Her eyes hazed, consciousness leaking. She’d reached too hard-even in her youth, that kind of power hadn’t been hers.
And then strength poured in from the healer beside her.
Moira redoubled her call-and trusted love, freely given, to hold her up.
Lauren felt the moment they won, the tiny girl and the old woman.
The hiccup in time when a mad fight to survive and flee gave way to beaten acceptance.
She dialed down the volume-Marcus wasn’t resisting now. He wasn’t anything at all. With the slow, shuffling gait of a man about to meet his hundredth birthday, Marcus inched back down the street. One foot, then another, reeled in by the twin ropes of love and need coming from Moira and Morgan.
It was the saddest magic Lauren had ever seen.
Tears leaked down Moira’s cheeks. “He comes.”
He did. But not for himself. There was nothing of Marcus in the shell of a man walking up the road. “He comes for you. And the baby.”
Sophie nodded quietly. “It’s enough that he comes.”
Lauren tightened her barriers. The vacant pain in his mind was overwhelming. “He’s broken, Soph. I’ve never felt anything like it.” And it killed her to think she might be responsible.
“You did right.” Moira’s hand slid firm in hers. “We had to ask-and I’m sorry for it.”
She’d blindly followed orders and blasted hell at another mind-one in agony before she’d even started. All because she trusted the old woman who loved him.
Lauren suddenly longed for the warm arms and reckless heart of the man who loved her.
She watched the pathetic shuffle, Marcus’s eyes glued to the baby in her arms. “He’s not going to make it all the way back.”
Moira’s hand turned to steel. “He needs to come all the way. On his own.”
No. She wasn’t holding a drowning man under water any longer. Ducking out from Moira’s hand, Lauren moved to unite him with his life raft.
“Forty-three years.” Moira’s voice held plea now, and a sadness that melted rebellion. “I’ve walked down the street to meet him every day of more than four decades. Not once has he ever walked all the way back with me.”
The love in her mind punctured Lauren’s lungs. Breathless, she cuddled Morgan tight and closed ranks again with the toughest witch she knew. And prayed the gamble worked.
The last steps took a thousand years. Each.
Marcus stopped in front of Lauren-and lifted up arms weighted by an infinity of chains. He took the bundle that was Morgan, blankets, cornflowers, and all. And cradled her in his arms like spun glass.
One man. And the baby who was his.
When he finally looked back up, there were shadows of Marcus in his mind. “Why has this stupid infant picked me?”
Lauren laughed, something akin to joy tickling her ribs. “I have no earthly idea.”
Nell landed in Sophie’s kitchen, a monster plate of Nutella cookies in her hands. Mike stood over the stove, stirring something that smelled like pure heaven. He smiled in greeting and snagged a cookie. “Food’ll be ready in a few minutes, but these will probably go over well in the meantime.”
They’d better-she’d stolen Jamie’s entire backup supply. “How’s everyone doing?”
Mike shrugged, light worry lines between his eyes. “I’m hoping you’ll be able to tell me that. My healing talents don’t run to psychology.” He waved at a tray on the counter. “Mind carrying that in?”
Herbal tea-and coffee? Nell frowned. Fisher’s Cove served up a hundred varieties of tea, but getting a good cup of coffee usually required magic or a drive down the road. “Who’s here?”
“Lauren.” Mike raised an eyebrow. “Nobody filled you in?”
Apparently not. Witches weren’t always the best communicators at the crack of dawn. “I thought Marcus tried to leave.”
“Yeah.” Mike added bowls of berries to the tray. “Lauren cracked him over the head with Morgan’s crying and he came back. Or something like that. Sophie was a little vague on the details-Adam was hungry.”
All this before 4 a.m. Berkeley time. Nell covered a yawn with her hand. Next time they were going to fetch a witch who kept more polite hours. She picked up the tray-time to go find out what the heck had happened.
The sheer exhaustion in the living room was obvious before she made it halfway down the hall. Nell stepped into the doorway, surveying the wreckage-moms of five were good at that. A pale Sophie lay on the couch, Adam curled in the crook of her arm. Moira looked twenty years older than the last time Nell had seen her, and Lauren turned toward coffee fumes like a woman halfway across the Sahara.
Yikes.
Nell dispensed coffee, sugar, and quick hugs, and then took a seat and waited for a roomful of witches to recuperate.
It was Lauren, gulping coffee along with her Nutella fix, who recovered first. “Hand out enough of these cookies, and I’m pretty sure you could be president.”
Sophie’s grin was wan, but real. “The world might not live through Aervyn in the White House.”
Jokes were a sign of witch recovery. “Give me some warning next time, and you can have warm, fresh ones.” A sleepy Jamie had thawed the ones in his freezer before sending them over, but a few had crispy edges-he wasn’t at his best at 4 a.m. either.
“None of us had any warning.” Moira still sounded like she’d been up a week. “’Twas Sophie who found Marcus leaving in the first light of morning. The rest of us got rather rude awakenings.”
Nell listened as three voices filled in snippets of the story. And listened harder to what wasn’t said. “Where are Marcus and Morgan now?”
“Napping.” Sophie was beginning to look more human. “Mike hit them both with a sleep spell, and he’s not very subtle.”
“So he tried to ditch the baby and leave town, you dragged him back by the ear hairs, and he’s going to wake up with a headache and a baby who can travel snuggled in his arms?”
Sophie winced. “Yeah.”
“We don’t know that Morgan can reach the astral plane.” Moira gripped her teacup like a lifeline. “Only that she might.”
Nell knew the levels of traveler magic-she’d lived in vigilant fear of them for Aervyn’s first three years. Some babies just got cold, touched in passing by the mists. Some floated, still firmly tethered to their bodies. Only a terrifying few stretched that connection to the whisper-thin strand necessary to reach the astral plane. But to a parent holding a cold child in their arms, it was a possibility that caused jibbering terror. Only a few would truly travel-but most of those didn’t come back. Whisper-thin cords broke all too easily.
And Morgan had gotten cold twice now.
A quick tug on fire power and Nell pumped more heat into the living room. It wouldn’t help Morgan-but it might
