A Nomadic Witch

Chapter 10

Something tickled.

Marcus swatted at the irritating fly.

More annoying tingles, this time on the other side. Again, his brain sent the annoyed command to swat. His arm, however, appeared to be missing.

And his eyes were fused shut.

A warm hand dropped to his forehead, cheerful words invading his morning. “Sorry, forgot about your eyes. Mike’s sleep spells are kind of strong.” Another tickle, stronger this time, and the owner of the good cheer came into view.

Marcus growled-he was in no mood for girl healers. “Go away.”

“Can’t.” Her hands moved quickly now, one hovering over his main channel flows, the other checking the warm, baby-shaped lump draped over his arm. “Somebody needs to make sure you two survive until breakfast.”

He refused to ask how the baby was doing, but Ginia’s mind seemed unconcerned. And Morgan’s drifted in the light haze of dreaming sleep.

A state she would probably stay in as long as he was willing to be used as a human pillow. Budge an inch and she’d wail like an opera singer, but the starving monster chewing on his intestines wasn’t going to wait patiently, dammit.

“Drink this.” A cool glass slid into his right hand. “I have a bottle for when she wakes up, and Aaron’s bringing scones over in a few minutes. If you behave, you can have a blueberry one.”

Marcus stared at the green goo in disgust. No way in hell he was drinking that. And why did all healers treat him like a toddler? “I’m perfectly fine, and more than capable of making my own breakfast.”

“Uh, huh.” Ginia’s eyes danced with early-morning humor. “I thought you knew how to launch a decent Realm attack, too. What were you thinking, leaving all your castle guards hanging out in the meadow like that?” She did something sharp to his missing arm and all the feeling flowed back in. “Someone might come along and turn all their swords into flowers or something.”

Marcus groaned, wondering what he’d done to deserve annoying preteen girls in his life. “I had to leave rather unexpectedly.” Babies had no respect for game play. And apparently, his next visit was going to be spent trying to reverse engineer whatever mischief Warrior Girl had unleashed on his guards.

Flowers were probably the least of it.

“Drink the goo. You need it after yesterday.” Ginia touched the frown on his forehead. “I moved them back to your keep.”

What?

She shrugged. “Uncle Jamie has to leave Realm all the time when Kenna cries, too, so we have an unofficial rule on level seven now-kind of like a baby time-out.”

She tapped the glass. Marcus sipped. It wasn’t entirely awful.

Ginia bent over and picked up a tiny sock off the floor. “Nobody messes with the dads’ stuff until they get back. People don’t all know you have a baby yet, so I moved your guards.”

Hecate’s hells. He wasn’t a father, and he didn’t have a baby. She wasn’t staying. “I don’t require any special treatment.” Marcus pulled his arm out and dumped the suddenly protesting Morgan into Ginia’s arms. “I suggest you use that bottle you brought.” He was going to acquire himself some industrial-strength earplugs.

No crying baby was going to undo his sanity.

And she wasn’t staying.

Four-and-a-half feet of fury stuffed a squalling girl-child right back at his chest. “You can have all the bad manners you want, but she’s your baby and you know it.” Ginia’s eyes were a miniature version of her mother’s. “And if you don’t feed her, right now, I’m going to turn every single one of your castle soldiers into poopy pink pigs.”

Gods. Even Morgan had stopped her wailing in the face of Warrior-Girl-healer wrath. Marcus popped the bottle in the baby’s mouth. That had been a very creative threat, and she’d clearly meant every word.

He tried very hard not to be amused.

And even harder not to respond to the small girl radiating simple happiness in his arms.

Marcus pulled his cowl closer around his neck. Normally he wasn’t the Realm-skulking type, but people with napping babies who could awaken at any moment needed new strategies.

No way was he leaving himself open to Warrior Girl rescue again.

“You seem cheerful this morning.”

Marcus looked over at his uninvited company and scowled. It was hard to skulk accompanied by a gypsy dressed in flamboyant purple. “Don’t you have a quieter avatar you can use?”

Jamie grinned and shrugged, turning to show the infant riding in some contraption on his back. “The munchkin likes this one. Apparently all girls come programmed to prefer gaudy colors.”

Ha. The gypsy costume long predated Jamie’s little girl. “I’m busy.”

