly what I'm doing." Then her face softened a bit. "Moira-I know what it's like when you like someone or you really want someone to like you. But it's so easy to get hurt. It's so easy not to see the big picture because all you're doing
is looking into someone's eyes. But looking only into someone's eyes can blind you." "Mum, I can't live in a-a-a snow globe," Moira said. "You can't just decide everything I'm going to do without even knowing Ian or totally knowing Ealltuinn. Some things I have to decide for myself. I'm fifteen, not a little kid. I'm not being stupid about Ian-if he was evil, I'd drop him. But you have to let me find out for myself. You might be really powerful and a great healer, but you don't know everything. Do you?"

  Moira was a much better arguer than Morgan had been at that age, Morgan realized.

  "Do you, Mum? Do you know Ian? Have you talked to him or done a tath mednmo? Can you definitely say that Ian works dark magick and I should never speak to him again?"

  Morgan raised her eyebrows, choppy images from the past careening across her consciousness. Cal, seducing Morgan with his love, his kisses, his touch. How desperately she had wanted to believe him. The sincere joy of learning magick from him. Then-Cal locking Morgan into his sedmar, his secret room, and setting it on fire.

  "No," Morgan admitted. "I can't say that definitely. But I can say that life experience has shown me that it's very hard for children not to be like their parents." With sickening quickness she remembered that she was the daughter of Ciaran MacEwan. But that was different. "I think that Ealltuinn might be dark, and I think that Ian probably won't be able to help being part of it. And I don't want you to be hurt because of it. Do you understand? Can you see where I'm coming from? Do you think it's wrong for me to try to protect you? I'm not saying I want you to be alone and unhappy. I'm just saying that choosing the son of the evil leader of a rival coven is a mistake that you can avoid. Choose someone else." "Like who?" Moira cried. "They have to like me, too, you know."

  "Someone else will like you," Morgan promised. "Just leave Ian to Ealltuinn."

  "I don't want someone else," Moira said. "I want Ian. He makes me laugh. He's really smart, he thinks I'm smart. He thinks I'm amazing. It's just-real. How we feel about each other is real."

  "How can you know?" Morgan responded. "How would you know if anything he told you was real?"

  Moira's face set. She picked up her mug of tea and her book bag and walked stiffly over to the stairs. "I just do."

  Morgan watched her daughter walk upstairs, feeling as if she had lost another battle but not sure how it could have gone differently. Goddess, Ian Delaney! Anyone but Ian Delaney. Slowly Morgan lowered her head onto her arms, crossed on the tabletop. Breathe, breathe, she reminded herself. Colm, I could really use your help right now.

  It was just eerie, the similarity between what was happening now to Moira with Ian and what had happened to her so long ago with Cal. She had never told Moira about Cal and Selene- only briefly skimmed over finding out she was a witch, then studying in Scotland for a summer, then how Katrina had asked her to come to Ireland. Moira had read Colin's Books of Shadows, and some of Morgan's, but none from that tumultuous period in Morgan's life. Cal and Selene were still Morgan's secret As was Hunter. As was the fact that Morgan was Ciaran MacEwan's daughter. She'd never actually lied to Moira-but when Moira had assumed that Angus Bramson was her natural grandfather, Morgan had let her. It was so much better than telling her that her grandfather was one of the most evil witches in generations and that he had locked Morgan's birth mother, Maeve, in a barn and burned her to death.

  Likewise with Hunter. What would be the good of telling Moira that Colm wasn't the only man Morgan had loved and lost? After Hunter had drowned in the ferry accident, Morgan hardly remembered what happened-losing Hunter had snapped her soul in half. She remembered being in a hospital. Her parents had come over from America, with Mary K. They'd wanted to take her home to New York, but Katrina and Pawel had convinced them that her best healing would be done in Ireland and that it would be dangerous to move her. There followed a time when she lived in Katrina and Pawel's house, and the coven had performed one healing rite after another.

  Then Colm had asked her to marry him. Morgan had hardly been able to think, but she cared for Colm and in desperation saw it as a fresh start. Two months later she was expecting a baby and was just starting to come out of the fog.

  It had almost been a shock when it had finally sunk in that she married Colm, but the awful thing had been how grateful she'd felt for his comfort. She was terrified of being alone, afraid of what might happen while she was asleep, and with Colm she'd thought she would never be alone again. She'd struggled for years with the twin feelings of searing guilt and humbling gratitude, but as time passed and Moira grew, Morgan began to accept that this had been her life's destiny all along. She'd never been madly in love with Colm, and she felt that in some way he'd known it. But she'd always cared for him as a friend, and over the years her caring had deepened into a true and sincere love. She'd tried hard to be a good wife, and she hoped she'd made Colm happy. She hoped that before he'd died, he'd known that he had made her happy, too, in a calm, joyful way.

