A Nomadic Witch

“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 up-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.”