“So I see.” Jamie eyed the spellcubes in Marcus’s hands. “Who are you listening in on?”

Marcus sighed and tossed the eavesdroppers back in his rucksack. The darned things were easy to build and bloody difficult to deploy, thanks to their highly recognizable spellshape. “No one.”

The gypsy squinted out into the street, empty except for a quiet little librarian-and grinned. “It’s about time someone started paying attention to him.”

They watched as Kevin’s primary game avatar walked down the street, touching the walls of each building and muttering. All while reading out of the old book in his hand.

The old book that radiated magic.

Marcus frowned. It took a lot of game points to bring magical objects into the highest level. “What’s that thing do?”

“Dunno.” Jamie shrugged, eyes intently curious. “Never seen it before.”

Marcus snorted-magical objects didn’t just pop into Realm fully formed. Carefully, he pulled a spellcube back out of his sack. Mysterious happenings tended to be bad for the level’s top-ranked players. No one ever worried about the lowly librarians until it was too late.

He wondered if Kevin knew he walked in gigantic shoes. The game’s best-ever non-witch player had also preferred a librarian guise.

“He knows.” Jamie grinned. “He’s easily the game’s best historian. Question is, how many of the people in this level remember The Hacker?”

Those who didn’t forgot at their peril. “Kevin doesn’t have Daniel’s coding skills.”

“Nope.” Jamie started the odd dance parents used to soothe fussy babies. Kenna quieted on his back. “But he watches and learns, and he’s dug some very interesting stuff out of the code archives.”

No one in their right mind ventured into the archives-that was where lines of code went to die, much of it material that had never worked properly in the first place. “Is it safe in there?”

“Mostly,” said Jamie wryly. “Activating it is a different story, but so far he’s been very careful.”

Marcus shook his head. “The boy just needs some good coding lessons. No point digging around in the old relics.”

Jamie snickered. “Don’t let Moira hear you say that.”

He had due respect for the past, but unlike most of the denizens of Fisher’s Cove, no desire to live there. Then again, his present had gotten rather inhospitable as well. Marcus sighed. So much for a few moments of mindless escape.

“Sorry.” The gypsy’s eyes were full of purple-hued empathy. “The first few weeks are hard.”

Weeks? He’d barely made it through two days. “I’m not cut out to care for a child.”

“None of us really are.” In a move that resembled Houdini exiting a straitjacket, Jamie slid the contraption holding a very sleepy Kenna around to his front and snugged her in to his chest. “And you didn’t get an easy draw.”

“It appears I have no choice in the matter.” Marcus winced at the whine in his voice.

“Sure you do.” Jamie’s eyes held something a lot steelier now. “And you already made it. You came back.”

It had hardly seemed like a choice.

Jamie brushed at random bricks on the wall. “We have a circle on standby for you, if you need it. The triplets are designing a bat-signal app for your phone.”

It would probably be pink. Marcus resisted the relief trying to creep into his gut. A circle didn’t always work-the mists had unspeakable power.

The gypsy stroked his girl-child’s fuzzy head. “Morgan’s safety lies with all of us, Marcus.”

“It might not be enough.” It could easily not be enough. And thinking that way would only make him crazy. He kicked an errant pebble in the dirt. “I have to go back. She’ll probably be waking up soon.”

Silence.

Marcus looked up-and finally figured out what it was in Jamie’s eyes.

Understanding. And respect.

Nell lowered herself into the hammock, smiling as the sides rose up around her. Her own personal cocoon.

She remembered the day Daniel had strung it for her. Aervyn had been about three months old and porting to random locations in his sleep. While starting fires. She’d been exhausted, running on magical fumes, and terrified for her tiny boy’s safety.

And then her husband had taken her by the hand, led her out to a quiet corner of the back yard, and tucked her into her very own escape pod. There were few moments in her life when she’d loved him more.

A hand, bearing brownies, appeared over the edge of the hammock. “Want company?”

She scootched up to one end-they’d figured out how to get both of them into the escape pod long ago. “You brought chocolate. What broke?” The last time he’d arrived bearing brownies, it had been a follow up to teaching Aervyn the finer points of a knuckleball pitch. The heirloom vase had not been impressed-although as Gramma Retha had pointed out, it had encountered errant baseballs more than once in the past. Being a Sullivan family heirloom was risky business.