  She'd also found fulfillment in the rest of her life. Gifted teachers had worked with her to increase her natural healing abilities, and as Moira had gotten older and needed less attention, Morgan had begun traveling all over the world teaching others and performing healing rites. When she was home, life was peaceful and contented. Time was marked by sabbats and celebrations, the turning of the seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon. It wasn't the flash fire of passion that she'd felt with Hunter, the desperate, bone-deep joining of soul and body that they'd shared, but instead it was like the gentle crackle of a fireplace, a place to soothe and comfort. Which was fine, good, better than she could have hoped.

  And until this moment she'd never thought of her life in any other way. She loved her husband, adored her daughter, enjoyed her work. She felt embraced by her community and had made several good friends. In fact, the last sixteen years, at least until Colm's death, had been a kind of victory for Morgan. In the first year of discovering her heritage she'd undergone more pain-both physical and emotional-felt more freezing fear, had higher highs and lower lows than she could have possibly imagined a human being experiencing. She'd had her heart broken ruthlessly, had made murderous enemies, had been forced to make soul-destroying choices, choosing the greater good over the individual's life-even when that individual was her own father. And all before she was eighteen.

  So to have had sixteen years of study and practice, of having no one try to kill her and not being forced to kill anyone else, well, that had seemed like a victory, a triumph of good over evil.

  Until today, when she'd found a hex pouch in her garden and seen a vision in her window. Now she couldn't shake the feeling that not only was she at risk, but so was her daughter.

  Morgan sighed. Was she overreacting because of her past? Getting up, Morgan made sure Bixby was in and that the front door was locked-an old habit from living in America. In Wicklow many people rarely bothered to lock their doors. Then she turned off the downstairs lights and cast her senses strongly all around her house. Nothing out of the ordinary. Later, writing in her Book of Shadows in bed, she heard Moira in the bathroom. Long after the house was quiet, after Morgan sensed that Moira was sleeping and that Bixby and Finnegan had passed into cat and dog versions of dreaming, Morgan lay dry-eyed in the night, staring up at the ceiling.

  3

  Moira

  "Tell us all," Tess commanded the instant Moira walked up. Vita was eating a bag of crisps, but she nodded eagerly.

  Moira grinned. Finally she had a lad of her own for them to ask about! After the last six months it was so great to have this huge, fun thing to be happy about. "Well," she said dramatically as the three of them started to walk down High Street. "What do you want to know?"

  "Everything," Vita said. "What was said. What was done. Who kissed who."

  Feeling her face flush, Moira laughed self-consciously. Tess had called that morning to arrange to meet early, before spellcraft class, so Moira could give them a rundown of her time with Ian. Today was unusually sunny and warm, with only fat, puf
fy clouds in the sky. It was hard to believe it would be Samhain in a few weeks.

  "Well, we were there until almost six-thirty," Moira said. "I got home brutally late and Mum had forty fits."

  "Enough about Mum," said Tess. "More about Ian. Six-thirty? All at Margath's Faire?" They turned down Merchant Street, staying on the sunny side.

  "Yeah," said Moira. "We just sat there and talked and talked. I looked up and almost two hours had gone by."

  "Holding hands?" Vita pressed.

  "After a while," Moira said, feeling pleased and embarrassed at the same time. "He took my hand and told me I was amazing."

  Tess and Vita gave each other wide-eyed looks.

  "Amazing," Tess said approvingly. "Very good word. One point for Ian. What else?"

  Wrinkling her nose, Moira thought back. She remembered a lot of staring into each other's eyes. "Urn, we talked about music-he's learning the bodhran. Initiation classes-he was initiated last year but is still studying herbology. Books. Movies-he said maybe we could go see a film next week."

  "Yes!" said Vita. "Well done."

  They turned into a narrow side street called Printer's Alley. Only a bare strip of sunlight lit the very center of the slanted cobbled road. Buildings on either side rose three stories in the air, their gray stucco chipped in places and exposing stones and bricks. A few tiny shops, barely more than closets with open doors, dotted the street like colorful flowers growing out of concrete.

  "It was just really brilliant," Moira said. "He's so great- so funny. We looked around the cafe and made up life stories about everyone who sat there. I thought I was going to fall out of my chair." She didn't mention the magick they had done. It seemed private, a secret between her and Ian.