Night's Child

by Cate Tiernan

  Finnegan flopped next to her, whining, pressing his soft brown, white, and black side against her, licking her face. Moira burst into sobs, putting her arms around him, holding him to her. He licked her face and lay next to her, and she cried and cried against him, the way she had when she was a little girl. She wished she were dead. She couldn't bear the fact that her dad had known all along she wasn't really his, yet he'd loved her so much anyway. That seemed so sad and pathetic and unselfish that she simply couldn't stand it.

  "Oh, Finn, Finn," she sobbed against him. "It hurts too much."

  Her school clothes were sodden and muddied, her hair was wet, her face was tearstained and mud-streaked. But she lay against Finnegan and sobbed, trying to let out the emotional pain that threatened to dislodge her soul from her body.

  She didn't know how long she lay there, but gradually exhaustion overcame her and her sobs slowed, then quieted. She felt completely spent, utterly drained of emotion. Blinking, she realized vaguely that it was quite dark outside. Finnegan was resting by her side, taking the occasional gentle lick of her face, as if promising to stay as long as she needed him. Her chest hurt, and the ground was hard, and she was cold, freezing, and soaked through. But she couldn't get up, couldn't move, had no idea where she was. She would just lie here forever, she decided, almost dreamily. She would never move again.

  "There you are," said a gentle voice, and Moira jerked in surprise. Finnegan hadn't growled, but he sat up alertly, his eyes locked on ... Ian.

  Moira felt frozen, stiff. Ian dropped lightly to sit next to her, seeming to neither notice nor care that he was going to ruin his clothes. Moira's first insane thought was that she probably looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. Then she thought fiercely, So what? My whole life just got ripped away from me-I don't care what I look like!

  Slowly Ian put out his hand and stroked the light hair away from her chilled, wet face. "I felt you get upset this afternoon while I was being tutored," he said. "It was strange, like you were sending waves of upsetness. Then later I was putting up shelves in my mom's pantry-it's a disaster in there-and I pictured you running over the grass, with the sea in the background. It's taken me a while to find you."

  "Thanks," Moira said, her voice small and broken. She struggled to sit up and felt lan's arm around her shoulders.

  "Brought a tissue," Ian said with a grin, handing it to her. Moira wiped her eyes and nose, knowing it was just a drop in the bucket in terms of what she needed. She crumpled the tissue and put it in her jacket pocket, feeling cold and miserable and self-conscious. What time was it? She glanced at the sky, but there was no moon. What in the world was she supposed to say?

  Gently Ian pulled her against him so that her face was on his shoulder, his arms around her back. He stroked her hair and let her cry, and she felt the warmth of his body and his arms surrounding her.

  14

  Morgan

  The second Moira ran out the door, Morgan jumped up after her, but Sky grabbed her arm, hard.

  "Let her go," she said. "She needs some space. Finnegan's with her-and we can keep an eye on her in other ways, without just chasing her farther away."

  Morgan hated using her powers to spy on her daughter, but she realized Sky was right-it was the only way to keep Moira safe right now without upsetting her even more. Through the window Morgan watched in despair as her daughter raced through the garden gate and flew up the road, her long straight hair whipping in back of her.

  She felt numb. No, that wasn't true. It was just that the huge, varied emotions she was feeling were working to cancel each other out. Anger, disbelief, despair, sadness, regret. And all the while the hope that Hunter was really alive was in there, too, mixed in with everything else.

  Katrina got heavily to her feet. "I'll be going, lass," she said, her voice subdued. "Now, looking back, I don't know how I could have thought this wouldn't rebound on us all like a hand grenade."

  "How could you not have thought that?" Morgan exploded. "How could you have possibly thought this was a good thing for anybody? You wanted me for Belwicket? So you lied to me about my child for sixteen years? It's crazy! Not even about Moira . . . but about Colm, too. I believed he was her father. That had a huge impact on our marriage, our lives. Every time I looked at Moira, I saw Colm's daughter. Now you tell me all those thoughts were a lie. What were you thinking?"