Daniel climbed in and handed over the much bigger brownie. “Nothing that I know of. Lull in the storm. Nathan took Aervyn to the park to climb trees, Mia and Shay are coding, and Ginia’s snoring on the living room couch.”

None of her children ever napped in their beds. “Did you remind Aervyn not to port the neighborhood kids again?” Not all mothers greeted the sight of their child twenty feet up a tree with equanimity.

“Yup.” Her husband grinned. “I even did it before I gave him his brownie. Do I get bonus dad points for that?”

Nell chuckled. “Not enough to make up for feeding him brownies an hour before lunch.”

“Says the woman who used to exist on Doritos.” Daniel shook his head in mock disbelief. “I know our marriage vows had lots of stuff about sickness and health and getting old, but nowhere in there did it say anything about you getting all responsible and nutritionally concerned on me.”

She stuck a foot out of the hammock to start them gently swinging. “I’ll give you a pass on the brownies, but I’ve always been responsible.”

He reached for her fingers. “I know.” His eyes held all the reasons why he loved her. “And I’m guessing that a baby girl with purple eyes is bringing back a lot of memories for my very responsible wife.”

She was. “It’s why I came out here, I guess.”

“No child arrives with the promise that they’ll always be safe.”

“I know.” Nell squeezed the hand that had always been there for her. “But with some, the dangers are right in your face.”

“If we let them be.” Daniel picked brownie crumbs off her belly.

“Choose life unafraid.” Nell repeated the three words he’d given her the day Aervyn had entered the world in fire and storm. They’d been her lifeline ever since-even on the days fear pummeled her chest and stole her air.

He nodded. “We do it. Your brother’s doing it.”

“Nat helps.” Nell offered her last crumbles. “She knows how to breathe through fear better than anyone I know.” Her sister-in-law was one very tough cookie-and she kept Jamie’s feet on rock-solid ground.

“Kenna’s a lucky kid.” Her husband’s eyes shadowed some. “I wonder what Morgan’s story is. Maybe she wasn’t so lucky.”

That, they didn’t know-but Nell knew her guy. “A sweetheart with lavender eyes is wrapping you around her little finger, is she?”

“She looks like our girls. Fuzzy hair and big eyes.” His fingers laced in hers again. “And Marcus looks like he’s been hit by a Mack truck.”

“Yeah.” And she was still trying to wrap her head around how that had happened. “I hope Evan knows what he’s doing.”

Daniel just shook his head, amused. “You’re second-guessing a ghost?”

She grinned. Probably a waste of time-especially when she was curled up in an escape pod with her husband and all five children were otherwise occupied. “Nope. But I am wondering just why you came out here.”

His chuckle sent familiar need curling in her belly. “Took you long enough to figure that out.”

Marcus looked up at the sound of his front door bursting open, wondering who they’d sent to keep tabs on him now. Not that it mattered-a baby who howled if he left the room made it difficult to shower or brush his teeth, much less run for the hills.

He wondered, only somewhat idly, if there was a spell for permanent deafness. Good for loud babies, and probably somewhat discouraging of visitors as well.

Whoever it was wasn’t trying very hard to find him-the cottage was tiny.

He looked down at the small girl tied to his chest, put down the carrot peeler, and sighed. “It appears my nice, peaceful salad is about to be interrupted. Let’s go find the interloper, shall we?”

It had always perplexed him that people insisted on conversing with infants who clearly didn’t understand a word they said. Now he understood it as a desperate attempt to hold on to the last remnants of a saner world.

One not limited to sleep and poop.

Perhaps the new visitor would be willing to change the next diaper. Morgan produced one every day at 4 p.m. like clockwork.

He gave his almost-ready salad one last wistful glance and headed down the hall. “Who goes there?”

“Hi, Uncle Marcus. I brought you flowers.”

Marcus left-turned toward the invader in his living room. Sure enough, there stood Lizzie, an enormous armful of flowers making a precarious journey, stem by stem, into a vase he was very sure hadn’t come with the cottage.

He was being furnished, like it or not. “Does anyone have any flowers left in their garden?”

