Marcus only scowled a little.
She took that by way of greeting and made her way through the flowers. “I heard wee Morgan has figured out how to roll over.”
He nodded glumly. “Sad, but true. She gets in enough trouble as it is.”
She had a lot of mobile helpers. Moira reached over and rescued the flower the baby had trapped in her pudgy toes. “No eating that one, sweet girl-it’ll give you a tummy ache.”
Marcus continued to move shiny pebbles and toy soldiers aimlessly in the dirt.
She knew the stages of grief. And could find joy in him finally moving through them, even if it hurt her to the core to watch. She reached out and touched his hand. “Tell me about my boy.”
Her nephew’s body jerked. “He lives in a gray hell and he can’t leave.”
“I know.” She’d had a long and tearful cup of tea with Lauren. “And the fierce injustice of it makes me want to kick a hole in the sky.”
Marcus looked up, face full of surprise.
“Aye.” She pulled dead petals off a flower with far more force than necessary. “You’re not the only one who would like to throw a witch-sized temper tantrum. One big enough to blast light into every corner of that awful gray.”
“We can’t.” His voice carried the full weight of that helplessness. “But I really appreciate the offer.”
“It’s not for you that I’d try.” Moira waited until he looked up. “I’d give anything to hold him on my lap, just one time, and tell him that I loved him. How proud I am of the man he’s become.”
“I forgot to tell him.” Tears swam in her nephew’s eyes.
“My dear boy.” She reached for his cheek, her own tears threatening. “You most surely didn’t. The two of you never needed words.”
It comforted his bruised heart-she could see it.
His fingers traveled again, a winding path over soldiers and shiny rocks. Pieces of home.
She picked up one of the pebbles. Evan had always loved them.
His hand wrapped around one of the soldiers. “This isn’t home,” he said softly. “It’s an amazing thing everyone’s done for us, and it’s keeping Morgan safe…”
But it wasn’t home. And while she sat in the flowers of her real garden every day, and drank tea at her kitchen table every night, he stayed here with the child he loved.
She closed her eyes and hoped Nell and Elorie were almost finished. Marcus had finally put his heart’s roots in the soil of Fisher’s Cove. It was time to nourish them.
Chapter 23
Escape.
Marcus climbed out of the car and breathed in the tang of salt, letting the glorious emptiness wash over his soul.
Alone.
Well, except for his sidekick.
After a week trapped in Realm, they had both earned this. They had every precaution dozens of witches could devise, a car filled with every baby item ever made, and thirty minutes of freedom.
Evan had told him to go home and live. Well, this was home, the happy and the sad of it.
He walked around to the back door and bent in, grinning as Morgan blew bubbles and tried to grab his hair. “Ready to play on the beach, girl-child?”
Marcus touched Elorie’s pendant around his neck. He could get them back to Realm at any whiff of trouble. As could any of the witches standing guard all over the village. And there wasn’t going to be trouble. The day was bright and sunny, Morgan had already slept like a rock, and he’d swaddled her in twenty-five warding spells.
Just half an hour. A moment to say hello-and perhaps goodbye.
Then he’d go back to the fortress that kept his girl safe.
With quick hands, he wrapped up Morgan in Aunt Moira’s latest baby blanket creation-this one swirling shades of purple. “Come on out, munchkin. And when you learn to talk, maybe you can explain to me why the women of the world insist on matching everything to your eyes.”
All she had in answer was a particularly wet raspberry.
No matter. Hecate herself couldn’t make him admit it out loud, but the purple was growing on him.
He drew the line at glitter, however. A man had to have his standards.
Tucking Morgan in one arm, he started unloading the trunkful of supplies required for an outing at the beach. He spent two useless minutes trying to fight the umbrella out one handed-and then rolled his eyes. The entire half hour could easily be spent unpacking. He looked down at his content companion. “What do you think, baby girl-can you manage not to poop for thirty minutes or so?” He was pretty sure the diapers were at the bottom of the trunk pile.
He hoped her raspberry was an affirmative one.
Feeling strangely unburdened, Marcus settled Morgan into her pouch. “Let’s travel light, then. You want to walk or laze around in the sun?”
For once, she seemed easy with either choice, and his old and cranky legs voted for lazing. Carefully, Marcus wound through the boulder field between the car and a long stretch of sand. In his boyhood, he’d barely noticed the rocks. Now his balance was rather more precarious.
Marcus looked down at his old-man shoes. And felt an odd sense of adventure meld into his general good mood. It had been years since he’d gone barefoot.
Hell, it had probably been decades.
With considerably more effort than it had taken in his youth, Marcus danced around until his feet were naked. “Well, that was about as graceful as a bull walrus.” He peered down at his pale toes. “And those look like fish bait.” Decades-old fish bait.
His toes scrunched up-he’d forgotten how cold the rocks could be on a Nova Scotia June morning. Wimpy old fart. It was, however, a far easier task to hop across the remaining stretch of boulders.
Problem number two showed up when he took the final hop onto the sand.
The very cold, wet sand. High tide-damn. He offered Morgan a knuckle to chew on, distracted. “Looks like we have a bit of an impediment to our lazing around.” And he hadn’t escaped civilization just to have his feet turn into sand popsicles.
Morgan gave his finger a particularly good chomp. Marcus chuckled. “What are you, a baby dinosaur?” Probably not. Too much drool-her onesie was half soaked already. With a quick finger wave, he activated the portable quick- dry spell on his iPhone. Bless Aervyn and his endless fire power.
Endless fire power.
Marcus grinned. “One patch of warm, dry sand, coming up.” He pushed several buttons on his phone. Using the same spell ten times in a row wasn’t the most elegant way to solve a problem, but it was working. The sand under his toes heated nicely.
Grateful for small pleasures, Marcus pulled Morgan out of the pouch and sank down onto the now-toasty circle of beach. “Welcome to tropical paradise, baby girl.”
He chuckled as her bare toes slipped out the bottom of the blanket. “Want to feel the sand under your feet, do you?” The baby manual probably frowned on such things, but he was in far too good a mood to care.
He unwrapped her little sausage of a body and laid her down on the sand-and then winced as she promptly wiggled around in paroxysms of happiness. Dang it. Sand probably wasn’t all that easy to get out of baby hair.
Ah, well.
Feeling oddly mischievous, he picked up a handful of sand and trickled it over her feet, grinning in victory as her giggles rolled out over the sand. “Like that, do you?”
He loved watching her laugh-her entire body got into the act. And if it was laughter Evan wanted to hear, Morgan’s could melt the earth and sky. One more time, he scooped up sand in his hand…