  The older woman's shoulders bowed, and she sighed. "We didn't know the side effects. I thought it was for the best. You were dying. I'm sorry." She sounded beaten and sad, and Morgan couldn't help feeling an instinctive sympathy for the woman she'd loved like a second mother for years now. But nothing gave Katrina the right to do what she'd done.

  "You did this to my life, Colm's life, Moira's life, so your coven would be strong," Morgan said. "How dare you? How dare you?" Morgan was shaking-she couldn't remember the last time she had been so angry.

  "Belwicket is more than that, Morgan," Katrina said, pleading with her to understand. "It's our lives, the lives of our ancestors. It's our power. It's our heritage, yours and mine. And please understand, I didn't do it just for the coven. I did it out of love, too-for you and for your unborn child. You have to know that."

  "Just leave, please," Morgan said quietly. She had no way to make sense of any of this at the moment, but she couldn't have even if she'd wanted to-she had something far more important to deal with.

  "If that's what you want," Katrina said. "But please remember how much I love you." There were tears on her face as she closed the door behind her.

  After Katrina left, Morgan paced the room nervously, emotions threatening to explode out of her like fireworks. She couldn't believe it-it was just too big, too huge, too amazing. On top of everything else, today she'd found out that her only child was Hunter's daughter.

  "Oh, Goddess," she cried, turning to Sky. "Hunter's daughter!" She threw herself into Sky's arms and finally allowed herself to cry.

  "Moira is Hunter's daughter," Sky said, repeating the words as if they were a miracle.

  "I had Hunter's daughter," Morgan said, pulling back to look at Sky. "Hunter and I had a child." And then she thought of her marriage, of Colm, who had been so good, so accepting, and she felt terrible and furious all over again.

  "They lied to me!" she said, letting go of Sky and starting to pace again. "More than that! They spelled me! Spelled me! All this time I've been living a lie! Every day of my life Colm knew our life was a lie, and he said nothing! He and Katrina and Pawel-I thought they were my family. They were deceiving me! For almost sixteen years-I can't believe it."

  Sky nodded soberly.

  "I still don't understand how it's even possible," Morgan said. "Hunter and I ... we did all the appropriate spells. It's why I never even considered Moira could be his."

  Sky gave a helpless shrug. "I don't know," she said.

  "Well, right now I just need to be with my daughter. Maybe I should send her a witch message," Morgan said, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve. Hunter's daughter. Moira was Hunter's daughter. She glanced outside, hoping to see Moira running back to the house. Now that she knew, she was dying to look at Moira carefully, to see where she left off and Hunter began. Oh, Colm. Goddess, Colm, what were you thinking? How could you do this to me? I trusted you.

  "I think she needs time alone," Sky said, always straightforward. "I don't feel her in the area. If she's not back in ten more minutes, we'll scry and go find her."

  "She probably went to lan's house," Morgan said, frowning with this fresh worry. "Like last night."

  "Maybe not. She might just want to be alone."

  "They did us such an injustice," said Morgan, and Sky nodded. "It's incredibly sad that Colm died, leaving no children."

  "Moira was his daughter," Sky said gently. "She mourns him like a daughter. You know from your own experience about the bonds between parents and adoptive children."

  "Yes, I do." Morgan thought of the parents who'd raised her, whom she loved so much. "But I
also know there can be a special bond between blood relatives. In a way, it's like Moira has lost two fathers."

  She sat down in Colm's leather chair. What would Hunter have been like as a father? Her heart constricted painfully, imagining how it might have been. His face, surprised at Moira's strong, tiny grip. Hunter changing a diaper with the same intense concentration with which he did everything else. Baby Moira sleeping between her and Hunter in bed. More tears rolled down her cheeks. How precious those moments would have been.

  Sky crossed the room and sank down on the couch, leaning back. "He would have loved to have had a daughter," she said, echoing Morgan's thoughts.