The invader giggled. “Gran said I could have as many as I could hold.”

“And who provided the container?” asked Marcus dryly. Might as well identify all the plotters.

“Gran.” Lizzie slid a blindingly orange flower into the vessel in question. “She said it’s an important family treasure and if you break it, she’ll feed you to the fishes.”

On Aunt Moira’s scale of threats, that one was pretty minor. “In that case, perhaps you should carry it over to the inn. Aaron always appreciates fresh flowers.” Marcus had no idea if that was true or not, but Elorie’s husband had better manners, so he’d probably find a use for Lizzie and her flowers.

His pint-sized visitor’s eyes flashed triumph. “I already took him some. Two whole armfuls. Gran says the flowers are really happy this spring.”

Probably had something to do with the hordes of witches raining blessings down on their heads. He was very grateful the flowers had kept Aunt Moira alive-but her garden had become a damned tourist attraction.

One last flower and the table display apparently met with Lizzie’s approval.

He tried for dismissal. “The light sabers aren’t here yet. I’ll send you a message when they are.”

She ignored him, much as he’d expected. “Can I play with Morgan now?”

He looked down at the bundle on his chest. Any more time there and she was going to be permanently attached. “Maybe I can put her down somewhere.”

“Sure.” Lizzie looked around. “Do you have a baby blanket? I’ll spread it out on the floor.”

He had no blessed idea. “I have several of Aunt Moira’s throws. Is one of those acceptable?”

“Uh, huh.” Lizzie was digging around in the bag of mysterious wares they’d first sent him home with. “But Aunt Elorie put one of her floor blankets in here. See?” She pulled out a big, quilted square of seawater-blue fabric. “You can put that down on the floor and lay Morgan on it. I’ll play with her, and you can go find a clean shirt.”

Marcus froze, the baby halfway out of her pouch. “What’s wrong with my shirt?”

Lizzie giggled. “It looks like you’ve been wearing it for a week.” She reached into the bag of baby paraphernalia again, coming back out with an enormous handkerchief-thing covered in pink elephants. “This is a burp cloth. You can use it to try to catch Morgan’s puke if you want. Then you wouldn’t need a clean shirt so often.”

He’d put on a new shirt after Ginia’s departure-he was quite sure. His last clean one, no less. And the burp cloth looked very poorly designed to be a catcher’s mitt. He carefully laid Morgan down on top of the floor blanket. She waved her limbs around like a stuck turtle, but seemed otherwise content.

Lizzie crouched down by the blanket and started to talk in the sing-song voice of a comic-book chipmunk. “Hey, cutie girl. Lizzie-Fizzie came to play with you today. Oh! I see your toes.”

“She refuses to keep her socks on.” It was already a thorn in his side. One of many.

“Babies like to be nakey.” His expert child entertainment chased toes as Morgan drooled happily. “Gran says they come that way to remind us how beautiful we are.”

Foolishness from an old woman who liked to walk barefoot in her flowers.

Lizzie grabbed the baby’s foot and blew some kind of entirely rude nose into its sole.

And then Morgan opened her mouth and giggled. Big, rollicking giggles straight from her toes.

Marcus took a step closer, moth to bright flame. “What did you do?”

“I gave her a raspberry.” Lizzie grinned and demonstrated again, giggling along with her tiny playmate. “See? She likes it.”

“No one else does that with their babies.” Marcus ignored the strange tugs inside his chest.

“That’s cuz they’re still wee tiny. Morgan’s older, so she likes to play.” Lizzie leaned over, pulled up the baby’s shirt, and planted a raspberry on her belly. “I have to go, Morgan-Zorgan, but I’ll come back and play soon.”

She shimmied up from the floor and straight out the door, still making raspberry sounds.

Morgan was older than the other babies? Marcus watched the small girl on the floor, waving her hands around in search of an imaginary friend, and wondered just how much he didn’t know.

Purple eyes stared back at him solemnly.

Gingerly, expecting her to wail at any moment, he reached a hand toward her toes. They curled up around one of his fingers like a little monkey.

They sat there in silence, man and little monkey girl. And then, gripped by momentary insanity, Marcus leaned over and blew a raspberry into her toes.

The giggles that washed over them both were pure magic. The headless demons of hell would have scared him less.