  Morgan nodded, crying silently. After a few minutes she got up and washed her face and drank some water. "I'm going to scry for her," she told Sky. "I just need to know she's okay."

  Then she lit the candle on the table and sat down, losing herself instantly to the peace of meditation. Scrying, she saw Moira, in the dark, sitting on wet grass. Ian was with her. He had his arm around her, and her head was resting on his shoulder. Finnegan lay nearby, panting and "relaxed. She saw Moira nod, then both she and Ian straightened up slightly, awareness coming over them. They'd felt her scrying. Morgan sent a quick witch message to Moira, and Moira replied-curtly-that she was fine. Morgan warned that if she didn't return soon, she would have to come find her, then pulled out of the image and blew out the candle.

  "Moira's okay," she said. "She and Ian are in a field somewhere-maybe up on the headland, by the sea. But she'll be on her way home now, I believe."

  "Good," said Sky.

  "I just wish . . . ," Morgan began hesitantly, then decided to go on. "I just wish I could see now who Ian is underneath. Maybe he's Cal all over again. Maybe he's not. I can't let him hurt my daughter."

  "We could pin him down and do a tath meanma."

  "And have the New Charter all over us? No thanks. But it is tempting."

  "Well, then, listen-there is something else we could do while we're waiting for Moira."

  Morgan looked at her, knowing exactly what Sky meant.

  "You said you scried and you saw Hunter. Tell me about that again."

  Morgan did, describing what he'd looked like, how he hadn't appeared youthful, as he had in all her previous dreams over the years, but instead had aged. Not only aged, but had gone through some shocking physical changes. When she finished, Sky was silent, and Morgan asked, "What are you thinking? What can we do to know the truth?"

  "I have Hunter's athame," Sky said thoughtfully. "It's out in the car. Daniel once told me about a spell where you focus intently on someone's energy, using one of their tools to help focus on them. It finds them whether they're alive or dead. I've been thinking all day-it's risky, but it's what we need to try. The thing is, you need three witches for it."

  Morgan was quiet for a moment. Daniel Niall, Hunter's father, had almost killed himself trying to contact his wife in the netherworld. Contacting the dead was dark magick, ill-advised, and often ended tragically.

  But this is Hunter.

  She didn't have to think twice. "Let's do it," Morgan said. Sky went to the car. The only question was who to enlist to help. Hartwell? Keady? In other times, when she had a difficult question about magick, she would have turned to Katrina. Not now. She wished she could call up Alyce Fernbrake, who had worked at Practical Magick back in Widow's Vale so long ago. Alyce was almost eighty now and living quietly over the store she still owned but no longer managed. Morgan hadn't seen her in eight years. It would be presumptuous to call her for advice now.

  The front door opened, startling Morgan. "Look what the cat dragged in," Sky said, coming back in.

  Moira looked like she had been hauled through a hedge backward. Several times.

  Morgan stood up and ran to her. It was clear that she'd been crying hard, and it looked as if she had fallen. Finnegan was right behind her, panting, wet, and muddy. Sky grabbed his collar and a dish towel and started rubbing him down.

  For a minute Morgan just looked at Moira. She saw her height and slenderness. And her hair, that fine, straight, light hair-it was more Hunter than Morgan. But the pain in Moira's eyes was a reflection of Morgan's pain.

  Morgan drew her daughter to her. Selfishly, Morgan was grateful that Moira couldn't be angry with her about this the way she had been about Ciaran. This hadn't been Morgan's decision, Morgan's fault.

  "I was worried about you," Morgan said.

  "I just ran and ran and ended up on the headland, above the cliffs. Ian came and found me there."

  "Oh." How had he managed to find her? "Did he . . . help you feel better?"

  A nod. "I told him everything," Moira said, sounding both defiant and tired.

  "Oh, Moira," said Morgan sympathetically. "I wish you hadn't. It's family business, our business."

  Moira sniffled and shrugged helplessly. "I'm sorry ... it all just came out. I had told him about Ciaran, too, and then afterward wished I hadn't. But I was so upset... I'm sorry. I know you're not sure about him and his mother, but he's been so good to me."

  Morgan knew the last thing Moira needed right now was to be pushed on the subject of Ian-and his family. "Well, why don't you go take a hot shower," she suggested. "Then we'll talk."

  Moira nodded and headed upstairs. "Morgan," Sky said when Moira was out of earshot, "I think I know who our third witch should be."

  Morgan met Sky's gaze uncertainly. "Moira," she said simply.

  An hour later the three of them went into Morgan's workroom. It was impossible for Morgan to keep her eyes off Moira-she kept examining every aspect of her daughter in order to find traces of Hunter, which now seemed so evident. And even her personality-she too kept much inside, like Hunter. They shared a similar dry humor. And Moira was tenacious, like Hunter-she couldn't let go of things.

  "You don't have to do this," Morgan told Moira as she got out her own tools. "Usually it would be for three initiated witches. It's almost certain that Hunter is, in fact, dead-has been dead all these years. If he's dead and we contact him, we could all be in danger."

  "I want to do it," Moira said.

  "Right, then," said Sky. "Everyone take off every bit of metal. No jeans, Moira-they have rivets and a zipper."

  Morgan hadn't taken off her wedding ring in sixteen years. It was hard to set it aside. Once Sky and Moira had changed into loose cotton pants and sweatshirts and Morgan was in her silk robe, Morgan and Sky drew seven circles of protection. Then Morgan drew three more circles of power. She gestured to the others to enter the circles, and she closed each circle.

  Seated on the floor, they made a natural triangle, their knees touching. Sky took out Hunter's athame and Morgan's heart ached, seeing it after all this time.

  A trident-shaped candleholder stood in the center between them; its black iron cups held three candles. Sky braced the knife across the middle bar of the candleholder so that the athame's blade was licked by one flame.

  Sky had shown Morgan the written form of the spell, and together they had read it through in the kitchen. Now Morgan closed her eyes, and each of the three slowed her breathing, her heartbeat, and they pooled their power so that it could be used.

  Sky began the spell. Like every spell, it was a combination of basic forms overlain with instance-specific designations: the quest-for-knowledge form was in virtually every spell ever crafted. Sky wrought other delicate patterns around the basic structure, tailoring the spell with elegance and precision to search for a person, to promise to cause the person living or dead no harm, and to ward any harm from coming to him by cause of this. As a Wyndenkell, Sky was a natural spell- crafter, and she adapted this one gracefully and elegantly.

  Then Morgan took up the chant, chanting first in her head, then softly aloud. She repeated Sky's basic form but wove her knowledge of Hunter into it, irretrievably chaining his image, his patterns, his essence to the spell. Using ancient words learned during years of study, she called on Hunter's energy as she knew it. If she had known his
true name, this would have been a thousand times easier. Every thing-plants, rocks, crystals, animals, people-had a true name that was a song, a color, a rune, an emotion all at once. In the craft many witches went through a Great Trial, during which they learned their true name. Morgan still didn't know hers, and she'd never known Hunter's. As far as Morgan knew, no one had known his true name except for him. Instead, she recalled all her memories of him and then sent those memories out into the universe, riding along the lines of inquiry Sky had formed.

  "Moira?" Morgan whispered, and then they took each other's hands and held them, combining their energies, their knowledge.

  Together they sent their energies out along the lines of the spell that radiated from them like spokes from a wheel. Moira was chanting her call-power spell and continuously sending her power to Sky and Morgan. Sky was repeating her quest spell, and Morgan continued to send out images of Hunter.

  It was unclear how long they worked. They wove their words, their thoughts, their energies together until it felt as if they had created a tight, complex basket of silver. In her mind's eye Morgan could see it shimmering before her, becoming more and more complete, spinning and glowing. She focused on breathing in and out, smoothly, constantly, like waves, like the sea, her life force waxing and waning without effort.